NATO's arch civilizer, the UK

[Carl Remick]

Tony Blair's willingness to civilize the Serbs good and hard shows such
extraordinary missionary zeal that I've been wondering, just how exalted
*is* UK society these days that Brits can afford to lavish such
attention on the woes of other nations?

The following item -- buried in Saturday's NY Times -- goes a long way
to answer my question:

"The British Medical Journal said teen-agers in England and Wales have
Western Europe's highest incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and
teen-age pregnancy.  A report also said the teen-agers were more likely
to have used illicit drugs than their counterparts on the continent.
The trend was ascribed to poor education, poverty and lack of
supervision by parents, who work the longest hours in Europe."

Carl Remick