The most baffling story we have come across this week is our old friends the Great Western Ambulance Service's plan to spend £300,000 on ambulances for obese people.

These 55 stoners (I mean the patients, not the ambulances) are apparently desperately needed because our population is not only getting older, it is getting fatter too.

The current fleet of ambulances can only cope with patients up to 30 stone and aqpparently that is no longer enough so the money will be spent on converting three vehicles with lifting gear and sturdier axles.

Wiltshire will be getting just one of these heavy duty vehicles, the others are going to Gloucestershire and Hampshire.

All this is very well for political correctness but it seems a bit ridiculous. How many people of more than 30 stone are out there?
What if one of these poor unfortunates in Salisbury keels over and the supersize ambulance is already shifting another patient in Malmesbury?

Given the dodgy state of the service at present, anyone with health problems ought to be grateful an ambulance turns up at all, let alone one the right size.

Surely the money could be better spent on health promotion and healthy eating advice to stop people getting in ushc a state in the first place.

If excessively fat people need this expenditure because they are an un-catered for minority (un-catered in the ambulance sense rather than the food sense, obviously) then what about excessively tall people? Will they be getting a special long ambulance?