Health better served from someone else?

The real cause of my upset was the last paragraph of the letter when Mr Young asked: "Who was so unfeeling as to establish the wing for elderly people on the site of the former Poor Law Hospital?"

My grandmother, Mrs Ethel Kilcoyne, a stalwart of the Labour, Trades Union and Co-Operative movements, was admitted to hospital after suffering a stroke on November 25, 1981.

She was transferred to the Bolton General Hospital immediately, and, after brief diagnosis on a main ward, was sent to the Poor Law Hospital, where she died on New Year's Eve, just 12 days before her 88th birthday.

At that time, Mr Young was the MP for Bolton North-east. Shortly afterwards, he was fortunate enough to be selected to fight the safe Labour seat of Bolton South-east in the boundary changes which formed the basis of the Tory landslide of the 1983 General Election.

Mr Young beat Ann Taylor -- then the Labour MP for Bolton West -- for that nomination after a tied ballot.

It had by then become a well established fact that Bolton needed more modern Health provision.

The Conservative Government was famed for parsimony and Bolton's needs were well down their list for investment.

Mr Young was prominent in pursuading the Government that the needs of Bolton people could be met by adding to the Townleys site, thus reducing the costs of a new hospital.

Many others, including myself, felt the borough needed a completely new hospital, but as Mr Young was the only Labour MP in Bolton, we deferred to his judgement.

What we ended up with as a result of this compromise was a hospital full of marvellous staff, but which was divided between Victorian, Bevanesque and modern buildings.

This concoction included buildings which had once been part of the Townleys Workhouse.

By the time the Royal Infirmary closed, the hospital was forced to use this miscellany of buildings, including the wing to which Mr Young refers and in which my grandmother died.

Am I alone in thinking the borough would have been better served if Ann Taylor had been the successful candidate as Labour nominee for the Bolton South-east seat in 1983?

Ann has been a front bench Labour MP since her return to Parliament as the Member for Dewsbury in 1987, and is now the Government Chief Whip, having previously been the Leader of the house of Commons.

David spent the whole of his time as MP for Bolton South-east as a backbench MP and was deselected by his own party for the 1997 election.

Every cloud has a silver lining and Bolton South-east is now represented by a tremendously hard working MP in Dr Brian Iddon, and his colleagues in the North-east and the West of the borough, David Crausby and Ruth Kelly, are equally committed to real improvements for the people of Bolton.

Michael Kilcoyne

Nuttall Avenue

Horwich