Whoever could have predicted it? Data just released by Monitor (in great detail) and the TDA (in scant detail) show the NHS provider sector is on the widely-predicted course to at least a £2 billion deficit for 2015-16.

In other exclusive news, bears shit in the woods.

This latest dispatch from the health policy trenches begins with news of Jeremy Hunt in the toilet.

Literally.

It is a Virgin toilet, as we would expect for a Very Important Secretary Of State. However, this is a Virgin toilet in a Virgin Train to the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

The former NHS Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson gave the second NHS Providers Annual Lecture a few weeks ago.

It was a thoughtful, amusing and insightful presentation, expanding on some themes from his July seminar on what the Government should do about NHS finances, and introducing others anew.

In the interests of mischief, here are some key lines from his lecture, and what they might mean translated.

I have previously mentioned that NHS England Sun King Simon Stevens has a way with legislation that doesn't suit his strategy: he simply ignores the shit out of it, in the sure and certain faith that he won't be challenged.

The traumatic legacy of the 2012 legislation is such that PM David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne want to re-onshore health policy from Simon as much as they want a return to recession.

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard explores how workforce issues, funding and social care gaps amount to an NHS conflagration

On Nero and fiddling whilst the NHS burns
The Department of Health and NHS England continue to produce a plethora of what the charitable might call innovations. As the Comprehensive Spending Review progresses, ’bold’ notions, such as allocating more NHS funding to social care, echo through the corridors of Richmond House.

As ever, life in the real NHS emulates the old Chinese curse: “may you live in interesting times”!

If it hasn't been done already, the socio-cultural impact of classic phrases from Lancashire is undoubtedly a PhD thesis waiting to happen.

Lancastrians are a withering lot, which presumably you need to be if you're going to fight people from Yorkshire about flowers.

It's been an interesting few weeks in health policy. A lot of things that have happened have been even less reasonable than usual.

In fact, it has gotten downright weird. In the words of the late Dr Hunter S Thompson, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".

Interview by Andy Cowper

Health Policy Insight: How are the new Vanguards doing?

Simon Stevens: The selection for the first crop of PACS/MCP Vanguards was only four months ago, and the ones chosen were not by any means all the usual suspects; nor were they in parts of the country universally deemed to be 'doing well'.

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard on tide-turning, mustroom management and hole-hollowing

The post-election logic of the Government NHS policy is as elusive as a piece of soap in the bath. But then, perhaps we are expecting too much of the Government’s attempts to keep the NHS show on the road.
Let’s review three areas of their post-election NHS “innovatory” activity.

The King Canute Problem of wishful thinking is no substitute for evidence based policy

Transcript of Sir David Nicholson seminar, Civitas 20 July 2015 'Is the Government still ignoring the NHS's finance problem?'

The term 'The Nicholson Challenge' was health select committee chair Stephen Dorrell putting a target on my back. Recently, George Osborne called the Five-Year Forward View (5YFV) 'The Stevens Plan'. Simon will have noticed ...