Health Service Journal's Dave West reveals that Number 10 policy advisor Paul Bate has assembled a 10 Downing Street kitchen cabinet committee (or should that be kitchen sink committee?) to bounce around ideas on future health reforms, and on NHS reform in general.

So. That was a good holiday-type break for finance directors in foundation trusts, whose frantic applications for new jobs prompted by Monitor's suggesting repeated use of a seven-per-cent solution - though sadly not one that would have appealed to The World's Greatest Detective.

Indeed, we may well need the World's Greatest Detectives to find 7% year-on-year for four successive financial years. But that is another post altogether.

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The fifth issue, 'Cameron the Winner; Lansley the Magnificent', is now out.

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Copied below is the text of the Monitor letter to FTs and aspiring FTs (i.e. every provider). The tables won't reproduce properly below, so you'll need to download via the link.

This was picked up by HSJ yesterday and by Nick Timmins and Sally Gainsbury in the FT today.

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And there I was hoping for a quiet few days in healthpolicyland. Will I never learn?

(No, probably not.)

Tuesday saw Health Questions in the Commons.

Simon Stevens interview - Making sense of the NHS reforms?

Simon Stevens is President, Global Health, at UnitedHealth Group and a trustee of the Kings Fund. He’s best-known in the NHS for his seven year stint at 10 Downing Street and the Department of Health, where he co-authored The NHS Plan and much of the subsequent reform agenda.

He discussed the current NHS reforms with Health Policy Insight editor Andy Cowper.

Health Policy Intelligence is our new, weekly subscription-based analysis service.

The fourth issue, 'Not even ‘Minder’ Letwin can save The Liberator - Andrew ‘Transport’ Lansley’s political fightback marred by not-wholly competent Beige Arts of propaganda ', is now out.

Health Policy Intelligence will not be available as free content. Subscription costs £8 a month / £69 a year for an individual. Increasing discounts are available to organisations wanting to subscribe for groups of more than 5 and 10 individuals.

I'm grateful to my friend and colleague, The Guardian's social affairs editor Randeep Ramesh for drawing my attention to this story on their website's bold new NHS reforms liveblog about the plan of Dr Jonathan Munday to orchestrate a letter-writing campaign in support of the Secretary Of State For The Time Being Andrew Lansley's bathetic plans for 'Liberating The NHS'.

The first thing to say about How is the NHS performing? Quarterly monitoring report, the new initiative from the Kings Fund, is that as it admits prominently, it is based on data from a small sample. 26 finance directors gave their answers via an internet survey last month.

Good day; I hope this finds you well.

Let me first direct you to the latest instalment of The Maynard Doctrine, in which the Good Professor gives choice, competition, comedy governance and the listening pause a good working over.

I was intrigued to read this survey of 500 GPs, carried out in February and March by Pulse on behalf of (and so funded by) private providers Spire Healthcare.