5 FEBRUARY 1977, Page 18

Who cares?

Sir: What a betrayal of journalistic standards to have the editor of the old tabloid Daily Mail writing about the new tabloid Daily Express! Surely most of your readers aren't interested in the twistings and turnings of the gutter press. Who cares about the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, the Daily Mirror and the Sun, the Sunday People and the News of the World—the pot sneering at the kettle for turning black ? Isn't it time that a serious paper like the Spectator learnt it has nothing in common with the kind of newspaper which, as Richard Boston rightly said seven years ago, 'is about as necessary to democracy as an outbreak of typhoid'? Nicolas Walter 134 Northumberland Road, Harrow, Middlesex