Sir, Judith Wardle complains (Letters, March 4) that I have not yet answered the email she sent to all local parliamentary candidates on February 19. As a concerned constituent, she demanded their support for rambling. Why, asks Judith Wardle, have the other parties responded and not the Green Party? Surely, she says, the Green Party should be supporting access to the countryside and the health benefits of walking.

Indeed it should, and it will, just as soon our backlog of 300 similar computer-generated emails is cleared. I have received over a thousand in the past month, all requesting candidate support for everything from fairness to Israel to the Kennel Club.

All parliamentary candidates receive these appeals ­­— as Judith Wardle will know. The large parties employ teams of writers to create dozens of stock responses, but we Greens are as poor as church mice and must cope with our own, meagre resources.

Wardle is being disingenuous when she says that David Cameron replied to her; someone replied on his behalf. Perhaps the local Labour candidate really did pen the fulsome response Judith Wardle attributes to him. Judith Wardle should know; after all, she runs the website of the Witney Constituency Labour Party.
Stuart Macdonald, Green party parliamentary candidate for the Witney constituency, West End, Witney