I am sure it will not have escaped your readers’ notice that the issue of tuition fees has brought out a string of Liberal Democrat MPs and spokespersons explaining why they have broken their pre-election promise not to accept this form of financing our universities.

“We are in a coalition”, they say. “We have to make compromises.” The implication being that, in the unlikely circumstances that they had formed the government as a single party, they would not have even suggested tuition fees.

Well, this is interesting, because Lib Dems are the party of coalition. They have demanded a referendum on the Alternative Vote system to change our constitution for electing parliamentary representatives – a system which will make coalition governments far more frequent in the future, if we are persuaded to vote for it.

There is contradiction and doublethink in spades here. We must remember Lib Dem words when, next May, they try to persuade us to vote for AV.

Cllr Tony Woodcock, Civic Centre, Poole