[andrewb]

I don't believe in centralisation.. it's just well, silly. I think they'd find if they cut down on the bureaucracy they'd have a lot more police free to, well, police. I think I read somewhere that if a police officer arrests someone they have to spend a further few hours doing paperwork, keeping them off the street.

For hospitals it's bad because for example, the Blackburn/Burnley merger, what about all those people that had burnley as their nearest hospital? They'll have to travel much further to go to blackburn, and now blackburns been burdened with several million pounds worth of debt because of the merger so cost cuting..