Editor's blog Thursday 30 June 2011: The ten Tweets of NHS reform

The micro-blogging website Twitter, where I am to be found  as @HPIAndyCowper, is proving itself a useful and amusing medium for micro-sized, 140-character-limited, health policy conversations.

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Yesterday I posted ten Tweets (140-character micro-blogs) on NHS reform.

Today, I have no time for a longer piece, so here are those ten for your enjoyment.

1. Promises of no more top-down reorganisation of the NHS are always completely true.

2. Shadow health secretaries should hold the post perpertually, to come up with seamless policy that will sail through Parliament.

3. Health Secretaries redisorganising the NHS are like dogs licking their own arseholes. 'Can' doesn't equate to 'should'.

4. When utterly redisorganising NHS, remember to demonise managers as 'bureaucrats'. This will make them keener to implement your NHS reforms.

5. This isn't party-political. Labour fucked up A Lot Of NHS Reform Things: PFI; ISTC deals; Cabinet ministers opposing key reconfigurations.

6. Failure regimes & designated services don't matter a bit to NHS reform. Leave Parliamentary debate as late as possible. Like, who cares?

7. The core business of the NHS is caring for people with long-term conditions. NHS reform redisorganising all structures makes scant sense.

8. Clinicians already tend to dislike regulating one another. Commissioner-provider conflicts of interest a huge risk now & may worsen this.

9. The NHS was bad at dealing with mediocre-to-crap performance when systems were stable. Chaos of NHS reform will create new hiding places.

10. Gallows humour may not be much, but it beats getting depressed.