THE NHS is in crisis with targets being missed by wide margins, patients dying on hospital trolleys while waiting for beds, ambulances queuing outside hospitals waiting to discharge patients and volunteers from the Red Cross called in to help.

All we get is pathetic excuses from Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary.

Apparently we have an ageing population, which is making greater demands on the NHS, and there is a peak demand due to winter conditions and at Christmas and New Year.

Does he not appreciate that the population only ages one year at a time and the problem has been increasing year by year and that winter always occurs about this time, as does Christmas and New Year?

Before I retired I worked on a very large continuously-operated chemical plant. When a shut down was scheduled we put in a lot of effort to ensure the necessary resources were available. It appears that although the above situation is foreseeable but the Government is incapable of making the necessary preparations.

So somebody should tell Mr Hunt that in less than a year’s time the population will be year older, it will be winter, December 25 will be Christmas Day and January 1 will be New Year’s day.

Brian Fiske, Darlington