My Lords, Ladies and gentlemen, NHS comrades (and regulators),

I have received some comments about the relative infrequency of Health Policy Insight posts of late. Thank you for your concern. I am fine, and indeed still hold opinions and do analysis about the NHS. It's just a question of time available.

Gosh my old boots.

Outgoing (as in leaving) RCP supremo Sir Richard Thompson has given The Guardian an exit interview in which he says the quality of some NHS clinical care is a bit shit because clinicians are too busy.

Well, thank Christ he didn't notice it during the entire period he was in post as the president of the representative body.

Who knows what might have happened?

In 'Stuck Outside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again', Bob Dylan wrote "And here I sit so patiently, waiting to find what price/You have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice". It's a good line.

However, Dylan also later wrote "Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle like a bowl of soup", which cancelled the former line out, and proves that you can't trust Bob Dylan as a seer.

It’s good to be back - back in the NHS, and back here on Tyneside.

I know times are tough, and the Health Service is under pressure. But when people ask me why take on this new job? My answer is: Because I believe in the NHS, and I believe in its future. That it will be there when we need it, at the most profound moments in our lives. At the birth of our children. At the deaths of our loved ones. And at every stage in between – as we grapple with hope, fear, generosity, loneliness, compassion – all the most profound elements of the human spirit.

NHS England has been run by a former Communist, and from today it is run by a former Labour councillor. Perhaps in our children’s children’s time, NHS England will be run by a former Lib Dem?

Anyway, Simon Stevens is a great hire. He runs the risk of inflated expectations leading to disappointment when miracles do not immediately ensue, which is a nice problem to have.

Here, to speed Simon on his way, are a few observations about the job.

Next week sees the arrival of Simon Stevens as NHS England's new chief executive.

HPI reisdent economics-and-everything guru Professor Alan Maynard has already offered Simon some advice, and very good it is too. I shall add to it on Monday, as doubtless shall the rest of the health policyverse.

But to truly re-enter the exciting online UK health policy debates, Simon needs a handle.

Is it too late to coin the phrase ‘Lansleyism’?

It’s not?

OK, then: the Care.Data fiasco is a near-perfect Lansleyism.

For starters, there’s a pause for six months. That always helps.

More obviously, here comes another technical solution that will revolutionise the NHS, where the communications to the professions and the public was so dramatically poor as to create significant and unanticipated uproar.

I know nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, but this 2010-12 retro is ridiculous.

Health policy via 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau? Why not?

Yesterday, Health Service Journal carried a fascinating article flying a kite for the provider landscape to be reshaped into large chains.

Now here is An Interesting Things, brought to my attention by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, Labour's health lead in the House of Lords (Temporal And Spiritual, for ever and ever, Amen).

Lord Hunt's fellow-lord, Lord Rea asked Buttle Of Britain Earl Howe for various details on the costs of commissioning support units (CSUs, of course).

The Twittering Classes were fascinated to notice that NHS England's outgoing chief executive, Comrade Sir David Nicholson had joined the micro-blogging service.

The Comrade-In-Chief revealed that he is taking part in a Cambridge University Union debate on the motion that 'This House believes that the NHS should be privatised', which you will be unsurprised to hear he is opposing.