Common sense is lost. Should be an essential attribute in public service.

Hospital advertising will bring them to the level of selling soap powders. White! Whiter than White! Dazzling White! So on...so on.

We were given CHOICE we did not need or want, and the Health Trusts got deeply into debt with cuts to necessary services, in spite of mountains of cash put into them.

What were the trust managers doing during this trains of events? Thinking up schemes for marketing budgets, so that hospitals can compete against each other with advertising for the available business and give us INFORMED CHOICE. More big money from already inadequate budgets. What next? Buy 3 get one free?

We go into hospital when we have to, through serious injury or illness. Not by choice or on impulse. On these occasions we need our hospital treatment locally as quickly as possible or, if they can’t give it, to get us to the nearest one which can. Often life saving. We are in their hands, content to be so and always have been.

All the advertising in the world doesn’t change that. These sort of changes can only be imposed. There is no sense in it. It insults our intelligence, wastes time and money to try and convince us that there is.