Though the Tory leader, David Cameron, is keen for his party to grapple with green issues, he might be taking the recycling thing a bit too far, writes Hélène Mulholland.
If he's said it once, he's said at least three times that the much-vaunted patient passport idea, trailed in last year's general election, is off the table. The trouble is, we knew that even before the Smiths fan decided to run in the Tory leadership race.
His health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, announced it in early autumn. Mr Lansley - always rumoured to oppose in principle his party's co-payment health policy (meaning patients could have opted to have 50% of their private healthcare provision funded by the state) - publicly conceded it was not a hit with voters at an NHS Confederation conference.
He told NHS managers that "diversion of resources to subsidy of private care" could frustrate the principle of meeting high standards of service delivery on the basis of limited, taxpayer-funded resources.
He repeated the decision to scrap patient vouchers in an interview with Guardian Unlimited soon afterwards.
It's understandable that Mr Cameron might want his fingerprints on this reverse gear, but each time he mentions it again we are reminded of a policy that failed to woo voters.
He mentioned it during his leadership campaign, he mentioned it on Sunday and yesterday, and he is billed to do so again today.
Recycling old announcements also gives the impression that the leader doesn't have enough new policies to talk about - other than the ones he is not prepared to entertain, such as social insurance.
Perhaps the aim is to underline to prospective voters that this Tory notion of giving financial sweeteners to the better-off to go private.
But enough already. Draw a line, David. Move on.
