RICHARD Drax MP recently used his Echo column to oppose Alternative Vote system. No surprise there.

Increasingly, Labour and Tory MPs are using every available media opportunity to oppose AV. Why?

MPs in the two main parties can be pretty sure they have a job for life under the present voting system.

With AV, at every election they would not be sure of the public opinion on the job they have done for the voters in their area.

Remember voters, the MPs’ expenses scandal?

Remember voters, we have an unelected, undemocratic House of Lords where cash for honours, donations to political parties, will help you with a £300 per day, plus expenses.

In that unsavory House they are passing laws on the population with no mandate from the public.

These same MPs then criticise the Arabs for being undemocratic.

Remember, also, millions opposed the war in Iraq. Where did the first past the post voting system get us then?

Mr Drax said in the House of Commons recently that the cuts in the defence budget should be re-examined. No they should not.

We are one of the smallest countries in the world yet we are the fourth largest spender in the world on defence. Why?

What should be re-examined is politicians sending our brave service personnel to countries and wars we should not be involved in.

Politicians like to use the excuse we would be attacked at home if we did not get involved. They told me that as an 18-year-old in Korea, 54 years ago.

We are under threat because politicians like to meddle in other people’s countries as if we still had an empire.

The defence of the UK should be in a NATO-led army with a reduced budget on our defence, like other countries. Mr Drax is wrong on AV, he is wrong on defence.

I will be voting for AV. Let us, the people, call our MPs to account. Do not give them a cushy, well-paid job for life, whatever party they belong to.

Make MPs accountable to the people, not to themselves. AV will help, in my opinion, to stop sacrificing our brave, service personnel being sent to countries by our so-called democratic election system by MPs out of touch with the people of this country.

D S L JULIAN, Old Castle Road, Weymouth