Certainly from a British point of view, any politician who suggested privatizing any part of the NHS (never mind all of it - that would be political suicide) would be in for a very hard time and a bollocking from the party leader.

Even the Tories, genetically pre-pogrammed to detest state intervention, wouldn't dream of suggesting that Britain's healthcare system move in the direction of America's.

Not true.

Some companies - like mine - provide private insurance for their staff. The theory is that, for routine problems, they can jump a few queues maybe and any hospital treatment is at a time and place convenient to the employee and the company. It's not because the NHS is deficient - any serious illness and you use the NHS anyway because they're much better equipped than any private hospital.

I've had my private insurance with my company for about 15 years now and never used it once - the NHS is just fine.

"And what was your tax rate for all those years of allegedly "free" health care?"

20% on taxable income up to £37400

40% above that.

I'm happy with that.

When it comes to speed and strength the best men will always out-perform the best women so of course men and women should be segregated in those events. That's just biology.

Where you draw the line when it comes to androgynous women is difficult, but a line must be drawn otherwise segregation becomes meaningless.

What is clear from the Caster Semenya controversy is that the IAAF and the South African athletics federation behaved abominably. If there was any doubt her gender, that should have been dealt with quietly and sensitively behind the scenes and not in the full glare of the media.

In speed and strength events men have a biological advantage as they produce far more testosterone than women, which, among other things, promotes muscle growth.

The marathon is interesting though because it's not so much about speed and strength as about endurance, which women have at least as much of as men. So it doesn't really surprise me that marathon times seem to be converging.

Re. defenders of torture:

"Their concept seems to be that if you do an unlawful thing because you believe thus and so, then the unlawful thing you have done is transformed into a lawful action because of that belief."

Precisely.

You might be able to imagine circumstances where a crime - torture or murder or rape, say - was 'justifiable' but you would have to argue your case in court.

Cheney then invoked the "ticking time bomb" scenario to justify using "enhanced interrogation techniques" and said that torture had worked in the past to prevent attacks on the U.S. However, recently released documents on the CIA's use of torture on detainees did not show that torture worked.

Torture is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable. It is illegal and wrong on so many levels that whether or not it 'works' is totally irrelevant.

I know the article is well meant, but giving any sort of consideration to the idea that torture might be 'justified' (even if you conclude that it's not) is to risk legitimizing a practice that should be unthinkable to any civilized society.

I don't much like to hear anybody use the C word. Or any other hard swear word for that matter. It is cheap and lazy and some people are deeply offended by it (even when no offence is intended).

That's not to say there isn't a place for swearing - when used sparingly and in the right context (rather than routinely in everyday speech), swear words can be very powerful.

But, no, I am not celebrating the return of the C word. I don't think it will much improve human discourse.

You shouldn't take seriously anything the Daily Mail has to say. It's a small-minded, censorious rag, full of fear and hate.

It also knows its target audience ('Middle England') and is very successful.

I despair sometimes.

As a member of the rest of the world, I can assure you good Americans that it does indeed look totally nuts from over here.

Every country has its crazies who insist the world is flat despite all evidence to the contrary, but the uproar over this back-to-school address thing really takes the biscuit.

Insane.

I'm not surprised the American Medical Association is against health reform. When Britain introduced the NHS in 1948, its main opponents were also the medical profession.

When Aneurin Bevin, the NHS's chief architect, was asked how he got the doctors on-side, he famously replied, "I stuffed their mouths with gold".

The trouble is, as I understand it, American doctors' mouths are already stuffed with gold.

You say:

Here is the AMA position on healthcare reform. I do not see where they are against it:

It was Robert Reich who said:

Devising a plan is easy compared with the politics of getting it enacted. Mere mention of national health insurance has always prompted a vigorous response from the ever-vigilant American Medical Association; in the 1930s, the editor of its journal equated national healthcare with “socialism, communism, inciting to revolution.”

I'm not sure that squares with AMA's declaration that, "tackling the tough challenges is something the American Medical Association (AMA) has been doing for 162 years."

But maybe you're right and this time round the AMA will be part of the solution and not the problem.

As a British citizen, the bit that makes me uneasy is the US's foreign-to-foreign surveillance. What is the scale and scope of this? We'll never know, I suppose.

I know that most countries go in for this sort of clandestine intelligence gathering, i.e. spying. It is legal (I guess), and can have clearly beneficial results, as in these terrorist convicions. But given the vast intelligence operation at the US's disposal and its global reach, it gives us foreigners pause for thought.

Certainly, if I were a British Muslim with relatives in Pakistan, say, I'd be wondering just how private my communications were.