{"id":14473,"date":"2003-11-18T15:13:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-18T15:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/18\/w-going-to-england\/"},"modified":"2003-11-18T15:13:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-18T15:13:00","slug":"w-going-to-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/18\/w-going-to-england\/","title":{"rendered":"W Going To England"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/WORLD\/europe\/11\/18\/britain.bush\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">W is visiting England this week<\/a>, causing the presence of &ldquo;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/main.jhtml?xml=\/news\/2003\/11\/17\/nbush217.xml&amp;sSheet=\/news\/2003\/11\/17\/ixnewstop.html\" target=\"_blank\">more armed men on the streets of London this week than at any time since the end of the Second World War<\/a>.&rdquo;  Additionally, the Secret Service made other &ldquo;<a href=\"http:\/\/observer.guardian.co.uk\/uk_news\/story\/0,6903,1086397,00.html\" target=\"_blank\">substantial demands<\/a>, some of them accepted, but the more outrageous courteously deflected by the Palace.&rdquo;  Some of the more &ldquo;outrageous&rdquo; demands included closing all Tube (subway) stations underneath wherever W was travelling and roving Blackhawk helicopters continually patrolling over his destinations.  I&rsquo;m sure that the citizens of London would have welcomed those minor inconveniences, though. \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n<p>I think that this whole visit, although designed to showcase England&rsquo;s alliance with the U.S., is doomed to backfire on both fronts.  Cost estimates to the English taxpayers alone are running \u00a35 million ($8.5 million); who knows how much this trip is costing Americans?  W isn&rsquo;t even going to address Parliament as his predecessors (&ldquo;including Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela and Francois Mitterand&rdquo;) have done in the past <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/allnews\/content_objectid=13631331_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-BUSH-PULLS-OUT-OF-SPEECH-TO-MPS-name_page.html\" target=\"_blank\">for fear that he might get heckled<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/WORLD\/asiapcf\/southeast\/10\/23\/apec.special.bush.australia\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">again<\/a>.  I&rsquo;m not certain I see any benefit to his going over there just for some photo-ops.  Take a look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.metafilter.com\/mefi\/29634\" target=\"_blank\">Metafilter thread<\/a> for some more rants&hellip;<\/p>\n<p>I think that these people definitely have the right idea: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bloggerheads.com\/can_weblogs\/bush_bum.asp\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.driko.org\/blogicons\/bare_bum_bush.gif\" width=\"100\" height=\"30\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Bare Your Bum at Bush!\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/3501955-106916838137101715?l=www.driko.org%2Findex_blogger.html\" alt=\"\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>W is visiting England this week, causing the presence of &ldquo;more armed men on the streets of London this week than at any time since the end of the Second World War.&rdquo; Additionally, the Secret Service made other &ldquo;substantial demands, some of them accepted, but the more outrageous courteously deflected by the Palace.&rdquo; Some of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/2003\/11\/18\/w-going-to-england\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;W Going To England&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[118],"class_list":["post-14473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-imported"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14473\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.driko.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}