Scotland is the red haired heartland of socialist ideology. But Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalist economics, was a professor at Glasgow. The Scots have a great tradition of enterprise. Scotland is not subject to the coalition’s NHS competition reforms and is the control group in this national experiment. As an observer I offer some unsolicited, unreferenced advice.

The need for change is based on some unchallenged assertions. Firstly, our health outcome data are “poor” in comparison with other countries. This is utter rubbish, because comparative data are so confounded with errors …