HANS Hammerschmidt – or HH as Michael Everett might call him – ends his letter (ViewPoints, March 29): “Our health service in Oxfordshire is absolutely splendid – never mind Staffordshire.”

With regret, I must say to my dear friend that I am bitterly disappointed by his stance and, with the greatest respect, deem such parochialism and (albeit extended) selfishness most unworthy of him.

Firstly, the issue raised by Linda French was allegedly undue criticism of the ‘NATIONAL Health Service’ and the Oxford Mail ‘welcomes letters on any subject’, not just provincial matters.

Secondly, lacking a monolingual English dictionary, I sought Hans’ “churlish” in some of my bilingual ones, in which the word’s semantic field seems to encompass the concept of ‘impolite’, ‘loutish’, ‘coarse’, and the like, though my German one interestingly also produced ‘kleinlich’, more frequently, as he knows far better than I, rendered by ‘petty’ or ‘small-minded’.

I fail to comprehend how any usage of the adjective could possibly apply to my reference to the “dire failings” in Mid-Staffordshire, to name merely the most notorious offender.

I accept that he, Linda French, Michael Everett (or ME) whose ‘reply’ to my contribution of March 22 does not merit dignifying with a response, Peter Casbolt and others, have been satisfied with their treatment here, as I largely have, but these sentiments are by no means general in this city or county.

Maybe, impertinently playing the amateur psychologist, I suspect that they consciously or unconsciously fear that, notwithstanding the quality of their previous medical care, something could go radically wrong with their treatment, or that of those close to them, at any time – even in this haven of clinical excellence and compassion, which will presumably be exempt from the proposed NHS reforms.

DAVID DIMENT, Riverside Court, Oxford