Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association takes a disparaging look at the Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow

The role of Lib Dems in the destruction of our NHS is characterised by the lamentable performance of Paul Burstow, who is active on the Bill Committee.

During the Committee exchanges, his role has been to read out lengthy and detailed explanations provided for him to justify every detail of the Bill.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

Liberal Democrat Health Minister Paul Burstow has made scant impression thus far, policy-wise.

A trend that continues with his dreadfully wet and at points misleading interview with Guardian political editor Patrick Wintour.

A fair few buckets of the midnight oil must have been burnt for the BMA to produce the 48-page agenda for its Special Representative Meeting next Tuesday.

The BMA's leadership find themselves between a rock and a hard place. They face the SRM ending in a near-certain mandate to move to outright opposition to the Bill.

If this is the result, the current leadership's positions would look untenable, and they would likely feel obliged to resign.

Congratulations to Pulse journalist Ian Quinn for spotting the publication of the Government's 100-strong list of amendments to its own Health And Social Care Bill.

A DH spokesperson told Pulse that they were "minor, technical amendments".

As the typo king of health policy-land, I am the last person to criticise anyone for minor technical amendments.

Today's health questions in the House Of Commons was not exactly a riot of answered questions and enlightened debate and discussion.

Plus ca change ... But one exchange seems to be worth quoting:

During Health Questions today in the House of Commons, Secretary Of State For Health Andrew Lansley was asked a question about a letter from NHS Confederation Foundation Trust Network to David Flory, finance supremo of the DH (reported today in the Evening Standard), warning of the impending effect of reduced spending due to the efficiency savings under way.

You will probably remember Mace-swingin' Haymarket-publishin' late-payin' Thatcher-topplin' own furniture-buyin' Michael Heseltine's infamous comment, on hearing of a Gordon Brown speech on the economy to the City using the phrase 'neo-classical endogenous growth theory'. Hezza repeated the line to his audience, adding in reference to Brown's economist lieutenant Mr Ed, "that's not Brown's; it's Balls'!"

Health Secretaries redisorganising the NHS are like dogs licking their own arseholes. Just because they can, it doesn't mean they should.

That did not prevent SOS Lansley from reversing the promises of the Coalition Agreement, and the pre-electoral assurances from That Nice Mr Cameron, to end top-down reorganisation.

There have been some shoddy attempts at revisionist history by Coalition ministers, but unless I somehow missed the widespread, proctologically bottom-up campaign among PBC consortia to abolish PCTs and SHAs, that was the first U-turn.

Professor Alan Maynard on data use, incentives, PROMs, private sector HES and a 1974 Burlington.

The reformed NHS has some “nice” data gaps which need to be plugged quickly, if performance management and transparency are to be improved.

Without improvements in data collection and analysis, NHS managers will not be able to manage efficiently and the NHS Commissioning Board will not be able to commission efficiently and equitably.

There are a couple of intrinsic dilemmas in NHS reform.

The first relates to the current debate about markets and competition. Monitor chair David Bennett's recent interview with The Times demonstrated that he's comceptualising NHS reform - at least, to The Times audience - as akin to a pre-privatisation utility.