I NOTED with interest in the Echo Oct 24, a headline "Tory concerns over election backlash" referring to "high ranking Conservatives" fearing the party could lose seats over the A338 roadworks fiasco.

If that is their most serious worry, and certainly a serious enough issue causing distress to thousands, I suggest they are missing one giant tsunami bearing down on their party.

And that is the fear and distress throughout Poole and Dorset and the Purbecks of on-coming decimation of our Dorset NHS services.

For reasons beyond me Poole Conservative councillors don't get it.

We are losing, in Poole, our Accident and Emergency service from the centre of town. We are are losing our maternity and child pediatric units out of the town. And we are losing 400 beds in Poole hospital.

People are horrified and have signed petition after petition with letters every week in the Echo. Yet Poole councillors running Poole council steadfastly do nothing.

There is in fact statutory legislation which make clear in the case of large scale NHS changes councils have a duty to scrutinise in committees with then recommendations back to the Secretary of State.

Poole has not done this in two years. The regulations refer specifically to "health service changes not in the interest of the public". It is then impossible to see how loss of Accident and Emergency and maternity units, from our town centre, could be more "not in the interest of the public".

And that is the source of the huge resentment to the Conservative group in Poole.

My message to the group is you focus on the A338 then beware, you will be swept out of office by bitter resentment, standing by whilst our local NHS "Safe in our hands" is decimated.

JACK OAKLEY

Penn Hill Avenue, Poole