I'm on a train on the way to the 2013 version of the NHS Confederation Conference. I'm not going to do my traditional mega-write-up and keynote speech coverage.

I will do a write-up, but it will go only to the Health Policy Intelligence subscribers who have been amazingly patient given the halt of service since I was ill back in March-April.

I appreciate subscribers' support immensely: it costs £69 for a year's worth of fortnightly issues. Email andycowper@hotmail.com if you want to subscribe.

The latest Ipsos MORI Issues Index, just published, shows that public concern about NHS issues is on a rising trend over the past year.

This is unwelcome news, but probably unsurprising. The fieldwork finished on 19 March, by which time the A&E situation was in the public domain. It presents on slide three a very useful chart of context of the main issues dating back to 1997. The NHS is in green.

Hello. I'm back.

I've been a bit busy with some other things, like becoming Comment Editor at Health Service Journal. I'll do a longer piece about my conflicts of interest when I can, but here it is.

And speaking of things that are here, Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson is off come next March, to the enormous surprise of absolutely nobody.

The NHS hasn’t been an election-winning issue for quite a few general elections now. It’s unlikely to be one in 2015 either, which seems set to be an economy election.

However, after promisingly mature responses from both the main leaders in the Commons in response to the Mid-Staffs 2 Report, its use and abuse during Prime Minister’s Questions today (transcribed below) could give Mr Cameron a nasty political headache.

One of the major philosophical aims of the NHS reforms newly-born to a proud albeit defenestrated Anderew Lansley (saviour, liberator) was to liberate the NHS from day-to-day political interference by passing the operational power to the national commissioning board, NHS England.

The famous public policy scientist Yazz defined it perfectly, albeit in a way that is ignorant of the laws of gravity: The Only Way Is Up.

The 2012 British Social Attitudes survey's health data, now supported financially by the Kings Fund following the DH's withdrawal, has found that following the record drop in the 2011 survey from 70% public satisfaction to 58%, there has been a small rebound - albeit within the margin of error for measurement.

It was a busy news day yesterday, during which HSJ editor Alastair McLellan's eagle eye spotted a significant letter to Jeremy 'Bellflinger' Hunt from Chairman Mal of NHS England (The Artist Formerly Known As The NHS Commissioning Board).

In his classic essay 'Fear And Loathing At the Superbowl', Hunter S Thompson famously said, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".

How could NHS Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson have been so stupid as to mislead the Public Accounts Committee when he could be caught out in so doing?

For whatever his faults, Comrade Sir David is not a stupid man.

Why, then, did he do such a stupid thing?

The answer lies in Marxism. Inevitably.

False consciousness, to be precise.

Health Service Journal has published a copy of former United Lincoln Hospitals Trust CE Gary Walker's 2009 letter to Comrade-In-Chief David Nicholson.

The concluding two paragraphs of the letter prove that Nicholson misled the Public Accounts Committee yesterday during his evidence.