I have been an avid reader of the Oxford Mail for three decades and enjoy the up-to-the-minute professional news servie it provides.

I am always very interested in the Letters to the Editor pages and muse on the various comments of the reading public.

I have very strong personal feelings on two of your major stories (Oxford Mail, May 11).

It is very easy to make snap judgements on others without thinking too deeply of the story behind the story.

First, the outcry for a more severe sentence for Angela Dublin, and the parents' anger at her two-year sentence for causing death by dangerous driving in the Oxford Eastern Bypass crash.

I have read much that has been written about the life sentence of agony thrust on the grieving families who may never recover from what happened.

Of course, our hearts go out to all those families, and we understand how frustrated they must feel that Dublin has got away with a very light sentence. But is this so?

Who among us would want to change places with her? She has started a life sentence of regret and will have to try to live with her guilty conscience and her act of folly for every day that remains of her life, as well as her own physical injuries and seeing those of her son adding to her torment.

In all the mention of the innocents who lost their lives, has anyone thought of Dublin's son, who is not only suffering mentally and physically, but is deprived of his mother as well?

Similarly, in the outcry concerning nurse Benjamin Geen, given 17 life sentences for killing two patients and assaulting 15 others at the Horton Hospital, Banbury.

I dread to think how any of us would feel in the care of such a maniac. But I feel even more concerned about his superiors who were in charge of his ministrations.

When one, two or three patients took a turn for the worse when he was present, I feel I would have been a little bit suspicious.

When six, seven or eight were taken mysteriously worse, I would have been very alarmed. Then, when the figure reached 10, I would have been frantic.

But casually, it seems, he is allowed to proceed with no fewer than 17 patients before his antics are discovered.

In my book, the colleagues appear to be just as guilty with their neglect of not seeing what was going on and their delay in doing anything about it.

KEN STALLARD (Dr) West Hanney, Wantage