BUPA and Nuffield Hospitals have distanced themselves from the scheme, which indicates that something is awry. What the scheme is likely to result in is existing NHS chief executives quitting their jobs, setting themselves up as private providers, and then going to work for different NHS hospitals with better salaries.

What is really needed is competition between existing providers and new ones, be they for-profit or not-for-profit. As Tom Clougherty argues today, existing hospitals need to be given more autonomy from the central government.

There was a lively phone in session, in which more generally I defended private sector provision and compared British healthcare with more effective systems in places like Germany and Switzerland.

I was once taken to a church in London called the Kensington Temple, the sort of church where people either engage in crass, self-indulgent behaviour or are led to visibly express their love for the son of God, depending upon your point of view. We were early for the service and ventured into the basement where the church had created what was like a small WHSmith, selling Christian DVDs, CDs and books. A credit card terminal let people pay on plastic.

This should have appealed to my capitalistic tendencies, but I wondered if the correct Christian action might have been to storm into the shop in a rage, driving out the checkout staff and turning over the tables, just as Jesus reportedly did to the traders in the Jewish temple he visited. I suspected that such Christ-like behaviour might have been considered criminal damage, though, so I resisted.

The journey beyond print is uncertain and perilous, but the experience of I.D.G., the world’s largest publisher of technology newspapers and magazines, suggests that it can be done. A privately held company, whose magazines include Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World, Macworld and CIO, it appears to have made a profitable migration to the Internet, with revenue from online ads now surpassing print revenue.

Advertisers and readers of high-tech publications have moved online more swiftly than other audiences, so I.D.G. may offer a glimpse of the future of publishing. Yet the transition at I.D.G. came only after years of investment, upheaval and changes in its practice of journalism.

“The excellent thing, and good news, for publishers is that there is life after print — in fact, a better life after print,” said Patrick J. McGovern, the founder and chairman of I.D.G.

In the cult 1980s film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there is a lesson that the Fabian Society would do well to learn. Ferris Bueller’s sister gets herself worked up because her ever-charming brother is able to get days off school by faking illness. A youth she complains to gives her some advice: “Worry about yourself, not about what your brother does.”

I am reminded of this because of the Fabian Society is currently pushing to persuade people to get worked up about others inheriting money. Sunter Katwali, General Secretary of the Society, which favours inheritance tax, wants us to know that: “The core mission that should underpin progressive politics is that we should not inherit our life chances at birth.”

Instead, the retailer is expanding the use of classical music as a deterrent. A spokeswoman from the Co-op denied that it was attempting to discourage hoodie-wearers, merely those whose behaviour can be intimidating to paying customers and staff. Sounds like a good idea.

The rise in internet-based electioneering has been significant in the United States. On this side of the Pond, there is an argument – made by the likes of Computing - that electioneering over the past few weeks has been surprisingly old-school. Boris Johnson is supposed to be gaff-prone, so why were we not deluged with amusing YouTube-published videos taken on camera phones? Where were the media storms created by blog exposés of candidates?