I have many happy discussions with a couple of Americans I know via blogging/facebook over their opinion on healthcare, in particular "Obamacare" which they absolutely refuse to accept.

These are normal, sane, very pleasant people, one is an artist who I have exchanged work with, one is a client of mine, I thought "knew" them until one of them posted a message on Facebook one day in opposition to Obamacare, I replied simply asking why a person could be so opposed to something that would benefit them in the long run.

A couple of hours later there was a huge string of replies from other Americans all based on the premise that anything with "social" in the title, ie social care, social housing, social securtiy, was basically communism in disguise, I was even told that the British NHS was a cover for Muslim terrorists.

The discussion sort of stopped dead when I gave a detailed explanation of how the NHS works and particularly what percentages our income tax deductions run at, and what NIS contributions are for, and their rates - I then asked them to go away and look at their payslips and tell me what National income tax they paid, what was their local income tax and what did their healthcare insurance and pension contributions amount to - never heard a peep after that.

I know it's a very slight diversion, but someone from the US I know via the internet, who has been working in Germany for a couple of years now, posted the other day that he was utterly stunned at a book he was reading on the roots of the Cold War, which stated that: "Right up until the launching of the long-postponed Allied invasion of the German-occupied Normandy coast in June 1944, Soviet forces were holding down more than 80% of the Wehrmacht’s divisions."

This is a very intelligent bloke – not a 'bad' person at all. But he had never seen or read (as opposed to someone like me making a comment on a forum) anything that suggested that the war was not actually just won pretty much on its own by the US.

Every country has its propaganda, of course – and reading history is the art of trying to dig beneath it – but this is just remarkable.

Not wishing to stray too far off-topic, I had some great fun over the last day with the feckwits who commented on The real crisi is welfarism not capitalism in yesterday's Torygraph. As any fool knows, Blair and Brown's profligacy in spending on restoring service to health, teaching and policing, is the sole reason that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the greater part of global finance soon followed.

Not wishing to stray too far off-topic, I had some great fun over the last day with the feckwits who commented on The real crisi is welfarism not capitalism in yesterday's Torygraph. As any fool knows, Blair and Brown's profligacy in spending on restoring service to health, teaching and policing, is the sole reason that Lehman Brothers collapsed and the greater part of global finance soon followed.

And it is indeed a pre-arranged facility. Mine has been running for about two years and has never needed reviewing. I earn my money, and should I go into my overdraft then I pay for that as I would expect - it's not my money I'm spending, it's - in effect - a loan I can call on at any time.
If I go over that overdraft, then that is definately taking the pish, but Barclays are happy to let me have that money for five working days without charging me any extra.

If I should hit the limit on that facility - as has happened in the past on a couple of occasions - then I can't withdraw any more.

Are you following this?

I am, but it appears to be far too hard for you, as the astronomical charges which I quoted are so mind-blowingly, unbelievably out of any proportion to the sums initially involved that only someone who can't actually follow it would defend it. You, of course, are a perfect example of how and why they get away with this mother of all ripoffs.

Indeed.

The company I work for rent a lot of equipment out to other businesses - I can't think that we'd rent anything out at all if we had a clause that said "If you don't pay your £15 a month rental on time then we'll charge you 100,000 times that amount, because we can"