Today's Disgrace - The English Patient

Understandably other news dominates the headlines but why is this report in the FT not even making the news at all? Are the BBC so cowed by the Scottish Viceroy that they are too afraid to expose him? Where are the opposition parties?

According to the FT "Gordon Brown quietly slashed by a third this year’s hospital building and equipment budget [in England] in one of his last acts as chancellor.

"Prompted by the tightness of the public finances, the new prime minister, who has placed the NHS as his “immediate priority”, cut the capital budget of the English NHS for 2007-08 from £6.2bn to £4.2bn. The move could delay the government’s hospital building and reconfiguration programme in England."

"However, Mr Brown avoided equivalent cuts to the Scottish and Welsh NHS budgets even though the funding formula for the UK nations suggests they should have shared the pain. That decision leaves him open to criticism that he favoured patients in his home country."

This is an UTTER DISGRACE! Almost a third of England's health capital budget is being cut!

Only last week he was spinning that there would be "[no] extra cash for Alex Salmond's spending plans. The Chancellor said the Executive would have to live within its means, adding: "There is no more money from central government."

So while he allows his own constituents the financial benefits of English taxpayers money to pay for their hospitals and equipment he denies the people of England this opportunity.

This is an injustice and it is the duty of the opposition parties to expose and pursue the Scottish Viceroy for England on his tax grab at the expense of the people of England's health and wealth.

If the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats don't raise this issue in the Ealing Southall and Sedgefield byelections they will be failing their English constituents.

It is already symbolic that the first two byelections of the reign of Viceroy Brown are to take place at the opposite ends of England. It would be a fitting symbol if he lost both of them to show that the people the length and breadth of of England were not taking his tax raids lying down.