"More fundamentally, we must ask why so much of official Britain, and especially its security establishment, keeps clinging for dear life to the United States, behaving for all the world like someone stuck in an abusive personal relationship"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/21/britain-us-special-relationship-trump-starmer
As you know, Simon, we have skin in that particular ‘over the pond’ game.
The fear and despair is real. Not least because the US is a currently a country that is perfectly content to kill off its own citizens with its insurance based health system.
Allow me to relate a case here:
A fully insured citizen with known cardiac issues is blue lighted to cardiac unit following an automated SOS alerted event. fully insured citizen with known cardiac issues is blue lighted to cardiac unit following an automated SOS alerted event.
This is the patient’s usual hospital where they are normally treated. Patient is tested multiple times/ways and discharged after 2 nights stay in the hospital.
The bill arrives and it is $239,000. Because the patient is fully insured, thank goodness, they only have to find $11,000, payable in a single lump sum, this would increase if only split payments were possible.
For those here in the UK or the EU, this appears almost outlandish. Over the pond people lose their lives, their livelihoods, their homes and their jobs in the name of profit.
I got a very interesting window into the level of outrage held by Americans well before Luigi became a thing.
I was in a jury pool for what was going to be a reinsurance case.
The lawyers involved went to great pains to explain to us that the case had absolutely nothing to do with the health industry. Apparently, from previous experience, most people immediately assume it’s healthcare and gave vent to exactly how they felt about American health insurance
@GhostOnTheHalfShell @barfilfarm I cannot at all understand how ordinary American voters can be repeatedly be persuaded to vote against universal socialised health care.
But similarly, in the UK we have one of the lowest costs per patient and per treatment of any health care system in the rich world, and outcomes which although not the very best are massively better than in insurance-based systems, but our politicians try to persuade us it's unaffordable.
I wonder why?
And that dark money has made its way into the UK for a long time just different. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan came to power at the same time because rich people had started their campaign to control society.
See there can be too much pesky democracy, and that happens when the great unwashed become educated and have enough time and resources to be involved in their own governance.
@michaelgraaf @GhostOnTheHalfShell @barfilfarm and because with the increasing capital intensity of modern warfare, and the consequent decreasing labour intensity, the oligarch class no longer feel so dependent on the proletariat to fight their wars for them.
Wars end when soldiers refuse to fight; if you don't need soldiers, they don't need to end at all.
Simon Brooke
Maggie Gordon
GhostOnTheHalfShell
Michael Graaf