HE CAME, HE SAW, HE TRAMPLED...
Well, the dadblamed, ornery critter came & went. The streets around Buck House were full of dissenters & at least the concentric rings of US security men will have heard the noise. A number of banners & badges expressed the demonstratorsí views succinctly yet fluently. My favourite argument was ëFuck Off Bushí. Whilst lacking a certain elegance, it certainly doesnít equivocate. Sadly, I was unable to attend, but my e-pal Natalie did & thereís a vivid & stirring account of the dayís events in her excellent weblog.
Iíve already reported the Queen as less than pleased prior to the visit at having to go without her three doses of top ranking soap Coronation Street because of the blacking out of Palace televisions by Bushís security team. Now The Sunday Mirror has her ìfurious with President George W. Bush after his state visit caused thousands of pounds of damage to her gardensÖî Palace staff said that ìthey had never seen her so angry when she saw how her perfectly maintained lawns had been churned up after being turned into helipads with three giant H landing markings for the Bush visitî.
Apparently Mark Lane, the Buckingham Palace head gardener, broke down when he saw the extent of the destruction. Trees & shrubs planted in Queen Victoriaís time had been damaged by the rotors of the presidential helicopter Marine Force One & a couple of attendant Black Hawks. Additonally, ìrare varieties (of plants) named after members of the Royal Family & planted by the Queen Mother & the Queenî had been trampled by US secret servicemen. A ëPalace insiderí stated that ìthe repairs will cost tens of thousands of poundsî & that the 30,000 visitors who have walked through the gardens since the Palace was opened to the public last year have had less environmental impact than three days worth of zealous presidential security staff.
But itís not just flora that have bitten the dust in the wake of this second Bush-led invasion. Fauna have suffered too in the form of the Queenís personal flock of flamingos. The birds are now in deep trauma after security staff insisted that they be moved to ìa place of safetyî in case they flew into the helicoptersí rotors. Gloomiest reports suggest that they might never return.
Some might consider this latest act of presidential vandalism to be of a lower order of priority than recent & ongoing events in Iraq. To them I would say that we in Britain see it as a damn poor showÖ
11:11:58 PM 
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