JULIAN HEAD, of Audley Rise, Newton Abbot, writes:

May I commend Brian Thomas for his letter in last week’s issue concerning ‘Woodpilegate’. I feel this has now gone on long enough.

Our local MP used an old hackneyed phrase from yesteryear, a slip of the tongue for which she quickly apologised.

My father would have definitely used the phrase when he was alive, does that make him a racist?

As he had welcomed an Israeli Jewish daughter-in-law into the family and built a succa every September for his cherished granddaughter, then I would think not.

Personally I have never used the phrase, a) because I never use the N word and b) because I do not know what it means.

Another saga, which is attracting a lot of attention concerns Nicola Burbeck’s payoff after she was resigned (I should be careful there as I do not know the full details of her departure) from Teignbridge Council.

This is a private matter between an employer and their employee; their rules should be the same in such matters as in the private sector.

You can bet that if Teignbridge did bandy the payoff about in the public domain, Ms Bulbeck (an experienced lawyer herself) and her team would be over this issue and the risk is that would receive an even bigger payoff from Teignbridge when they are sued for breach of the Data Protection Act. An act which is going to be toughened even further next year.

I understand that Teignbridge Council had fallen foul of the Data Protection Act in the past and are right to be cautious in this instance.

You also state in your latest article that the local taxpayers are feeling distressed, I am not, what I feel is unsurprised and little nauseous by the whole thing as it happens so often.

One good thing to come out of ‘Nicolagate’ is that Phil Shears has pushed his daughter off the front pages, I was worried at one point that your newspaper had morphed into Nuts magazine.