Doesn't make sense

For the layman, the arguments of the managers (but not, it seems, the medical experts) that putting such surgery in one place will benefit patients seems perfectly plausible. We are, after all, conditioned to accept the word of people in authority. We're also told that where some services will go, others - like gynaecology - will expand.

But, hang on a minute. Turn back the clock to a year ago when the same health bosses were telling the doubters that Wharfedale would be a centre for orthopaedic surgery. Its new, all singing, all dancing clean air theatre would allow surgeons to carry out knee replacement surgery in a day and jealous health bosses from other trusts would visit Otley and hold up their hands in wonder.

Now, all that is forgotten, and it is perfectly reasonable for the same health bosses to change their minds. So, what about all the planning. We were told that the hospital was specially planned for its specific uses. Medical expertise was used to make it a patient friendly hospital - how can it be that in less than a year, all that can have gone? It just doesn't make sense.

SOMETIMES international disasters happen on such an horrific scale that they shake us out of our own little worlds, albeit only briefly. Just as the communities of West Yorkshire and across the UK did following the Boxing Day tsunami, people are once again sparing a thought, and some money, for the victims of last Saturday's massive South Asian earthquake.

It is heartening to see, despite the overall desperately bleak situation in Kashmir, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan that some of the UK volunteers responsible for pulling people to safety from the rubble were trained here in Otley. It demonstrates perfectly, as if proof were needed, what a truly global community we all live in.