Councillor David Turner (Oxford Mail, May 6) accuses me of encouraging the lack of democracy I complained about.

Not so! If the Conservative candidate in my ward had won, there would have been a more democratic city council.

Regrettably, he misled me into thinking he had a good chance.

I thought my letter (Oxford Mail, April 28) made it clear that my vote was purely tactical. It had nothing to do with Conservative policies.

Perhaps the new Tory leader, David Cameron, will come to see the merits of proportional representation, and will change his party's policy.

I hope so. And the same goes for the Labour Party. As it is from May 5, the city council has 19 Liberal Democrats, 17 Labour, eight Greens and four IWCA. These parties got respectively 31.4 per cent, 30.1 per cent, 20.8 per cent and 4.6 per cent.

The Tories got 12 per cent of votes, which should have meant three councillors among the 25 elected this year. They should have at least six in the full council of 48. That would be far more democratic than the present numbers.

Of course, the same applies to the county council, where the Tories have far too many seats for the percentage of votes they got last year.

Michael Hugh-Jones Headley Way Oxford