But the truth he couldn’t say, was that the VAT increase would not have been his choice. It cannot be right, in my opinion, to raise sales taxes that affect everyone, when there are income taxes that could be amended to affect only those able to pay. From a personal point of view, a local income tax in place of Council Tax, set at a level that would raise just a little more money from the well-off and taking about the same from those in the worst situations, would have been a fairer way.

But Clegg, if he doesn’t support the VAT increase, cannot say so. He has to compromise on some things much as the Conservatives have compromised.

The government’s doing a good job — I just hope it does as many of the good things that it can, before the next elections when, unless electoral reform is carried out, the old parties will regain power.

Just because I say (as I have in the real world) that the NHS doesn’t do a particularly good or efficient job does not mean to suggest I am criticising the NHS’s staff or that I think it is anything but a moral imperative that people are treated for injuries and ailments regardless of their ability to pay. It’s just that I believe that the inevitable redundancy required in genuine competition would provide a better, more efficient and, if well-regulated, a fairer healthcare solution for the British people.

There are many problems in the UK which result in our current levels of excessive taxation, and the NHS is just one of the bigger of those problems. Even if people thought that the current levels of taxation were reasonable, shouldn’t we have at least one service provided by them that is world class?

I think most people these days are a little cynical about green taxes. Isn’t it true, they say, that green taxes are about revenue rather than behaviour? Isn’t it true that outside of London there is no viable alternative to private transport? And isn’t it true that a tax meant to disincentivise a behaviour, in the absence of an alternative, serves only to hurt the lower and middle earners?

Well Osborne’s solution is to create price stability — ensure the effective price of oil maintains a certain level and there will be a realistic chance of people investing in alternatives. Make long-term guarantees about the minimum level of landfill tax and then companies can be sure that it is worth investing in making money out of the situation.

While we would all like to believe that people and companies do the right thing because it’s the right thing, there’s absolutely no harm in allowing companies to profit from environmentally friendly practices. Even though there are arguments about the ‘green-ness’ of the Toyota Prius, no-one can claim it has been bad for the Toyota company.

Our current government announces things at pre-budget report stage and if they’re unpopular, changes its mind on the day of the budget. Osborne and co. have promised that there won’t be a raft of surprise new measures on the day of the budget which will allow companies and early-adopter consumers to know that their purchases and money-making exercises are going to have a sound-business case in five years time.

Like social welfare and the NHS, the Conservatives have taken the lead on another policy area — environmental realism.

So just a quick note: I am going into town later to do some shopping. I am literally a two minute walk from the railway station and, for all my differences of opinion with left-wing environmentalists, I do care about the ability of this planet to support humanity. I therefore decided to get the train in.

But then I was reminded that I have to go over to Ditchling tonight — I may have time to come back but I may not. Once again the lack of a genuinely available public transport system has caused me to burn unnecessary carbon. It is the responsibility of all of us to do what we can to protect the environment, but some of “all” of us have more capabilities to do that. Central government needs to make strong, clear policy announcements on public transport, and especially the railways, in the South East generally, and in the countryside specifically.

There are clearly not enough tracks between Brighton and London (fast trains must go sufficiently after a so-called slow-train that it does not catch the other train up — how pointless is that?) and there are absolutely no tracks (or buses in most cases) between rural towns and villages in Sussex.

But in a previous post I also criticised the US’s can’t-pay-then-die system which is, to put it simply, wrong. In a civilised country it is right that provision of healthcare for those who cannot afford to pay is made from general taxation. If that makes me an impure libertarian then so be it.

But this system does not have to be the NHS. It doesn’t even have to be in place somewhere else. So here’s what I propose:

The railways in the UK were privatised by the last government in the most awful way. Ticket prices are not set by individual operators and so if I buy a ticket from Brighton to London it effectively does not matter which company’s trains I use. This ruins the point of privatisation — competition.

Oops, I just lost some of my audience by talking about privatisation; well come back will you?

The NHS needs genuine competition. The way I propose to introduce that is to allow half of all hospitals in each area to be run privately. Whatever the state spends per patient, the private hospital in the same area would get the same money. The incentive, then, would be to attract patients to your private hospital in order to receive some of that funding. Money that is not required to provide patient care is then made available to the private hospital’s shareholders. The drive for efficiency to create profits would be balanced by the need to attract patients and so be better than the NHS hospital.

The private hospital would be free at the point of use (because it receives matching funding from the state) and would be heavily regulated in the same effective way the financial services sector in the UK is (and which is clearly not working in the US).

Alongside this revolutionary healthcare system would be a change in incentives for drugs companies. Currently there is a clear conflict of interests whereby drugs companies can make more money from treating illnesses than from curing them. So the drug companies need an incentive to attempt to cure ailments. This should be done by using a competitive prize system where prizes are larger than the likely profits from symptom-relievers. I challenge some philanthropist to start up a charitable foundation to fund these prizes — I would happily contribute to that fund!

And finally, let’s be clear, Sicko is not even as unbiased as the BBC; it is a propaganda work which sits on a body of fact and then changes aspects to suit the maker’s own ends. I enjoyed Sicko, I found aspects of it (that are true) disturbing and I found aspects of it laughable. The reactions of British patients and doctors was clearly genuine — Brits do tend to laugh at that sort of question in a way that Americans do not.

Last year I started to like apples. Earlier (maybe two years ago) I started to like cabbage and this Christmas, for the first time ever, I liked brussel sprouts.

And it’s not just food, last week I slept much less than normal (and didn’t feel tired). Come Thursday I decided I must just not be noticing the tiredness and so went to bed early. The result? I woke up at 4am on Friday morning feeling fully refreshed!

It’s also extended to politics and religion. On this site in the past I have been strongly against religion. I continue to be frightened by people who will do things in the name of God that I hope normal people would not do in the absence of His influence. But I can also feel sympathy for those people who do believe. I can feel what Dawkins has described — a feeling that God exists — which can be explained by biological means.

So, like all things, religion is not black and white. There are fundamentalist nutters at one extreme, a violent version of Richard Dawkins at the other and myself sitting nearer Richard Dawkins than Bin Laden, closer to the Dalai Lama than the Archbishop of Canterbury and closer to a vicar than a priest.

Why am I telling you this? Well, at almost regular intervals (perhaps the seven-year thing), I have come to see another aspect of life as grey rather than black, or as grey rather than white.

It’s a shame, with these newly discovered shades of grey, that we no longer have the diversity of political parties we once had. SDP, Liberals, Whigs, Radicals, Tories and Independents have now been replaced, to all intents and purposes by the Conservatives and Labour. And neither of these parties, for all their minor differences, reflects the opinion of more than (at a guess) 5% of the population. The so-called centre-ground, is actually the swing vote — a part of the population which has a particular opinion but has not bothered to make a firm decision about whether people should be taxed a lot or a little, and whether people should work hard or have a ‘right’ to the dole.

There’s another problem with the party system. I know Libertarians who would never vote UKIP or Tory even though they ought to be their natural home; and I know socialists who could never vote for Labour or the Liberal Democrats because of other policies.

In France, as I was discussing with a colleague the other day, the president must be elected, eventually, by more than 50% of the population through run-offs resulting in just two candidates. But why couldn’t this work when electing a parliament too? It would guarantee a working majority for a particular party (which I believe is important) while not disenfranchising the 66%-ish who do not vote for the eventual winner in most English elections (assuming the FPTP system we currently have provides a reasonable impression of the intentions of the electorate; which is doesn’t).

[Cameron] held up the NHS as a “best of British” institution: “created by a Welshman and benefiting from the skills of doctors trained in the great medical schools of Scotland.”

… and financed by the poor of England to the benefit of the poor and wealthy of Scotland.