IT is a dispute which is both extraordinary and highly disturbing.

The chief executive of a newly-launched air ambulance operation in our region has effectively accused a neighbouring ambulance service of playing politics with the lives of accident victims.

The chilling suggestion by Grahame Pickering, the boss of Great North Air Ambulance (GNAA), is that a disagreement over fund raising was behind a decision by the Tees East and North Yorkshire Ambulance Service (TENYAS) not to call the air ambulance to a crash on the A66.

The accusation of "negligence" has been strenuously denied by TENYAS but the seeds of doubt have been well and truly planted by Mr Pickering's damning words.

Whatever the truth, petty rivalries must never come before the need to respond in the best interests of patients.

Mr Pickering states that the air ambulance team could have been at the scene of an accident on the A66 within seven minutes - faster than any other unit.

Yet the air ambulance, which started a month-long trial on Monday, was left unused at Teesside Airport, with its operators unaware that the accident had even taken place until they read about it in The Northern Echo.

While the injured from the accident continue to be treated for their injuries, an unseemly squabble continues over fund-raising boundaries.

The bitterness clearly runs very deep, but both sides must come together without delay to find a way forward. Otherwise, how many more accidents will happen without the air ambulance being called into action?

The public can only come to one conclusion: that politics and rivalry are getting in the way of saving lives.

And that cannot be tolerated.

Baltic blessing

FOLLOWING the financial disasters which struck the Arc on Teesside and The Gala Theatre in Durham City, the North-East desperately needs an arts initiative to be successful.

The region needs to show it is capable of taking its cultural future into its own hands - and making it work.

That is why tonight's launch of the innovative and exciting Gateshead Baltic Arts Centre is so important to the region and why we wish it every success.