Christie Hospital: Gordon Brown to Damn Political Footballer?

Unusual. The South Manchester Reporter's website usually trails up to 24 hours behind the inky edition but today they've pre-empted themselves with a story about Gordon Brown's visit to Manchester Withington last Friday.

The reported visit was the Christie Hospital, subject of a disgusting hoax from Lib Dem John Leech MP. This pretender claimed that the hospital was under threat of closure and mocked up a "Save Our Hospital" campaign.

His people, inhumane and stop-at-nothing as they were, even placed screaming closure hoax leaflets in waiting areas for vulnerable patients and their friends and families. Confidence, optimism and maintaining relaxation appear to be crucially important in maintaining reasonable health and prospects in the face of cancer.

What a kick in the teeth it would be to attend for your lifeline radiotherapy or chemotherapy only to be confronted with a cynical message that that lifeline was perhaps threatened with closure? How can John Leech MP sleep at night? What a complete bastard he proved to be.

Far from clearing Leech as Cllr Mark Clayton disingenuously claimed in a recent letter to the SMR Freedom of Information requests proved that, cynically, he was just making things up.

It turned out that NO DOCTORS had signed any PETITION - Leech claimed 60 had signed the thing. It turned out that it was a DRAFT form letter which NOT ONE DOCTOR returned. And it turned out that even this rather unhelpful and unused document DID NOT SUGGEST CLOSURE was a threat. Actually seems like some of the news archive has been doctored to remove embarrassingly unchecked and inaccurate stories.

John Leech and his Lib Dem chums made that idea up. A complete fantasy. And they were warned off by health experts and officials that their claims had absolutely no substance and scolded for using cancer services and cancer patients as political footballs.

The real debate about Christie was over the plan for satellite centres - which John Leech's informants vehemently opposed, saying this would detract from the hub - and it must be considered deeply paradoxical that Leech's fellow Lib Dem, the complete banana boy sleazer and old speckled hen beer aficionado Mr Paul Rowen MP actually stood up in parliament to big up plans for one such satellite.

Clearly cancer patients, cancer services and Christie Hospital must not be used as a political football even now. The Christie is safe as it always was. Thanks to a cross party and broad popular campaign, supported by Manchester Evening News, Gordon Brown felt he could make the tough decision to replace charity funds deposited in Iceland with our NHS money.

The real question now is the integrity and judgement and scarey ruthlessness of John Leech MP. If nothing else he would deserve to be tipped out of parliament on the basis of his shameful Christie lies and their distribution to vulnerable patients. He is a scheming chancer.