DO we live in a Wonderland? One minute we are told more of our money than ever before is being spent by the present Government on the NHS.

So why has that same Government told the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust that it has to make savings of £20 million?

Secretary of State for Health Patricia Hewitt is presiding over a massacre of local hospitals.

Surely Jacqui Smith (for whom I have great respect as a constituency MP) should protest to the Government, of which she is a senior minister, to stop the downgrading of the Alexandra Hospital rather than indicating the fault is that of the hospital trust.

The trust has to do what it is forced to do by the Government and the Secretary of State for Health.

So ultimately, it is Jacqui's Government that is causing the problem in the first place.

What she should question is the need for the top-heavy management jobs that are increasing daily to cope with new Government directives, taking funds from the provision of doctors, nurses, drugs and equipment.

For example, the trust advertised recently in the Advertiser recruiting two "Senior Clinical Governance Facilitators" at £25,000 a year each.

That expenditure would provide two (or probably three, at their lower rates of pay) nurses, and "facilitators" are not much use when you need a nurse or doctor.

However, the trust apparently believes bureaucrats are worth more than nurses and pays them more.

Jacqui Smith should take the Advertiser's petition to Westminster, not Worcester.

B SINCLAIR

Heathfield Road

Webheath