By Bagehot
APOLOGIES for a gap in blogging, your correspondent has been wading through the swamp of complexity that is the British National Health Service. It has been a big and not very comfortable week for the coalition government, and its ambitious plans to reshape the NHS in England. It all came to a head with a grim little tableau vivant at a hospital in Surrey, at which the prime minister David Cameron stood next to his Liberal Democrat deputy Nick Clegg and the Conservative health secretary, Andrew Lansley, to announce a two month „listening exercise“ to review and amend the reform package.