A welsh woman.

KT the reason is your political scene is so polemical. So you get ultra conservative media battling it out against the "mainstream" which is pretty damned liberal. So you get to have shows like the daily show and colbert report.

If we had nightly satirical news programmes, they'd be full of local news about road detrunking or stolen scrap metal. big stories like the phone haking are quite rare. plus, we have laws requiring impartiality. thats why hilary clinton thinks the bbc is one of the best news organisations. but this limits the lulz we get from them. additionally, we have laws that mean footage from government (houses of parliament, leveson inquiry etc.) cannot be shown for the purposes of satire. it would seem that britain has lost its sense of humour altogether.

The closest thing we have is charlie brookers annual review of international news. (i wholehertedly reccomend watching it. just youtube 2011Wipe) A little bit more serious and to the point than the daily show and colbert, but he is satirising a whole year in under an hour.

the US is just more interesting. It also lets itself be ridiculed, which is a good thing i think, becoming one of the many ways to keep your government in check. The UK has a higher voter turnout percentage, but I would argue that those voters are much less knowledgable (or rather interested) in the issues at hand. We dont care who we elect because all the parties are centrist and they will all bugger something up. Our government can create peers WILLY NILLY to sit in the house of lords and pass legislation through the upper house, in effect bypassing them. The PM has no veto power, but provided that he controls his Cabinet, maintains party discipline, and has a majority in the commons, the Prime Minister will be assured of passing his legislative agenda. Which is not nearly as exciting as filibusters, executive orders and the year long electoral campaigns.

We hardly keep up with our PM's either. All we have to remember is that they will be some public (which means private) shoolboy, who went to an elite university, lacks any military experience, leadership skills or really common sense and it will be up to the population to try again in four years, which only results in us making a mess of cleaning a mess. But debt ceiling deadlines, now they are exciting...