"Or he (Gove) may go to the Home Office or the Department of Health, a move we floated on Saturday."

What about putting him back at Education, where he was successful?

"Of course the NHS management doesn't want to utilise private care - the unions don't like it and the NHS couldn't keep bleating about needing 'more and more' whatever or patients will suffer"

The pandemic has created a wonderful opportunity for the NHS to make its peace with private medicine and acknowledge the huge debt it owes especially to the military but also to private labs, private doctors etc etc.

The military always shows up the inefficiencies and slowness of NHS bureaucracy (in fact it always shows up any public service bureaucracy), as Tubby points out and, now that the country is free to act in our own best interests , the government should do so.

I am sure that there are some pricey aid items that could be wrapped up (vaccines, weaponry etc) in the International Aid budget, though i wish that the annual commitment had not been made. I would have liked £1 bn a year to be applied to the alleviation of homelessness..

It is over three years from the Grenfell tragedy and it is to be hoped that the government has used this time to require the local authorities concerned to identify those who were responsible for planning these blocks in the first place. Some will no longer be in business but the local authorities that signed off the planning permissions will still be there and, if they are liable, they should be paying for the necessary remedial work.

A very informative letter from a builder in last Friday's Daily Telegraph, states: "As a builder, I find it astonishing that blame has not been apportioned. The system is a simple one" and then sets out the various steps that should have been taken.

The government has promised a large sum of public money for remedial work but it should not spend this without first chasing the local authorities to require the people guilty in the first instance for covering the cost of the remedial work.

The provision of education is a charitable object and independent schools save the Exchequer several billions of pounds a year. Some also contribute to the Exchequer by educating foreign nationals.

Most large independents provide generous bursaries for parents who cannot pay the fees and because most offer competitive sport, music and drama (largely organised by teaching staff) they help keep the nation fit. England's batsmen learned their skills at independent schools.

" I’ve written previously about the positive impact the uplift of £20 has had on my constituency. But the real challenge now is a political problem which, I would argue, is wider than just that about UC":

The country's current economic situation provides us with a marvellous opportunity to establish several vital principles on which to rebuild the economy.

One would be, as I posted a few days ago, to adopt a useful French slogan: "Tout ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas francais". Secondly, everything should be simple and thirdly based on commonsense.

UC is fine as far as it goes but the Chancellor should go the whole way that logic directs i.e do away with all personal benefits and replace them with a weekly wage or monthly salary, according to the amount awarded to the claimant; this would vary on a sliding scale when calculated. This would also be a more civilised method than present employed which can lack dignity.

"Poverty" needs to be redefined to properly meet the needs of those in genuine need (plenty at the moment).

Finally, the above principles should underlie the reform of personal taxation on a flat tax basis.

The rationalisation of some taxation and benefits would lead to a fairer and better administered society, apart from producing huge savings, which must be be found from somewhere.

Our sovereignty is not divisible, therefore any solution must come down on the side of the UK.

If no border controls are to be introduced, so all and sundry are allowed to pass freely, then common sense (the missing ingredient in the mix), must be introduced. Since, whatever the answer, neither the UK nor Eire (aka the EU) can possibly allow drugs, weapons or illegal immigrants to pass from one country to the other, then all freight lorries would have to enter Eire only from an EU port. If Eire wants to check traffic going the other way, it would be up to Eire to introduce the checks.

Failing that, the UK could declare the whole of NI a freeport!

"Comply with Northern Ireland protocol before expecting changes, EU tells UK"

Surely the various Northern Ireland political parties must recognise that it is in everybody's interests to detect the smuggling into Eire from NI of weapons, drugs or illegal immigrants. Maybe a crude and simplistic line of action would be to prohibit HGVs from travelling into Eire, while allowing free access to all other forms of transport.

The one ingredient that seems to be lacking is common sense.

"But pandemic has exploded figures like those. At the start of the pandemic, about three million people were claiming Universal Credit; now, that figure has all but doubled".

A few years ago, someone I knew lost his very well paid job as an architect overnight and never really got another job, except a temporary one as a swimming pool attendant. What I found shocking was the contempt that he was shown when applying for jobs, quite apart from the suffocating bureaucracy.

It seems to me that, although UC is a step in the right direction, it does not go far enough. What is needed is a very simple system; although the key thing is to to protect the taxpayer, the benefit claimant should also be treated with some respect. This could be achieved by doing away with all benefits and treating benefit claimants as if they were as job applicants.

To achieve this, the claimant's overall needs should be very fully and carefully assessed; having done that,
s/he should be given a weekly wage or monthly salary sufficient for his/her needs, which would be much simpler to administer. This would obviously be subject to periodic review and, although the setting up would be more time consuming, the admin costs would be much reduced.

"Next time to slogan must be: 'STOP THE VIRUS'." - or "Mind the Gap".

Although it is rather simplistic, I suspect that we could have borne down on each of the phases of the pandemic much more quickly, if we had concentrated on stressing that the virus is (mainly) an airborne chain and therefore if everyone accepts responsibility for breaking that chain, it will eventually be snuffed out i.e. keep 2m. distance at all times.