enroute crab angle Does that make you a crab person?

There's not such thing as the British NHS in terms of one large health service - there are 4. Healthcare delivered free at point of use was instigated across the whole of the UK in 1946, but the NHS in Scotland and Northern Ireland has always been decentralised with responsibility being with the Scottish Office and Northern Irish government as they were at the time. The Welsh Secretary of State took responsibility for the NHS there in 1969. Nowadays, the Westminster (UK) department of health is only responsible for England. Healthcare (along with many other matters such as justice/policing) is looked after independently by the Scottish Parliament, Northern Ireland Assembly, with the Welsh Senead also governing this (though with fewer other powers than the other two legislatures, which both have their own legal jurisdictions). So whenever reports of privatisation appear, they're normally specific to England, because it's only there that the Tories can carry out their ideological assault on the welfare state so directly.

If you don't break the law you are not likely to be ever pulled over.

You've obviously never driven in Northern Ireland.

Judge!

Your arrogance and guinea piggery aside, Scotland is making good progress towards its goal of 100% renewable energy from the wind, hydro, tidal and wave resources it has available. Indirectly this is of global benefit, but it's primarily for the benefit of Scotland, not 'Murica. The Westminster Government on the other hand seems to be struggling to get anyone to build new nuclear stations in England (the Scottish Government will not give permission for nuclear and in any case, Westminster doesn't like paying for infrastructure outside of the South East of England).

http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-news/5013-concern-raised-over-nuclear-subsidies

If true, this is a Bad Thing (though not terribly surprising). TFS is a bit wrong though. The Department of Health is not responsible for the NHS across the UK, and never has been. It has only ever been responsible for health in England and Wales, with the latter being devolved to the Welsh Assembly in 1999. Arrangements for social services are a little dfferent, but again this isn't necessarily relevant to all of the UK. Not that civil servants in devolved departments are perfect, but this is just another example of the UK stopping at the M25 (don't worry America, it's not just you, the British MSM and Westminster politicians do it all the time).

As mentioned in some of the earlier comments, there is no such thing as the UK police, any more than there is a national US police force (Scotland may be legislating for a national police force soon enough though, however its legal system is entirely different from England/Wales and Northern Ireland. The Met may be a big force and anything London based tends to hog the news, but that does not mean it applies to anywhere in the UK other than London.

There's a good chance that Scotland will vote to end the Union in 2014.

"What are we going to do tonight Brain?"

Pirate pours seawater over robot, alien shoots pirate with ray gun, ninja decapitates alien, cowboy shoots ninja, wizard hexes cowboy, Spock nerve pinches wizard, scissors cut paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitate lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporises rock, rock crushes scissors.

"Me fail English? That's inpossible!"

England != UK. You still have a right to silence in Scotland.

Maybe avian?

I for one welcome our sentient turkey cyborg overlords.

How about a nice game of chess?

That happened to me you insensitive clod! My connection went down for about a day last year and when I checked my ISP's status page when it came back up, it turned out someone at BT had accidentally disconnected them from BT Wholesale while testing a circuit.