Thank goodness for INVOLVE.

What a dispiriting week it had been until today and the first day of our annual symposium.

From the gloom of a meeting on Monday in which all hope of progress on a beloved public engagement project seemed to evaporate – when did we all become consumed by the bean counting culture I wondered?

To the high of our first session this evening. Provocative and generous presentations by NIHR Programme Directors and other significants followed by challenging discussion and a communal desire to inject urgency into the public involvement agenda.

Even the dinner conversation was good.

Until talk turned to the NHS I am afraid. It shall keep me awake all night i suspect.

Listening to reflections on how we are going to have a north, middle, south and deep south regional set-up for the NHS with centres for each shared across cities and towns (or something like that) a lightbulb moment occurred for me.

The Government is actually creating an NHS modelled on the European Union. With the same pointless wrangling over centres, places and boundaries in which bureaucrats or should we call them healthocrats (which comes out as ‘healthy rats’ on my iPhone auto corrector ) make hay. A chaotic system in which no one really knows who is running the place at the end of the day.

Who would believe such a thing from such a Government? Is Andrew Lansley the Jacques Delors of the NHS I ask?