Us politics

If we are going to have a sensible debate about the NHS in this country, we need to deal with the myth that the NHS is free. Yes, the NHS is free at the point of use, but we all pay for it through taxation. I suspect that slightly fewer people would still ‘love the NHS’ if they knew precisely how much they were contributing towards its costs through all the taxes that they pay. I say this as someone who has no desire to import the US system. Before I went to live in the States, I was quite a fan of the US healthcare system. But having lived

Go to any international think-tank conference and you will hear one complaint repeated ad nauseam: the intenational system, built after World War II – and incorporating the UN, NATO, the IMF, WHO etc. – is no longer fit for purpose. It needs to change to accomodate new threats, like climate change, and new powers like India and Brazil. The last point is particularly oft-heard. If India provides the majority of UN peacekeepers, should Delhi not have a permanent say on the UN Security Council? Now that China has become a pillar of the global economy, should the Beijing government not have more votes on the IMF board? The limited representation

Today the Burmese junta convicted pro-democracy campaigner Aung Sang Suu Kyi to a further 18 months under house arrest after a U.S. man swam uninvited to her lakeside home in May and stayed there for two days, breaching the terms of her house arrest. Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy have led the world’s outrage, urging the UN Security Council and European Union to impose tougher sanctions on the regime.   Unfortunately, not much is likely to happen to the Burmese generals. They remain protected not only by their neighbors, but by China and India who have both economic and strategic interests in keeping the regime intact. Like China, power-hungry India

In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress. Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight? Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community. Only nine parliamentarians have the legal authority to pry

Inspired, perhaps, by The Spectator’s list of the top 50  political scandals, Bloomberg has run a list of the ten best American ones. I have to say, these prudish Americans just don’t do scandal like us. The list has a common theme: moralising politician caught having an affair! Please. Where are the Russian spies, the society whoremongers, the russian oligarchs, the Corfu taverns? Okay, I’ll accept that the boy Clinton did them proud – but the rest of the list makes you think either America is squeaky clean or that its political class get away with far too much. Anyway, here are Bloomberg’s choices, with my comments: 10 ‘Family Values’. Spitzer was

Well done to the Mail for their continued support for Gary McKinnon, whose case featured on their front page a couple of days ago. It was a bold decision, but absolutely the right thing to do. Unless Alan Johnson steps in at the last minute, an awful injustice is about to take place. Gary McKinnon is the 43-year-old from Hertfordshire who hacked into US military computers, looking for evidence of UFOs. No-one is denying that he has committed a crime ­ least of all Gary who made a full confession to the police. And, yes, Gary deserves to be punished – a light sentence or community service would be best.

Seeing as it is the Fourth of July, I hope Coffee Housers will indulge me in a quick post on the Declaration of Independence. The document was, of course, drafted by Thomas Jefferson. But Ben Franklin ran his eye over Jefferson’s draft and made a few changes. One of them, can I think, lay claim to be the most felicitous edit in history. As Franklin’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, explains, Franklin took, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” and changed them to the words now enshrined in history: “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” (The picture is of Franklin’s marks.) The Declaration of Independence remains an inspiring