HPI readers with elephantine memories will remember that there was a time before NHS England's boss was Sun King Simon Stevens.

It seems improbable, but it's true. In the BS Era (Before Stevens), the NHS Commissioning Board's previous Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson asked the sector to deliver their three-year plans. It was called 'A Call To Action'.

Health Policy Insight: Do you agree that hospital A&Es are currently under real pressure?

Simon Stevens: Definitely. The NHS holds itself to a very high standard. No other major industrialised country in the world over the past year has managed to treat 9 out of 10 of its patients within four hours in an A&E department, but we have. The same with providing 9 out of 10 of our citizens with routine surgery within 18 weeks.

But that doesn't mean we can just carry on as we are.

The British Medical Association has gone nuclear in its plans for the next stage of protest against the new contract for 'junior' doctors.

It plans to hold four five-day all-out strikes of junior doctors, at short notice.

Finance directors may be breathing a sigh of relief at the wages to be unpaid, although lost tariff revenue may make the strikes unprofitable anyway.

The Overton Window is a political theory, which holds that there is a finite range of ideas that voters will find electorally acceptable.

The range of the Overton Window is finite, but crucially, it’s not fixed. Items can move or be moved from fringe to mainstream, and vice versa. Look at Euroscepticism in the Conservative Party for a perfect example: fringe in the late 1980s; mainstream today.

2016 is a year of surprises: I got a couple of political predictions right.

Both were on Twitter: first up, I replied to former Guardian leader writer and new Prospect editor Tom Clarke's tweeted assertion that "the great revolt of the people of England prepares the way for the smooth transition of power from one Etonian to the next", with the query "did Theresa May really attend Eton?"

Consider a country that has run out of money, just come out of a damaging battle in Europe with huge differences between the haves and the have-nots. Britain in 1948 (laughter). Despite those extraordinary challenges in 1948, the visionary Labour statesman Nye Bevan came up with his extraordinary vision of the NHS.

Labour party insider and health policy adviser Mo Mentum explains what a Corbyn government will do to get the NHS back on its feet

Pledge 1: We will immediately put a stop to plans by this totally corrupt Tory government to break up and sell off our NHS, starting by repealing the Lansley Act which handed over control of everything to David Cameron’s rich chums Richard Branson and Simon Stevens.

'Pierre Poujade' follows on from Health Policy Insight's recent, exclusive and accurate stories about John McDonnell's efforts to subvert Labour Party policymaking process

The arguments about who advises the Labour Party on the NHS, revealed by Health Policy Insight have reopened some of the claims about the passing of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act.

Health Service Journal's leak of Simon Stevens' weekly email to NHS staff shows why he is the Heineken of NHS and public sector leaders: he refreshes the parts other leaders cannot reach.

Simon puts the Government on notice that the Leave campaign's funding commitments must be honoured, and puts clear markers down to support staff who come from beyond the UK.

There has been lively discussion on social media about HPI's recent stories about the McDonnell Policy review and yesterday's follow-up.

Some of this discussion has been reasonable and reasoned in tone; some not so much. That's left-to-far-left politics for you, unfortunately.