Good morning. I hope this finds you well in our new socialist utopia.

What fun to own shares in banks! Presumably, this is sharing the proceeds of negative growth? Now, when do we start finding out about our year-end bonuses, and dropping heavy hints to the Revenue that we'll move abroad if they're not good enough?

Still, it has to be done.

Sometimes, it isn't fun being right, but I did think the NHS was going to get hit by the Icelandic banking crisis.

We now know that two foundation trusts, the Christie cancer hospital in Manchester and Central and North-West London mental health trust, both banked reserves with Icelandic banks that are currently in administration.

You may not yet have heard of Dr. Christopher Ruhm, Jefferson-Pilot Excellence Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA. I suspect his work will receive wider attention very soon.

"When the economy tanks, people are healthier but they may not necessarily be happier"

This prophecy thing is a bit worrying. I was being slightly tongue-in-cheek when I posted on Tuesday about the possibility of NHS institutions losing money in the Icelandic banking crash.

Well, the NHS is certainly going to be affected, because it looks as if local councils have taken a bath. This has obvious implications for social care, and joint working under the new joint strategic needs assessments.

Just come from the Wellcome Trust's fascinating exhibitions, and arrived to see the global financial turmoil cointinuing apace.

Just a very quick thought about IceSave - do you think any SHAs have put their money there?

Just when I was thinking my powers of prophecy might be waning (see the second paragraph of this), my not-very-difficult deduction that Ivan Lewis was off proved correct. Lewis has been sent by Gordon Brown to International Development - a slightly sadistic form of gardening leave.

Thanks to Martin Rathfelder of the Socialist Health Association for sending me this link to a magnificently appropriate photo of Ivan Lewis.

Today we will see whether Gordon Brown is better than his predecessor at cabinet reshuffles. It will not be hard: Tony Blair's reshuffles were startlingly clumsy and leaky.

For health, the hope must be for steady-as-she-goes, apart from the probably-doomed Ivan Lewis, whose pre-conference comments on Labour's need for leadership were miraculously followed by the leaking to the press of an old story about Lewis's inappropriately hassling a DH civil servant with romantic intent. Whoever might have been behind that?

“The central task I have set myself and this Party is to be as radical in social reform as Margaret Thatcher was in economic reform” – David Cameron, Conservative Party conference, 1 October 2008

Over the past generation, no Conservative politician since Michael Heseltine has had the electorate’s serious scrutiny as ‘probable next Prime Minister’.

As Thatcher’s assassin, of course, the crown would never be Hezza’s.

Good morning. Story of the day looks very much like The Independent's piece highlighting the pharmaceutical industry's bankrolling of many of the patient charities that have run prominent campaigns against NICE decisions about recommending new drugs for NHS availability.

Something has happened to Andrew Lansley’s hair. The shadow health secretary’s barnet is looking distinctively … different. Now as regards a discussion of male grooming (albeit the sinister connotations that have accrued around that phrase mean that I shall not be using it again) – a discussion of male preening, let’s say, I am not your ‘go-to’ person This much is obvious if you have ever met me. Or even seen a photograph.