I DECIDED not to apply to vote in the recent election. Naturally, having blatantly flouted the law, I expected to be hauled away to spend my twilight years in poky. I saw myself as the Nelson Mandela of Acomb and the focus of world-wide media attention. Even the threat of compulsory television could not intimidate me.

As it was, I might have been a burglar for all the notice the police took of me. Perhaps Paymaster Hills had decided that he couldn't afford to lose a taxpayer and at the same time scandalise New Labour sensibilities by encouraging someone to read for a degree at public expense.

I should have voted willingly for Dr Richard Taylor, or for any candidate who declared a credible belief in democracy. Voting should be a function of democracy. In the UK it is simply a function of Parliament. It allows a government with less than 25 per cent of the votes to claim a mandate and a hefty pay rise.

In boycotting the election, I was in no way forgetting those who fought for democracy. Indeed, I recall that it was Parliament that hanged them, "knocked them on the head", banished or imprisoned them according to the fashion of the day. I felt that, in disobeying the law, I was honouring them in my own small, unheroic and doubtless futile way.

William Dixon Smith,

Welland Rise, Acomb, York.

Updated: 09:16 Saturday, June 16, 2001