Mal Fletcher comments on the Scottish Independence debate

Yes, Scandinavia arguably enjoys a better standard of aged and health care than does the UK. Very high taxes are responsible for that.

They're also responsible for giving nations like Denmark a much higher number of bureaucrats than the UK - at least on a per capita basis. As a result, Danes often face much tougher regulations and more obstructive procedures when it comes to starting businesses.

The much vaunted Nordic welfare state may pay for better hospitals, school facilities and prisons in many areas but it often seems to do little to encourage self-starting or individual enterprise.

By the time many entrepreneurial young people reach adulthood, their pioneer zeal has been quenched. They're infected with the notion that whether they succeed or fail there will be little or no difference to their overall standard of living.

From experience, I know that there are wonderful exceptions to this, but the general rule remains intact.

What's more, the idea that ultra-high taxation eliminates social ills, including social inequality - among migrant populations, for example - is a social democratic myth.

The Nordic countries have their own problems with poverty, employment and immigration, albeit different ones to our own.

In June 2010, the Danish government took the radical step of reducing the country's four-year unemployment benefits period to help restore its finances in the wake of the financial crisis.

Danish studies had shown that the longer a person is without a job, the harder it is for them to get one. In part, this is because people often wait until they're about to lose their benefits before seriously pursuing a new position, particularly if doing so requires reinventing themselves through retraining. The shorter the time between losing one job and getting benefits, the better.

For Brits, the idea that one should have to take up only the job one is really looking for might seem a luxury. For many Danes and other Scandinavians it is seen as something of a right.

There is, of course, more than one Scandinavian model anyway. Each country in the region has its own important variations on the theme and Brits and others can learn much from Scandinavia. Taken as a whole, however, their social models arguably suit a mindset that is quite different from that found within the British Isles.

A former US ambassador to the Danes once wrote that Denmark is not so much a nation as a very large tribe. People have, over a long period of time, been conditioned to try to achieve the widest possible consensus on as many decisions as possible.

Change, therefore, is very slow - for an outsider, often frustratingly so - and once a semblance of agreement has been reached discordant voices are unwelcome. On an individual level, the drive to better oneself through conspicuous achievement is arguably tolerated rather than applauded.

In many areas, individual expression is not as important as groupthink.