I'm not sure why I got so angry reading your post. It could be the way you champion a "brute force and ignorance" approach to problem solving that you yourself know is not based in any form of reality. I love the idea of 12% more staff year on year, not forgetting 12% more vehicles and equipment, oh and 12% more support functions for those staff; makes a great sound bite! But where are all those patients going? Not to 12% more hospitals with 12% more staff and 12% more beds thats for sure! Your solution does nothing to manage the growing call volume. It fails to take account of a reduction in funding that will only worsen under a Conservative government. You can bemoan these funding issues but the truth is that you, your readers and the vast majority of the electorate are not prepared to pay for the Health Service you suggest. Thats a reality! So maybe I was upset at your throw-away comments about an alternative solution! Could be that I thought you'd look into what happened a little before writing it off so completely. But you haven't, 35% reduction in conveyance to hospital is a significant improvement, but then you don't know that because you haven't looked at the data! But in the end I think what upset me the most is that you're better than you that post! Emotion is a great driver and passion makes for good reading but in the past you've always underpinned it with an ability to recognise the "other side" of an arguement and an understanding of the complexity of the situations you write about. I don't know whether you're too heavily influenced by the "Compare the Meerkats" simples philiphosy but this offering was a dissapointment. That said, Happy Christmas and here's wishing 2010 brings you what you want from life DSO