SIR - It was bound to happen and it was my old friend and colleague Margaret Layland who demonstrated so clearly that the Cripplegate Park saga remains an object-lesson case-study of how sometimes, parochial fear of change can - whipped along by irresponsible, unaccountable and wilfully-misinforming local news media - overcome calm, rational decision-making (Letters, October 2). I was not helped, of course, by the way that the Worcester News edited my previous letter.

Margaret, I did not write that I judged Cripplegate "third-rate". I merely recalled that this was the view of "those who get out more and have rather wider experience of similar facilities in similar towns".

I am delighted by Margaret's report of the activities in the park but she fails completely to accept that there would have been far better facilities for those activities, and more space for them, in an enlarged park. There would have been no road or traffic on north-west Severnside, and no years of planning blight and educational uncertainty in St John's.

Margaret Layland must take a leading responsibilty for these negative outcomes; and that is why, presumably, she pointedly avoids comment on these uncomfortable facts.

DAVID BARLOW, Worcester.