Well done to The Guardian's social affairs editor Randeep Ramesh, who seems to be first with the figures of the NHS's £300 million management consultancy spend in 2009-10.

Ah, I remember the happy days when it took zillions of FOI requests to find those figures. Now they are collected centrally - and that, folks, is progress.

Clearly there are not enough reviews under way: the DH has announced another, and significant one, on the Clinical Excellence and Distinction Awards for consultants.

This is a subject covered here by Alan Maynard, some months ago.

Not if the fact there were only 300 responses to a survey by the GP freesheet is anything to go by, it would seem.

You can click through above to read the results. What seems quite odd is to have such a low response rate. August and all that, yes. But if that is any kind of proxy indicator of the level of engagaement ahead, there will be trouble. And it will be big.

In the new world of the White Paper, local government is to have a significantly extended say in healthcare and commissioning, as the local democratic aspect once envisaged for PCTs. So this pick-up in today's Telegraph of a management consultancy report that local government staff waste 2/3 of their day might cause a few shivers down Con-Dem spines.

I missed this recent Guardian editorial on PFI, but certainly didn't miss Alan Maynard's witty recent deconstruction of PFI for that parish.

Good morning. I hope the weather is good where you are.

Today we turn to an interesting press release from Dr Foster Intelligence, whose public sector share sale by the IC to the Health Secretary for £8 million we exclusively revealed last week.

Dr Foster Intelligence have moved into consulting mode. Now Tribal, KPMG, McKinseys, E&Y, Old Uncle Tom Cobblers and all can take heart: the consulting in question is about the methodology to be used in the next edition of the Dr Foster Hospitals Guide.

This article doesn't need any contextualising. Just read it (as Nike so very nearly said).

Professor Alan Maynard ventures into the anthropomorphic, assessing the porcine nutrition issues arising from the latest NHS redisorganisation

The American economist Uwe Reinhardt has likened a healthcare system to a sow, with beneficiaries of her milk competing for suckling rights. In the NHS, the ‘milk’ level exceeds £100 billion. Accordingly, the ‘piglets’ are bodies such as the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and general practitioners.

If I'm ever sick enough to need to be admitted to hospital, I'm not going to give a shit whether the ward is mixed sex or not.

How about you?

Today's Telegraph offers three health policy-inflecting stories.

The first is the return of the Quiff Of Doom, ex-Health Secretary and ex-MP Alan Milburn.

Again.

Who indeed, sort of never went away.