IN reference to your front page World Exclusive for Desmond Tutu (Hereford Times, April 2) I would like to say the ordinary second-hand book still provides a superior service to the internet and thus, by co-operation among the book trade in Hay and perhaps with other members of the International Booktown Association, we could have assembled a vast collection on the theme, “The rise of African Nationalism with special reference to Christianity”.

No book would have an individual value, all would be the economics of the by-product, but nevertheless we would be in a unique position to show Desmond Tutu more books about his chosen subject than he knew existed.

Hay’s battle against the telematic fascism of the internet desperately needs all the help it can get.

Rather than be warned of Tutu’s arrival, I first learnt of it from your front page and will therefore have more difficulty in placing such a collection in Gaza, Egypt or Bulgaria, all places which have now told the International Booktown Association they want booktowns, which could grow independently of government support and need an international identity.

During Hay Festival 2008 television screens throughout Europe flashed “Make Hay-on-Wye into Hay-on-Sky,” so at Hay Festival 2009 I would be enormously glad if your readers could be in touch with me to help tell Murdoch it is just “Pie in the Sky”.

The enormous wealth involved in celebrity culture has absolutely nothing to do with the world’s first economy of poverty, in which it is likely 20,000 people will work…only a variety of democratic disasters in the Welsh Assembly have allowed this situation to occur.

The fundamental issue is, of course, the difference between a new and a second-hand book, and Hay was originally inspired by William King, a keeper at the British Museum who said only an economy of poverty can have an enormous international influence.

Appealing therefore to Hereford for help I believe we otherwise face a future of telematic fascism worse than Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Brave New World and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

RICHARD BOOTH, Hay Castle, Powys