• Anaesthesia
• general

The new coalition government in the UK is busily getting on with its long and large reform agenda now the dust has settled following the May general election, one example of their haste being the national budget delivered to the House of Commons in June, several months ahead of its usual schedule and only a few weeks after the previous government had delivered one. The new Minister of Health is also quickly getting on with things, announcing a new raft of policy changes for the NHS within a few weeks of getting into office.

Delegates in the UK and Australasian contingents attending the recent international conference on emergency medicine in Singapore in June heard a circulating story that the Minister was planning to abolish the UK 4 h target; the story transmitted itself through the conference like a virus. The Australasian community in particular focused on it, wondering what it may mean in their world now that similar targets are on the agenda there.

These rumours …