The only possible issue of privacy lies in cases where there might be a disagreement between parents over the desirability of the vaccinations Too bad. If Ms Booth is opposed and Mr Blair in favour, the nation is still entitled to know, who won?. A new board game is finding favour in the homes of Argentines this Christmas. “Eternal Debt” is a game that invites players to pit their wits against the International Monetary Fund. They may as well be doing it for real, for all the use their government has been. Not for nothing do its critics call President de la Rua’s regime an “ineptocracy”. The riots and looting that have broken out in Argentina’s cities bear witness to its incompetence.

The finance minister, Domingo Cavallo, has already resigned, and the president himself may not be far behind. Such instability, of course, only makes the current economic crisis worse, and it is hard to see how the country can easily recover. Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that Argentina has the resources and potential to enjoy Western standards of living, as it sometimes has in the past. In 1945, for example, Argentina and Canada enjoyed the same per capita income; now the average Argentine earns only about one sixth that of the average Canadian, and Argentina’s people complain that they have hardly enough to eat.Describing the problem and laying much of the blame at the door of the government is easy. Prescribing solutions for Argentina’s seemingly intractable economic problem is trickier.

But there are some general pointers to be gained from the experience of countries, including Britain in 1976, which have found themselves at the mercy of the IMF First, the government should devalue the currency. The attempt to maintain a parity of one peso to one dollar has already foundered (on the street the exchange rate is much lower). There are some, notably the Peronist former President Carlos Menem, who advocated the “dollarisation” of Argentina – the adoption of the US currency. Adoption of the dollar or at least permitting its circulation beside the local currency is becoming something of a trend in Latin America, with Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador all going down this road to a greater or lesser extent. It has its attractions, of course, the most obvious being the elimination of the prevalent cycle of inflation and devaluation.

It does, however, tie policy very much to conditions in the USA and removes the “lender of of last resort” from the Argentinian banking system, a hazardous move in current conditions. The most important point about dollarisation, though, is that changing the currency is no substitute for more fundamental economic reform.In Argentina’s case that means putting its public finances on a sound footing. To be fair to President de la Rua, he has striven to do this, but has been stymied by the resistance of the opposition parties in parliament. The political difficulties involved in such measures as cutting university funding or teachers’ pay are obvious and very real. For that reason it would be better if the IMF did not force such measures on an already weakened body politic immediately, but phased them in as part of a package that rescheduled the debt.Over the past decade or so, agencies such as the IMF and the World Bank have moved towards a more realistic approach to writing off some of the more extravagant debts owed to them, and this has been successful Something of the same must now be offered to Argentina. But painful change in that country too cannot be long delayed, even if it can be ameliorated..