More magic

So Gordon Brown has started 2008 promising more reform in the NHS. It is about the last thing we actually need - what we really want is a period of stability and some basic competence from our political masters.

It smacks of a degree of desperation - all rather like the magician who borrows an expensive watch from a member of the audience,smahes it with a hammer - and then, after much anguished brow-furrowing, confesses that he has forgotten the rest of the trick.