COUNCILLOR Nick Wallis was quoted as using the phrase "professional eels" with reference to the critics of his "foot-fall strategy" in Darlington town centre (Echo, Nov 9).

He corrected your report to "professional eeyores" (HAS, Nov 10), but according to the Oxford Dictionary of English an eel is "proverbial for its slipperiness".

Considering Cllr Wallis’s current record on the town centre, particularly the scrapping of the public library which is a beautiful Victorian monument to education and learning, I can only say: "It takes a professional eel to know a professional eel."

I suggest that if he is not a member of the library that he should join and learn how and when to use "le mot juste".

Donald Marshall, Darlington