Editor's blog Tuesday 7 June 2011: Introducing PMCPDs - PM David Cameron's 'Ground Control to pigs' NHS speech

The Independent's political editor Andrew Grice reports that PM David Cameron's 'five NHS pledges' speech today will include the line "guarantees you can hold me to and that I will be personally accountable for".

Jesus. Does he seriously mean to end both clauses of a sentance with a preposition?

......................................................................

Click here for details of 'The meat raffle and the King Of Skiffle - Does Your Health Bill Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

......................................................................


It's an interesting move to make, by a man who is more popular than his party.

It's also very high-risk. As NHS Supreme Soviet chair Comrade Sir David Nicholson said, this is a reorganisation so big you could almost see it from space, and most major change management projects fail.

It also means that his pledges should be looked at quite carefully; we gave them a skim yesterday. They will be worth revisiting regularly.

Introducing PMCPDs
Oh, and these five pledges are definitely not top-down targets. We don't do those anymore: they were a Bad New Labour Thing. That Nice Mr Cameron's fab five are, instead PMCPDs - Prime Ministerial Career Preservation Directives.

PMCPDs are not the same as top-down targets at all.

Cameron will apparently also bewail "empty bureaucracy". So it's just as well that his pledge on waiting times and efficient integrated care don't require any bureaucracy, or as it's also known, management.

I mean, £110 billion a year just spends itself, and the market makes all the adjustments needed using perfect information.

It looks as if the PM has mis-heard 'swine flu', and thinks that pigs do in fact fly.

Ground control to pigs: you're cleared for take-off