21 NOVEMBER 1981, Page 16

Premature prediction

Sir: In 'Portrait of the week' (31 October) you indicated that 'various polls predicted a win for Mrs Shirley Williams at the Crosby by-election . . . ' We don't possess any crystal balls, read tea leaves, examine entrails or make long range predictions of either weather or the state of the economy. What we do is to report the state of public opinion at a point in time. To say that we 'predicted' a by-election that had not yet been called and in which neither the Labour nor the Conservative candidate had been named is to give us considerably more credit for soothsaying than we would wish.

Robert M. Worcester

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