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Ken Clarke continues to anger the Tory right with his opinions on prisons, and does anyone like Andrew Lansley's NHS white paper?

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Anne Owers: my nine years as chief inspector of prisons

David Conn: how to reduce the coalition hitting sports community

Cartoon: Steve Bell on Lansley's NHS reforms

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Guardian podcast: charities and the cuts

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More news ...

• Andrew Lansley's plans for a massive devolution of power to GPs will be preceeded by two years of tight central control of money and qualityin accordance with the NHS chief Sir David Nicholson, reports Financial Times

• Coalition ministers are heading for a confrontation with public sector unions over plans to dismantle national pay bargaining,says Daily Mail

Bloggers on the NHS white paper: it anyone really, really like it?

I'm unsure why it's so hard to find independent commentators who show much in the way of enthusiasm for health secretary Andrew Lansley's NHS white paper. Bold social policy revolutions, in my experience, quickly spawn cheerleading enthusiasts. But not this one it seems, at least not in the blogsphere.

Paul Corrigan was a health policy advisor to Tony Blair and Alan Milburn, so is both a enthusiast for the principles behind Lansley's market reforms, and tribally unsympathetic to the Coalition. He's not averse to Lansley's "liberation theology" but he's scathing about its internal contradictions:

The Government has obviously heard GPs arguing that they are being held back by State commissioners... But if that is really the case why then does the State have to force every GP to become a commissioner? There is something very weird about the state making people do something that apparently they want to do. Conscription is hardly a voluntary civil society sort of intervention. It's the raw power of the state intervening with GPs much more strongly than PCTs ever did.

Even on the right, it 's hard to find someone who really loves the white paper, even among the usual suspects. By Henry Featherstone Policy Exchange seems to share some of the problems Corrigan 's Although he still concludes, perhaps optimistically, that everything will be alright in the end:

"Structures are irrelevant, accountability is everything. Patients and clinicians will be in control from here on in and that is the way to drive real healthcare reform."

Blogger Wat Tyler at Burning our Money tries not to be too disappointed ("Lansley has made a reasonable start, and he is sounding a lot more radical than we'd ever expected.") while James Gubb at right of centre think tank Civitas seems to get more disheartened the more he studies the white paper:

"The reality is the detail of what is now being proposed â€" on the commissioning side â€" is currently a bit of dog's breakfast."

Health policy journalist Andy Cowper on the Health Policy Insight blog finds confusions and contradictions aplenty in the white paper.

"The document's flaws are in two main areas: those of Emmentalesque holes; and of biscuit contraception (the bits that are fucking crackers)."

The holes, says Cowper, include the white paper's excessive faith in foundation trusts, and his "crackers" section cites the white paper's plans to introduce risk-sharing arrangements for new drug treatments.

It is as if the BMJ's report into the beta interferon risk-sharing arrangements had not shown it to be a costly failure. Serious document, policy should not ignore it.
Evidence-based policymaking, anyone?
Anyone?
Hello?

Neil Durham at Healthcare Republic says the white paper begs more questions than it answers:

See beyond the national media bluster about it being the biggest shake-up in the NHS's 60-year history and, like January's five-page Conservative NHS manifesto, it is actually depressingly devoid of any real detail. I suspect GPC chairman Dr Laurence Buckman will relish the opportunity that this presents in the run up to negotiating a new, single GP contract. After all, the BMA and GPC are now key to ensuring Mr Lansley enjoys many more 'Christmases' at the DoH helm.

Anna Dixon on the King's Fund blog is sceptical that the white paper can be implemented, at least at the speed that Lansley envisages:

Meanwhile The Media Blog reckons the media were hoodwinked by Lansley's spin machine into writing about GPs and ignoring the bigger story... that the NHS is being dismantled.

"We're all still gawping at the GP shiny thing, and all the while are we're ignoring the fact that the NHS is being privatised. This is big news, no? Bigger than the GP shiny thing?"

Finally, FlipChartRick posed as an Irish priest to get an exclusive "interview" with Lansley

Father Dougal: Sure that was a great speech yesterday Andy.
Lansley: I'm glad you think so. It's the most radical shake of the NHS since 1940.
Father Dougal: Sure it is, and I bet all the doctors are chuffed that they'll get all that wonga to do what the feck they like with.

On my radar...

• Clifford Singer of the Alternative TaxPayer's Alliance reviewing the government's Spending Challenge crowdsourcing initiative, "where race hate meets comedy gold..."

• Julian Dobson's powerful critique of the Coalition's "centrally-directed localism\\ "...

• Agebomb blogger Geraldine Bedell's interview with TV's "mad professor" Heinz Wolff (aged 82) on his latest project: innovative ways of caring for older people...

• Blogger David Floyd, who takes issue with my blog postyesterday on social enterprises and the NHS white paper. Social business, he says, is about what you deliver, not how you are legally constituted - why can't a for-profit healthcare business be a social enterprise?...

s ?€? Liberal Conspiracy blogger Kate Belgrave 'interview with Anthony Roden, a resident of Hackney Housing Benefit, seemingly unaware that the coalition government is going to turn his life upside down ...

"Rhoden refuses to believe that housing benefits will be cut. He doesn't talk about campaigning against the cuts â€" he says that he never 'gets involved in the politics. I'm not a political person. The politics never changes anything and it never helps us.'
Now I'm looking at Rhoden oddly. Very. I wasn't expecting this â€" I was as primed as ever for anger and a tide of anti-Cameron obscenity, but had nothing up the sleeve for denial. I tell Rhoden that George Osborne has housing benefits very much in his sights, and that if Osborne wins, Rhoden may find his housing benefit entitlement takes a ten percent hit.
Rhoden shakes his head. He says again that 'there's no way that they'll cut the housing benefit.'"

• Blogger and social entrepreneur Rob Greenland on social innovation, Danone-style. Fascinating insights into how this multinational company takes social mission beyond conventional corporate social responsibility, including the fact that a third of Danone's senior staff bonus element is based around achieving social goals, such as CO2 reduction targets...

• Adil Abrar on the lessons public services facing tumultuous changes and falling revenues can learn from Apple...

In today's Society Guardian supplement

Research: Eric Pickles 's "not working' hard to find

Ten years of Fairtrade towns

Interview: would-be NHS reformer Sir David Varney

Craig Dearden-Phillips: John Lewis-style reforms need work

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