How they see us

Thursday, 14th May 2009

Just a quick query: has anyone seen any coverage of the Westminster expenses scandal on the main American blogs? I had a brief search through Andrew Sullivan's site just now, but couldn't see a thing. Yet more evidence in support of Hoggart's Law, which, as we all know, states that:

The Americans are as interested in us as we are in, say, Norway

The NHS, on the other hand, is getting some play over there, thanks to the anti-reform lobbyists. Mark Steyn has weighed in too:

Well, I think Britain does have a functioning private system, but unfortunately, its public hospitals, I think, would strike most Americans as being like 19th Century workhouses. They’re like Lionel Bart’s Oliver! They’re something you expect to see Dickensian urchins being given bowls of slop and gruel in.

But then that sort of knockabout stuff is what they love to hear on talk radio. As I've mentioned before, one of the very few reasonable comparisons of the two systems came from Fox News anchor David Asman. (The "no place like home" headline isn't an entirely accurate reflection of his findings.) That was four years ago. There doesn't seem to have been a huge amount of coverage since then. Michael Moore did take a look, I admit, but his account of a land of milk and honey was just as far-fetched as Steyn's.