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I am an experienced NHS Senior Manager who is just about to leave the NHS because I am not prepared to work towards the unnecessary disintegration of the NHS and its fundamental principle that clinical need and care is free at the point it is required. Let me be clear - this is the ultimate goal. I have always worked hard for the patient (who could be me, my husband, my son, my family, my friends), always striving to lead by example to others "that if you treat others as you would have others treat you, you will never go wrong in this world". Instead I have consciously decided to move to new pathways/challenges where I can be of most help and service to others - that's my starting point.

The NHS can choose to work cooperatively with a new set of values and assumptions. It collectively has the intelligence and knowledge to do so. The true spirit of these times isn't the fear of being down-sized or social unrest. There are many symptoms of what is really going on, we all need to look deeper to see the real spirit of what is being born. In fact, the nightly television news is documenting the dying of the 'old world' rather than the birth of the new. A 'real listener' senses the elements emerging for a new paradigm. He or she then acts in response to what has been noticed. That person is able to give expression and form to the new assumptions about life. This sort of person (who is within us all as a potential) is also able to put aside fears. He or she is able to courageously to accept that moment of void we encounter when we have to let go of the old and the new isn't yet fully within our grasp. We need the confidence of a trapeze artist who has let go of one swing and momentarily hangs helplessly out in space before grabbing on to the next: he knows his own momentum will carry him forward to meet the swing he trusts will be there.

The current 'listening' exercise with ever increasing desperate headlines is a sham and utterly shameful as everything continues to be dismantled at lightening speed. The private companies are circling like vultures ready to swoop and pick over the best bits - all for the sake of £. The love of money really is the root of all evil.

I believe the NHS needs to take all its interdependent elements and find new places for them. It's a crucial point to understand. The elements themselves do not change, instead it is our way ordering them that needs to be altered. The challenge therefore is to arrange, order and relate all the elements to each other based on a new set of rules. The NHS itself needs to vigorously define and defend its boundaries and that might mean telling the politicians to "go to hell" - reaffirming the NHS and all that is stands for, re-connect with our own courage and strength, and rededicate to what the NHS holds as its ideals. We need to return to a deeper understanding of the original meaning of "ideal". It means having the courage to actually live the ideals that we have set. He without an ideal is sorry indeed: he with an ideal and lacking the courage to live it is sorrier still.

Watching President Obama this week in Westminster Hall, I for one was struck by the difference between Obama, his presence and his speech, and that of our front line coalition politicians who fidgeted and looked so much like the rich public schoolboys they really are - I felt ashamed that this is the best that this country can offer - they really don't give a dam about the vast majority of people in this country, and it shows. Who do they think they are kidding?

In conclusion, those at the top of the NHS need to tell the politicians to 'go to hell', reaffirm the NHS founding principles and ideals and look afresh at how all parts of our National Health Service can efficiently work together in cooperation, integration and harmony. We all know things cannot stay as they are but the NHS really can do this by itself without constant political interference.