IN ALL the furore about sacked presenters and ageism I think people are losing their perspective a bit and demonishing a perfectly decent, if somewhat ill-advised human being.

Having met Mia Costello on a number of occasions I can only imagine that she's been faking to Oscar standards, because her passion for BBC and commitment to its listeners has always rung true for me - and I'm 72! Mia has always had time to stop and talk and has even brought her family along to Solent events.

Her management of BBC Radio Solent has overseen some tough times for everyone in the BBC and I can't believe any of the decisions she's made recently have been taken lightly - or that she's been immune to presenters from above. Remember the BBC's commitment to shedding thousands of jobs after the Gilligan affair? Local radio has not been spared and local managers like Mia have had to make the best of pared down resources and minimal budgets. While competing commercial stations have had thousands to splash around on advertising, Solent has had nothing but its own inventiveness.

I'm really sat to see presenters like Peter and Richard go, but even they understand how it works. If your ratings drop for long enough, your fee can't be justified. It's always been that way. It's licence payers' money, after all.

Some really good things have come during Ms Costello's stewardship of Solent, including the BBC Daisy Appeal, which has raised many thousands for the benefit of us all - and Jon Cuthill's mid-morning show which I think is fantastic and innovative - way better than Nick Girdler's which was becoming stale and staid, whatever a small core of strident listeners thought. If enough listeners disagreed with me on this, you can be sure the BBC would have hung on to Nick for much longer.

I really hope Solent can right itself after all this brutal press - if we turn on our local BBC then we risk losing something incredibly precious and never getting it back. I also wonder how we'd all react if one of the Echo editor's rallying emails to his staff got out. Newspaper journalists aren't known for their finer PC feelings among their own either - or does the Echo only recruit saints these days?

MRS M WEBSTER, Southampton, sill a Solent listener