- Me being introduced to the President
The address by President Obama in Westminster Hall last Wednesday was certainly an historic occasion, the first time a President of the United States has spoken in the Hall to members of both Houses of Parliament. The speech has received something of a mixed press, but I thought its content was well crafted for the occasion and a tribute to the UK.
The Hall was ideal for the occasion. There was an appropriate mix of pomp and informality or at least an absence of too much formality. The fanfare by the State Trumpeters heralded the President’s arrival. The Trumpeters were on a ledge in front of the magnificent South Window: I hadn’t even realised that such a ledge existed.
The President made a couple of slips in his opening remarks. Ken Clarke, sat quietly on the platform, must have been surprised when the President opened with ‘Lord Chancellor’. The Lord Speaker, who had just shown the President round the House of Lords, may also have been a tad surprised as well. There was also a little unexpected excitement at the back of the Hall when, about half way through the proceedings, an MP collapsed and had to be attended by Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, a doctor, before being rushed out in a wheelchair.
Following his speech, the President left by the North Door, which meant walking the length of the Hall. In so doing, he spent a good deal of time meeting parliamentarians at the end of each row of seats. Since I was sat at the end of a row, I was introduced to him. Given that the Archbishop of York was sat in front of me, and the Lords Heseltine and Carrington sat behind, I thought there was a chance I might miss out, but in the event I got to meet him.
The sense of history was reinforced by Lord Carrington who, before proceedings got under way, reminisced about the time when President de Gaulle addressed members of both Houses in the Hall in 1960. Lord Carrington was present and was impressed by the fact de Gaulle delivered his speech, word for word as on the printed text circulated in advance, without a note.
The USA has less than 3% of the world’s-human-population
but is cornering and consuming more than 70% of the renewable-and- non-renewable lifesupports of planet Earth :
so when the President of such an enormous Carcinomic-civilisation unilaterally initiates his own American governance-terminology “Lord Chancellor” over and above the British Second Chamber’s own constitutionally-correct terminology “Lord Speaker”
we might expect further esotericly insidious moves, on high between The UK Executive and the American Establishment, to rescue Britain from the internationally-competitive slippery-slope it is unawarely sliding-down
by having us ‘de facto prepared’ to be one of the 51st states of the USA; or if Puerto Rico becomes the singular 51st state before we can, then we’ll no doubt still stand a very very strong chance of becoming top-of-the-heap of 52nd states, until duly winning that saving Title.
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My more positive submission to Baroness Deech’s “Hymn to” is the one I recommend to be read, however.
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(310 / 6900) x 100 = 4.5%
The noble lord Norton is first rate at making people jealous! ach!!
Lord Carrington was present and was impressed by the fact de Gaulle delivered his speech, word for word,
Some people do incessant rehearsals, and it gets better and better.
Twm O’r Nant: Indeed. The best ad libs are usually those that have been well rehearsed!
“The Trumpeters were on a ledge in front of the magnificent South Window: I hadn’t even realised that such a ledge existed.”
There must be a very narrow access corridor then, but from where? Some of the mysteries of the place. Certainly not lifted by crane! I know! The window is closer to ‘ground’ floor level on the other side.
Gareth Howell: That’s a very good question. I had a look at the end of the ceremony. There is a narrow ramp leading up to the ledge. One could discern that it was narrow by the way in which the trumpeters took up their position.
I first discovered this ledge by noticing the doors on the side in this photograph; I have always assumed there was a staircase somewhere. I later found about its use through photographs from the Queen’s Jubilees, showing the State Trumpeters in the same location (see here). Similar balconies, if I can describe them thus, seem to exist above the doorways in the Central Lobby and St Stephen’s Hall, although I assume they are only used for the conservation and lighting of the mosaics.
What I don’t understand is, where is this ramp Your Lordship is referring to? What did you see? I confess that, thanks to your interest in the Palace and because I am stuck 2,140 kilometres away, I sometimes see you as my eyes in the place.
Regards to a presidential hand shaker.
I think I may abandon ship for the summer before long.
On the basis that he is never going to please the purists, no matter how hard he tries, I’d be tempted if I were in his shoes to adopt the ‘you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb’ approach and just say, “Yo dudes! Who’s in the House?”
In order to get a little bit of history clarified and to weaken the idea that the UK somehow owes subservience to the USA and its duplicitous leaders.
Recently we had a lift of spirits as this strange alliance was, at last, being questioned as it should. But, here we go again, licking around the jaws of the Eagle for the remains of the kill.
We have an insulting view of history connected with the US and it is time it was corrected once and for all. It makes you all look so dramatically ignorant to the rest of the world.
The US did not come to our aid once, let alone twice. In fact, if you look at from a different angle, we came to their aid in many ways.
America joined Europe in the fight against Hitler only after war had been declared on the US via Pearl Harbour. Hitler declared war on them five days after the attack on that base. Therefore the Americans could do little else but finally accept the need to join Europe.
If you are now going to say, well, in WW1 they were there for us. Oh, yes? And that was because the Germans had already got U-Boat action on the go and was urging Mexico to attack the North from the South. So, what else could they have done?
The US did not make a massive contribution to our economic recovery. They were worried Europe would not be able to keep their economy going if it did not have the cash to buy their imports. So they funded our spending in order to save themselves from recession. No Father Christmas there then. Simply a clever way to gain financially from our dire straits. Does that ring a banking bell to you? The Marshall Aid programme was to stimulate Europe in order to aid the US economy. Not done via altruism but by the drive for economic good sense.
We follow that country into our own demise. Curious situation to be in if you really look at it. Why is it felt to be a feather in our cap to play the coat tail game? It is not only an embarassment to us all but brings us to the point of nausea at disbelief.
Follow the outcome of our sycophancy and see where it has led. Iraq, both sides of the Commons loved to be out front with the idea of our British men’s young lives for the use of American imperialism. Only too pleased to give them up on the lie they were supposedly fed. We have this wonderful ‘Special’ relationship in which anything must be sacrificed to.
What did we pay for that ‘friendship?’ Iraq was a failure, Afghanistan is following along and Libya is the craziest move so far. And that too is built on a foundation of duplicity.
Arms is an enormous earner for a lot of people and so the continuation of war is paramount to those who collect from the sale of such items. Stop war and you end their gravy train.
What you fail to realise is, those who represent the US policy look as if they are mentally in tact, the truth is they are akin to the Peter Sellers characters in ‘Dr Strangelove.’ Mad as a hatters and from a long line of them, since way back in the history of this silly little country who cannot see the forest for the trees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59YKlP–PhU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJit-ww5ntA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxrWz9XVvls
The love affair you have is misplaced and the need for clear information on our history and the truth is mandatory.
A book is on its way, titled:
America And The Imperialism Of Ignorance by Andrew Alexander, which should enlighten those who are in the dark.
It does a disservice to go on about the USA only entering WW2 at Pearl Harbour. Before that the USA was helping the Allies against Hitler by lend-lease (which was the only way to keep supplies coming once our money ran out) and by trying to support convoys in all ways possible short of war. It has to be remembered – if it can ever be forgotten – that to enter a war you need popular support, and, rightly or wrongly, it was far from clear to people in the mid-west or western states why their boys should get involved in Europe. Though the USA entered WW1 late and only really got involved in the fighting mid-1918 onwards, they paid a considerable price in proportion to the troops engaged. Had the war continued into 1919 the bulk of the fighting would have been by USA troops, the other allies being pretty well exhausted. The same is true of WW2 where whatever the proportions landed on D-Day it was clear the bulk of the non-soviet forces engaged would be American as they pretty well were by September 1944. And if we are going to throw stones, it should be pointed out that the UK did its very best to keep out of the war, hoping the Germans would turn against Russia, and we so nearly went to war with Finland against Russia which would have been a disaster. Where were we after all when Hitler entered the demilitarised Rhineland – Labour was still very pacifist and Baldwin was concealing from his own party the need to rearm on a big scale.
@DanFilson:
You really are clinging to propaganda of that era and it is a bit demoralising to think a person can go on with it after such a great deal of evidence shows it to be a fallacy. You appear to live in a closed mind world.
The US was late coming in because they didn’t want war at all. And they felt, which our leaders rebuked, that had they stalled long enough, Hitler would be finished as he was already out of his mind by the time he entered Poland. They also banked on the Russians putting an end to his expansionism. Just as they had with Napoleon.
The US loaned the UK money at huge interest rates, which only recently was repaid in full. We kept the US economy going with that money. They didn’t give two hoots about the British or Europe, other than as a place to dump their goods, that is until Japan hit Pearl Harbour.
And nothing has changed since.
If I may instantiate from the book title phrase, contributed by Maude Elwes in her
mind-warning and spirit-supporting clarification, concerning America’s international un-worthiness and Britain’s duplicitous complicity therein,
(‘) … The Imperialism of Ignorance (‘)
may I propose a notional title such as
‘ US and the Insidious Worldwide Terminal Disease of Ignorance ‘ –
We have only to find a handful of Individual & Neighbourly Human Development self-&-mutual-help publications and begin learning their know-how, then asking around for existing likeminded neighbourhood educational-support associations and UN, EU and UK democratic-governance-support-institutions thereto,
to find ourselves locked-out of both self- and mutual-neighbourly improvement and instead ‘openly-imprisoned’ in padded-cells under Individually-Capitalist-Global-Marketonomics
the underlying-driver of which is the Esoteric-Space-Race-for-the-Elites to colonise “Earth II” (and b****r Earth I).
The author of “Continent In Crisis” Professor David Smith surely ‘had his glasses off’
(if indeed he needs glasses at all which I would seriously doubt since he was fully alive and in touch without such stilts when I last saw him in 1998)
when he pointed out via a core-universities TV course that
“With the Lifesupports upon which Economics depends deteriorating into a quite possibly irreversible Downtrend, by being over-consumed, extincted, and destroyed, as THE STRATEGY for long-term Human-Race-Survival & Thrival,
but the economists’ inflated publicisation of GNPs and Global Stock-Markets show such Lifesupports to be on a permanent long-term-reliable UPTREND,
someone has to tell the economists that they have a vital-equation wrong somewhere”.
I submit that the above is only one instance of an Overall-Gross-Ignorance gripping the Global-Workplace (which employs Humans as a Workforce for 25% of their weekly timeframe)
spilling over into, and both impairing and corrupting, the 75% Life-place.
I ask the serious reader now to take any one of the following shortlist of self-and-mutual improvement publications, start proactively-doing its enablements, and then find a like-minded institution, association, group, or individual prepared to (affordably and with weekly regularity) genericly support and further those enablements :
“Natural Vision Improvement”
(Janet Goodrich, PhD);
“The Centering Book”
(Hendricks G. & Wills R.);
“The Moving Center”
(Hendricks K. & Hendricks G.);
“Dynamic Alignment Through Imagery”
(Eric Franklin);
“The Thinking Body”
(Mabel Todd);
“Wisdom of the Body Moving”
(Linda Hartley);
“Six Thinking Hats”
(Edward de Bono);
“(Any teaching book on life-factors-reporting, formal-argumentation, and moral-reasoning)”
and kindly include MilesJSD in your results-loop, to be informed please, via my email address held confidentially by this Lords of the Blog e-site, or forthcoming soon via my new voluntary non-profit would-be Earth-citizen’s website http://www.healthyhabitsmakehappyhumans.info .
0459St040611.JSDM.
both sides of the Commons loved to be out front with the idea of our British men’s young lives for the use of American imperialism. Only too pleased to give them up on the lie they were supposedly
Oil interests in the Gulf and Iraq are multinational and quite impenetrable except that the UK govt itself owns a large share in British Petroleum, an interest which it was obliged to protect.
This video came into view over the weekend and I felt it would throw some light on the true reason for the war on Libya, etc..
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?19927-Gaddafi-gold-for-oil-dollar-doom-plans-behind-Libya-mission
Just a thought!