Bad news sells papers ...

I don't mean to stigmatise the Whitehaven News which is an excellent local paper: almost any other paper these days, or a TV news outlet, would have done what I am about to highlight.

This week, as recorded a couple of days ago, the UK Treasury finally gave signoff of a full business case approval for £77 million for the the rebuild-refurbishment plan for West Cumberland Hospital, the final hurdle for a £90 million uplift to secure the future of a District General Hospital in West Cumbria.

If the business case had been rejected this would rightly have been seen as a disaster and would have been front page news in the Whitehaven News and other local papers. Any suggestion of delays or doubts to the approval had been greeted with front page headlines like "Do We Need Another March, Prime Minister?"

Yet the final approval of the scheme was relegatd to page five. The front page headline of the Whitehaen News this week was the news that the government is considering a proposal to ban cars from Sellafield to improve security. Obviously a very important local story - but more so than the future of the hospital?

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