"The issue isn't how to divide the cake, but is the cake big enough in the first place?"

This was your response to the eminently sensible suggestion from Mike Ruane, chief executive of Wigan and Bolton Health Authority, that your paper becomes involved in the complex issues of budgeting our resources for the provision of local health care.

There are two quite separate issues here; the getting of the resources and the disbursing of those resources. As funds are made available for established perceived needs, technological advances inevitably will create more fields in which the resources could quite properly be spent. Demand will always exceed supply. The Bolton and Wigan Area Health Authority administration actively pursues money from whatever sources become available. The question was put to you, and hence to your readership, as to how the monies should be spent. Your paper normally approves of the democratic approach, letting the people have a voice.

Many health professionals and health administrators in this area, as in others, give of their time, over and above their remunerated hours, in order to tap whatsoever source of income comes to light - to the benefit of the population. Having obtained some funding, it seems to me that we should welcome Mike Ruane's request for our views as to the use to which it is put!

Ruth Shaw

(Address supplied)

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.