How much management does the NHS need?
Andrew Lansley (he's the health secretary, in case you haven't learned all the names yet) is playing an old political trick on TV this morning. He claims to have found £1 billion of "bureaucracy" to cut - money which will be redirected to the "front line". Of course everybody would support that...wouldn't they? But what if he decided to fire 30,000 essential support staff and shift their workload onto hard-pressed GPs? Doesn't that sound like a terrible idea? Of course it might be exactly the same thing. It's all in the framing. Frank Luntz wrote a revealing - and cynical - book, Words That Work , about how he and the politicians he advises control voter's emotional responses with the language they choose. "Bureaucracy" is a classic choice of word for conservatives; while those on the left might choose "public investment", "social spending", "public healthcare" or "efficiency improvements...