I think I’ll flag this Guardian piece up today, in which Stephen Hawking rallies to the defence of the NHS. He rightly points out that it is a national treasure which must be preserved from commercial interests at all costs. Although I heard recently that a report had found that Labour had exaggerated the degree to which the Condems had opened it up to privatisation, it is nevertheless true that they have increased the market pressures exposed to the NHS, undermining it’s very ethos. It is therefore good to see a man currently so high in the public agenda sticking up for the greatest of British institutions.

The article also recalls the hilarious episode when some clueless american journalist assumed that Hawking was american and wrote that he would have died if he lived in Britain with our ‘commie’ NHS. EPIC FAIL! Mind you, it did bring about an opportunity for Hawking to pay tribute to our health service, so it backfired on the journalist really sweetly.