...and the flag is full of stars! We're home!!! Get the segue from last week all you poets in the audience?
Anyone thinking on visiting Blighty in the near future, bring lots of money and don't even think about taking a taxi in London. Insane. Our Arab breatheren have driven up the price of everything to the point where it's nuts, and the Russians are still bidding things up as well. I can't explain what the city has become to one who doesn't have a reference point of a few years or decades past but it's simply mad. Oh, it's not as though I still don't love the place but the guy who said you can never go back was right; or at least if I did go back I could afford it for about a week. It was freezing and it snowed a couple of inches as well which sent the entire country into a tail spin for days. Someone asked me if we get snow like this. My reply was that we simply get out the leaf blowers and that's that. I was accused of American arrogance. I thought I was being pretty funny. Oh well.
The Brits still care about us and apparently there was a great deal of interest in the recent election. Problem is they KNOW and UNDERSTAND LESS about us than ever before. America to most is that strip of land between Boston and Virginia, California where everyone is a bit odd and the weather is lovely and Florida where a proper Brit goes to from time to time to get broiled like a lobster and take the kids to Disney World. As for the 200-odd million people like me who live somewhere that is frightfully unsophisticated--or so they have been told--a geography lesson is a must. Question no. 1 is will Sarah Palin become President (my answer, no), usually followed by, "wouldn't that be awful" or some variation thereof, whilst no. 2 is, "don't you feel lucky to have Obama as President?" My really smart friend, Larry, answered that one with, "Why should I? I grew up in Chicago. All Chicago politicians are crooks. Obama is from Chicago." A bit of a harsh assessment of The Leader I thought, but it did move the conversation along.
We were there for the "riots" against the raising of University tuition. In G.B., all University tuition is presently at L3000 and the proposal was to raise it to L7000. Horrors of horrors. For one who has paid out over $300,000 for my two geniuses I didn't see the big deal but it sure got the attention of the kids in the student union, hence the riots. Trust me, it looked worse on tv than it actually was but down at the Met (that's New Scotland Yard to you), where I had lunch the next day with an old, retired buddy, the real concern was how the devil did the Heir and Camilla wind up where they wound up and who would carry the can for that one. As an American having this conversation I couldn't help but wonder if that had occured over here how many of the attackers would have been shot in the first 5 seconds of the incident whilst over there, not a weapon was produced by the security forces from Special Branch despite the fact that they WERE armed. Different policing. Anyway, I thought it might be of interest to a few readers as to what this was all about, so here's the story.
The new fees for University apply to every school equally; Oxbridge as well as schools of lesser note. Whilst payable immediately, one can borrow the funds at truly low interest charges (like a bank!) and not begin to repay the loans until one has a job paying over L21,000 a year. After that, the loan is repayable in very small installments every year over thirty years and after that, if not satisfied, it goes away! My friend, I would take that deal in a New York second and for that we had the nonsense of a week ago. Needless to say, there were a number of "professional" protestors involved in the melee who contributed mightily to the events of the evening. As to the rest of the austerity package produced by the government, nary a peep. Grumblings, yes, but there appears to be a fuller understanding that the country has reached the end of a near-20 year spending binge and something must be done. Admirable. A bit more on this in the following days and then we begin on the gift that keeps on giving for folks like me, The Euros. By the by, I hope you noted that my predictions with which I closed out my last effort were spot on...WHEW!
See you tomorrow. Good to be back.
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