Despair as health cash goes on euro

THE latest news from our health service is enough to make any reader weep with despair.

Our Bucks NHS system is perilously close to cracking under the strain - and yet it's still been forced to spend nearly 13,000 staff days preparing for the European single currency.

Entry into the Euro is an event which may never happen, but hospitals in Bucks have still spent almost half a million pounds getting ready for it.

One event which has happened though is that Wycombe Hospital's accident and emergency department closed last week for a day due to shortages of nurses and beds. Patients actually had to be turned away, and that's an absolute disgrace in 21st century Britain.

That episode is just the latest in a catalogue of problems suffered by the hospital which admits it has a serious crisis.

There is patently not enough money and resources around. The cost of medical equipment is astronomical and rates of pay in an expensive area are too low to recruit a decent supply of nurses.

And yet ...bureaucrats can still spend all that money and time on an exercise which may not actually be needed.

MP David Lidington has attacked the Government's sense of priority and describes this spend as scandalous.

He is right. This is a scandal because it sends out entirely the wrong message to the worried people of Bucks.

Still perhaps it's only right for the Government to strengthen our links with Europe. Because the way our NHS is going, you might have to take a ferry to France or Germany to find a hospital that can treat you the next time you fall ill.