I WRITE regarding David Williams’s comments (Oxford Mail, March 14) on my placard displayed at last month’s Bonn Square demo.

I wrote the sign just after the expulsion of Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak had been announced on TV, so it was very topical.

I did indeed compare county council leader Keith Mitchell to the departed ruler mentioned, but I was careful not to say ‘Mitchell OUT’, just ‘Mitchell?’.

There is a vast difference between those despotic Arab rulers and Mr Mitchell, as the latter was duly elected to the county council by the voters of Adderbury and then freely chosen by his fellow Tory councillors to be their leader.

But I do not consider the county elections in 2009 to have been democratic.

The Tories, none of them from Oxford city, got just 43 per cent of the votes cast but they hold a big majority of the seats.

This is, of course, due to the ridiculous first past the post system still used in England, though not now in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, apart from at UK parliamentary elections.

In the Irish Republic, they have for many years used the proportional representation system called single transferable vote, though this point was never mentioned by the British media in their coverage of the recent general election in that country.

Personally I cannot see how any council or assembly can be democratic if the views of the members do not represent the views of those who voted. Yes, democracy involves compromise and even coalition – a kind of government which I find far better than the dictatorship of a phoney majority.

From 1940-45 we had a coalition government to win the war. Now we have one to win the war against national bankruptcy, and I support it.

M HUGH-JONES, Headley Way, Oxford