Although health bosses will claim that it's not privatisation, it certainly appears to be the first step along that treacherous road.
The NHS may be struggling, but there must be other ways to save money – how about reducing the number of managers and cutting red tape.
You only have to look at the privatisation of the utility companies and the railways to see the potential damage this could cause. Household bills and train tickets have shot up in recent years, but not necessarily the quality of service.
A company running any NHS service would inevitably lead to questions of cost versus care.
M Williams
Huntingdon
>> WHAT irony that the dismantling of the NHS should begin in one of the strongest Conservative party constituencies in the UK (Firms bid to run our hospital, Town Crier, May 15).
That this piecemeal action should be overseen and condoned by a so-called Labour government is a disgrace and a complete sell-out of long held principles.
Mr D J Mack
Hawthorn Road
St Neots

>> To quote the article in the Town Crier (May 15): "The SHA is planning to run a 12-week public consultation on the new set-up, but only on the implementation of the arrangements after a new partner has been chosen."
Typical! So much for the Government's much-vaunted "patient-centred NHS". We are supposed to believe that some international private health giant will happily enter into a contract to run Hinchingbrooke without having first worked out in detail how it is going to run the place?
Any "consultation" on "implementation" will be purely cosmetic. Nothing new there, then!
Welshwitch
Posted on our website


Ask MEPs about post offices
>> LIBERAL Democrat councillor Colin Saunderson (Town Crier, May 8) has exhibited the very characteristics that I expressed in my original letter headed, EU behind Post Office closures on May 1.
The reason Tory, Lib Dem, and Labour politicians try to find any answer but the right answer to the problem of Post Office closures is that they don't want the general public to know that it was their MEPs who voted in the European Parliament for the acceptance of the two European Commission introduced Postal Directives. 
The first of these was EU Privatisation of Postal Services Directive, 97/67/EC issued on December 15, 1997, and a second Postal Services Directive, 2002/39/EC issued on June 10, 2002, which reduced the Royal Mail monopoly to 50 grams or 1.75 ounces. 
This monopoly will be abolished from January 1, 2011, by a new ruling from the European Parliament allowing competition from any other EU member state. It is clear that neither the British Government nor the Royal Mail is in control and the reality is that the British Government has had to go cap-in-hand to the European Commission to ask for the annual government subsidy of £150million to be increased, but this has been refused. 
With inflation the subsidy becomes less each year so more post offices have to close. So the real reason that post offices are closing is because the EU will not let the British Government spend more on keeping them open.
The Royal Mail and the Post Offices have to provide an unprofitable service in vast rural areas with limited population and with foreign competition able to cherry-pick the profitable business in densely populated cities there is no way to reduce the government subsidy.
It's strange that Mr Saunderson thinks there is some sort of magical solution by changing operations to a different floor or replacing post offices with agencies of some kind.
The reason the three main parties huff and puff about post office closures is that they don't want the general public to know that their MEPs voted in the European Parliament for these disastrous EU Directives that are killing off one of Britain's most necessary and wonderful public service industries.
Yes, Cllr Saunderson, the Liberal Democrats must take their share of the blame for post office closures.
Derek Norman.
Chairman
Hunts and Cambs Branch,
UK Independence Party

Do you know the teenage car thief?
>> SOMEWHERE in Eaton Socon there is a teenager with a rather sore head.
I think the parents might like to know how this came about.
On May 6, three youths stole my keys from inside my bungalow in Duloe Brook. They then went to my garage in Knights Close and stole my car.
They totally wrecked it and stole everything in it, and being a pensioner I will find it hard very hard to replace everything. Therefore I have no sympathy whatsoever for the youth who had clearly hit the windscreen when the car crashed. Someone out there must know who did this.
Mrs Brenda Tee
Eaton Socon

Give us our job centre back
>> IN answer to your article "What residents want for town", (Town Crier, May 15), I suggest that the St Neots Job Centre is reinstated, especially as the population has increased considerably.
E A Clark-Ward
Longfellow Place,
Eaton Ford