IT SEEMS that certain vital arguments are being missed regarding the Withybush downgrading.

First Glangwili is itself only 12 miles or so from Morriston, so everyone in the Carmarthen area is only 15-25 minutes away from access to a hospital without it, and indeed according to relatives of mine who live in Carmarthen they would travel to Morriston out of choice anyway.

Far better it would seem then, to downgrade Glangwili and keep medical care out here in the west at a proper level. Secondly, a relative staying locally recently had the misfortune to injure himself.

Living in England, he asked that I take him to a walk-in facility at a GP rather than hospital.

Being a Saturday afternoon there was none - of course the GP practises were all locked and deserted.

Similarly there is no cottage hospital facility at Tenby or at Pembroke Dock anymore, so off we went to Withybush.

On the way he commented that by now where he lives we would have passed three hospitals where he could have got attention to his burns, and since we had been travelling for over an hour - so much for the ‘golden hour’.

It does make you think what would happen to someone living out in the villages south west of Pembroke if they were to suffer a stroke -’ the quicker you act the more of the person you save’ is the slogan - that’ll be nothing out here, then.

I wonder if anyone in Pembrokeshire tourism is warning holidaymakers that after August pregnant women had better stay away, and I wonder if anyone has yet picked up on the fact that soon we will live in a place where an entire county of the UK has no 24-hour accident and emergency cover - and that’s a county that relies on tourism, has two oil refineries, a power station, the biggest LPG terminal in Europe (or so we are told), a very busy artillery range, bombing range, and small arms training facility! Sorry to take attention away from the lunacy at county hall, but we seem to be entering dangerous times.

TONY HICKLING

Tenby