Their beef? As the image here shows, the bottom right hand ¼ of the screen was where the movie’s credits ran (without music) while the top half showed live promos for upcoming shows. The bottom lefthand box had a list of programs currently running on BBC 2, 3 and 4. It looked like a peripatetic FOX or SKY News screen with eye bleeding headlines in virtually every corner and tickers running at bottom with a tiny space for the on-screen person talking (trust me, in this country that’s a huge insult as reviled Aussie media magnate Rupert Murdoch owns both networks and several newspapers).

It is a rare and beautiful thing to see a big organisation admit they are wrong and allow viewer to see the full credit run. Now perhaps the ball is back in Hollywood’s court to strike a balance between the classic movies which ran 6-8 slates of credits at the start of a movie and the words THE END in the 1940’s -1960’s the current explosion of end credits. Once there, they figured no one but the most dedicated would even watch and we saw a cornucopia of names explode.

They grew to where the film my son and I saw this weekend in the DreamWorks hit animated film Kung Fu Panda nearly 8-minutes of credits. This included an entire team for a series of alphabet letter computer machine graphics operators that ran by so quickly I cannot remember them and meant nothing to anyone but their Mom and Dad because anyone operating this kind of a machine has no life but this machine. Even my 8-year old son was pissed that we were the only two left in the theatre as the cleaners worked around us while he tested his ability to run up and down the stairs.

We read about the star’s (remember it is an animated film so they come in to do solo voice over work in a tiny sound studio) and their multiple assistants (what does one plump the booth pillow under their angelic butt whilst the other brings herbal tea for the equally delicate voice), the accounting team (hey what movie can be made without a team of bean counters counting out every penny?), the drivers (not sure what they do on this movie…), the lawyers and their assistants (your bad lawyer joke goes here) and the catering company because no army, even one locked up in buildings with digital cubicles 24/7 goes anywhere without food.

I half expected to see location credits for virtual filming in virtual China and I did see an envious newsfeed over the weekend about Chinese film and animation artists wondering why their country could not produce something this good but that’s another subject for another time.

At the very least DreamWorks finally got it that we want to know who played what character as we were leaving so we could say out loud, “Oh my gosh that was Dustin Hoffman! Wow, they even had the greatest martial arts film star ever Jackie Chan in a Kung Fu movie, how cool!,” before we saw the names of the 3rd Assistant director and her assistant’s assistant.

Progress by any other name is still progress.

“Men’s Wearhouse wants to charge me $50 per pant alteration because I lost “too much weight” and they will have to “cut” the pants, whatever the hell that means, and “cutting” is not included in free alterations. On top of it all, they would need more than a week to do the alterations. You would think I went from morbidly obese to extremely thin as big of a deal they were making it. Nevertheless, I took my pants and left. Forget that.”

So fit and healthy Travis either has to invest the money elsewhere, (psst a decent tailor won’t charge you more than about $20 each) or invest in new suits. Clearly the store erred in judgement on this one first by refusing to honour their own guarantee and then trying to extort $100, £50 for an alteration that they made sound like they were doing him a great favour.

Now those reading this across the EU are thinking so…?

Alteration/tailoring services in higher end men’s clothing stores come as part of the sales. A salesman works for a large percentage of his or her income on a “commission” or percentage of sales basis so the best keep extensive lists of customers with whom they communicate when items come in that may suit them (pardon the pun). The retail chain Nordstroms in the USA is especially known for their diligent attention to detail and excellent after service sales.

Tailoring is offered as a break-even in-store service “goody” the diligent sales professional tacks on (pardon this pun as well) out of his or her own margin to service the customer. Most sales professionals understand that a happy customer is the gift that keeps on giving year on year. A dissatisfied customer will tell 12 people about their experience whilst a satisfied one tells 3. It’s not fair but it is reflective of human nature.

In a recent article about the men’s clothier Rochester Big and Tall, I talked about the lengths that chain goes to ensure customer satisfaction enshrining their senior service representative Holly Roe into the customer service Hall of Fame for sheer tenacity on my behalf.

Travis was treated as a kid not likely to buy any more suits there. Get him in, take his money and then next customer! In this economy, looking at any customer walking through the door with anything less than a multi-thousand dollar lifetime bounty on their head is just dumb. He was jerked around during the sale buying expensive add-ons and other things not needed then had the rug pulled out when he needed them most.

My guess is Travis will buy a few more suits in his lifetime. “I’ll definitely never shop at Men’s Wearhouse, or even return for alterations. Especially the location in Topeka, Kans, who initially exploited my lack of suit knowledge to tack on many unnecessary additions to my purchase with guilt trips and more (”Anybody interviewing for a position HAS to have…[product]”) and the location in Addison, Texas for telling me I’ve lost too much weight over the past year.”

The Consumerist website wanted to know what would have happened if he came in once a month over that year he lost the weight, would there have been a problem then?

Good question. Bad move on Men’s Wearhouse part though. I just told many multiples more than 12 people. Oh well, they have a bid advertising budget, they’ll lure in more and treat them badly too…

ONCE.

Americans living abroad, if we indeed want to find something resembling a community of US ex-pats, sometimes gather together for a cookout. The weather is fabulous today. Alas this is a workday, so most will occur tomorrow or Sunday. Mostly though, we keep to ourselves. Living abroad, one learns to “blend.”

We’re quite happy living with our EU spouses, expanding our world view, obtaining news more sources than CNN and FOX, Brits actually read up to 10-daily newspapers and discuss local issues in great detail. Our priorities shift from the White House race to: local Council Tax lobbying, community movements to stop a local heavy metal rock festival from going ahead or speaking in quiet, dignified meetings to protect areas along our pristine Glamorgan Heritage Coast from expansion.

Our lives are simpler, quieter and whilst we do not know all of our 38-other neighbours here in the village of Monknash, despite our best efforts to blend in, they know who we are.

This real time conversation with an as then unknown neighbour as introduction whilst walking the dog:

“Hi there, my name’s Denis, I live on the farm up on the hill over there.”
“Yes… I know…”

And that’s why we pretty much keep to ourselves.

Were I to leave this secure Welsh homeland and wander about London, I could within 10-minutes easily locate a dozen or so groups shaking and stirring like Bert, Ethel and the kids visiting for a week from Austin. “Hey honey look at this!!!! Awww, ain’t that sweeeeeet… this nice man says Queen Elizabeth personally authorised this plate with her photo on it!!!”

They are the ones speaking 30-40 decibels too loudly wandering obliviously in their matching US flag tops. One normally hears them coming long before you see them, “Hey Ethel, get the kids and come over heah! I want a picture of us all by this heah Tower Bridge!” Excuse me!, EXCUSE ME! Parle vuuus Engles? Yeah you! Can you get a picture heah of me, Ethel and the kids? That there’ Sara Jane, she’s a real cutie ain’t she! We’re from Austin (Hook ‘em Horns! Woo-hooo!).

The migraine has by now fully formed in my right temple and is inching its way across the forehead region as I ask God to open the ground in front of me and swallow me whole. Why do Americans blithely play the stereotypical role of crass buffoon, even when guests in someone else’s country? Even George Bush and the Secret Service shut down Heathrow for hours cancelling hundreds of flights over two days when Air Force One landed, whilst Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II goes to the annual horse meet nearby at Ascot and if you did not know she was there could likely trip over her unawares.

The Brits are quite serious and quiet folk. Do you even see the number of heads that whip around to stare as your “entourage” approaches? Do you remotely listen to what is being said or understand that you are the butt of a series of long-running and time-tested jokes? Can anything save you from yourselves?

I keep watching clips of Americans stuffing themselves at backyard BBQs whilst complaining about $4 a gallon gas (that costs $10 here) and uttering phrases about how much they “support our troops” on this day yet would never personally consider serving in the Armed Forces (or allowing their progeny to) but tear up at the song (or is it a demand that) “God Bless America.” They will look you powerfully in the eye, talk about their Patriotism and proclaim that “these colours don’t run…” but do they ever blend?

A local lad was killed in Iraq recently and the grief was as quiet and powerfully felt as the shame for even being there in the first place. I offer my national origin only when pressed and always with an apology. In 2003 I helped lead an effort in Amsterdam asking questions about the war to come (that we knew even then would never end) because I speak Dutch fluently, something most never bother to do or try. Instead we expect everyone else to speak US English and think that by speaking louder and s-l-o-w-e-r they will somehow understand us? To this day, people walk up to me in Amsterdam when visiting thanking us for our efforts to bridge gaps and showing an entire nation our country does have thinking rational people and we’re not all bunch of gun-toting cowboys.

Is it possible to insist that Americans visiting a foreign country learn a bit about sensory acuity, the people and culture of the land we are visiting and develop an ability to have our own body language, speaking level and tone mirror and match the environment we find yourself in vs. always standing out so painfully?

Our e-magazine The Vadimus Post tries to help bridge understanding gaps because people want to learn about our country beyond the media portrayals. Brits are fascinated with our country and when they visit, they blend in and do not make a fuss. They queue up orderly while we push and demand our space.

It would be nice if we could learn something from their example. But then we kicked them out by dumping tea in our harbour. OK, I guess that nixes that walk to the sea. I guess I’ll just take the dog and quietly hum Yankee Doodle Dandy…

The ever prescient e-bay CEO Meg Whitman saw their potential and in 2002 invested $1.5 billion dollars in e-bay stock to acquire and make this the world’s biggest web micropayments platform on the back of an exclusive deal with eBay and 60 per cent of its turnover derives from this auction marketplace. She smartly kept them at arms-length to avoid any direct financial control or appearance of impropriety since the two company’s financial transactions were so closely related.

The only thing she was unable to bring was e-bay’s focus on community and customer service. The company is never on anyone’s service hit list, except perhaps a Mafia one for service gaffes. People have had accounts wrongly seized or dismissed without real chance of appeal. For years they were known for shooting first and asking if the homicide was justified later… if at all.

The website The Consumerist was so peeved with an inability to reach live people with real complaints that they asked their readers to help. The end result was a 13-page list of direct dial telephone numbers, names and found here for those with a direct complaint to access a live person.

I recently had to send money to my sister from here in the UK. After three attempts over 10-days all wrongly input by various backroom departments at Barclays Bank, I gave up and said open a PayPal account. She did and it was there in a nanosecond and fully in her account after 36-hours.

I received pirated vs. legitimate DVDs that were not labelled from two e-bay sellers. I was enraged and in one case they quickly refunded my money and in the second case they decided there was no claim despite identical claims. There was no way in which to speak to a live person and so it just died.

When it works, it’s great. When it doesn’t it doesn’t.

Now as they approach adolescence, we can all hope they grow up enough to become a customer focused company.

Meg would prefer it, I’m sure.

100’s of trucks drove through and around downtown London during Prime Minister’s Question time in the House, expressing their displeasure at the high cost of diesel (which already starts 10% higher than petrol) that is destroying many businesses. Yesterday The Guardian reported that “today’s action saw a section of the busy London-bound A40 Westway road close, but overall the protest was non-disruptive.

Kent-based haulier Peter Carroll of Transaction, the fuel protest group, warned that unless government policy changed, some drivers could take part in ‘wildcat action’. “I fear that if the government does not listen, they (drivers) might end up doing things that we would not condone but which we would understand,” said Carroll from the protest outside the Houses of Parliament.

“This is all about people - people who have built up their businesses, sometimes over generations. “It breaks my heart when I meet people who have had to re-mortgage their homes and are now facing a kind of commercial slaughter on a gigantic scale.”

The rises are unprecedented and there is no cost parity across the EU so drivers in France and Belgium tank up before getting on the ferry, drive on UK roads and fill up again when they return home thus saving considerable money. While the government did scrap a scheduled .02 pence per litre rise in April, fuel costs though have risen 30% this year and £1.50 per litre diesel is months, if not just weeks, away.

What can the government do? Not much really. It’s all a matter of who has the biggest impact/makes the most real noise. Fuel hauliers for Shell staged a four-day strike recently and won a 14% pay increase (over two years) because stations began to run out of petrol, consumer panic buying ensued, lines began to form and the company blinked. One service station owner in Devon raised his prices to £1.99 and pilloried for taking advantage of consumers.

Government workers faced with rising costs of all home products have threatened strike action along with teachers and NHS nurses. Yes there is some speculation and the supply and demand curves are identical with and no new fields coming online. China adds 1,000 cars each day to the roads, India less than but significant.

The problem is that like junkies injecting drugs between our toes because the veins in our arms have collapsed, little is being done to end our dependence on foreign oil, rather we try to find ways to ensure we get an uninterrupted supply at any price.

And OPEC knows this.

Alas, the trouble is not in clothing rather their decidedly upscale food markets located in nearly every large High Street or shopping mall store. They could never compete with Tesco, Sainsbury or Asda on volume for such low margin business so they provided upscale products in the manner of specialty food retailer Waitrose. Indeed they poached Steve Esom from Waitrose to head their food division just 13-months ago and he was announced just four months ago as a likely successor to Sir Stuart. All was tea and crumpets until yesterday.

Alas, Mr. Esom’s departure was also announced yesterday as his understudy John Dixon, head of M&S Direct, their online retailing arm pulled a Shirley MacLaine of his own and was slotted in as head of food. (MacLaine was a chorus member understudy to Carol Hane in Broadway’s Pajama Game, stepped in when Carol broke her leg and was promptly discovered moving on to fame and fortune, while most still ask Carol who?) How long before we say Steve who?

M&S business strategy often reminded me of Volkswagen in the 1970’s. The brand has an enormous value and name recognition but the lines extending underneath it make little sense.

Volkswagen meant solid reliable Beetles and Campers to virtually everyone. The 70s saw them branch into so many cars and then they did away later with the Beetle altogether they lost their soul and identity as a company. OK, it was a bit eerie to see Hitler parade around Berlin in one and they were the car every kid could afford to buy and maintain. They went crazy with all the different cars including something they marketed as ‘The Thing’ and almost disappeared. Now with the new Beetle leading the way, VW is back strong and synonymous with sleek autos.

M&S has struggled with the development of hypermarkets such as Tesco and Asda superstores and just never decided what it wanted to be, a top flight department store, High Street anchor or specialty food purveyor. So they did all three. Aside from the roadside service home run they hit with their partnership with motorway provider Moto Services to bring healthy food options to rest areas, they have lagged.

Their online operation is now easier to navigate and the delivery/fulfilment system works well enough, but you don’t think of them in terms of innovation, fitness and sexy, mostly solid singles up the middle with their “me too” response.

Tesco.com is the online gold standard where virtually every item in store can be purchased online. They have a few things still to learn, but none more important than deciding who they really want to be because trying to be all things to all people is a failing strategy in today’s niche business world. So the High Street weather barometer shows a period of low pressure moving in, but they’ve been here before and always come on strong.

John, we’re ready for you onstage sir. Break a leg?

US Govt. drug interdiction contractors Thomas Howes, Marc Gonsalves and Keith Stansell’s were shot down February, 2003. Subjects of a Time Magazine story on the fifth anniversary of their captivity, family members were angry with the US government over lack of progress and news of their plight. They were indeed the forgotten hostages. It appears to have been a brilliant deception operation leading to the forgotten three, former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and 11 other hostages to be rescued without a shot fired. And it was interesting that Columbian President Uribe would choose to personally brief Senators McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman about the covert “Operation Checkmate” before dinner on the 2nd day of their visit. “It was really a brilliant plan,” Lieberman said. “I think the timing was fortuitous. They just felt they had it ready to implement.”

A major shining moment foreign policy event highlighting the one resume strong point of Senator McCain occurs and he just happens to be in Colombia? What great coincidence that of all places on Earth an American presidential candidate could chooses to campaign over the annual 4th of July Independence Day holiday weekend, he chooses Colombia, and is witness to the biggest hostage rescue mission in this or any century?

OK, I admit I just lost the cynicism battle.

Whilst the glow is still here, John McCain has, at best, benefitted from extraordinary good fortune or… at worst, was caught in a continuing cynical and nefarious disregard for US sensibilities. As the mouthpiece for an Administration that led us into a 100-year war under false pretenses, outed a CIA agent out of spite then issued a Presidential pardon for the man responsible (well the guy taking the fall at least), Swift Boated the last Democrat to run for President and now, on centre stage, this event to boost to McCain’s failing poll ratings? It is not a huge stretch of the imagination to think the worst here. To quote former Texas Governor Ann Richards during her 1992 convention speech, “where… was… George?”

While sources in the White House admitted the Colombian military had some help from the US military in locating the rebel base, they refuse to go any farther and this should be one interesting day of Administration SPIN. A highly prized and high priority group of hostages were rescued without a single shot fired while 700 others remain held captive? And it occurred during a time when Washington is empty with Congress in recess for the holiday weekend?

President Alvaro Uribe’s stunningly simple “Operation Checkmate” was launched by undercover operatives who “duped” the rebels into putting the hostages on a military helicopter to be taken to rebel leaders in a new location. They over-powered the two FARC soldiers enroute and announced, “We are from the national army, you are all free.” If the government account is to be believed, FARC is “tired,” things had been going wrong for more than a year and it all began to unravel when two FARC commanders were killed earlier this year.

One can only hope then that John McCain journeys over the Labour Day holiday weekend to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who in that meeting hands over Iran’s nuclear warhead triggers whilst begging for international forgiveness just days before the Republican nominating convention.

Brooke Army Medical Centre in San Antonio will be busy as the re-integration process medically, emotionally, mentally and physically begins for the three former hostages. Indeed, without the 5th anniversary Time story where relatives expressing frustration at the lack of news or movement from the US government and only two “proof of life” videos in five years, they would still be anonymous captives. The families suffered with no real news because the US was pre-occupied with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So if you follow the fawning SPIN on CNN and FOX, yesterday’s release was a miracle and should not have come as a surprise to anyone. We should all just shut up and be grateful? There are many unanswered questions here. While I want to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, the timing is strange.

Let’s hope the news cycle of the holiday weekend does not mean this story is DOA on Monday the 7th. Three men and their families deserve a better explanation than “a miracle occurred.”

As my friend columnist Charley James of the Political Curmudgeon says, “if John McCain keeps changing positions as quickly as he is doing, he’s going to look like Lynda Blair in The Exorcist.”

McCain (list compiled by Charley, Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Steve Benan at The Carpetbagger Report) is below. Benan wrote “I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the criticism is taking root. Consider yesterday’s “Cafferty File” on CNN where Jack Cafferty notes some of McCain more glaring recent reversals, adding, ‘If John McCain doesn’t stop changing his position on the issues, he threatens to make John Kerry look like an amateur. In order for McCain to win in November, he has to appeal to both the traditional Republican base and to Independents. Dana Milbank in The Washington Post says that’s a delicate dance. And if McCain’s not careful, ‘he’s liable to break a hip.’ Of course, any doctor will tell you a broken hip can be very difficult to recover from.”

Shall we do the math?

Obama has one seeming change of position.

The McCain flips then flops:
-McCain supported the off-shore drilling moratorium; now he’s against it.
-McCain strongly opposes a windfall-tax on oil company profits. Three weeks earlier, he was perfectly comfortable with the idea.
-McCain thought Bush’s warrantless-wiretap program circumvented the law; now he believes the opposite.
-McCain defended “privatizing” Social Security. Now he says he’s against privatization though he actually still supports it.
-McCain wanted to change the Republican Party platform to protect abortion rights in cases of rape and incest. Now he doesn’t.
-McCain thought the estate tax was perfectly fair. Now he believes the opposite.
-McCain opposed indefinite detention of terrorist suspects. When the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion, he called it “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
-McCain said he would “not impose a litmus test on any nominee.” He used to promise the opposite.
-McCain believes the telecoms should be forced to explain their role in the administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for retroactive immunity. He used to believe the opposite.
-McCain supported storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca mountain in Nevada. Now he believes the opposite.
-McCain supported moving “towards normalisation of relations” with Cuba. Now he believes the opposite.
-McCain believed the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas and Syria . Now he believes the opposite.
-McCain argued the NRA should not have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making. Now he believes the opposite.
-McCain supported his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997. Now he doesn’t.
-McCain wanted political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley. Now he doesn’t.
-McCain supported the Lieberman-Warner bill to combat global warming. Now he doesn’t.
-McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain was asked if he is a “‘read my lips’ candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988 pledge. -“No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said, “I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise taxes.”
-McCain is both for and against a “rogue state rollback” as a focus of his foreign policy vision.
-McCain says he considered and did not consider joining John Kerry’s Democratic ticket in 2004.
-In 1998, he championed raising cigarette taxes to fund programs to cut underage smoking, insisting that it would prevent illnesses and provide resources for public health programs. Now, McCain opposes a 61cent-per-pack tax increase, won’t commit to supporting a regulation bill he’s co-sponsoring, and has hired Philip Morris’ former lobbyist as his senior campaign adviser.
-McCain has changed his economic worldview on multiple occasions.
-McCain has changed his mind about a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq on multiple occasions.
-McCain is both for and against attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor at his former church
-McCain believes Americans are both better off and worse off than they were before Bush took office.
-McCain is both for and against earmarks for Arizona.
-McCain believes his endorsement from radical televangelist John Hagee was both a good and a bad idea.
-McCain’s first mortgage plan was premised on the notion that homeowners facing foreclosure shouldn’t be “rewarded” for acting “irresponsibly.” His second mortgage plan took largely the opposite position.
-McCain vowed, if elected, to balance the federal budget by the end of his first term. Soon after, he decided he would no longer even try to reach that goal.
-McCain reversed course on prohibiting waterboarding.
-McCain used to champion the Law of the Sea convention, even volunteering to testify on the treaty’s behalf before a Senate committee. Now he opposes it.
-McCain was a co-sponsor of the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status to illegal immigrants’ kids who graduate from high school. Now he’s against it.
-McCain announced in February 2008 that he would vote against his own legislation.
-McCain sponsored legislation to require grassroots lobbying coalitions to reveal their financial donors. In 2007, after receiving “feedback” on the proposal, McCain told far-right activist groups that he opposes his own measure.
-McCain said before the war in Iraq, “We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” Four years later, McCain said he knew all along that the war in Iraq war was “probably going to be long and hard and tough.”
-McCain said he was the “greatest critic” of Rumsfeld’s failed Iraq policy. In December 2003, McCain praised the same strategy as “a mission accomplished.” In March 2004, he said, “I’m confident we’re on the right course.” In December 2005, he said, “Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course.”
-McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.
-McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.
-McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but then decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks.
-McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.
-On a related note, he said 2005 that he opposed the tax cuts because they were “too tilted to the wealthy.” By 2007, he denied ever having said this despite it having been recorded on video tape, and insisted he opposed the cuts because of increased government spending.
-In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.
-McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June 2007, he abandoned his own legislation.
-McCain opposed a holiday to honour Martin Luther King, Jr., before he supported it.
-McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.
-McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.
-McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.
-McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he “would taint the image of the ‘Straight Talk Express.’” Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

Confronted with the inconsistencies in McCain’s record in March, the senator’s aides told The New York Times that the senator “has evolved rather than switched positions in his 25-year career.” I’m dizzy from so much (r)evolving.

So there’s your gun Democrats. Remember please now to point it away from your own foot. And Bill, get over yourself and onboard Obama’s bus and stop looking and behaving like a damned fool.

Because this time your wife and the party that stood by and watched you self-destruct will throw YOU under the bus.

Imagine the carbon footprint impact of 130+ cancelled and 200 otherwise disrupted flights on the day of his arrival and a similar number for his departure the next day. Her Majesty is so unobtrusive; one could trip over her at Ascot and still miss her in the crowd. When George Bush visited Buckingham Palace a year ago, the Blackhawk helicopter carrying his Secret Service detail landed in the Palace gardens destroying several valuable, some would say priceless, trees.

Her Majesty’s security detail is modest, professional and discreet. W’s armour plated limousine and vehicles arrive before him on military aircraft to escort him through and around European capital cities. Huge armour plated SUV’s are kept constantly idling in the event they need to move immediately.

Heathrow outgrew its two runways 30-years ago. Most airports handling this much passenger traffic use four to six runways. An airplane lands or takes off every 58 seconds, and as they approach over the City of London, the site of four or five 747-400 jets stacked up and zigzagging side-to-side to slow and create space for landing continues un-abated and is a ballet meant only for the strong of heart and stomach.

So in his last 204 days of legacy building before heading permanently to the ranch in Crawford, Texas, the Brits, who already think him a buffoon, can add this to his list of so-called “green redneck” credentials. American comedian Jeff Foxworthy describes so-called redneck behaviour as a blissful lack of sophistication, true rednecks know not what they do or that others would even consider it funny. They are what they are.

Now George should know better and considering his lack of standing in the world here are a few green tips…

1. Next time why not land at quieter, more remote Stansted Airport or an RAF airbase and motorcade or chopper in to the Horse Guard Parade Grounds behind Number 10? That may take a few moments from your goal of ending the Iraq War, taking out Iran’s nuclear arsenal, fostering a lasting Middle East peace in Gaza and tackling climate change/global warming but we can better prepare for you that way and keep ground and air traffic disruption to a minimum. While not as bad as the Air Force One haircut your predecessor had delaying thousands at LAX, it is a close second and not needed whilst trying to repair your reputation.

2. If you land at Stansted the Express train service is very cool. 20-minutes to downtown London and from there the motorcade can take you the rest of the way. It may surprise you to learn that Gordon Brown and David Cameron use the train all the time to visit Wales and Scotland. The trains are much more comfortable than Metroliners, but then you would not know about Amtrak except as a budget line item.

3. Stay home? You don’t even like to travel outside of the US, you are the least travelled of any modern president and hey this is the telecommuting age. Show your tech savvy and use those big screens and video cameras in the Situation Room to save the environment. You may not be able to look into a leader’s eyes like Putin this way but think of how much you save? It might als keep you sharper and more sceptical.

But then the cost of Jet A being what it is today, would it be cynical to suggest this was a gift of several thousands of gallons of fuel to your oil benefactors?

Yeah, that would be cynical.

Mark Muller, owner of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, said sales quadrupled since the start of the offer. Every buyer “except one guy from Canada [wimp, Ed.] and one old guy” chose the gun, rather than the gas cards. Mr. Keller personally recommends the Keltec .380, “a nice little handgun that fits in your pocket.” When asked why, by the incredulous BBC reporter, his reply was: “We’re just damn glad to live in a free country where you can have a gun if you want to.” [And I’m damned glad not to anymore. Ed.]

Mr. Keller sells new and used General Motors/Ford cars and trucks. He added the promotion was inspired by comments from Barack Obama. “He said all those people in the Midwest are bitter, you’ve got to have compassion for them because they’re clinging to their guns and their Bibles. I found that quite offensive. We all go to church on Sunday and we all carry guns.”

Okay… how come we don’t feel safer? But I’m open minded and willing to try anything once. Since gun use is on the rise in the UK and sensing a “business opportunity” for UK residents to similarly protect their “bitter” selves, I began to look for UK businesses that might benefit from the PR and business boost of a similar promotion [once the law changes and with tongue firmly embedded in cheek!].

Try as I might, I could not avoid our Big Four… Tesco Supermarkets, British Telecom or BT, BSkyB and UK’s Labour Party. They all seem to suffer from por branding and bad publicity of late so this scheme just might do the trick.

Gordon Brown has had a bad run of luck. BBC Radio 5 this morning portrayed him as one who will never be a slave to fashion, opinion polls or a media flash in the pan of all sizzle and no steak. Mr. Brown is a serious, somber and dour Scotsman who is also headed to defeat by the smarmy upstart, hip young David Cameron in 2010. If he waits until 10-weeks before the election then announces this scheme, he would surely win the general election. Fire the pollsters and consultants and run security adverts that say, “Vote Labour and instead of a chicken in every pot, we’ll give you your very own handgun and blank rounds (live ones may only be fired over their heads as a warning shot) to scare off those pesky YOBS yourself!

BSkyB and BT both want to own our entire home communications platform. They both sell Broadband services, telephony, movies and other programmes for both home and on the go viewing. Both charge a king’s ransom for their services because they can and at the end of the day really don’t care what you or I think of them.

Offering a Keltec .380 as part of their service offering is risky to you because you could end up shooting up your telephone or telly in frustration at the non-responsiveness during calls that you have to pay them for to reach their service department and talk about your account (for which you already pay the aforementioned king’s ransom). But what if instead of the Keltec, they offered a live, interactive, real-time pop-up video game array complete with photon cannons?

What if instead of hearing yet another low-paid and poorly trained anonymous uncaring voice on the end of the phone, you could pull up a digital display choosing the phone rep’s boss, or, better still, the ability to give a mild taser bee-sting like stun to CEO’s Rupert Murdoch and Ben Verwaayen every time a service commitment was missed or a lie spoken? Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! That would send sales through the roof. These guys would be as jumpy as cats the number of times they are stung?

OK, how about Tesco then? Spend £100 in store or online get a gun? They would though need to set up an off-site collection point for fear of gun battles breaking out in-store every time the 10:00 am cashiers are paged immediately to the front of the store for a shift that began 15 minutes earlier. “Would all cashiers, pleeeeaaassseeeee report immediately to the front of the store?”

I think the taser idea will keep most out of jail and force massive service retraining. The problem is, knowing these companies and their zero-tolerance approach to customer’s or journalists complaining, we’d be killed in the cross-fire.

OK, maybe it’s not such a good marketing idea then.