Sir, You deserve your readers' gratitude for the excellent full account in Friday's paper of the district auditor's full-term report on Oxford City Council's financial activites, and the council's reaction. Your report did not make comfortable reading, and one may hope that the same is true for the city councillors involved.

What I find particularly shocking is the revelation that the publication of the auditor's report is to be deferred until after the local election! Surely a crass attempt to deflect the public from drawing conclusions which may damage the sitting council's re-election prospects as they should.

Gertrud Seidmann,Wolfson College, Oxford