Big Society, Big Conversation

A memo by the chief executive of the health service indicates that the fundamental lunacies of Twizzler Lansley's anti-NHS bill will be enacted no matter what mere medical or taxpaying personnel have to say about them. In particular, the setting up of consortiums of general practitioners to oversee funding is non-negotiable, which is jolly convenient as that is the very part of the bill on which everyone is out of step except for Daveybloke, the Twizzler, Wee Nicky and the rest of the right-wing lunatic fringe. Much as George Osborne is reducing government debt by shifting it onto the public, so the Twizzler plans not so much to reduce NHS bureaucracy as to dump its burden onto GPs, who after all have nothing better to do.

Labour, who must be incandescent with copyrighteous fury at the Government's appropriation of their line about the public mind being too narrow and inflexible to encompass the awesome nobility of their intentions, said that the Government's "listening exercise" is more of a PR exercise; and of course Labour ought to know.