There seems to be a conspiracy to never let anything positive about Crawley Hospital be published. It is only ever mentioned in connection with horror stories, or general doom and gloom.

In fact there is a sizeable minority in the town who think that the hospital closed down completely. We have used the place quite extensively, being blessed with acident-prone children, and some people are genuinely surprised to hear that we have always had them treated in Crawley instead of Redhill.

The latest example of this ‘spin’ is on the front page of the Crawley News this week. It is a story about a child who had her finger sliced up at the funfair, and found no first aid facilities available. It says:

After the accident, Mr Harris and his girlfriend searched for someone to help, but say there were no first aiders available.

The group was left with no option but to rush Megan to the Urgent Treatment Centre on West Green Drive.

Megan was later rushed to Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead where doctors saved her finger.

So what is the “Urgent Treatment Centre” on West Green Drive? It is, of course Crawley Hospital. Why not just say she was taken to Crawley Hospital where she was treated before being transferred to specialists?

I choose to believe this is not a deliberate policy of the News to suppress any mention of Crawley Hospital in a positive light but a result of the perfidious and chronic campaign to undermine the place making it a reflex to do just that unthinkingly.

Or am I reading too much into it?