I CAN'T remember the last heartbreaking story about patients dying as they waited for an operation - even though I read more newspapers than is probably healthy.

Similarly, what happened to the annual 'winter flu crisis', that February favourite that saw sufferers piled high on trolleys in hospital corridors?

On the same theme, it was revealed this week that 13 hospitals - although none in the region - are on course to treat patients within 18 weeks of referral by their family doctor by the end of this year. If achieved, it will put the hospitals one year ahead of a national target and in position to slash waiting times further by that deadline of December 2008.

Most patients are expected to be treated within seven weeks, an astonishing advance on a decade ago when waits of 18 months - or even two years - were all too common.

Meanwhile, cancer survival rates have improved nationwide as nobody suspected of having the disease waits more than a month for treatment after seeing a consultant.

With all this good news around, patients and doctors must be queuing up to praise the Government's handling of the NHS, surely? Er, not exactly.

In fact, recent polls have found the Conservatives more trusted to run the health service and there was a similar blast from the doctors in a 3,000-strong poll this week.

More than half the docs said there had been no improvement in the NHS since 2002 - when funding rose dramatically - and almost three quarters said the money had been badly spent.

Now, don't get me wrong, there is a long list of justifiable criticisms: the ridiculous use of PFI, the obscene profits handed to private companies, the £20bn spent on an IT system that doesn't work.

There is the absurdity of plans - first revealed in The Northern Echo - to fine hospitals millions of pounds if they treat patients too quickly, to rescue cash-strapped primary care trusts.

Meanwhile, some hospitals are still struggling to pay off crippling historic debts, including South Tees (£21.4m) and North Tees (£12.8m).

Above all, how on earth could ministers have introduced financial rules that have led to the axeing of 23,000 posts when money is being pumped in as never before?

It will be remembered as one of Tony Blair's most astonishing political failures - to have tripled funding to save the NHS, yet ended up less trusted than the party which starved it of cash for so long.

Regular readers of this column may have gained the impression that I miss no opportunity to give the Prime Minister a good kicking when deserved. But, on this occasion, for all the mistakes made, it is madness to deny the dramatic improvements to the NHS.

WHEN a statue of Margaret Thatcher was erected at London's Guildhall, one man was so angry he smashed the former Prime Minister's head off with a metal bar.

A few years on, a replacement statue - a 7ft 4in effort, of silicon bronze - is ready to be perched on the long-empty plinth outside the entrance to the Commons chamber?

Surely, no unforgiving Labour MP will be similarly tempted to take aim?