MAIL COMMENT: Ignoring those who really matter

It talks of seeking out 'the best available evidence' and 'involving all stakeholders in a transparent and collaborative manner'.

Which, of course, is the least the public should expect, given NICE's extraordinary power to make life or death decisions over whether a drug should be made freely available on the NHS, or banned.

Ill-served: Kate Spall (right) who lost her mother Pamela Northcott to kidney cancer

Yet today we reveal that NICE appears to have flatly ignored patient views in making last Thursday's wrong-headed decision to deny kidney cancer patients four drugs which can double life expectancy.

Two of the four patient 'experts' invited to advise the panel say they have serious reservations about the process, which they label a 'sham', an 'appalling experience', 'flawed' and 'irrational'.

Campaigner Kate Spall, who lost her mother to kidney cancer, was so disgusted that she even demanded her name be removed as a NICE 'consultee'.

Describing her experience of a two-hour evidence session, Mrs Spall says: 'We waited for our opportunity to contribute - and it never came.

'I don't think they used the word patient even once during the meeting and the process is designed to exclude expert patients they invited to take part.' How utterly unacceptable.

To have taken last Thursday's decision (reached on the grounds of cost, not because there were any doubts over the drugs' effectiveness) would have been a mistake in any circumstances.

For NICE to have done so without properly hearing the views of the very patients over whom it is playing God is scandalous. The ruling should be immediately reversed.

A bullying beast
As bombs rained down on Georgia yesterday, an alarmed Washington described Russia's ruthless attack on its neighbour as 'dangerous and disproportionate'.

It is hard to disagree with the U.S. verdict. Yes, Georgia provided the trigger for war, with last week's surprise attack on the Russian-supported breakaway province, South Ossetia.

But Moscow's devastating response has extended far beyond South Ossetia.

Witnesses say Tbilisi International Airport, in the Georgian capital, has been blitzed and the conflict is escalating in a second breakaway region, Abkhazia.

With mighty Russian warships now deployed along the Georgian Black Sea coast, who knows where it will stop?

It is a brutal reminder that, behind the mask of post-Cold War acceptability, Russia remains a bullying beast.

And a brutal reminder, too, of the West's impotence in a region which contains key oil and gas pipelines, on which we depend.

Soft justice
A murder suspect bailed to kill again... a devoted father kicked to death on his own doorstep by a yob freed from court that very day... widespread offending by thugs wearing electronic tags...

Labour's handling of the bail system, driven by the need to keep as many suspects as possible out of our packed jails, has been shambolic.

Criminals have been given repeated second chances, only to flout the rules and even kill.

Now we learn, thanks to some probing by the Conservatives, that the average punishment for bail breaches is a £60 fine - £50 less than councils hand out for overfilling a dustbin.

Tough on crime? What a sick joke.