Do you ever wonder if the British might be a fundamentally unserious people? I do, though I should stress that I include myself; a thoroughly trivial person whose “professional” life is mainly spent in the silliest corners of an internet that long ago destroyed my capacity for joined-up thinking.

Still, if you do have any intellectual rigour, it must be troubling, what with the hegemony of Hun culture, voting for politicians purely on bants potential, expressing dissent through the medium of milkshake chucking, being endlessly amused by our own social awkwardness and viewing Gemma Collins as some kind of philosopher savant. It’s all arguably ironic, but that doesn’t make it any better. I keep expecting Melvyn Bragg to defect and seek asylum in the Sorbonne.

I was thinking this as I read the responses to the NHS’s idea-generating Change project. Launched last week and described as a “national conversation” and “rallying cry to the nation”, the Change NHS website offers a platform for the British public to contribute views and ideas on how to fix the NHS.

You can probably already imagine the kind of highlights picked out........

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