I AM concerned and dismayed. Concerned that all the stories on your front page (Advertiser, January 11) were about cuts to services both to our local hospital and local cultural services.

More concern because this seems to be an ongoing theme of recent history. The news is always of budget cuts and consequent reduction of services. They may not be called this as efficiency savings and such terminology is used to confuse but the results are the same.

I am dismayed because when I read national papers or watch TV news, the scene is the same in many other towns and cities.

So while the council and the public and the health trust get into frenzied debate about which services can be lost or saved, the bigger picture is somehow lost.

How have we as a nation got into this state of constant decline in public services? We seem to accept there can never be budget increases, that services have to be axed for the benefit of others.

If they are needed, why can they not be supported?

I am sure the politicians will be able to give statistics that can discredit my assertions but sometimes the statistics do not reflect what we see.

We are proudly told our economy is in the top 10 of nations, so why is this happening? I returned recently from a holiday in Sri Lanka where, yes, there is poverty but every town has a hospital and the children have free education to degree level - and I don't think their economy is such a high flier.

So before we get divided and conquered, let's think about that bigger picture and tell our politicians what we want.

Let's reassess our values and think what really benefits a society, let's think about how we preserve our heritage, let's think about how we stimulate our creativity.

It may mean we are asked to contribute a little more through taxation but let's think hard because once lost, reinstatement of services is usually a lot harder to achieve than preservation.

ROY THOMPSON

Glover Street

Smallwood