Christie Hoax: Still John Leech Clings to Closure Fib

Manchester Labour activist John Hacking is rightly furious that Cllr John Leech MP will still not admit, never mind apologise for, hoaxing the people of Withington, as well as needlessly frightening thousands of patients from the region, by pretending the Christie Hospital was threatened with closure.

John provides an extended quote from the Manchester Evening News of 15 April 2005. Neil Goodwin, the CEO of the Strategic Health Authority, saying in effect, and I do paraphrase slightly: "These maverick Doctors (and John Leech) are talking 100% Absolute Bollocks". (Goodwin in fact said "stuff and nonsense").

Leech says the MEN report was his signal to campaign. LOL believe it is likely that Leechy's scaremongering leaflets were not only already designed, and already printed, but that they were also already terrorising local people with it.

The MEN report is plagued with factual errors, for example claiming that "60 doctors have signed a petition" when NONE HAD IN FACT DONE SO, but on balance it gives the lie to Leech's scaremongering story.

Still Leech will not concede publicly what we all know. Still he will not acknowledge he was wrong to use cancer patients as a political football. Still he will not apologise for what is either gross dishonesty or gross incompetence.

Leech's behaviour on this matter was absolutely outrageous. No amount of crawling round Doctors and medical charities worthy though that appears, and certainly not issuing of "biggest ever" but bogus "health surveys" will absolve him. Leech actually had the gall to tell patients waiting for chemo- and radio- therapy that their lifeline was likely to shut.

And now he preaches in Council about morality?

His selection rival Yasmin Zalzala PhD - who had fought the seat well in 1997 and 2001 but was rejected as unsuitable amidst claims that as a woman and an Iraqi refugee and a muslim she could never win - had a cracking riposte in the South Manchester Reporter Letters this week. "Where are these 60 Doctors that you keep talking about?" she asks of Cllr Leech's repeated excuses for his cock and bull closure story.

CHRISTIE FACTS: Only THREE of these "sixty" Doctors have EVER been named in this hoax. Dr Nick Slevin, Dr Mark Saunders and Sarah O'Dwyer. In ascending order of hysteria. Slevin spoke of concern being communicated to him, Saunders of patients' suffering, O'Dwyer of patients' deaths.

CHRISTIE FACTS: Freedom of Information searches revealed that NO DOCTORS AT ALL signed and submitted the supposed "petition" which was in fact in the form of a draft letter of protest to be signed individually.

CHRISTIE FACTS: That draft letter DID NOT - unlike Lib Dem literature - claim that Christie Hospital could or would be closed.

CHRISTIE FACTS: One LIB DEM leaflet - full of unsupportable claims of a closure threat - was absolutely shamelessly distributed to Chemo- and Radio- therapy patients and to nursing and ancillary workers.

LOL believe that this was at least FOUR DAYS before, not after the MEN story broke as Leech now claims. We'll be checking diaries and interviewing witnesses in an attempt to prove that to be the case.