Good afternoon. As I am psychically preparing myself for the cross-London walk to get my train lto Liverpool for the NHS Confedeeration conference (from which I shall blog frequently), there is just time to point you to two new things.

Associate director Tom Smith returns with Health Policy Today, in which he loks at the silver jubilee of the Griffiths Report and wonders about Andy Burnham's record-breaking potential.

Interviewed by The Guardian, new health secretary Andy Burnham has suggested that prevention of lifestyle-associated ill-health will be a personal priority.

Burnham sees the British population getting on their bikes not to look for work (as Norman Tebbit's father reportedly did), but to ward off the impending crises in obesity and diabetes through exercise. He is reported to view expenditure of public money on fitness and prevention as "a long-term insurance policy".

It is with huge sadness that I write about the death of Bob Sang yesterday. Bob was 61.

His particular specialism was in patient and public invovlement and engagement in health and social care, and in facilitation of this. Bob was working in this area long before it was fashionable, let alone a statutory duty.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Alan Johnson has been moved to the Home Office.

He has been an effective health secretary in terms of keeping the NHS out of the run of the news. Policy was left as is (or in the case of ISTCs, rowed back on) and sub-contracted to Darzi.

Who the hell next for Health? Straw is staying at Justice and Darling at the Treasury. Surely not Ed Balls?

Latest gossip (12.20) is that John Denham knocked back health and will be community secretary.

Health Policy Insight associate director Tom Smith has written an entertaining and insightful essay about Labour's leadership crisis on his fine new blog. I recommend it to you strongly.

Gordon Brown's future as Prime Minister hangs on three things: Labour's fate in the council and European elections; the reshuffle he will attempt; and the attitude of Alan Johnson.

It's a circular world. What goes around, comes around.

In an intriguing piece in Health Service Journal, NHS head honcho David Nicholson shakes off his reputation as a centraliser by promising to reinvent the top-down, 'doing change to the service' approach. Basically, Nicholson is going to reinvent the NHS Modernisation Agency (abolished in 2005) on a regional basis.

I missed the story in The Sunday Times about Monitor's executive chair Bill Moyes' expenses. There was much to miss.

Good morning to you. Time is not my friend today, so this will be by way of a short catch-up.

Item! I am no longer acting press officer for NHS Alliance. The real press officer returned to work yesterday (welcome back Ana), and so both you, dear reader, and I can lose any concern about me using this as a mouthpiece for a client. I hope we both know I wouldn't, but you've got to be open about these matters. Ask MPs.

Surgical sexism

Posting twice in one day? I am spoiling you, Ambassador ...

However, this piece in the Staggers caught my eye irresistably. I don't think I have chuntered on yet about the Loi Bachelet, which basically proposes that managers will decide what care hospitals deliver.