Will Gordon Brown prove Tory Ken wrong?
8:18pm Thursday 15th May 2008
AN amusing email arrived from legendary Bucks Tory Ken Ross who told me he mistook my column in our South Bucks Star newspaper last week for an April Fool's joke.
Ken, former chairman and leader of Bucks County Council, was shocked to see Prime Minister Gordon Brown was guest columnist in my normal newsprint space, and he thought it was a spoof.
Well to Ken and other readers who thought they were being had, Mr Brown's piece was entirely genuine.
He penned it for papers up and down the land as part of Local Newspaper Week.
I thought it appropriate to use it in my Editor's Chair print column because a) I'm bone idle and it saved me the labour of having to do a column last week; and b) because his final words were so provocative.
The PM ended his article by stressing the vital role of newspapers in campaigns and saying: "I want readers of this newspaper to know that when you participate in these campaigns, we are listening to you."
His words coincided neatly this month with a public meeting in Marlow where more than 100 people complained about changes to Wycombe Hospital.
As readers will be well aware, birthing services are due to be transferred to Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury by the beginning of next year. This delayed move, which will happen around five years after the original consultation, will leave only midwife-assisted births at our local hospital.
From 2009, anyone needing a doctor to deliver their baby will have to travel to Aylesbury or to Slough or to Oxford or Watford. NHS officials decreed, despite around 40,000 protests, that Wycombe Hospital would no longer provide this service.
Centralisation, regionalisation, rationalisation are all terms that can be used for the change, although I know what words I'd use.
The business world will tell you that bigger is better these days. Larger teams work more efficiently because there's more back-up and more expertise.
There's less risk of units shutting down because of sickness or staff shortages, and less reliance on indispensable' martyrs who carry small teams on their backs.
I accept there is a logic for this larger centralised structure for loads of companies so I can see where the Bucks NHS was coming from when it decided on pooling all its maternity doctors together.
But health, pregnancy and babies somehow don't fit neatly into this business model. It all goes pear-shaped for me when I picture women riding in the back of an ambulance for 40 minutes along the narrow A4010 with babies hanging out of them.
One such mum wrote to me just this very week telling me of her trip of hell' after having to go to Aylesbury when the Wycombe SCBU was full.
NHS officials will say I'm blowing this up out of all proportion. In a way, I hope they are right.
But I also hope readers will join with me and participate in one last-ditch campaign by taking the Prime Minister at his word and asking him to hear us.
Ex-council leader Ken Ross, however, thought the PM's article was a piece of tosh because he doesn't believe Mr Brown will really listen to us.
Ken, of Flackwell Heath, wrote to me saying: "Does he think we are all idiots?
"Surely it was you pulling our legs. As if he could care less about what local people think - he hasn't listened for over ten years."
So Mr Brown, do me a favour and prove Tory Ken wrong by listening to the people of Bucks and saving our precious services.