In one of his last acts as chancellor, Gordon Brown apparently slashed the NHS hospital building and equipment budget in England by almost a third, from £6.2 billion to £4.2 billion. That’s quite a big cut, isn’t it? He did not feel it either prudent or necessary to tell anyone about this at the time, the Financial Times reported yesterday.

Upon opening the door to No 10 he announced the health service was his “immediate priority” – which, I suppose it was, although maybe not in the way in which you and I (or the Labour party, for that matter) might have expected. But then “it is my immediate priority to cut as much money as is humanly possible from the health service without anyone noticing, in order to balance the books” has a rather counterintuitive ring to it.

More interestingly still, while he cut the English NHS capital expenditure budget by two billion quid, he left the budgets for Wales and Scotland intact. One is forced to conclude that it is because he likes Scottish and Welsh people more than he likes English people and is thus less bothered if we die. Or perhaps he’s scared of getting a good kicking where it hurts from Alex Salmond. Either way, it is evidence yet again that north of Hadrian’s Wall and west of Offa’s Dyke, the same rules simply don’t apply.

One of these days a clever economist will produce a paper that explains how many weeks of the year we have to work to pay off in tax the money required to keep Scotland’s vast, profligate and expanding welfare state afloat. My guess is eight. Until then, the English will abide with a vague resentment and sense of chronic injustice: we let them run our affairs, vote on issues that are only of our concern, give them close to full political independence – and still continue to subsidise, subsidise, subsidise.

Yesterday the Treasury admitted – because it could not do otherwise – that the health service capital expenditure budget had been “adjusted”. My guess is that if your wage packet suddenly turned up 30% lighter you’d be tempted to use a more vigorous, apposite verb than “adjusted”.

The Treasury also indicated that the missing £2 billion would probably turn up in the spending plans for the three years from 2008-09. Yes, I bet it will. In an election year it will be suddenly announced there’s much more dosh for the NHS, a big juicy rabbit pulled straight out of Gordon’s hat.

So, to recap. Gordon Brown swipes two billion quid from the NHS in England and doesn’t tell anyone about it, keeping a straight face when he announces that the NHS is his priority. Out of political expediency there is no such cut in Scotland or Wales. In a year or so he will announce, for reasons of expediency, that, for lo, more money is available for the NHS. Whisper it quietly: Pretty. Straight. Kinda. Guy.

- There is a new and disturbing medical condition at large, which I have called KKK Tourette’s syndrome. The symptoms are thus: a public figure, seated in front of a radio microphone or in a television studio talking sagely about world events, suddenly suffers a terrible spasm of the brain and blurts out something racist. Then, realising what they’ve said, they try desperately to recant before the phone call comes through sacking them from whatever office they hold.

I saw a nasty case of KKK Tourette’s at first hand last week when I was in a Five Live discussion with Gordon Brown’s friend and mentor, Geoffrey Robinson MP. He had been talking, perfectly reasonably, about Labour’s forthcoming by-elections. And then he had a sort of seizure. “We’ll be fine,” he said, “so long as we don’t choose a white candidate in Ealing Southall and a black in Sedgefield.”

Suddenly realising what had issued from his mouth, he looked embarrassed, as if he had just passed wind in front of the Queen. “Well, ah, um, let me be clear,” he bumbled in desperation, “we’ll be fine with a candidate of any colour, creed, race or gender...”

Hope it’s not too late, Geoff. Next time you hear a politician suddenly announce he doesn’t like darkies, or he bets Rosa Parks never bought a ticket for that bus, you’ll know what it is: KKK Tourette’s.

Five become one big turn off

An Indonesian spider has apparently bitten Victoria Beckham on the arm. (Yes, you read it here first. Or more likely second or third.) As a result, “Posh” Spice was left with a nasty scarlet inflammation just below the elbow, while within seconds the spider suffered violent bowel cramps and then died. Lawyers acting for the spider’s distraught family are preparing their papers right now.

We know all this because the Spice Girls have reunited for an extremely lucrative world tour, or, as The Sun acidly put it, a “trip down mammary lane”. This was a reference to Victoria’s breasts – both of which are, these days, much, much larger than Victoria herself and seem to have been created by Antony Gormley out of Bakelite and aluminium and stapled on with a B&Q nail gun. Like the bumblebee in flight, they cheerfully defy the laws of physics. And aesthetics.

Will anyone fork out to see these talentless, haggard slappers, who – with 2 Become 1 – produced what was possibly the most emetic single of all time? Rather cheeringly, there is growing evidence that the public is bored by the money-grabbing stadium antics of such addled has-beens, or never-weres. We remember you, Posh, Sporty, et al – but we would rather we didn’t.

Smoking ban zealot is bad for my health

I intend to spend the rest of today handing out free cigarettes near the home of the chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, to highlight the grave dangers of Donaldson-related illnesses and passive Donaldson.

Sir Liam is the chap who believes today’s unjust and draconian smoking ban is “only a start” and wishes to pursue smokers into the family home. Despite evidence to the contrary, Donaldson believes passive smoking kills millions of people; but then his career has been built upon scaring people.

In 2005, for example, he predicted 50,000 Britons would die in an avian flu pandemic, and a death toll of 750,000 was “not impossible”. The total deaths from avian flu worldwide stand at 191, none of them in Britain.

The government should issue one of those spooky public information films, warning people to stay away from Donaldson. I would go further and ban him from all public spaces, though I can see the sense in allowing him to sit by himself in a sealed room, talking piffle.

- If those failed bombs in London were indeed the work of Islamic terrorists, then there is at least one piece of good news to be gleaned from the whole business. They didn’t try to blow themselves up.

This suggests a certain waning of commitment and conviction on the part of Allah’s foot soldiers, who more usually jump at the chance to blast themselves to smithereens.

Perhaps somehow a dead suicide bomber has got a message back from the nether world to the effect that those 72 virgins were a hoax, or that there are indeed 72 virgins but they all look like Ginger Spice.

Either way, we should be grateful for such small mercies.

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