IN response to Steve Grist's letter (Hereford Times. May 8) concerning my comments about RAGE at the council on April 25, I am happy to provide some justification, which was articulated at the aforesaid meeting.

My comments including the phrase '..wild and inaccurate statements..' was a reference to some of the utterances of the RAGE platform spokesman at the public meeting, arranged by RAGE and the Waverley House Action Committee, in Leominster on April 23, at which I was present.

For example, he asserted that Shaw Homes was 'a Mickey Mouse organisation'; council's Best Value Reviews were 'a fraud '; and it was RAGE which made the council withdraw the option of closure of any of its residential homes in July 2001.

This latter claim was particularly galling considering it was Councillor Mrs French and myself who proposed and seconded the amendment to abandon any notion of homes closure, and which was unanimously approved by members at the Extraordinary Council meeting of July 20 2001. The outrage felt by many members of the council at any suggestion of closure needed no prompting from RAGE.

Such comments and claims, in my view, deserve the description 'wild and inaccurate.'

Councillor J P Thomas,

Leominster South, Pen-y- Bryn, Danesfield Drive,

Leominster.