It demonstrates that there are many lessons to learn.”At least one lesson is clear: any survey of European health systems demonstrates how poorly funded the NHS is. As the graphs show, we spend less of our economic wealth and have fewer doctors, nurses and beds than most comparable countries.Tomorrow’s Budget should set Britain on the way to remedying that imbalance – but it will take a decade of sustained investment to train the doctors, build the hospitals and develop services. And at the end of it all, will patients be any more satisfied?That is the nightmare haunting ministers – that we could spend tens of billions of pounds and make no noticeable difference. Scotland is already spending at the average of the European level on its health service – and satisfaction is not noticeably higher north of the border. There is a battle for hearts and minds still to be fought.Mr Duncan Smith, whose party has been accused of wanting to dismantle the NHS, said he wanted to see “a system based on need, not ability, to pay, but that need should be defined by patients working with doctors not politicians”.The question is whether Britain can provide a health service that offers the greater choice available under the French model but without imposing an unsustainable financial burden on the country.. The scream has a special place in rock’n'roll.

Its primal, animalistic capacity to express the inexpressible – be it sexual desire or inchoate rage – has been utilised by a proud lineage running from Little Richard through Black Francis to The Vines

The scream has a special place in rock’n'roll. They have one classic song, a debut single as incredible as “Supersonic” by Oasis. “Highly Evolved” breaks and enters your skull without wiping its feet, shakes some serious Nirvana-meets-T.Rex action, and after just one minute and 31 seconds, scarpers out again before the police arrive. (It transpires that it isn’t actually The Vines’ debut – they had something called “Factory” out last year – but don’t let that spoil the story).I walk through the door just as they’re playing it I’m lucky. Unfortunately, the remainder of their set indicates that “Highly Evolved”, like “Supersonic” before it, may be the precursor to disappointment.

There are a few good R&B rave-ups (in the Sixties sense of R&B, you understand) like “Ain’t No Room” and too many dreary psychedelic dirges like “Autumn Shade”.Nevertheless, it seems The Vines are the latest anointed ones. They’re the new favourite band of everyone who has the wrong ideas about what music should be, and they would have been on the NME’s front cover if the rock plesiosaur responsible for “Supersonic” itself hadn’t chosen this week to open his gob. The bar staff are humiliated by being forced to wear “Highly Evolved” T-shirts – someone’s put a bit of money into this, and it ain’t Aussie dollars – and most of London’s rockerati are here tonight Drop a bomb on this place, and … “It’s 1969 in my head,” Nicholls sings at one point, and, well, at least he’s honest. One song starts with the “Made Of Stone” beat and I blush for them, but The Vines’ closest cousins are an older generation of Britrockers: The Pretty Things and The Troggs.

Towards the end, Nicholls announces that we “might know this one”, and they cover Outkast’s “Ms Jackson” making it sound like a bloody Neil Young song. The ethics and aesthetics of this sort of thing are always suspect, and The Vines add nothing new to the debate.Just when it’s getting dull, Nicholls hands over the lead vocals to bassist Patrick Mathews and, high on caffeine and sugar from the four cans of Coke he has on the go, launches into another of those wordless Noddy Holder screams It’s a nice trick. But how many times can you watch a dog riding a bicycle?Billy Bob Thornton wants to see me Well, OK, not just me. But the actor, director, and – would you believe – singer-songwriter has summoned all the journalists reviewing his debut London concert to a pre-show briefing It’s a strange, unnerving idea (what does he want with us?). In the event, it’s an informal chat which, a cynic might say, serves to soften our steely critical faculties.