EDITOR'S NOTE: Occasionally, I get sent pieces good enough to be worth including here: this is one such. Enjoy.

Coronavirus can make you credulous and may lead to complete stupidity.

This is the shocking discovery that the World Health Organisation and other so-called experts are keeping from the public to protect the billionaire producers of hand sanitisers and bleach.

I’m grateful to a friend for giving me the insight below into Dominic Cummings, the special advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

This dates back to an incident when Mr Cummings was the special advisor to Michael Gove, who was then the Coalition Government’s Secretary Of State For Education. A person creating a charity to provide breakfasts for children in state schools was seeking the Education Secretary’s support, and so got a meeting with Mr Cummings.

Rough text of Matt Hancock speech to Nuffield Trust Summit. Uncorrected. Will contain typos.

Government’s vision for the NHS and social care – Matt Hancock

We’re doing all we reasonably can that’s possible to keep the public safe from Coronavirus.

Praise exemplary response from officials, PHE and DH. Brilliant work of CMO Prof Chris Whitty. Plan driven by science and guided by expert advice marshalled by Chris Whitty. Tackling this is overwhelming and currently taking most of my time.

This is quite interesting. Labour's shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth has finally given Health Service Journal an interview about Labour health policy.

Being asked to choose a Prime Minister between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn is like being asked whether you'd prefer constipation or diarrhoea. The obvious answer is 'neither, thanks'.

It's not quite a Hobson's Choice of a General Election, but it's not far off.

Baroness Harding is the highly executive and very vocal chair of NHS Improvement. She is saying many of the right things about the change of culture needed in the NHS, which is thoroughly welcome and greatly to be applauded. We must hope it will happen.

The Baroness is now seeing executive tendencies in other, specifically in Health Service Journal. Speaking at the NHS Confederation's conference in Manchester, Baroness Harding suggested that we are currently in an era of "trial by HSJ".

Why is this allegation and perception on the mind of NHS Improvement's chair just now?

I don’t lightly encourage people to watch interviews with ‘Appless Matt ‘Ancock, Secretary Of State For The Time Being.

But I have to make an exception for this classic.
 
It starts at 4 minutes 30 in, and is notable for two things.

In the ongoing bonfire of the sanities that is Brexit, the ‘Appless ‘Un tells a grateful nation that as part of the ‘no deal’ plans for crashing out of the EU on 29 March 2019, he has become the biggest buyer of refrigerators in the world.

[AUTHOR’S NOTE – Health Policy Insight's been on a hiatus for a while because, well, life. This column was written for my regular Monday HSJ slot, and delayed due to legal concerns. It now appears, following HSJ editor Alastair McLellan’s barnstorming editorial on the matters in question.]

Those whom the Gods of health policy would destroy, they first make over-enthusiastic about tech solutions.

L P Hartley's 'The Go-Between' opens with the magnificent line "The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there".

For HPI's favourite lying-buffoon-turned-Foreign Secretary Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson, the truth is increasingly becoming a foreign country.

The historian Robert Conquest is famous for his 'three laws of politics':
1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.
2. Any organisation not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
3. The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.