When the Fly in the Ointment column started in the Guardian it began as a light-hearted, sometimes amusing and sometimes thought-provoking look at life and I looked forward to reading it each week.

Unfortunately it has drifted some way from this.

For an anonymous writer to be given more than half a page to write on an issue unchallenged is a privilege, so it was frankly with disgust that I read the diatribe in the latest edition and an abuse of that privilege.

I don’t care what the Fly thinks about Brexit any more than I care what Paul Nuttall thinks in his regular pro-Brexit letters to the paper but at least he doesn’t get half a page to spout his unchallenged opinions. We know who he is and the readers do have the right of reply.

Blatantly biased political opinion from anonymous sources has no place in local journalism, in particular his inclusion of a number of highly emotive and frankly stupid points only highlights how wrong it is.

Specifically he asks ‘are we going to have a Trump style wall...in Northern Ireland’ and then ‘My dentist is Polish. Are we going to throw her out of the country’.

If he had been paying attention he would have heard all politicians who might conceivably have a say in the matter repeat ad nauseum that there will be no hard border in Ireland whatever the outcome of Brexit let alone a ‘Trump style wall’ – whatever that is because he hasn’t built it yet – and absolutely nobody has ever suggested that we should be in the business of deporting settled EU migrants, indeed even UKIP specifically ruled this out as being one of their aims.

To imply this might happen is irresponsible in the extreme and on a par with Nigel Farage standing in front of a poster of Syrian refugees during the referendum campaign when Syrian refugees had nothing to do with Brexit.

This kind of scaremongering can only undermine any genuine points he makes but more seriously serve to arouse unnecessary fear in our local Eastern European population who might be reading this newspaper.

It must be quite difficult for the Fly to think of things to fill the column every week, but if that’s the case perhaps it’s time for him to move on.

Paul Cotton

Northwich