AS rector in a busy metropolitan parish, I visit a lot of hospitals and I have to say I'm not impressed by a great deal of what I see. Chaos seems to rule. Chaos and clutter.

And there is the unavoidable sense that things are not as clean as you might hope in places dedicated to human welfare. So I wasn't surprised to learn that more than 16,000 people die every year from germs picked up while they were being treated in hospital. And there have been a series of quite scandalous reports claiming that some doctors and nurses are clueless when it comes to simple personal hygiene. The general effect is mess, waste of resources, delay and decay.

But one of the worst aspects of the hospital scene, to my mind, is the hellish amount of unnecessary noise. I went into ward after ward, each one housing about eight beds, and up on a rail between the beds were six television sets - all of them switched on to some godforsaken inanity at the loudest volume. You have to wonder whether this is the best environment to help sick people get well again. Apart from the dumbed-down banality of ubiquitous television sets belting out trash, what about the cost? I thought the NHS was short of money?

When anyone makes these sorts of criticisms, ministers responsible for health dismiss the evidence as "merely anecdotal". But direct observation of particular cases reveals that the hospitals are failing. There was such an outcry of protest about this failure last week that the Prime Minister felt obliged to make a speech. And what did the Prime Minister say? He turned on the people who were doing the complaining. He accused journalists who printed NHS horror stories of "disloyalty" to our doctors and nurses. But the first duty of loyalty is loyalty to the truth; and the truth is that hospitals are in meltdown.

Whose fault is that then? I don't see how it can be yours or mine, or the journalists or even, dammit, the patients. It must be the fault of those who decide how the hospitals are to be run; and ultimately that means Mr Blair and his ministers. It is not hard to see where they are going wrong. Over the last five years, many informed people have told Mr Blair that the way to improve the NHS is to stop throwing money at a system of bureaucracy and mis-management which merely wastes it. Example: 15 years ago, the NHS employed 500 senior managers; now it employs 70,000.

And, if you live out of London and need to get to hospital, you may want to catch a train. Tough - there aren't any. We're just suffering our third 48-hour strike by the train drivers. I gather you had similar problems up in the North-East last week, and we can all look forward to more of the same. What we are seeing is a return to the normal conditions under Labour governments: the prevalence of industrial chaos. Remember 1979 and the winter of discontent? It's all coming back.

And what is Our Leader's solution to the blackmailing trades union militants and the shambles of our public services? It is to go on a hectic series of foreign visits and to make embarrassing speeches about how he can "heal Africa". Heal Africa? He can't even get the trains to run on the Circle Line. Resign, Sir.