Barack obama

Does Britain have an obesity problem? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Fraser Nelson discuses the bizarre steps taken by the NHS to deal with our growing weight problem. Do we have such a thing as a ‘fat gland’? Why is Britain’s changing size so rapidly? And according to Fraser, Nottingham is the ‘fattest’ part of our country and deep fried Mars bars really are a delicacy. James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman also discuss this week’s Westminster reshuffles, what they mean (if anything) for the man for the street and who’s up and who’s down in the the cabinet and shadow cabinet. What do the changes says about the

Barack Obama may not be a great president, but he is a wizard at the blame game. He has fought ‘fiscal brinkmanship’ battles throughout his presidency, and he tends to come out on top. America’s federal government is today closing down, and most pundits refuse to say it’s in any way the president’s fault. Instead, they accuse his opponents of wrecking the political system. If you read most newspapers, or watch the BBC, you would think that wicked Republicans — ‘in hock’ to their extremist tea party division —  are shutting down the federal government out of little more than a fit of pique. The Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid,

There’s little need for people opposed to launching any kind of attack on Syria to expend much energy doing so when those tasked with making the case for reminding Bashar al-Assad that using chemical weapons is not something the international community can or will ignore are making such a bloody hash of the job. Here, for instance, is John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, reminding us all that the Americans really don’t want to be taking action at all. They’ve been pushed into doing so, the result of both the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons (why assume Assad’s people are clever enough not to use them?) and by President Barack

There are a number of obvious differences between last week’s vote in Parliament and the forthcoming Congressional vote on Syria. But today when he gave his closing statement at the end of the G20 summit, Barack Obama highlighted another very interesting divergence in the way he is approaching the vote. Asked whether he understood the concerns of members of Congress who will have to vote against the will of their constituents, Obama replied: ‘Now with respect to Congress and how they should respond to constituency concerns, I do consider part of my job to help make the case and to explain to the American people exactly why I think this

David Cameron spoke to Barack Obama yesterday about the situation in Syria. A Number 10 spokesman gave the following read-out of the call: ‘They are both gravely concerned by the attack that took place in Damascus on Wednesday and the increasing signs that this was a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian regime against its own people. The UN Security Council has called for immediate access for UN investigators on the ground in Damascus. The fact that President Assad has failed to co-operate with the UN suggests that the regime has something to hide. ‘They reiterated that significant use of chemical weapons would merit a serious response

The elasticity of President Obama’s ‘Red Line’ on Syria seems to be being stretched to breaking point following this week’s chemical weapons attack by Bashar Assad in a Damascus suburb, Ghouta, where up to 1,200 people, including many women and children may have died. What we all have seen on our screens is not an episode from ‘Wag the Dog’ as Assad and his chief cheer leader Putin would have us believe. In fact this is likely to have been the worst chemical attack on civilians since Saddam Hussein gassed up to 5,000 Iraqi Kurds in Halabja 25 years ago. Fortuitously the UN has a team of chemical weapons inspectors