I have to admit that I haven’t seen Alan Johnson being questioned, but I’ve read about his plans, and I agree that a year-long consultation is… unhelpful. If he reviews services without changing anything, surely morale will stay low for another twelve months, the problems with ST applications for junior doctors will be repeated next year, and – essentially – nothing will get done.

On the other hand, I guess it’s hard to truly tackle a problem without getting your head round the problem as a whole – chipping round the edges at whatever the Daily Mail has as it’s latest moan seems to have caused much of the current damage – but I don’t understand why a full year of consultation is necessary. As you rightly say, people know what the problems are already, they just need sorting into a logical form, and sorting ASAP.

You’re way ahead of me on Norman Lamb… I have to say I have no idea what the Lib Dem policy is on hospital cleaning, though I probably should! Having said that, I don’t know much about any Lib Dem policies at the moment – I know I thought Sir Menzies would be a good leader, but I’m starting to agree with his dissenters… The obvious problem being that there’s no-one who seems particularly well placed to replace him. But to the point…

Wards are currently cleaned by private companies, and it’s clear that they have more interest in profit than cleanliness, so I’m not sure that’s the right way to go – unless, of course, you do some kind of privatisation on a national scale, where one company is responsible for cleaning all hospitals. That would be quite an interesting idea, and could help to relieve some of the strain on the NHS, and some of the difficulties of individual hospitals having to negotiate comparatively tiny contracts. It would presumably give someone real ownership of the cleanliness problem, which is (I think) the way to get it tackled.

As for ‘diverging the health of the nation from politics’ – that’s a fab point. I’ve never really thought of it in that way, but health should really be very separate from politics – after all, everyone’s in favour of a nation of good health, the only disagreements are about how to get there. We should be working toward cross-party consensus, and consensus with the staff on the ground. It has to be said that the latter are largely united anyway, so it’s just a case of marrying that with politicians’ views – it will be interesting to see if Alan Johnson moves in that direction.

Of the doctors, nurses, and administration staff, I reckon its the admin people who have the worst time. I think a great many of them are trying hard to perform the role that they’ve been assigned by the government. The fact that some of these roles are bureaucratic and pointless isn’t their fault, yet it must give them an utter lack of motivation, and a flood of vitriol from doctors, nurses, the public, and the media. We need a rationalisation of these roles – give them clearly defined purposes, get them involved on the ground, and give much more of the day-to-day running of hospitals back to clinicians.

Anyway, thanks for a brilliant ‘rant’! Certainly given me food for thought!