An ugly phrase used to intrude on debates over the NHS.

If you didn't care for a criticism of your policies on the people's health, you would call it "shroud-waving". Sometimes trolleys, or hospital food, or even blankets would do for a shroud.

The point about the NHS is no politician can ever win. Enough is never enough. Your achievements count for nothing if a single patient suffers in the aftermath of whatever it was the last daft reorganisation was supposed to achieve. Alex Salmond knows this. He can talk until someone is blue in the face over "satisfaction" ratings. He can tell you any mistake he might make pales into irrelevance beside the advancing devastation in England.

It makes no difference. There will always be a Johann Lamont to say "the rhetoric doesn't fit with reality". There will always be a Ruth Davidson to remind you "Government is all about choices".

That the parties represented by each of these women have had their go, more than once, is one of the bits of history voters are supposed to forget. That Ms Lamont's party did not propose to protect health budgets is a matter of record. That Ms Davidson's party intends to rent out 49% of beds to private firms in England is a matter of fact.

NHS Lothian has been shown to be imaginative with the truth. Hospital care for elderly people in the west of the country is a subject of controversy. Would it help if Mr Salmond said there are eight nurses and midwives per 1000 people in Scotland in comparison with 5.9, on average, in England? Not even slightly.

Yesterday's was not a comedy debate at Holyrood. Ms Lamont, for Labour, wanted to say the SNP is all happy talk, and NHS realities are insulting to the elderly. Ms Davidson, Tory leaderene of the hour, wanted us to understand that free prescriptions spoil prosperous folk.

Mr Salmond handled himself well enough, especially in terms of what is happening elsewhere within these islands. You couldn't help but think, though, that he was being given a glimpse of what independence might be like.

As with the NHS, it will never be enough. We will be free, so to speak, at the point of need. And free to complain that less-than-perfect isn't close to good enough.

The First Minister also deplores George Osborne's Budget, somewhat, in case you were wondering.