RARELY do I feel angry enough to write to your letters page, but having read the Phillpott File (Evening News, Monday, September 16), I felt the need to express my concerns about the appalling comments made by Mr Phillpott.

The hysteria he is trying to whip up with regard to the siting of a new or the enlarging of an existing airport for the West Midlands, is a carbon copy of the like being contrived in the Coventry area ( is this a coincidence?).

No one likes the idea of great swathes of countryside being lost. The building in which he works was probably once on the site of water meadows - should that possible desecration ever have happened?

Can this man, with hand on heart, say he has never travelled by air or never will?

Has he never like me, an occasional flyer, never felt pleased not to have to trudge to London when a suitable flight from a local Midlands airport has been found?

When big decisions such as this are being made every possibility is bound to be explored.

So calm down, Mr Phillpott there is no high horse to climb on just yet.

Not content with slamming the rich who he says "all wish to travel by air to their second homes on the continent" ( if only!) he then predictably takes a swipe as always at the current government.

Mr Phillpott has, in my opinion, expressed an extremely racist comment, and damned the efforts of the participants of the Earth Summit .

He suggests that the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, should stop worrying about the cesspit of Africa and concern himself about the environmental disaster that will happen here if an airport is built and insists that charity begins at home.

The possible siting or extending of an airport here does not justify him calling Africa a cesspit undeserving of any charity.

Tell that, Mr Phillpott, to Live Aid, Red Nose Day, Oxfam and all people at home and abroad who help the struggling (for whatever reason) nations of Africa.

Tell that to the swelling numbers of UK citizens who visit Africa each year for their holidays.

My family - and others - will, I am sure, join me in the condemnation of this article and the appalling language used.

The only cesspit would seem to be your twisted mind and hell-bent determination (I repeat) to fulfil your seemingly own hidden political agenda.

I am surprised this final section got through your editor's hands and staggered that you still have a job!

Africa, Mr Phillpott, deserves an apology, now!

MARILYN WOOD,

Malvern.