I have long known that there are real advantages to being a bit poorer, having a more basic job and fewer resources than I've eventually grown to have: you have less to lose, and therefore more freedom. Not as much to look anxiously down at when making decisions for radical change in your life.

If I had any doubts that the US is rapidly becoming a sort of massive banana republic, leaving it and participating for three weeks in the lives of Britons put those doubts to rest. We are third-world-ready around here. Sadly, we still have enough influence and power to be infecting Europe with our strip-mining economic policies. The conservatives in power in the UK are just slavering at the prospect of dismantling the NHS.