JOHN Walsh talks more sense than most Tories, but his attack on the Government for allowing Lottery money to be used to help fund the new £1m MRI scanner at the Royal Bolton Hospital is pure nonsense.

Councillor Walsh says using Lottery money is a form of double tax, a stealth tax.

Would he perhaps then prefer this money to be used to subsidise opera and ballet companies, or theatres who cannot attract enough customers to fund themselves, as it has done in the past?

In a letter to the BEN in February, 1999, I suggested that Lottery money should be used to help fund hospitals. I said that only when every hospital in the land had all the ultra modern machinery and enough beds and well trained staff to deal with any emergency, promptly, should we even consider using Lottery money to subsidise rich people's entertainment, or such like. This money, of course, should, and must, come on top of government funding, and not instead of it.

Councillor Walsh says the government are now relying on charity to fund the NHS. But surely he must be aware that charities have been supporting -- nay, propping up -- the NHS for many years. The British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research, Marie Curie, The Red Cross, Bolton Hospice -- and the list goes on.

Without these and many other excellent charities, the NHS would be in an even bigger mess than it already is.

The Lottery has directed much money away from these charities. Now in helping to fund the NHS, this lost money, and more, is being redirected to where most people, I am sure, would want it to go.

Brian Derbyshire

Ribchester Grove, Bolton