"The health secretary has said he wants to turn the NHS in England into a more "personalised" service.

"Alan Johnson told Labour's spring conference in Birmingham people should have more choice.

"Mr Johnson said: "The days of patients being the passive recipients of one-size-fits-all service are over."

Doesn't that sound impressive? How personalised is an NHS service when the health secretary constantly ignores 38,000 people who live 45 minutes away from his constituency?

And their argument is about having more choice – the choice of being treated in their own town if they suffer a heart attack. Fewer words, more action please, Mr Johnson.

l BRAVE old Prince Harry, a proper British hero. Well, not quite.

As far as I can see from the blanket media coverage, he spent most of his 10 weeks in Afghanistan giving interviews to journalists or pretending to drive a tank or fire a gun in front of a TV camera. I think there are many more soldiers out there deserving of the title 'hero'.

But at least his work out there is more purposeful than that of his father and step-mother, who are on an "11-day tour of the Caribbean".

Or as the rest of us would call it, a holiday.

* DID you see the most ridiculous picture of the year last week?

A school in Essex is refusing to publish pupils' faces on its website, so instead it printed pictures of the little cherubs doing everyday school tasks – but with daft cartoon smiley faces over their heads so they can't be identified.

Barmy! Kids need protecting but when it reaches that stage, you just take it for granted that the world has gone mad.

The Free Press has had a few run-ins with schools over the issue in the past.

The problem is the advice given to schools about identifying children is pretty vague and different schools interpret it differently.

Some take a very sensible approach and realise 99% of parents and kids love to see their name and face in the paper.

Others, bizarrely, think it is okay to print a picture, but not the name, which I have never been able to figure out.

But thankfully, nobody has ever asked us to cover a child's face with a smiley face that looks like something out of a rave magazine.

Well, not yet anyway.

Paper Clip

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