MAY I ask why the Royal Mail is delivering, at public expense, a commercial survey asking hundreds of personal questions about our preferences in leisure, holidays and travel, motoring, shopping, health, money and investments, and charities?

The recipient is asked to fill in their full name, whether they are married, divorced, separated, widowed or living together, with full name of partner or spouse.

For the simple-minded there is an inducement of a top prize of £5,000 to give all this highly personal information to a commercial enterprise which sells it to other companies and organisations.

For the Royal Mail, of course, it generates plenty of business in the form of unsolicited junk mail for years to come.

Am I alone in thinking this is a gross intrusion of privacy with overtones of a police state in formation?

How many people would volunteer information to strangers in the street, for example, about who one was living with, what your religion was and details of your savings?

I hope this state-sponsored scam can be halted before any more secret dossiers can be compiled.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.