FORGIVE me for licking the sugar-coating off the maximum three stars awarded to Blackburn's hospitals and the two awarded to the Burnley Health Care Trust's in the government's new performance league tables.

No, I'm not complaining about the self-assessment that lies behind the Trusts' ratings -- I'm sure they wouldn't risk putting a false gloss on their achievements.

Nor am I doubting that real improvements have been made in all the aspects the star-rating system entails -- everything from cleanliness to reducing patients' waits for operations and on trolleys for a proper bed.

But what these awards do not measure is how good our hospitals are at curing people.

They may say you may wait less long to be treated in a nice clean hospital, but they don't say what your chances are of coming out in better health -- which would be a much more telling guide to how good they are, would it not?

But in good health is government spin that they are on with the task of making the NHS better -- when after more than four years in power the telling tag 'Britain's Third-World Health Service' still haunts Labour.