MADAM, I had to wait for a patient attending the brand new Renton Cancer ward at Hereford Hospital on Monday. It is a superb facility. But it is no surprise the Countess of Darnley was asked to open the unit from the new entrance. For if you come from the main hospital one enters from a corridor which is in reality a complete slum.

What they have actually done is, from stem to stern, built half a new boat and then tacked it on to the other half of a rotting hulk they found in some long forgotten estuary.

David Williams, Ross