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4 April 2009

Sorry, Mr President, but bringing your own car to the G20 summit was plain rude

It’s the little slights that really hurt. The ones where they just don’t seem to have thought about it. Certainly, we’re all thrilled that the great President Obama has deigned to make a visit to this little island vassal state. But why did he have to bring his own car?

We have cars. Loads of them. And the thing is, Barack, ours even drive on the correct side of the road. Granted, they aren’t all so proficient at, say, withstanding a direct hit from an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) as your multi-ton behemoth (dubbed ‘The Beast’), but you’d be amazed at the number of RPGs we don’t have floating around in the UK. Or assault weapons of any sort, really. It’s probably something to do with the way that we can’t buy them at our local 7-Eleven of a morning, when we pop out to get some milk.

Even so, some of our cars probably could have managed it. You see, we actually have a few quite important people in this country, too. No, don’t laugh. We really do. There’s that lady, what’s she called? Ah yes, the Queen. We managed to stop her from being blown up, like anything. Really. On a daily basis. And that other guy. Chubby, squinty eyes, Scottish. Name escapes me. But I think you met him. Yeah, that’s right. You gave him a DVD boxed set. Which didn’t work. Because the DVD players are different over here. Just like the cars. Has anybody ever told you that? No, probably not. You probably just ship your own DVD players over, too.

It’s not as though you were even paying for the damn car properly, either. At least, I assume you weren’t. I’m having some tense trouble with this column, because I’m writing this before you get here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that the US embassy hasn’t reversed its policy of totally not paying the congestion charge at all, for no reason whatsoever.* Well, I say ‘policy’, although ‘policy’ is a bit grand, isn’t it? It’s more a sort of vague, unthinking assumption. A sort of ‘ooh, look, there are some tiny little people, like ants, jumping around down there and waving some quaint little bills around, let’s ignore them completely’.

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Alide

April 3rd, 2009 11:17pm Report this comment

Hugo, who the heck are you talking about rudeness? Your are rude to the nth degree, and ignorant to boot.

Ruth Fitch

April 6th, 2009 1:49pm Report this comment

He won't get it you know - too much irony. But I liked it.

Ken Bishop

April 6th, 2009 5:47pm Report this comment

Poor Alide, an American perchance? Calling someone "ignorant" is not debate, unless you provide some reasoning to justify the remark. Keep it up, Hugo, you make me chuckle every time. And you make a serious point too.

Alide

April 7th, 2009 12:43am Report this comment

No, Ken, I am not an American!

The Masked Marvel

April 7th, 2009 1:35am Report this comment

Alide,

So you're not an American. This means that you went out of your way to defend the leader of a foreign country against a fairly routine "Ooh, That Arrogant US President" column. How strange.

Cult of Personality, or what?

Malc Dow

April 7th, 2009 12:08pm Report this comment

"It sounds like the globe has a lot of problems. Or maybe people just like describing things as a ‘global problem’ so that they personally can’t be held accountable."

A truer word...

If the article was worth reading, for Politics is a bit naff as a subject (one can go on and on...),it was for this.

There is a funny smell about this 'global' stuff.
Reminds me of something...

Way back then in the stone age times, when the majority of the population was 16 or younger (imagine the noise), when the 1 in 300 who had reached over 30 years old were privy to certain cycles that the majority of the population were not.

This is power over the people of course.

The vast amount of monies that are expended on researching what results in 'secret' reports, surely can't be all wasted.

We must have the technology (thanks to the tax payer), that can predict certain fundamental elements of the universe as we know it.
Including the financial world. In fact very much the financial world.

Do 'they' know something 'we' do not? I think we should be told etc...

After all, while you struggle with your mortgage, 'they' just print more of the stuff.
The budget, as far as one can see, is dependent on the speed of the printing press.

Of course it makes good business sense, as it did in the times of yore, to keep a trick or two up your sleeve.

"Where does a General keep his armies??"
"Up his sleevies" is the obvious answer.

Global warming, global crash, global anything, if you have prior knowledge to anything 'global', as any fan of TinTin and his adventures in the land of the Incas' will tell you, is a powerful thing.

And yes, it is the small details about Barack Obama that should cause concern.

Little glitches in the program perhaps.
But this can result in a computer crash, and wwe wouldn't want that, again.

One trusts 'they' are working on it.

Alide

April 9th, 2009 7:20pm Report this comment

Neither, Masked Marvel. It's just that I know a little more than you or Hugo seem to know. Besides, I don't resent Americans the way most Brits and other Europeans do. Get over it, man.

Blaze N.

August 4th, 2009 8:45pm Report this comment

I don't know how things are run over there, but in the USA you are taught not to trust other people. -Any- other people. Why? I don't know, it's a bunch of crock, but you can't easily break habit.

You would, however, think the elected leader of a large, powerful country could resist the habitual urge and actually lend credit to those he visits. Oh, and to also not clog up their streets with the same atmosphere depleting garbage that is rampant here.

It's just common courtesy.

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