Sir – We are puzzled by plans to downgrade the QE2 Hospital when all predictions are that our population will increase dramatically in the next 10 years. We read in your paper that between 75,000 and 107,000 new homes will be built in Hertfordshire alone

Sir - We are puzzled by plans to downgrade the QE2 Hospital when all predictions are that our population will increase dramatically in the next 10 years.

We read in your paper that between 75,000 and 107,000 new homes will be built in Hertfordshire alone; one assumes that these will all be occupied by human beings, who will get sick from time to time.

We read Mr Grant Shapps' letter stating there will be just two major hospitals in Hertfordshire (and where they have been sited!) Not enough for the present population, let alone the growth to come.

Is this Doomsday?

Having just read a book entitled The Greatest Railway Blunder about the privatisation of the railways, which sets out clearly the machinations, deceptions and false promises of an utopian future made by politicians and the governing apparatus, one feels some affinity with the statements as to where the two major hospitals are sited in our county.

This country-wide close-down or grading-down of viable hospitals must be centrally planned and imposed.

It is impossible to believe nearly all care trusts would take the same action and advance the same lame excuses, in times of population growth, if it had not been imposed on them from above.

It [the plan for the QE2] is clearly a 'downgrade', whatever the propaganda says.

Most of the QE2 goes and a lot of land is freed for redevelopment, not for car parking for all the day visitors.

Land we are told is more expensive in WGC than in Stevenage; more profit.

It is promised that this will provide us, the taxpayer and potential patient, with 'a better service'.

Pull the other one.

This exercise is purely political and to save money.

What has happened to all the millions thrown at the health service by Gordon Brown during the boom days? They now wish to sell off land for redevelopment (more potential patients) to raise capital, just as the railways were ordered to do and now we lack capacity. We will soon lack capacity in the NHS if we don't at the moment.

Could they not tell us the truth?

We can take that even if it is bitter pill to swallow. How can they tell us downsizing will give a better service? More population growth and fewer hospitals is better? Do they believe it themselves one asks.

Where has the argument about 'carbon footprints' gone?

These closures mean more travelling, mostly by car and ambulance.

Being the sort of people we are, accepting the inevitability of powers to get their own way, we will make the best of it and soldier onwards, albeit with a few grumbles.

I am reminded of a statement written many centuries ago in a Psalm; 'never put your trust in princes (ie politicians), never put you trust in man'.

Why blame others, when we did not act ourselves.

It is probably true that we get what we deserve and deserve what we get.

John Murphy, Beehive Lane, WGC.