Editorial Monday 8 February 2021: The olden days

“And here I sit so patiently, waiting to find what price
You have to pay to get out of going through all these things twice”
Bob Dylan, ‘Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again’

Sometimes, the past has useful lessons we can learn.

This bit does, anyway.

In 2010, I spent a huge amount of time getting to understand the things that became the 2012 Health And Social Care Act.

History, and this website, record that I was not a big fan of those ideas.

History, and this website, also record that I was right about how bad those ideas were, which is why the Lansley reforms are being abolished.

And for fans of evidence, here is my analysis of the 2010 White Paper, from that time.

It identified a taxonomy of the Emmental bits of the policy (full of holes), and the bits that were biscuit contraception (fucking crackers).

I was not wrong.

Time passes. Bad legislation gets passed, and then doesn’t really happen.

Even so, I am more than slightly annoyed by the people in senior roles in 2010 who at that time, came out with the usual “we welcome, but ...” responses, and did nothing about those proposals.

And who just kept on doing their easy thing: kissing up and kicking down.

That’ll be the Easy Blues.

A comfortable life must be a comfortable thing.

In recent years, the evident failure fo the 2012 Act ensured that these types have moved over to ‘of course, I always thought the Lansley stuff wouldn’t work’.

Oh, really?

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

OK.

Where are those newly self-reported reluctances or oppositions written down, then?

Ah.

That’ll be nowhere.

Are those people (honourable exception mention for Clare Gerada) all still in senior jobs?

You bet they are.

Kiss my biscuit
The great French diplomat Talleyrand observed that the Bourbon monarchs ”had learned nothing and forgotten nothing”.

Too many senior NHS leaders are Bourbons.

And not the decent, biscuit kind of bourbon.

Much more biscuit contraception types. Lazy cowards, who talk a (totally different) good game many years after the fact.