From Hansard, today's statement in the House of Commons on social care funding.

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The identity of one of the five high-mortality trusts whose investigations were announced in the wake of Francis trusts didn't surprise me even slightly.

The reason is that a couple of years ago, I was invited to visit its chief executive and director of communications to discuss their media and communications strategy.

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"This is not something which can be blamed simplistically on one policy or another, or on failings on the part of one or even a group of individuals. There was an institutional culture in which the business of the system was put ahead of the priority that should have been given to the protection of patients and the maintenance of public trust in the service.

The Francis Public Inquiry into Mid-Staffs will publish tomorrow. Prime Minister David Cameron will respond in the Commons.

Will it make any difference?

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NHS Comrade In Chief Sir David Nicholson outed himself as a one-man Salt 'n' Pepa of NHS management, when he told the audience of the National Voices conference today "let's talk about sex".

OK, almost true. What he apparently said, according to Twitter reportage (which is usually pretty accurate) was "I really want to make patient leadership sexy".

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Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the Parliamentary water, a big beast resurfaces.

Lord David Owen made some of the best speeches in the Lords debate over the Health and Social Care Act 2012, in very much the same way that Baroness Shirley Williams didn't.

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On Saturday, I saw that Enfield North MP Nick de Bois (a Conservative) had published an open letter on his website in response to Sir Bruce Keogh's Guardian interview asking politicians not to attack plans for NHS provider reconfiguration.

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Health economist Professor Alan Maynard queries why healthcare managers appear unwilling or unable to learn from history and evidence.

Non-clinical managers and their medical colleagues appear to be dumb, as defined by their failure to learn from history and evidence. For this dumbness, they are highly paid and continue to manage the delivery of care characterised by variations in process, cost and outcomes that damages patients and taxpayers.

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In the wholly spurious interests of binary 'balance', here are five snarky observations about shadow health secretary and Mascara Kid Andy Burnham's health policy review launch speech and subsequent Q&A this morning, followed by five non-snarky ones:

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From the Labour Party website

'Whole-Person Care' A One Nation approach to health and care for the 21st Century

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