I was really disappointed by how the Today programme on Saturday handled this

linking the wider issue of rationalising hospitals to the closure of Lewisham A&E - as if the researchers hadn't bothered to find out that this proposed closure had no clinical logic behind it, and a financial logic which depended solely on PFIs. So Lord Darzi made his point that London was the best place in the country to have a stroke, thanks to the centralisation of treatment in specialist hospital, while Joan Ruddock indignantly rejected the idea that in this campaign she was acting against the best interests of her constituents, and insisting that she had always been ready to follow the evidence.

It meant that two other important questions got side tracked - first how should politicians / policy makers approach those genuinely difficult cases where local hospitals / units ought to be closed, and second how many more well run hospitals are going to be sacrificed to maintain the sanctity of PFI contracts.