PEOPLE power and not the grumbling and posturing of MPs, did it in the end for House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin.

PEOPLE power and not the grumbling and posturing of MPs, did it in the end for House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin.

The country had united in anger against the ancient and once-respected “mother” of Parliaments - and those members who had abused the system governing expenses.

The man at the top, he in ill-fitting black robes, had failed to bring about change - and the people, aided and abetted by a watchful media, decided he had to go.

In Ipswich, we have a decent, hard-working MP, who to his credit has shown the public exactly what he has claimed for and when.

Well done, Mr Mole, and others like you, who do not abuse the system.

But today we accuse Mr Mole of missing the point in the debate over serious heart attack care in Ipswich and Suffolk.

And on that point he risks, like Mr Martin and MPs who have abused the system, of galvanising an angry population in the countdown to a general election in less than a year from now.

Today we're urging Mr Mole to stand up for the people of Ipswich and Suffolk - and call a stop to these ridiculous plans until a full consultation is completed.

Yesterday Mr Mole said more lives will be saved by taking emergency heart attack patients to centres in Norwich, Papworth and Basildon. He stressed he supported this move because it is good for the people of Ipswich.

We say it is time Mr Mole listens to the wealth of opposition, and to see beyond the paperwork presented by the bulldozing arms of “our way only” regional health chiefs.

We recognise that new emergency hearts care centres will be better for patients - but only if they can get to the specialist centre in time.

Paramedics can take 30 to 40 minutes to reach some isolated communities, before journeys can even begin to the hospital care so desperately needed which to the planned specialised centres could be a further hour and a half away.

Add to that the fact that clot-busting drugs will not be administered and the threat to these seriously ill patients is clear.

Yesterday Mr Mole admitted that in an ideal world Ipswich would have one of the new centres - for the growing population of Suffolk and North Essex.

But the cost, believed to be about �5 million, cannot be afforded - when Mr Mole's government has pumped in BILLIONS to prop up a discredited banking system …

Let's get it straight - these centres can be afforded in three other distant places - but why not in Ipswich, Mr Mole?

Meanwhile, we know of local doctors and administrators who are terrified lives will be lost locally because of this move. Has Mr Mole heard their concerns? Has he done his own 25 questions for regional bosses?

Did he know that health bosses, aware of the Suffolk “black hole” in their thinking, re-worked the model time and again - and that Suffolk still didn't fit the bill?

As he knows, there was no public consultation on this, a scandal in itself.

The whole scheme has been shuffled through in a bunch of board papers that few if any members of the public read and Ipswich was not even mentioned.

We say - it is a farce and shame on Mr Mole for backing these plans without full interrogation.

As he knows, these decisions are being made by remote bureaucrats who do not live in our county and have probably never had to travel from the most rural parts of Suffolk to Cambridge or Essex in a car, let alone the back of an ambulance when they are frightened and in pain.

A flood of petition signatures coming into The Evening Star office tell Mr Mole all he needs to know about the feelings of the people of Ipswich and Suffolk on the matter.

Come on Mr Mole your time is now - step down off the fence and fight.

Click here for more on our Health Watch campaign and to sign our online petition