THE Echo article ‘MPs? White men of course’ (September 24), showed that only one in eight youngsters at a Bournemouth school visualised an MP as being female.

Interestingly, only one of the Dorset MPs is female, although one political party is campaigning to change that.

Conservatives are planning to put the clock back to a time before these youngsters were even born, to a time when Dorset was not just represented in Westminster only by white men, but exclusively by white male Conservatives.

In the 21st century that gender imbalance has to be embarrassing for Tories and rather shocking for everybody else.

Dr MARTIN RODGER, Bloxworth Road, Poole