For those readers of the Hammersmith & Fulham Chronicle who want to have an idea of what their local MPs really think, subscribe to their newsletters.

The most active and wide ranging is Greg Hands, current MP for Hammersmith & Fulham.

Greg is a polyglot (speaks quite a few languages) and has views ranging from life, the universe and[2026] tourist guides. In his recent newsletter - news@greghands.com issue 184 - he moaned about how leftist guides like Lonely Planet are.

Their guilt was to portray those he admired, eg. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as 'bad' but extol those people, like Clem Attlee and FD Roosevelt as 'good'.

Unfortunately, while Greg quotes from the offending book, he fails to answer why the comments were made.

If we take Margaret Thatcher, there are a number of points our local MP has failed to address: why during her and John Major's time, did the top 10 per cent in the UK do 10 times better than the bottom 10 per cent? She came into power with the slogan 'Labour isn't working', yet in 18 months, presided over the trebling of unemployment.

Why did she with Reagan, support the ousted Pol Pot regime in Cambodia; a mass murderer who slaughtered, perhaps, a third of his own people, just because it served US interests in the Cold War?

And we have the two to thank for turning Afghanistan from a backpacker's destination to a death trap for British forces there after supporting 'freedom fighters', AKA the Mujahideen and Taliban (yes, those same Taliban).

Greg even thinks it's a bit naughty to be critical of George W Bush - yes, the one who has shown his formidable intelligence at our cost with his grasp of economics - "most of our imports are from abroad", to that of the campaign in Iraq "mission accomplished".

Greg Hands' newsletter is busier than the rather tepid Andy Slaughter, Labour MP for Ealing, Acton and Shepherd's Bush, andy@andyslaughter.com for whose sporadic effort reads like a junior lecturer or barrister (which is what he is) trying to sound ever so clever.

But it's Greg who seems to possess a broader vision of what his politics are. The problem is that he hasn't the bravery to say Thatcher was wrong in so many instances, because he is from that generation of Tories who doted on the matron at private school and to whom she became super-matron.

Michael Gannon

Sun Road West Kensington