Bu Justin Dunn

A PENSIONER spoke to the Globe from her closure-threatened hospital ward to plead: "Don't let those idiots close us down."

Margaret Moss is one of many elderly and infirm in-patients at doomed wards 6&7 at Victoria Central Hospital in Wallasey.

She is the human face of a campaign to force hospital chiefs to change their minds about shutting the wards and to instead commit to their future.

Wirral Hospitals Trust has ordered the closure as part of a massive cost-cutting exercise to shore up a £6m budget deficit.

The Trust has argued that many elderly people needing long-term care would receive better treatment in private nursing homes.

Margaret contacted the Globe on Monday and invited us to talk to her inside the bustling wards that sit at the rear of the VCH complex on Mill Lane.

Staff have been treating her since her arrival on May 6, which was preceded by a month-long stay in Arrowe Park Hospital.

Margaret, who herself worked as a nurse at the older VCH site off Liscard Road as long ago as the 1940s, said: "The people here do such a marvellous job.

"They are so busy all of the time and yet you never hear a word of complaint from any of them. Just watching them run off their feet all the time makes you realise what a nonsense it is to say these wards have to close.

"There is not a single person here who thinks closing these wards is a good idea. The only people who do are the people who sit on the various Trust boards who are only interested in protecting their own salaries."

More than 20,000 people signed a petition opposing the closure. Wirral Council, which also opposed it, has referred the Trust's decision to the Secretary of State for Health.

Margaret said: "The utter nonsense of all this is the way the dreadful, patronising people who sit on these boards have pretended to consult the public.

"How on earth can you call something a consultation when you have quite clearly already made up your mind over what it is you are going to do?

"The powers that be have wanted to close these wards down from the word go, and it's an insult to every patient and every single member of staff to say otherwise.

"I won't be able to go to London to campaign for these wards, but I would like to send a message. And that is whoever wants to close this place down is the biggest fool that God ever created."