Almost every conversation at the NHS Confederation conference in Liverpool opens with the phrase "So who's going to replace David Nicholson, then?"

This is a classic instance of Asking The Wrong Question.

Public policy sees a lot of Asking The Wrong Question, alas.

The Right Question is a very important place to start, though there is no guarantee of it leading neatly to The Right Answer.

Nothing so pleases the God of Health Policy as a sinner come to repentance, but it remains a matter of gobsmacking chutzpah that NHS England CE Comrade Sir David Nicholson uses his first of what might be many 'exit' interviews with Health Service Journal to call for a more decentralised NHS.

Delegates at the NHS Confederation conference might be excused for snorting cornflakes out of their nostrils as they read this over breakfast.

I'm on a train on the way to the 2013 version of the NHS Confederation Conference. I'm not going to do my traditional mega-write-up and keynote speech coverage.

I will do a write-up, but it will go only to the Health Policy Intelligence subscribers who have been amazingly patient given the halt of service since I was ill back in March-April.

I appreciate subscribers' support immensely: it costs £69 for a year's worth of fortnightly issues. Email andycowper@hotmail.com if you want to subscribe.

The latest Ipsos MORI Issues Index, just published, shows that public concern about NHS issues is on a rising trend over the past year.

This is unwelcome news, but probably unsurprising. The fieldwork finished on 19 March, by which time the A&E situation was in the public domain. It presents on slide three a very useful chart of context of the main issues dating back to 1997. The NHS is in green.

Hello. I'm back.

I've been a bit busy with some other things, like becoming Comment Editor at Health Service Journal. I'll do a longer piece about my conflicts of interest when I can, but here it is.

And speaking of things that are here, Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson is off come next March, to the enormous surprise of absolutely nobody.

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard looks at NHS reform plans from 1974, and finds that all too little has changed.

An appraisal of the history of NHS reform since 1974 shows a naïve belief that altering organisational structures will improve the processes of healthcare and benefit patients in terms of their outcomes: i.e. improve their length and quality of life.

The links between structure, process and outcome are assumed, with reformers asserting unevaluated and un-evidenced conclusions from their repetitive and learning-light organisational reforms.

The NHS hasn’t been an election-winning issue for quite a few general elections now. It’s unlikely to be one in 2015 either, which seems set to be an economy election.

However, after promisingly mature responses from both the main leaders in the Commons in response to the Mid-Staffs 2 Report, its use and abuse during Prime Minister’s Questions today (transcribed below) could give Mr Cameron a nasty political headache.

Health economist Professor Alan Maynard suggests we need radical reform: end two decades of policy failure and let purchasers merge with providers

The Health and Social Care Act 2012 has created a plethora of new bureaucracies, whilst undermining collective memory about past decision-making by retiring and making redundant many effective managers.

One of the major philosophical aims of the NHS reforms newly-born to a proud albeit defenestrated Anderew Lansley (saviour, liberator) was to liberate the NHS from day-to-day political interference by passing the operational power to the national commissioning board, NHS England.

The famous public policy scientist Yazz defined it perfectly, albeit in a way that is ignorant of the laws of gravity: The Only Way Is Up.

The 2012 British Social Attitudes survey's health data, now supported financially by the Kings Fund following the DH's withdrawal, has found that following the record drop in the 2011 survey from 70% public satisfaction to 58%, there has been a small rebound - albeit within the margin of error for measurement.