I'm not in England any more , so perhaps I write with nostalgic fervour for a forgotten past. However, a couple of points...

A 16-year-old terminally ill cancer patient died after waiting over an hour for an ambulance to transfer him.

Now, excuse me for being callous, but the whole point of "terminally ill" is that you ARE going to die. It's only a question of when.

Perhaps the Ambulances were busy with people who COULD be saved, who could be helped.

normally, Tom, you'd leap down the throat of a journalist who had such an obvious agenda as this.

I have great sympathy for the departed, and his family, but pragmatic decisions have to be made. On average, they are made reasonably well, imho...

Seriously ill patients are left for hours in ambulances instead of being immediately admitted to accident and emergency departments to meet a Government target on treatment times, it was claimed yesterday.

The practice of "patient stacking" has left some waiting for up to five hours because A&E units have refused to admit them until they can be treated within the four-hour time limit.

Unison, the public sector union, said the practice poses a danger to other patients because ambulances detained as "waiting rooms" cannot answer new 999 calls.

it seems to me that Ambulances are quite well suited to be mobile treatment rooms. They have a stock of medical supplies, trained paramedics, and adequate beds.

Overall, it would be much more cost and time efficient to allow a modest "floating" supply of ambulances to help whichever hospital is temporarily under stress from a statistical influx of patients, than to build surplus capacity into EVERY hospital so that they NEVER had an overflow.

I know I'd personally prefer to wait in the ambulance, than wait in the waiting room. The chairs aren't so comfy, for a start...

Now, whether the stock of ambulances is sufficient for the demand is another question, but the article uses emotive arguments rather than addressing the actual issue, so I can't answer this one...