MY initial anger at the way the, soon to be, privatised hospital trust has treated the League of Friends (Oxford Mail, May 21) was tempered somewhat when I recalled a Private Eye article from about 15 years ago.

Then, as now, the bean counters at the John Radcliffe Hospital decided that the huge sums of money the volunteers of the League of Friends raised could be bettered by renting out the space they occupied to a business.

Accordingly, they ousted the league and rented the space to a lawyer.

One of the lawyer’s first cases was a malpractice case against the hospital, which he won, and sued the hospital for a significant sum.

The way the League of Friends is being treated is shameful, but only an indication of the lengths successive goverments are willing to go to in order to privatise the health service.

The £63,000 a year raised by voluteers pales into insignificance in the eyes of the bean counters and vandals who seek to line their own, and their powerful friends’ pockets at the expense of the sick and the needy.

The name of Andrew Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health will be spoken in the future with the contempt that Beeching has in our generation, with the difference being Lansley will be responsible for suffering and death.

JULIAN COLES, Bradstocks Way, Sutton Courtenay