THE Gazette last week (March 11) had three stories that highlight the folly of privatisations.

First school meals. As you note Gloucestershire is starting to tackle what Jamie Oliver has shown is a national scandal. The average expenditure on school meal ingredients is just 35p.

40 per cent of girls are iron-deficient, 83 per cent of children eat more sugar than the maximum recommended for adults and 20 per cent are overweight or obese. These problems stem from policies to put school-meal contracts out to tender without any minimum nutritional standards.

Second plans to privatise our council housing.

This means less security of tenure and one of the most successful welfare policies of the 20th century being swept aside. As a Shelter report last year showed, there is increasing inequality with poorer families being trapped in "low value areas" and missing out on better services, jobs nand education.

Third MRSA. Part of the reason that our hospitals got increasingly dirty was due to contracting out cleaning services and those companies' need for profit. Indeed most contracting out of public service provision works badly, if at all; other examples include shocking conditions in asylum seekers' detention centres, PFI schemes and the failure of our railways.

All these are Conservative policies followed by Labour and often supported by Lib Dems. Privatisations cannot hold down costs and maintain a high level of public service. We must stop selling our public services.

Martin Whiteside Stroud District councillor and Green Party Parliamentary candidate