Yeah ... except it isn't.

In case people haven't noticed the pattern here, everyone who slags off the UK NHS has to make stuff up. For the record, Liar Firepants the Liar here couldn't 'work for the Army Medical service' as that's just the umbrella term, not the name of an organisation it's like saying your employer is 'the finance industry'. And the RAMC isn't a branch of the NHS, if we're going to bring facts into the argument.

The NHS isn't perfect. If there was a medical system somewhere in the world that was perfect, every other country would copy it, and America - as with every other social issue - would end up copying it a generation later, too.

The NHS is paid for by taxes. I used to live in the UK, I live in the US now. My total tax bill was rarely as much as just my family's medical premiums are here, my coverage here is riddled with ridiculous exclusions and hidden costs.

Put it this way - every politician in the US agrees the system we have here is broken, but the fastest way to lose an election in the UK is to look like you're threatening the NHS.

While we're on that subject ... countless people in this health care debate say that they are or know someone who can't leave their job because they'd lose their benefits. So the libertarian position is 'trap people into working for someone else'.

As noted by others here: no, no, 100% wrong. The word 'cunt' is used as punctuation in Britain, in many circles at least, and I use it frequently myself, but in no way, in no circumstances would anyone I know, even another woman, ever use it to describe a woman.

I think the gender studies analysis of the word works in the US. I'm British, I moved to America, and everyone here, men and women, has a problem with women in positions of power, any position of power. Here, it's used by misogynistic men to insult women. That's America's peculiar little foible, though. Hint, guys: when *Pakistan* doesn't have a problem with female leadership and you do, it's time for you to sit back and realise that the US has always been a generation behind the rest of the world on social issues.

And you're terribly prim when it comes to swearing, preferring the mall-level, off the shelf, unimaginative 'fuck' franchise to all the various bespoke options. Why have a hamburger when you can call someone an otterquimmed nancy face?

Holy crap, if 'releasing endorphins' is why we execute people just buy those relatives a puppy.

Here's why I'm anti death penalty - ultimately it comes down to a politician, a governor, signing a piece of paper saying 'kill someone'. I don't really understand how so many people who oppose 'big government' object to politicians earmarking money to give health care to poor people but get a little thrill at the thought that politicians have the power to kill people.

And that's the epitaph for the Bush administration right there - they could (and did) boast about how they were able to shape perception and therefore reality and that all they needed to do was say it and it became true. But all the media control and endless, mindless repetition of talking points in the world won't stop planes flying into skyscrapers, levees from breaking or conjure WMDs into existence.

Here lies the Bush administration, sticking to what they were best at.

So, if someone anally raped your thirteen year old daughter, and you knew where the guy lived, how long would you leave it before deciding it wasn't worth the authorities going after him? Less than thirty two years? Five years? Ten days? Five minutes?

Yeah, well, life's unfair. Rape a child, you get called a child rapist.

It's not as though she was the only child he had sex with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastassja_Kinski

He drugged and raped someone. That someone was thirteen. How about we stop worrying about exactly what we call that and start wondering why people would want to queue up to defend him? Because he's the auteur behind such landmark cinema as The 9th Gate and Bitter Moon?

Exactly. Golden rule, folks: data's not data until it exists in two places.

... when I say that if she'd have been playing for Chelsea at the weekend, the referee would have let her get away with it.

The EU already did this.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/4222445/Power-hungry-plasma-screen-televisions-to-be-banned-under-new-EU-legislation.html

... and the EU's a bigger market than the US, now, and if TV manufacturers in the US can't manage to make ones that comply, then don't worry, someone else is already doing it.

There's a lesson to be learned from the car industry. American car manufacturers thought that the way to survive was to lobby to keep making primitive, inefficient cars. There's simply no export market for them, now, there is a huge demand for small, advanced cars ... which people have to import.

Instead of pretending there's nothing to be done, TV manufacturers shouldn't need prompting or pushing, they should be at the forefront of making their products more efficient. If they're not ... well, don't weep for them when you see news that they closed on your German TV in a couple of years.