IS it not ridiculous that the life-or-death service provided by Lancashire's Air Ambulance might be grounded next year for lack of cash -- when there's a huge cash mountain available that could rescue it at a stroke?

The emergency helicopter costs £750,000 a year to run and since it started two and a half years ago it has flown 1,700 missions, rescuing casualties in inaccessible areas and slashing the time it takes to get those in urgent need of treatment to hospital.

Now, as doubt hangs over whether the sliding-scale sponsorship by the Automobile Association will be renewed to help keep it airborne, the prospect is that fund-raisers already backing the air ambulance may have to find the full cost of this life-saving service -- and if they can't, Lancashire could lose it

But why should such a vital service be dependent on either commercial goodwill or fund-raising -- when millions of pounds for good causes sloshes around in the National Lottery's coffers?

The government has already agreed that lottery money can go towards providing extras for health care, so why not use some of those millions to save the air ambulance and keep it running?

Consider the hundreds of thousands of pounds the lottery has dished out to put the history of Lancashire's canals, rivers and mills on the Internet and to have a mobile Internet cafe running around the county and a photographic record made of gasometers and that, added up, those sums come to £765,000 that would easily guarantee the air ambulance's future. Is it not crazy then that a far better good cause should be in jeopardy?

What would you rather have -- a helicopter-ambulance or a nice picture of a gas holder?