The Real “Iron Lady”

Reading about Meryl Streep’s preparation to act in “The Iron Lady” could lead one to believe that the real Margaret Thatcher was difficult to understand.

But if you go back to the dark days Britain faced in the late 1970s when she became prime minister, it’s really not that hard.

UK Military Wives Choir

He took a group of vulnerable, anxious Army wives, whose husbands were fighting in Afghanistan, and turned them into a choir whose heartbreakingly beautiful performance at the Royal Albert Hall in front of the Queen for the Festival of Remembrance is simply impossible to watch without weeping.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2067895/BBC-The-Choir-army-wives-We-need-men-like-magical-Mr-Malone.html#ixzz1k26CyizD

Cataracts, hips, knees and tonsils: NHS begins rationing operations

Hip replacements, cataract surgery and tonsil removal are among operations now being rationed in a bid to save the NHS money.

Two-thirds of health trusts in England are rationing treatments for “non-urgent” conditions as part of the drive to reduce costs in the NHS by £20bn over the next four years. One in three primary-care trusts (PCTs) has expanded the list of procedures it will restrict funding to in the past 12 months.

Britain would be a better place if families looked after their own

The welfare state, as conceived by the great social reformer Sir William Beveridge and implemented by the Attlee government after the Second World War, was a sublime idea. It rescued millions of British citizens from the degradation of poverty and lifted the fear of illness. It guaranteed employment or, if jobs were not available, universal benefits. It offered security in old age.

As we go over the cliff, just who is in the driver’s seat?

A few months ago, I asked the question, “How did we get here?”

If you have to ask where “here” is, then you may as well not read this column. But if you, too, believe that “here” is the end of the road for Western civilization, then you may as well read it and weep.

If you have to ask where “here” is, then you may as well not read this column. But if you, too, believe that “here” is the end of the road for Western civilization, then you may as well read it and weep.

I have explored a few possibilities already to explain the collapse of American values and American traditions in the past 50 years (which roughly correspond to my own life span up till now). Most of them seem to be linked to the phony Marxist philosophy of “redistribution of wealth,” whether in the guise of the New Deal, the Great Society, social justice or “the myth of permanent plenty.”

Former British Health System Director Dies After Hospital Delays Life-Saving Operation Four Times

A tragic story and a cautionary tale regarding government-run healthcare and the rationing it inevitably requires. A chilling preview of things to come under Obamacare:

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation – at her own hospital. Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist, and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party. He is mainly remembered for his support of the cause of the American Revolutionaries, and for his later opposition to the French Revolution.