With all the skill of an accomplished polemicist, Councillor Pat Strack (Your Views, May 6) attempts to deflect attention from the charge brought against her by laying a false trail of argument.

I have made no comment on the decision of the Aldenham Country Park Trust not to submit a bid to manage the park. This, of course, is not the act of surrender of which she and her accomplices stand accused.

Rather, it is their consistent refusal to challenge the decision of Hertfordshire County Council to abandon this public amenity, and the failure of its local members to give any reason for their acquiescence in this act of corporate vandalism.

Councillor Clive Butchins describes such criticism as “unnecessarily partisan”. But the county council is under Tory control, and both he and Ms Strack are elected representatives of that party. Neither of them has publicly dissented from its action, from which we are entitled to infer that it has their support.

If Mr Butchins regards criticism of Conservative councillors for their own party’s record as unnecessarily partisan, the mind boggles at what might qualify as necessary partisanship in his eyes.

Mr Butchins invites me to offer my services to the self-styled Friends of the Park. But this is mere rhetoric, as he knows full well that I have nothing in common with a body which exists to collaborate with the county council and not to confront it.

Ms Strack enjoins us to “trust the judgement of the panel that has been entrusted with getting the best deal for residents.” Since this panel has been appointed by the very body that is set on the park’s destruction, the trust she is willing to place in it beggars belief.

John Cartledge
Haddon Close, Borehamwood