If Nicola Horlick ran the NHS and other fantasies

I did not hear Desert Island Discs on Sunday, but the guest was Nicola Horlick who was apparently asked if she would like to get involved with the NHS in a professional capacity.

She was, I think, merely responding to Kirsty Young’s question, not announcing some long-held ambition – knowing Horlick (which I did, a little, when she was at Oxford) if she had that ambition she would be in charge of the NHS by now.

Up yours, Ms Flint

Oh Lord. Did you think I meant something vulgar? Not a bit of it. Vulgar comment about Caroline Flint would be like, well, shagging Mary Poppins’ aunt. Unseemly. None of that here, not in this post anyway.

No, I meant up your nose, where the photographer from the Times managed to get when illustrating Dominic Kennedy’s article of 27 June. The article itself sought to explain Ms Flint’s mission to reform us all by reference to the hardships of her youth. Her mother died young, of alcoholism, and she herself had to pull pints in a pub.

Gordon Brown – the Monster Dances

There is a scene in Mel Brooks’ film Young Frankenstein where Dr Frankenstein dresses the monster in white tie and tails and does a song-and-dance routine with him. The monster is stiff and clunky, going through the motions of human activity with a fixed parody of a smile on his face, as Gene Wilder’s Frankenstein parades him in front of an audience who instinctively fear him. Frankenstein mutters encouraging commands to the monster whilst assuring the audience that he is under control.

All goes well for a while, until a foot-light explodes. The monster reverts to type and goes beserk. The audience flees in terror with their prejudices confirmed. For a brief moment, they had been persuaded that the characteristics inherent in a brute could be suppressed and ordinary human ones acquired, but the true nature of the beast had broken through under pressure.

I was reminded of this scene when watching Gordon Brown give his speech on his return to Downing Street from Buckingham Palace. So far, we are still at the Puttin’ on the Ritz stage, the forced smile holding up, the legs and arms and body going through the unfamiliar public motions like the monster in the film.

Putting Patricia Hewitt out of her misery

For the most part, failed politicians should be allowed to limp miserably off into the shadows. Some are obviously personally dislikable – Gordon Brown, Peter Hain and Caroline Flint come to mind – but for the most part, the strongest emotion one can drum up when they fall is contempt.

Patricia Hewitt, on the other hand, should be pursued down Whitehall by an angry mob throwing things. We forgive incompetence to some extent and blame Blair who appointed her more than Hewitt herself that she was not up to the job. We accept that the NHS is an intractable problem. We might believe that her accent – like a 1950s charwoman who wears her mistresses’ cast-off clothes and adopts her manner of speaking as well – was beyond her control.