COUN Ian Gillies claims that the new leader of City of York Council “has never had a proper job” (The Press, May 12).

Presumably working for one of the city’s major education institutions or for a national chain store doesn’t count, as in the next breath the Tory leader defines a proper job as one where you risk your own money.

Students of history will know that this is exactly the same line trotted out by the Conservative Party in the Victorian era, when the impertinent working classes had the cheek not only to ask for the vote but to demand the right to elect their own kind to Parliament.

In those days, the Tories said that the country should only be run by “men of capital” who had a “stake in the nation”.

The 21st-century Tories may look different, but underneath they display the same old 19th-century attitudes.

Patrick Kelly, East Mount Road, York.