I HAVE been thinking back over the past few weeks of events that took place and which caught the headlines.

First there was the New Year celebrations, watching at home and thinking about the money that went up in smoke from John O'Groats to Lands End, hundreds of thousands of pounds.

And then I started to think of other people who were desperate to have medical treatment and just what they would be thinking at that time, probably thinking just a fraction of that amount could have saved our so and so.

Then there was the news that there wasn't a bed available in the country for flu victims, let alone the people who needed urgent surgery, and in the next breath we were told that the Moors murderess had been admitted to hospital for treatment - and got it! Like a lot of other people, I thought straight away, does one have to become a criminal before one gets special treatment and becomes privileged?.

I would like to hope that in the next few months the politicians, the men and women of the cloth, the British Medical Association and the so called 'goodie goodies' would search their consciences and just try, for once, to get their priorities right.

Let's hope that more support is given to the victims because it's those people who have to suffer long term.

Ron Jackson, Lyme Street, Haydock.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.