Yesterday, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor returned from talks with officials from the International Monetary Fund. The officials were urging our ministers to inject billions of pounds into the economy to create fiscal stimuli, in other words, get money moving around the country again by introducing tax cuts and public spending with the use of money from NHS surplus.

In the '60s, the then Prime Minister and previous Chancellor, Harold Wilson, said this: "The engine of economic growth is the public sector".

I do not think he quite meant this should be done with privatisation and profits to corporations from out of this country, the emphasis was on the word "public".

In this climate of uncertainty and with the public desperate for stability and security, our Primary Care Trust (PCT) and similar trusts throughout the country, all of whom have a change of name or are about to implement one (for example NHS Peterborough), have plans to develop an autonomous organisation within the PCTs, including Peterborough, with the approval of the city council, which has provision for social care in its hands.

This change of organisation turns the NHS into a pseudo NHS/public/private company, called a community foundation trust, still with the logo of the NHS present, with the present NHS staff made available, if necessary, to transfer to private providers.

Some will remain, for now, with the NHS, with resultant worries about pensions a big factor for all staff. However, some will come off better than others. How's that for harmony?

Competition will be the name of the game and not co-operation. No further NHS regulation, but a regulator from an outside monitoring company will do that job, wait and see.

America, and health providers from other countries are knocking on our door. Some PCTs have already succumbed. We chance our luck in this economic cauldron outside of the comparative safety of what was once known as the NHS.

I haven't mentioned the dictats coming from the European Union. We are allowing them to rip the NHS apart.

Enough of management systems, targets and lack of respect for the professionals that abounds now, let's get back to common sense, security and co-operation within the NHS.

And let's see some genuine recognition that those on the "shop floor" need to be left alone to do what they are best at, within the confines of the National Health Service.

Mary Cooke

Retired nurse,

Wingfield,

Orton Goldhay,

Peterborough