Let's start with something light...

So I've not been on here for a while, I can't even claim it's because I've been that busy! Luckily, it's only Paddy who reads regularly so it's not too bad!

I should probably start with something important like the reduction in quality of Rocket lollies, but instead I have to look at 2 subjects - the NHS and Lockerbie man. Lets start with the NHS debate shall we?

There's a cultural difference and one which I will never grasp. From the outside looking in - and I will admit I don't know the intricacies pf the American system - it seems that nothing embodies the phrase 'All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others' like the American healthcare system. If you're poor, have a pre-existing condition, are unemployed or have one of the many other reasons the 40 million who don't have insurance, then essentially you die.

I know people who would be dead if they lived in America, we all probably do. As I say, it's a cultural thing and one which I will never grasp. Here, the Police are just there, the Fire Brigade are just there and if you get serioulsy ill you go to hospital and they (hopefully) fix you. I don't understand how providing a system that protects your populace from disease and injury is any different to providing protection from crime, from fire or from a foreign invader. I'm no doubt missing some of the intricacies of the system, just like the American right missed that Stephen Hawking is in fact British and our doctors don't kill disabled babies and people over the age of 60.

And on to Lockerbie.

As part of the ceremonies of Yom Kippur a goat was sent into the dessert to die. The idea being that the goat carried with it all of the sins of the participants. Everyone focusses their energy on the goat, a perfectly innocent creature who's only crime was being a goat and going about it's goaty business, eating things that it shouldn't and whatnot.

Rather than addressing the sins, everyone thinks only of the scapegoat and how it carries all of the sins away into the dessert, they want the goat to die because then the sins die with it and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that all of our righteous fury has poured onto the sinful goat and it has got its just rewards.

And that's Kenny MacAskill. The rightness or wrongness of the decision is being discussed by cleverer people than me and theories abound. One thing is for certain, as usual we are all shouting at the goat instead of the guys sending it into the dessert.