Sir - Reading and hearing the local news lately with reference to the prospective new eco-towns, I have to ask myself are we going stark staring bonkers?

This comes at a time when we are led to believe that there are likely to be food shortages in the near future, these proposals appear to take up valuable agricultural land, while disregarding two perfectly good sites that will have no impact whatsoever on productive land.

The old cement works is one and is becoming an eyesore. While I do understand that there are objections on the grounds that it has become a valuable site for wildlife and I would be the last to favour the destruction of nature, there have to be limits.

After all it is only a few years ago that there would have been no wildlife there at all.

The other site is the old Heyford USAF base. Here we have a ready-built housing estate, almost an existing town, with all the infrastructure to go with it.

I believe it even has a virtually unused, but fully operational hospital. This site must have been empty, or at least not used to its full potential, for some 15 to 20 years now since the Americans left and seems to me that if there is this desperate need for housing it is almost criminal for those in authority to be prevaricating about the rights and wrongs of the planning on that piece of built-up area.

C.O. Peers, Great Milton