This weeks FoS award goes to ...

... Paul "Petey" Ryan, running mate of Romney.

... written in The Times by Sam Coates Deputy Political Editor

Mitt Romney’s running mate in his campaign to become the next US President has been sharply critical of the NHS, claiming that free healthcare distorts the democratic process because it makes patients dependent on government help.

Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman who was announced on Saturday as the Republican vice-presidential contender, has also compared the British economy to those of Greece and Ireland, saying the “day of reckoning” has already arrived in all three countries.

The remarks are likely to cause further transatlantic friction after Mr Romney’s troubled visit to Britain last month in which he criticised preparations for the Olympics. 

Mr Ryan’s attack on the NHS was part of an effort to stop President Obama’s healthcare reforms, which the Republican said would put the US "on a glide path toward European-style socialism". He wrote in the Wall Street Journal:  "We need only look to Great Britain and elsewhere to see the effects of socialised healthcare on the broader economy. Once a large number of citizens get their healthcare from the State, it dramatically alters their attachment to government.

"Every time a tax cut is proposed, the guardians of the new medical-welfare state will argue that tax cuts would come at the expense of healthcare — an argument that would resonate with middle-class families entirely dependent on the government for access to doctors and hospitals." The analysis came in 2009, in an article co-written with Peter Wehner, a former adviser to President Bush.

Our NHS is not "European-style socialism", its a recognition that we are all dependent on one another at some point in life.  A recognition that there are aspects of life that require just a little more intervention than the markets.

In the UK, we as a people through the ballot box, have decided that our imperfect NHS, a service that is totally inclusive, is a better civilised solution to health care than the models that Ryan and chums subscribe to.

For the little people, those who have been denied opportunity by accident of birth, working with asbestos during the 20th century developed incomprehensible debilitation by virtue of occupation.  These people produced products used by all, produced products upon which vast fortunes were made.  This is the single example needed to justify an inclusive health service is provided by all to everyone with a need.

The little people need this service when their earnings hover around the poverty level .... 

Professional politicans rarely experience this type of need .......

 .......... so we award the Full of Shit medal to Paul "Petey" Ryan, not a friend of the little people.

Mitt Romney and Team GB ...

... is there a lesson to be learned ?

The London Olympic was a success from its stunning opening ceremony to the end game party last night, some have described it as the most successful exhibition of sporting excellence of all time, for myself its success lay in the projection of inclusive stakeholder participation by all;  athletes, audience and organisers, that's not to say everything was perfect, but as Sebastian Coe said at the closing ceremony ...

... when it came to our turn, we did it right !

In the USA, the appointment of Paul Ryan by Mitt Romney as his Presidential running mate, sends a very clear message to the population that "things, they will be changing !"

It is the change that is causing concern ....

The most damming condemnation ...

Network, a Catholic social justice lobby group, which organised a six-state "nuns on the bus" tour last month, damned Mr Ryan's proposals as "immoral".
Sister Simone Campbell, Network's executive director, said: "His budget deliberately harms people at the economic margins. It is also unpatriotic because it says that we are an individualistic, selfish nation."

Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity" is long on words, with a very simple underlying message, government must shrink!  The full document can be found here, it runs to 99 detailed pages, it might have added a page to explain why Sister Simone Campbell's "people at the economic margins" are not considered as stakeholders in the great nation that is the USA.

As a small country Great Britain came third in the medal tally for this Olympic Games, the success must in a great part be attributed to the way the peoples funded the athletes in the years prior to the games, as Samantha Murray said after winning the silver medal in the very last event, modern pentathlon, "If I can do it, and I'm a normal girl, anyone can do what they want to do."

Shrink government at the expense of the little people of this world and it is a poorer, brutal existence, not civilisation........