Published at 15:45, Wednesday, 17 March 2010

SIR – I write with regard to Mr Cleaver’s totally irresponsible piece of journalism on West Cumberland Hospital’s A&E dept. It is not drab and gloomy, never really has been.

Why does every waiting room in the world look like this? So asks Alan Cleaver. Read more on his blog, Copeland Crack, on www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/copelandcrack

I have been visiting on and off for about 48 years both officially, as a police patrol car driver, and sometimes as a patient. The staff are, and always have been, wonderful with an awful lot of abuse, both verbal and physical, to put up with. It is usually clean, but with some of their clientele it is never likely to stay pristine for long. The posters are not as depicted by Mr Cleaver, but are there to inform and help those who have the sense to heed them. The cut-out PC is not threatening to take us all to jail and these things, I would imagine, are put up by directions at national level and the local staff have no say in it.

So far as the waiting time is concerned, I would have thought that someone as supposedly intelligent as Mr Cleaver would have realised that the whole system is sadly short of staff due to a government who puts its own personal interests before those of the public it is supposed to represent. Finally, Mr Cleaver, the staff there suffer very badly from some members of the public, and you owe them a grovelling apology, and soon.

Patrick CAPSTICK

Low Moresby, Whitehaven

Alan Cleaver writes: My point was about the traditional decor of waiting rooms, but at no point did I criticise the staff. In fact, I described them as ‘wonderful’.

SIR – Alan Cleaver should visit my doctor’s waiting room, that of the Birbeck Medical Group in the Penrith Health Centre, next to Penrith Hospital.

This, built c 1975, is spacious, light and airy; its posters are informative, not threatening; its users provide its doctors with a fund for extra equipment.

As to Penrith Hospital, a friendly place of 1970’s date, the notice at its front door might alarm some: “Patients Drop-off Point.”

Jeremy GODWIN

Drovers Lane, Penrith

Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk