THE day before the 1997 general election, Tony Blair proclaimed that there were just 24 hours left to save the NHS. So what does health minister Ms Hazel Blears suggest six years on? -- yet another madcap idea to keep the government fresh.

New Labour's latest bright idea for cutting waiting lists and waiting times in the health service is that patients should now sign a "healthy living contract."

I have heard the phrase 'physician heal thy self,' but for the government to come up with the notion that patients should heal themselves is ridiculous.

It's just another ill-thought-out strategy betraying those of us who thought they were contributing and entitled to a National Health Service. The mere idea that patients who smoke or eat too much will soon have to sign a "lifestyle contract" -- or they may not get NHS treatment -- is proof positive that the plot is well and truly lost.

Good family doctors for years have been giving the correct advice to patients; they don't need any interfering government busybody to tell them how to do their jobs.

Perhaps this latest plan in return for increased National Insurance payments is a plot to ease the burden of the unnecessary targets that swamp the NHS and with which New Labour's health ministers seem obsessed with.

Why stop at smokers, drinkers and overweight people? Why not include children who fall off skateboards or gardeners who suffer hay fever? Will they tell rugby players with cauliflower ears to politely go away?

If it carries on at this rate, it will only be fit and healthy people who are allowed treatment in the NHS.

JEAN ALLISON (Mrs), Whalley Road, Shuttleworth, Ramsbottom.