At just one surgery in West Sussex, the number of missed appointments totals more than 120 per month.

The chances are the majority have felt better by the time of the appointment and don't bother to notify the surgery, or they simply forget.

Either way, it's a huge headache for surgeries up and down the country. In the short term it means that someone else who may be desperate for an appointment, has to wait longer to see a doctor, and collectively, it means that millions of pounds of NHS money is wasted.

And that means that through all these people's stupidity and selfishness, someone, somewhere has to go without an operation, or has to have it delayed, because there is a finite amount of money available to the NHS.

We've got used to dentists charging patients for missed appointments and, no doubt, those people are far more responsible when they know that if they miss an appointment they are going to feel pain in the pocket (as well as in the mouth!).

And it's about time surgeries imposed charges for missed appointments. It's selfishness in the extreme to just ignore an appointment a person has made.

It seems that if you provide a service for free, certain people are more likely to abuse it, or assume it's theirs as a God-given right.

Inheritance tax misery

Talking about God-given rights, it seems that the government believes it has a God-given right to take our money!

I was angry in the extreme last week when I read a story about two elderly sisters aged in their 80s and 90s who have lived together in the same house for many years.

They now face the prospect that when one of them dies, the other will have to sell the home and "downsize" just to pay inheritance tax.

While married couples, partners and now gays and lesbians living together have the right to an exemption on estate duty on property, enabling it to pass to the other person in the partnership, that does not apply to siblings living together.

It beggars belief that any government is prepared to accept as fair and reasonable a situation where a gay or lesbian person can live in the partnership home when one of them dies, sisters or brothers cannot.

For any elderly person to be forced to move is a traumatic experience – it is made far worse when that person, still grieving at the loss of a close relative, is forced to move just to pay government tax.

Inheritance tax is an appalling tax and those who originally dreamt it up and voted in favour of it should be ashamed of themselves.

We're taxed to the hilt in Britain (we're one of the most heavily taxed nations in the world) when we're alive, it's dreadful to tax us when we're dead.

That said, I am far from sympathetic to those who are born with silver spoons in their mouths and inherit fortunes from parents.

So often we hear of parents building up highly successful businesses which pass to the offspring who fritter the money away because they have lived the good life and never learned what real work is all about.

Don't tell the truth it may hurt

Strange world, banking. A few weeks ago banks were being accused of being irresponsible and rash, giving 100+ per cent mortgages and lending money to people with scant regard whether they could ever pay the money back.

We are all paying the high price for this foolishness, but we now have the Bank of England saying to banks that they should relax their strict controls and lend more, otherwise the economy will suffer.

This all smacks of heads I win, tails you lose. The fact is that banks were prepared to lend more than they should because house prices were going up month after month.

At one stage it was calculated that house prices were soaring at a rate of £100 per day. Anyone in their right mind could see that would end in grief.

And it's happened. It would be very foolish if banks started opening up the floodgates and let people borrow big time at present, with house prices tumbling.

What I find sad is that now things are tough, everyone is trying to find a scapegoat. First it was all the banks' fault and the latest is that it's the fault of the press (the press gets blamed for absolutely everything!).

The argument is that newspapers and television shouldn't tell the public that house prices are going down because that adverse publicity only drives prices down even more.

Isn't that great! Don't tell the public the truth or write any bad news because it might hurt business.

I don't remember anyone criticising the press when there were stories day after day that house prices were going up every month and which make people (falsely) believe they were better off than they were.

The simple truth is that house prices went up beyond a point that people could afford.

There had to be a correction which should have happened 18 months ago but didn't, and the correction now is greater than it would have been.

The plain truth is that the reason there wasn't a correction 18 months ago was that the market and the entire financial world was being driven by greed.

Unfortunately, as always, the public has to pay the price for it. There's no one group responsible. Collective greed is.

Small firms brought to their knees by tax

On the subject of the downturn of the economy due to the credit crunch and spiralling food and fuel costs, there's an interesting report in tomorrow's Worthing Herald that well worth reading.

There's a story about a successful small business in Worthing being brought to its knees by sky-high business rates and spiralling overheads.

Month by month, they manage to increase the volume of products they are selling, but the overheads are rising at an even faster rate.

This, it seems, is the dilemma for many small businesses in the UK and it's extremely worrying when you consider that hundreds of thousands of people are employed working for the owners of similar small businesses.

The other tack of this feature is the problem facing retailers in the town centre suffering from reduced footfall because people's disposable income has fallen plus ever-rising costs.

There are empty shops in Montague Street, South Street, Chapel Road and Warwick Street and an interesting facet to the story is a comment from the town centre manager is that we have not got suitable buildings to attract new store chains.

These want larger premises with sufficient external waste-storage areas and there is a distinct lack of these in the centre of Worthing.

It goes back to the lack of investment in Worthing in the 1960s onwards when many towns built new shopping centres, many under cover.

It's going to take mega-bucks to catch up now.