What is wrong with Americans?
In the passed 24 hours I have stumbled across three incidents of ... what shall we call them? Gross insensitivity? Stupidity? Should mind their own business? Or just plain bog off back to their own little backwater and resist any attempts to play with the grown ups out in the Real World?
Harsh words? Maybe, but just read on....
This week Mitt Romney's side-kick - whatever his name is - thought it would be a good idea to slag off the UK's NHS service - presumably to try and whump up the number of voters who'd plump for his party at the next poll. What a good idea, slag off how a foreign country runs it's health service, they won't catch on.
Nobody will be any the wiser - will they?
Well yes, actually they will; they have read the news, you see residents of other countries do actually pay attention to what is going on in the rest of the World.
We saw the apparently petty-fogging attempts by Mr Romney to distance himself from said side-kick's massive foot-in-the-mouth bloomer. Didn't the side-kick think to run this shameful ploy by the powers that be in the Republican party before he ran with it? Hard to believe.
And then... We find naughty pictures of Prince Harry taken when he was cavorting in his own hotel room - naked!
Shock! Horror! Scandal, rumour - gossip!!
Well, no not over here. For Christ's sake - he a young, fit, healthy twenty something year-old, he's unattached and well... up for it. Why in heaven's name can't he cavort in private? I'd be a wee bit worried if he didn't cavort, that's what young men do. So he was playing strip billiards or some such - with an equally dishevelled woman. So what? Was he running up and down the public areas of the hotel, waving his willie about? I don't think so! Can anybody tell me why they are shocked?
And finally... I listened to a radio debate about Mr Romney's side-kick's goof yesterday. And to represent the US we were treated to a Charlie Wolf, who is apparently a columnist for The UK's Daily Mail. He was there, front line to kelp the kicking the NHS was getting - and this was after he'd admitted that he's undergone successful treatment for cancer under the NHS. But this notwithstanding, he still took aim and gave the NHS a good kicking for daring to sell their wares abroad. Get the kinks out of the system first, was his cry, don't go wasting resources by selling brand NHS abroad.
The discussion also touched on the free at point of contact service we enjoy in the UK. Admittedly no one is turned away at a NHS hospital, not even if they are poor. But the service is not free, we pay for it via taxation. I think a better term would be universal healthcare, for all.
Something the USA has still to catch up with.
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