SOME 70 years ago I was with a number of other school friends helping with the harvest by picking up potatoes.

One year we were just outside Tarrant Hinton and across the road, we could see an old fashioned seaplane dropping torpedoes on a target range.

That land, as I learnt many years later, had been requisitioned by the Government under wartime powers for a military use; and because the original landowner felt dissatisfied over the way the land was being retained long after the war was over an inquiry was set up – the Crichel Down Inquiry.

That inquiry reported in 1954 and the damning criticism of the Ministry of Agriculture led to the resignation of the then Minister of Agriculture Sir Thomas Dugdale, who took full responsibility for the shortcomings of his department.

Quite clearly to me, at least, the word responsibility had meaning in those days; but how does that apply in Bournemouth today when we reflect on the £3.5m lost on the surf reef?

More importantly, how does it apply to the 400 to 1,200 people who are estimated to have died at the Stafford Hospital as a result of neglect and poor diagnosis?

GORDON CANN, Craigmoor Avenue, Bournemouth