The man has been (for a long time) and is a Hartlepool United fan just like you and I are.

If you want to have a go at him for the Hospital event then so be it, I and anyone LIVING in Hartlepool have the right to ask qustions and demand the truth about the U Turn from central goverment.

HE IS AS MUCH A POOLIE AS YOU ARE ..... so let that side of him be.

Frank.

If you want to have a go at him for the Hospital event then so be it, I and anyone LIVING in Hartlepool have the right to ask qustions and demand the truth about the U Turn from central goverment.

Frank.

I also think that it is a bit below the belt to have a go at Wright for being a Poolie, i certainly don't think he is a plastic poolie anyway. As for using Pools for political advantage in the town you really don't have to look any further than drummond surely...?

The man has been (for a long time) and is a Hartlepool United fan just like you and I are.

If you want to have a go at him for the Hospital event then so be it, I and anyone LIVING in Hartlepool have the right to ask qustions and demand the truth about the U Turn from central goverment.

HE IS AS MUCH A POOLIE AS YOU ARE ..... so let that side of him be.

Frank.

PoolieKev ....

Leave his football out of it it has nothing to do with it.

I am as angry as anyone about the dam turn around of our prime minister, I feel let down and cheated, however I am not turning every and all stones to get at someone. Stick to the hospital it is a good enough reason to have a go.

I agree, isn't Wynyard in Hartlepool like? The Stockton Borough Council sign.....where does it kick in on the a689?? Wolviston is certainly part of Hartlepool.

Don't the ambulances come from Wooler Road ambulance station 3Quid?
When I lived in Elwick Rd the bloke next door got electrocuted in the garden, I rang the ambulance and it was there in about 90 seconds.

the hospital will be closed and rightly so

you cannot slag off Ian Wright for trying to save it
or for being powerless to stop the closure

as for being a poolie what the hell difference does it make i tell you what look at most of the business people of this town and tell me how many you see supporting pools

these are the people who can make the difference to this town and they are all sat on a Saturday afternoon supporting the smoggies NOW THAT RATTLES MY CAGE MORE THAN ANY LOCAL MP WEARING HIS POOLS SHIRT

I've voted Labour all my life, but if it's the MP or the hospital, it's goodbye Mr W .... incidentally, since Friday, I'm officially a floating voter!

Hartlepool is a safe seat isn't it snowy?

Not any more.

If Our Jody gets on the Hospital bandwagon quickly, she'll be in before you can say Chic Ellett!

Let me say to my hon. Friends on these benches: you have been saying in the last fortnight or three weeks that I have been quarrelling about a triviality - spectacles and dentures. You may call it a triviality. I remember the triviality that started an avalanche in 1931. I remember it very well, and perhaps my hon. Friends would not mind me recounting it. There was a trade union group meeting upstairs. I was a member of ft and went along. My good friend, "Geordie" Buchanan, did not come along with me because he thought it was hopeless, and he proved to be a better prophet than I was. But I had more credulity in those days than I have got now. So I went along, and the first subject was an attack on the seasonal workers. That was the first order. I opposed it bitterly, and when I came out of the room my good old friend George Lansbury attacked me for attacking the order. I said, "George, you do not realise, this is the beginning of the end. Once you start this there is no logical stopping point."

The Chancellor of the Exchequer in this year's Budget proposes to reduce the Health expenditure by £13 million - only £13 million out of £4,000 million. No, £4,000 million. He has taken £13 million out of the Budget total of £4,000 million. If he finds it necessary to mutilate, or begin to mutilate, the Health Services for £13 million out of £4,000 million, what will he do next year? Or are you next year going to take your stand on the upper denture? The lower half apparently does not matter, but the top half is sacrosanct. Is that right? If my hon. Friends are asked questions at meetings about what they will do next year, what will they say?

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is putting a financial ceiling on the Health Service. With rising prices the Health Service is squeezed between that artificial figure and rising prices. What is to be squeezed out next year? Is it the upper half`? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do you squeeze out the year after? Prescriptions? Hospital charges? Where do you stop? I have been accused of having agreed to a charge on prescriptions. That shows the danger of compromise. Because if it is pleaded against me that I agreed to the modification of the Health Service, then what will be pleaded against my right hon. Friends next year, and indeed what answer will they have if the vandals opposite come in? What answer? The Health Service will be like Lavinia - all the limbs cut off and eventually her tongue cut out, too.
I should like to ask my Right hon. and hon. Friends, where are they going? Where am I going? I am where I always was. Those who live their lives in mountainous and rugged countries are always afraid of avalanches, and they know that avalanches start with the movement of a very small stone. First, the stone starts on a ridge between two valleys - one valley desolate and the other valley populous. The pebble starts, but nobody bothers about the pebble until it gains way, and soon the whole valley is overwhelmed. That is how the avalanche starts, that is the logic of the present situation, and that is the logic my right hon. and hon. Friends cannot escape. Why, therefore, has it been done in this way?

After all, the National Health Service was something of which we were all very proud, and even the Opposition were beginning to be proud of it. It only had to last a few more years to become a part of our traditions, and then the traditionalists would have claimed the credit for all of it. Why should we throw it away? In the Chancellor's Speech there was not one word of commendation for the Health Service - not one word. What is responsible for that?

Why has the cut been made? He cannot say, with an overall surplus of over £220 million and a conventional surplus of £39 million, that he had to have the £13 million. That is the arithmetic of Bedlam. He cannot say that his arithmetic is so precise that he must have the £13 million when last year the Treasury were £247 million out. Why? Has the A M.A. succeeded in doing what the B. M.A. failed to do? What is the cause of it? Why has it been done?

I have also been accused - and I think I am entitled to answer it - that I had already agreed to a certain charge. I speak to my right hon. Friends very frankly here. It seems to me sometimes that it is so difficult to make them see what lies ahead that you have to take them along by the hand and show them. The prescription charge I knew would never be made, because it was impracticable. Well, it was never made.

I will tell my hon. Friends something else, too. There was another policy - there was a proposed reduction of 25,000 on the housing programme, was there not? It was never made. It was necessary for me at that time to use what everybody always said were bad tactics upon my part - I had to manoeuvre, and I did manoeuvre and saved the 25,000 houses and the prescription charge. I say, therefore, to my right hon. and hon. Friends, there is no justification for taking this line at all. There is no justification in the arithmetic, there is less justification in the economics, and I beg my right hon. and hon. Friends to change their minds about it.

I say this, in conclusion. There is only one hope for mankind and that is democratic Socialism. There is only one party in Great Britain which can do ft and that is the Labour Party. But I ask them carefully to consider how far they are polluting the stream. We have gone a long way - a very long way - against great difficulties. Do not let us change direction now. Let us make ft clear, quite clear, to the rest of the world that we stand where we stood, that we are not going to allow ourselves to be diverted from our path by the exigencies of the immediate situation. We shall do what is necessary to - defend ourselves defend ourselves by arms, and not only with arms but with the spiritual resources of our people.

just an easy target for any tory then

A bit from me if it's ok....

Our hospital, or certainly the 3 departments I've ever been personally involved in, is crap, endof.

My two girls were born in Newcastle, out of choice, because of the failings of Hartlepool General Hospital. My eldest (who has Muscular Dystrophy)has all her treatment at James Cook University Hospital, out of choice, because of the failings of Hartlepool General Hospital. My middle brother is having a major operation in East Riding Infirmary, Hull in April because of the lack of resources in Hartlepool General Hospital.(and his partner works in our Hospital...)

Sorry, but I won't be sorry to see it go. If that's selfish, then I apologise but you can only go by personal experience. Let 'em build a brand new state-of-the-art hospital at Wynyard, it's nearer for half of the town anyway.

the hospital will be closed and rightly so /
you cannot slag off Ian Wright for trying to save it

All in the name of saving a few quid?

i wont bore you with the mother in laws experience then were she went in and at eighty eight years old and walking with a frame had to try and clean the toilet before she could use it
or the day i went in and found all of her prescribed medicine for the day standing in a row in pots on top of the bed side cabinet
when i queried it with the staff the whole lot was scooped up in front of me and taken away this person telling me that she had had all of her medicine it was on the chart
the only thing they gave her in there was MRSA THEN DENIED THE FACT
i will tell you of the nights i stayed in there to make sure she was looked after as she had rang for staff and was ignored all night
this same staff who spent the night in the bathroom opposite her room smoking and drinking lager from cans ignoring the pleas of elderly patients
the same staff who looking after incontinent old man that kept falling out of bed ,,,and his family found him on two occasions on the floor at visiting time
this same staff that used alcohol hand cleaner on plastic gloves rather than discard them
then they have the bloody cheek to say that she had MRSA when she came in despite a check made on arrival that she did not
that is two cases that affect me and i have only touched on the real story