I particularly like it when blogging is being done, or is about to be done, by people whom I know quite well. And my friend Helen Evans has just this very day started a blog about nursing, called the Nurses For Reform blog.

That said, the prose style so far is rather corporate and armour-plated for my taste. However, despite the rather baffling word "contestability" - which is presumably some kind of Blairite code-word, for something or other - I think it is reasonably clear what is intended by the following:

NFR rejects bland egalitarianism in favour of contestability. Above all else we believe that greater partnership with the private sector is to be actively welcomed and that this sector’s contributions are good news for patients and healthcare professionals alike.

That suggests to me something quite like free market medicine, and of course I am totally for that. This next bit is definitely about free market medicine:

NFR believes in fundamental change. It believes that only by putting patients and consumers interests first will healthcare improve. It is only when healthcare is opened up to real consumers and trusted brands that nurses will find themselves working in a sustainable environment and with the incentives, resources and encouragement to deliver a responsive, popular and truly high quality service.

This says stuff I agree with, but in the manner of a corporate mission statement, and I loath and detest nearly every corporate mission statement that I have ever encountered.

Wouldn't it be fun one day to read one of these things starting with something like: "We believe only in superficial change. Fundamentally, things should stay pretty much as they are." And how about someone just occasionally admitting that he aims to supply an "unresponsive, unpopular" product or service? Many splendid tradespersons do just that and are richly rewarded.

However, since this is a corporate mission statement, I really ought not to carp. And since this is medicine and nursing care in Britain that is being talked about, well, I admit it, I do believe in "fundamental change". Nor can I reasonably object to the ambition that nurses should work, if at all possible, in a "sustainable environment", nor to them delivering a "responsive, popular and truly high quality service".

To be more serious, I have quite often heard Helen Evans say, in the plainest of English, that one of the many problems of Britain's National Health Service is that its nurses do not now have a proper career path in front of them. As soon as they get really good at their job, they tend to leave. The NHS has lost many of what would now be its NCOs, so to speak, good and experienced senior nurses being to hospitals what good and experienced sergeants are to armies. And where have they all gone? To get married, or to the private sector.

When the postings at this new blog get more specific and personal, as I am sure many of them will, I will surely read them with interest and pleasure. There will be more links from here to there in the future, I promise you.