FOLLOWING on from Cllr D'Orton'Gibson's advice, we ought not to be concerned about ambulance response times in "certain areas", we now have a second Bournemouth councillor, Cllr Stollard, with the advice: "We can all play our part in not going to any hospital."

What jaw-dropping attitudes. The solution to hospital overload is for sick and injured people not to attend hospital.

As for the facts of the matter, 80 per cent of those currently attending Poole A&E will not still be able to be treated at Poole Urgent Care Centre, as the councillor claims. The figure is 45 per cent. That is the 31,000 of those attending Poole A&E, out of 68,000 a year, who were not admitted and could then be dealt with by an urgent care centre.

As a matter of fact, Portsmouth Hospital is getting £58million to rebuild their A&E unit, Southampton is getting £16m to develop their A&E wing and Royal Bournemouth Hospital is getting at least £40m to expand A&E, and Poole Hospital A&E, along with our maternity unit, gets closed down.

As for the argument that head injury patients need to be taken to Southampton hospital, that is no argument to close down Poole A&E. It is an argument to fund and develop a brain trauma unit in Dorset.

And the councillor pitting distance to travel, against A&E expertise in a hospital, of course you have to go to an A&E that can deal with the trauma. That then again is the argument to upgrade all A&E units, not to tell us travelling 50 miles is the solution.

The whole Dorset NHS plan is to streamline and save huge sums of operational costs, by grand centralisation. And the very worst of it, Poole Conservative councillors are not speaking up to defend our A&E and maternity.

Instead we end up with Tory councillors in Bournemouth speaking up, by proxy, for Poole Tories who clearly support closure of Poole A&E and maternity but haven't the moral integrity to tell local people and face public outrage.

JACK OAKLEY, Penn Hill Avenue, Poole