Obama a Socialist? I don't think so!

The rise and rise of the "Tea Party" movement in America is hard to understand. It appears to be as mad as a cabbage. Is it something written by Lewis Caroll? Is it the Mad Hatter's Tea Party?

Straight away I have to apologise for using pejorative terminology, because this is what seems to be contaminating political debate in the States. As Jon Stewart said at the recent rally in Washington, if you amplify everything you hear nothing.

I have heard members of the "Tea Party" movement interviewed on BBC Television say that President Obama is working towards a Socialist government. What nonsense! Can you imagine the words Socialism and USA in the same sentence?

One is tempted to ask, what is inherently wrong with Socialism anyway? Capitalism has done spectacularly well in the past couple of years, hasn't it?! It's a mistake, by the way, to confuse Social Democracy (which is probably about as "Left" as the USA will ever get) with Communism, and some people in the "Tea Party" movement don't seem able to understand the difference. The important word to understand is Democracy of course. If a majority decide via the ballot box for one system or another, then there can be no complaints.

The outcome of the mid-term elections should, one hopes, be based on reasoned debate rather than name-calling and simplistic exaggerations.

What is the "Tea Party" Movement? On BBC TV news this morning, one American described it as "George Bush on Steroids".

Oops! There I go again. Sorry.

Cheese and Chocolate

After last week's takeover of the UK chocolate company Cadbury by the US Company Kraft, I was amused by an observation made by Michael Portillo the other day.

He said a British company who made chocolate that was not recognised by the rest of Europe as real chocolate had been taken over by an American company producing something that he could not associate with cheese.

We understand, of course, that Kraft does rather more than produce cheese (real or otherwise), and that Cadbury does produce a darker, more cocoa-rich product for the purists. The fact remains that for a few days Britain felt sad to see such an iconic British independent company with an illustrious past (originating with a Quaker family with the typical social-reformist and caring attitude towards its workforce) at last succumbing to the cruel winds of international capitalism.

As usual, though, the Daily Telegraph's resident cartoonist, Matt, was able to lighten our mood with a picture of a Kraft executive yelling down the phone, "I told you to buy the whole of Cadbury's except the Coffee Creams!"