SIR Mike Foster's latest smokescreen about middle class influence over state education suggests to me that he's either lost all connection with reality or he shares Tony Blair's belief that we are too stupid to see what 'New' Labour's global capitalist elite are up to.

Just cast your eye across New Labour's front bench and their cronies and you will find precious few 'beneficiaries' of state education - and even fewer among their children. The few exceptions there are will have gone to middle class dominated grammar schools which our political elite abolished because they gave too many poor people a free leg-up in life.

As for the idea that a New Labour Worcestershire County Council would deliver Mr Foster's socialist paradise, I would ask him to question whether there can be anyone left with a grip on reality who imagines that local authorities have the power to do anything which New Labour's central government doesn't want them to. Even state education couldn't make us that stupid, Mr Foster.

JIM EVANS,

Worcester