Storm over the £1m pub lunch

[Fridays Child]

-snip-

Questions are raised on police costs, says Paul Stokes


President George W Bush will fly into a dispute about who picks up the bill surrounding his £1 million pub lunch in Tony Blair's Sedgefield constituency on Friday.

As an unprecedented security operation gathered pace, questions were being raised about why local police should be faced with the extra cost.

It is anticipated that the President will arrive at Teesside airport before being taken the 20 miles to Tony and Cherie Blair's home in Trimdon Colliery by helicopter.

Activity in the area yesterday suggested that they would then travel five miles by road to the Dun Cow Inn in Sedgefield for lunch.

The premises were closed to customers during the day as American special agents and British police installed themselves inside, with signs of new kitchen equipment being hastily put in.

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[E_Zapata]

1. New kitchen equipment?

Did bush bring his own thai tasting mice, I wonder?

He is a total embarrassment........I am sooo ashamed.

My sincerest apology to the good people of England!

A million pounds for a friggin bowl of porridge?!!!!

[Fridays Child]

2. I wonder how many children went to bed hungry, tonight?

In Houston, a charitable feeding program can buy one pound of food for ten cents. That £1,000,000 (1,700,000 US dollars) being spent on the pub lunch could have purchased 17 million pounds of food for the poor.

Bush is a walking obscenity.

[maggrwaggr]

3. That's a couple million bucks for a freaking PHOTO op.

You could probably buy the pub for less than that.

[neuvocat]

4. This has been a disaster from minute 1.

And Britain is supposed to be Bush's best ally. I love those brits.

[Lisa]

5. I think that the White House's surprise

... about Blair's modest constituency home is very telling. Bush doesn't seem to realize that, even though there are fancy manor houses on BBC shows, many of them are National Trust properties ... the vast majority of Britons live in houses or apartments that are quite modest (and generally use far less energy than North American homes).

Judging from his "autobiography", Bush has always been like this -- he doesn't seem willing to look at life in other countries from a local perspective, but goes around imposing his own expections all the time (e.g. when he went to China as a young man). No wonder he's making so much trouble for his poor hosts!