Neopolitan

Duh, I guess you're right. Now that I think of it, I've sure never seen one doing a half time show at a British "football" game.

PatrickLondon

All a matter of taste, but to mine, marching bands anywhere don't seem to exit soon enough, so Barbara was right.

As for the congestion charge thing:
http://tinyurl.com/nxv7n
http://tinyurl.com/mqlgv
http://tinyurl.com/omlkt

WillTravel

Insurance premiums might be driving this as well. I know someone else posted that the costs of taking a school group overseas had become prohibitive lately.

Neopolitan

Thanks for the links, Patrick.

I loved this quote:
But Mr Livingstone said: "It would actually be quite nice if the American ambassador in Britain could pay the charge that everybody else is paying and not actually try and skive out of it like some chiselling little crook."

Neopolitan

Darn, didn't mean to post quite yet. What I wanted to say was that Mr. Livingstone can certainly turn a phrase, can't he?

Unfortunately he fails to acknowledge one basic fact -- most American diplomats and politicians are clearly above the laws that govern all normal people!

wtm003

<<Oh please, using "Florida school board" and "common sense" in the same paragraph is already a stretch!>>

LOL! Thanks for the chuckle. I'm sure you can replace Florida with any of our other 49 states.

PatrickLondon

I have an ancient book of rude remarks where Mark Twain is quoted as saying something like "In the first place, God created idiots - this was for practice; then he created school boards".

ira

>..most American diplomats ... are clearly above the laws that govern all normal people! <

All diplomats are exempted from the laws of the country to which they are accredited.

Carta_Pisana

a majority of Americans do not live in an urban envoronment - and by that I mean, no car, able to walk to the grocery store, choose to take public transportation. Many Americans are fearful of "the big city". The are very few urban small towns/villages in America - like in Italy, Spain, Mexico, Croatia, France, etc, etc. I grew up in the suburbs (on the west coast of Florida) - I now find the suburbs to be horrible - the isolation, having to drive to get anything. But many Americans
live that way and are not comfortable in crowds.

PatrickLondon

>All diplomats are exempted from the laws of the country to which they are accredited.<

Not quite. They're immune from criminal prosecution and taxes, but the common sense of diplomacy would dictate that they don't make egregious nuisances of themselves by setting out to flout local laws.

Neopolitan

Now that we've gotten into semantics on this topic of diplomats being exempt from. . ., I hope you realize my original comment was very tongue in cheek, meaning they "think" they are above the law in all respects. There have been so many cases of outrageous behavior on the part of embassy workers and diplomats trying to be excused from actions that no normal person would ever even consider doing.

jody

Back to the original post...Yes it did make the London Times this morning!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...115749,00.html

SiestaLinda

Ok all of you non believers--Neopolitan was right!! CNN did a segment on it at 6:30 this morning. It "is" turning into a big deal

Neopolitan

So is now the time I'm supposed to say, "I told you so"?

Christina

6:30 am on CNN is not a big deal, it is filler of minor interest. I have been on CSPAN at 6:30 am, actually, and no one saw me, that is not a prime period of viewing. This wasn't in any national newspaper I read (Wash Post, NYT). I really don't think that a high school band group in Ft Myers is of that much interest internationally too anyone. I am sorry if that offends Floridians feelings, but I just don't think this is really of much interest or importance. They have lots of minor items in the paper and CNN, etc., that aren't very important, just to fill space. This didn't even make my newspaper's weekly travel section on Sunday (Wash Post) and they have lots of minor items. I really don't think this is going to be a big deal or that it can be, because a HS band isn't that important. Now if Condi Rice or the Air Force Band refused to go to London because of fear of danger, that might be a big deal.


I thought it was really dumb, but Florida is very conservative in most parts. In fairness, it wasn't really just about London per se, but their assessment of Europe in general and I guess a couple train bombings created impressions on them. It is a problem when you have US plus UK as allies in a war, I think.

annabelle2

Was it the humorist Dave Berry who said, after the hanging chad elelction fiasco: "Florida; you can't say it without saying "duh..."

Okay, not bashing Florida, just kind of fit w/ the theme...

Neopolitan

Christina, my most recent comments were more about the article in the London Times than the one on CNN. It was directed more to those who insisted it wouldn't cause a comment in London itself, and scoffed at the idea of any kind of real or imagined threat to reduced tourism from London to Florida. That "threat" is pretty apparent in the London Times article.

m_kingdom2

For the record, it's not the "London Times", it's "The Times" which is NATIONAL not local newspaper.

I believe the town in question in America has a population of around 56,000 i.e. some hicky backwater. So their views are utterly isignificant, and serve merely to amuse those "across the pond" rather like president Bush.

Neopolitan

m-kingdom your aloof diatribe as usual is pretty funny. While Ft. Myers may be a "hicky backwater" to you, over 80,000 Brits a year go there for a week or more and spend literally millions of pounds.
That may not be significant to you (possibly the amount you spend on your designer wardrobe each year) but it is significant. That includes the thousands who actually now own real estate there, but it does not include an even larger number who also own or go to Naples, Marco Island, Sanibel-Captiva, Bonita or other communties in the same general area.

And it HAS been noticed and is being used as a sort of threat by officials in the UK. It may merely AMUSE you, but clearly there are some who are taking this quite seriously -- probably even more seriously than those same people take their own designer wardrobes, if you can imagine such a thing.

And thanks for reminding me that the report I mentioned, which shows this event IS creating a stir, is in a National paper, not just a local one, indicating that perhaps it is becoming even more significant than I had originally suggested it might become.

ncgrrl

If you just say "The Times" how do you distinguish the London Times from the Financial Times?

Have to agree with Christina about the media coverage. Some FL hs band isn't going to London isn't a big deal to most Americans. It's local to Londoners, so I understand why it's in their paper and probably not on the front page.