Its worth repeating again but one evening I was involved in an online discussion with a Utah resident and former graduate of the Brigham Young University where they seem to churn out Survivalists by the cartload every year, his base point argument was that the UK, even under a Tory government ran a form of socialism that was only slightly removed from communism whereas he preferred to be completely independent of any government "interference", of course he was still in his twenties, thought he was invincible and any thoughts of retirement or illness were still light years away - independence from the state is a luxury that the young enjoy for a decade or two.

I thought it was time that he, and a few others who seem to flock to that sort of discussion discovered exactly what our form of communism costs us every month and so I got my last months pay slip and itemised the salary element, tax and nat ins deductions, described what each of them will provide for me in terms of healthcare and state pension, and what the stages of Tax and NIS were dependent on salary - enough information for them all to work out what they would be paying on their own salary if it were taxed in the UK.

I then asked them to come back to me and itemise their last pay check in terms of government and state tax, provision for private healthcare and pension savings and then to describe what level of healthcare and its limits they would receive for their self-sufficiency.

Strangely enough the discussion stopped right there.

I think Obama will still win the election this year. Hasn't Mitt Romney only picked Paul Ryan as his running mate to get the Christian right to vote for him with their wish to stamp all over womens rights and their hatred of homosexuality ?

The conservative right in the US are going to fight this election on the basis that Romney's business background gives him a better idea of how to run the economy than Obama. At least that's what they are saying in public.

We all know it will descend into a series of racially and religiously motivated smear campaigns, funded by those with no other interest than how little tax they will pay.

Well hopefully small government will mean the US stops wasting taxpayers money on the forces of the state, the military, arming the police to support police brutality, hopefully if Romney comes in he can promote liberty and take the US away from this kind of militarised tyranny.

don't get your hopes up. I'm sure I read somewhere that Mitt Romney had pledged to cap spending across all government departments except one, defense.

To be fair Romney is of Mexican descent himself, so it would pretty rich to start throwing racial slurs around, but nothing would surprise me in an American election. Interestingly, I read somewhere recently that Obama is likely to receive the majority of the Mex-American vote.

Also I'm pretty sure (although please feel free to correct me) that a democrat hasn't received the majority of the white vote since the 1960s.

Absolutely spot on.



I work for a US company and a couple of years ago I went over for three weeks training. I already have several good friends over there, ex-pats and some Americans who worked over here for a few years so I had plenty of nights out while I was there. On one of those nights we met up with some people who my friends socialise with who used to work for the company but who had been made redundant. Their biggest concern? Healthcare.

I bet they will be voting for Obama. They have to wait until they are 65 to get Medicare and in the meantime could not afford treatment of various ailments. They were middle aged and so were finding new jobs hard to get.

The company paid their health insurance and once you left than that ceased and you had nothing. One of my friends was actually made redundant the day I arrived in the office. He had the option to continue his health care plan as provided by the company at the cost of $1000 a month for 12 months. After that nothing.

However he ended up getting a job pretty quick . Another friend had a job at an insurance company in the same city and both had a policy of never making anyone redundant and I believe they never have.

If you have that sort of job security with free healthcare I can see why they might not like a tax hike to pay for others. What they don't understand is that their health insurance is probably limited in some way and "jobs for life" may well be on the way out. And that is before we consider the social conscience side of it.

So I can see why some people won't see Obama's healthcare ideas as a vote winner. A lot of them will be under the misapprehension that they are covered.

If anybody has seen the very good documentary film Inside Job narrated by Matt Damon, you may recall Glenn "give it your best shot" Hubbard, who gave a very aggressive, spiteful account of himself during his interviewhttps://t0.gstatic.com/images?q

Hubbard is Romney's chief economic adviser.

Gawd knows how I ended up on the site during one night of idle browsing but I found myself looking at a mobile home for sale on a park in Florida for a few ten thousand dollars or so, looked quite nice and then you read the owners reason for sale - they had cancer and their insurance for their treatment had just reached its dollar limit, from that point on they were on their own, you either pay for your treatment now or you die.

So she was selling her home, to pay for her cancer treatment, even though she had health insurance.

Its a f'kin tough old world out there when you go for "small" government and its the big corporations who run it.

I understand that Uhmurrucuns won't vote in a president who isn't a Christian. So maybe this is a groundbreaking moment. Or more likely Uhmurrrucuns wouldn't know the difference between a Mormon nutjob and a Catholic nuttjob.

My American father died alone, in a motel room, of bowel cancer. He was a truck driver therefore self employed. For some reason none of us can fathom, (other than affordability) he didn't have health insurance. I had seen him, suffereing, a few months before he died but because he was a very private man I didn't know the extent of his illness. He was 55 years old.

I do believe, caught early enough, bowel cancer is one of the most treatable cancers. Had he lived here in the UK, I would still have my dad. He died not because his cancer was untreatable but because he didn't have the means to pay for treatment. In a country like America, this is despicable.

It's truly amazing how ed up the place is, I watched Michael Moore's "Sicko" and couldn't believe what I was watching. (I'm well aware MM is biased)

When I hear Romney and his other cronies laugh at the mention of Obamacare I despair.

He's that biased he's telling the truth?

Apart from when he announces on Twitter that the UK is invading the Ecuadorean embassy.

Do Ecuador possess WMD?

We best get in there sharpish, we might only have 45 minutes.