"And here I sit so patiently,
Waiting to find what price
You have to pay to get out of going
Through all these things twice"
Bob Dylan, 'Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again'

I wasn't into football as a young man: I'm still not now that I'm less young. Still, football culture was a reality of the 1970s and 80s, with hooliganism, tribalism and affordable standing terraces.

Some things you want to write much less than others; some you don't want to write at all. This one is in the second such category.

Professor Aidan Halligan has died unexpectedly, aged 57. A friend and mentor to many, he was the NHS's first director of clinical governance, and also deputy chief medical officer to Sir Liam Donaldson.

The revelation by the Manchester Evening News that there is to be a Greater Manchester health and care authority, to which the region's entire £6bn annual budget will be devolved, is a spectacular one.

It involves the creation of a new statutory body by April 2016 to assume the budget, sitting above a supervisory commissioning body formed of the area's councils, CCGs and NHS England.

This is clearly in no way adding new bureaucracy and complexity into the NHS system.

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard casts doubt on the £22 billion efficiency challenge

There are five basic questions worth asking yourself when setting out to tackle a problem.

They are as follows:
1. Do I understand this problem and its root causes?
2. Is it a big problem?
3. Is it an important problem?
4. Is it a wicked problem?
5. Is it a real problem?

Step one is self-explanatory, although a lot of people (in health policy and politics and beyond) do tend to skip it.

First, the good news: the 2014 British Social Attitudes survey found that satisfaction with the NHS has resumed its upwards trend, and is back to its second-highest level ever. This is a remarkable testament to the hard work of NHS staff.

(It will be instructive to see whether those who criticised the BSA's methodology when it found the massive drop in public satisfaction in 2010-11 change their tune now that its findings may be more convenient.)

Here follows the short version of the text of NHS England West Midlands local area team's major incident guidance, which has made the news today.

Urgent Care Checklist/On–Call guidance
Purpose
The purpose of this checklist is primarily to assist both CCG and Area Team on-call managers and Directors when the system pressures across urgent care providers is significant.

* CCG On call

Simon Stevens interview – Health Policy Insight, January 2015

Interview by Andy Cowper

Health Policy Insight: No healthcare system has yet achieved the level of productivity gain required in the 2015-20 period - though Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece have all made big cuts. Why will the NHS be different?
Simon Stevens: There are three main zones where we have to unleash major efficiency improvements. Number one, where most efforts to date have focused, is in individual NHS organisations and providers.

To the enormous surprise of absolutely no-one with a hint of knowledge of what's happening in the NHS, Circle today anounced that they are handing back the management of Hinchingbrooke to the NHS Trust Development Authority.

Dear Sir Galahad,

Your noble intentions in pursuing the Holy Grail of increased productivity in the NHS have been noted. As you know, I am a ‘shape shifter’ (i.e. I can appear in a variety of forms). This has enabled me to attend covertly various meetings in Whitehall village and Quarry House, Leeds and listen to the often chaotic burblings and confused intentions of those in charge of NHS policymaking.

The cacophony (as you can imagine) has been considerable because the imminence of the election and the Stalinist efforts of the Coalition to curtail expressions of panic.