Fireworks light up the London skyline and Big Ben just after midnight Jan. 1, 2012, in London. Thousands of people lined the banks of the River Thames in central London to see in the New Year with a spectacular fireworks display.
Photo: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg in the third leaders’ debate in Birmingham. Photograph: Jeff Overs/AP
BRITAIN’S special relationship with the US — forged by Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war — no longer exists, says a committee of influential MPs.
Instead, America’s relationship with Britain is no more special than with its other main allies, according to a report by the Commons foreign affairs committee published today.
The report also warns that the perception of the UK after the Iraq war as America’s “subservient poodle” has been highly damaging to Britain’s reputation and interests around the world.
continue reading…. timesonline
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In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal. Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.
The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain’s universal health-care system. “If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it’s needed,” Hume explained, “she’s more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn’t it obvious?”
A young woman I knew in Britain added another explanation. “If you’re [sexually] active,” she said, “the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy. Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm. It means going to the doctor. But that’s easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free.”
”T.R. Reid - Universal health care tends to cut the abortion rate - washingtonpost.com
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People who are anti-abortion and also anti-healthcare baffle me.
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