Now James Doyle has become Worthing's youngest mayor I sincerely hope he will select St Barnabas Hospice as one of his chosen charities.

The financial problems and subsequent redundancies at the hospice are a terrible blow for the town, although I'm sure new chief executive Hugh Lowson will do everything he can to see it through these difficult times.

Apart from chronic and shameful under-funding from central government and the cost of building the children's hospice, a major cause of the present problems was a former chief executive ignoring the old adage of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and setting up a very expensive marketing division at the expense of the hospice's fund-raising side.

St Barnabas doesn't need marketing - it markets itself - but it certainly needs an efficient fund-raising department, which it had until the marketing "professionals" came in and changed things.

I doubt there is anyone in this town who doesn't know someone, be they a relative or a friend, who has been cared for at St Barnabas. Its whole ethos is one of care coming first.

Everyone makes mistakes and I'm sure if the hospice had its time again, it wouldn't go down the marketing route.

The post in question has now disappeared and, although it has been an expensive lesson, this must not stop people making donations.

The most important people are the patients. Without people's generosity, they will be the ones to suffer.

East Worthing MP Tim Loughton was recently described as one of the hardest working constituency MPs in the House of Commons by a rival newspaper.

He is certainly the most photographed MP this town has had. I don't think a week goes by without seeing young Tim's handsome features in the Press.

But frankly I don't care what he says or how many photos get printed as long as he backs up all the publicity with a bit of action.

Why not start by meeting police and working out a strategy for dealing with the wave of vandalism in the East Worthing area?

A total of ten smashed windows at the Aquarena last week. What next?

The old spoon bender himself, Uri Geller, is coming to the Worthing Pavilion and in his publicity flier tells his audience to bring along broken clocks and watches.

Clearly he's going to the right place, as when I attended the excellent production of the Wizard Of Oz at the venue last Saturday I noticed not only were both clocks in the theatre not working but one of them had Geller's face in the middle of it.

Is the maintenance budget so tight that rather than shelling out to have the clocks fixed the theatre is prepared to wait until Uri rolls into town and does it as part of his show?

Or is Uri that desperate to sell tickets he'll pull every stunt possible?

His friend Michael Jackson at the Pavilion on April 1?

Now there's a thought.