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.

It was a busy news day yesterday, during which HSJ editor Alastair McLellan's eagle eye spotted a significant letter to Jeremy 'Bellflinger' Hunt from Chairman Mal of NHS England (The Artist Formerly Known As The NHS Commissioning Board).

In his classic essay 'Fear And Loathing At the Superbowl', Hunter S Thompson famously said, "when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".

How could NHS Comrade-In-Chief Sir David Nicholson have been so stupid as to mislead the Public Accounts Committee when he could be caught out in so doing?

For whatever his faults, Comrade Sir David is not a stupid man.

Why, then, did he do such a stupid thing?

The answer lies in Marxism. Inevitably.

False consciousness, to be precise.

Health Service Journal has published a copy of former United Lincoln Hospitals Trust CE Gary Walker's 2009 letter to Comrade-In-Chief David Nicholson.

The concluding two paragraphs of the letter prove that Nicholson misled the Public Accounts Committee yesterday during his evidence.