Posted on 09/10/2005 5:16:37 PM PDT by jmc1969
AN overwhelming majority of Britons believe that President George W Bush has mismanaged the response to Hurricane Katrina, a Sunday Times poll has found. Fully 86% of people said his handling of the crisis was bad or very bad, while 70% said he was a generally incompetent president.
By almost three to one, 63% to 23%, people think the response to the hurricane would have been speedier and more effective if most victims had been white and middle class. By 67% to 19% they think race and class divisions in America are as bad as ever.
The poll of a representative sample of 1,856 adults, carried out on September 8-9 by YouGov, the online pollsters, is the first major test of UK public opinion on the crisis.
The poll uncovers deep hostility to Bush; 57% agree and 23% disagree that he is one of the worst presidents America has ever had. By 66% to 18% they think he is generally not trustworthy, and by 68% to 21% that he is not really concerned about the fate of ordinary people.
The disaster has also hit Americas reputation more generally. By 63% to 20%, people said the Katrina aftermath and the Iraq violence showed America is losing the ability to organise and run things.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
I lived in Paris during the heatwave. Because of the holiday MONTH of August the emergency services did not respond to being called back! Chirac was on vacation in Canada and only made a written statement the second week of the horror! There were people dead in their apartments (elderly and infirm) who were not able to be moved for DAYS because there was no one to retrieve the bodies and nowhere to place them! Finally they commandeered cold meat trucks to house the bodies. There were over 1000 people dead whose relatives REFUSED to return from vacation to arrange burials. The French response was " they are dead, either wait until we return in 2-3 weeks or bury them at government expense". I could look down from my apartment and see people laying on the ground under trees to try and get some heat relief. It was unbelievable..it still haunts me.
I really can't say that this surprises me. It's going to get worse. You have a bunch of Britons who grew up being fed multiculturalism in their schools, who have stopped going to church, who grew up reading the Guardian...I'm just not seeing a revival of conservativism in Britain. Nor is there the opportunity for talk radio to thrive there as it does here. For starters, people spend so little time in cars.
I still can't believe people are blaming Bush for this. He is the one politician who acted cogently and with purpose in all of this, and everyone is just taking shots at him.
For once, I'd love to hear him just stand up and say, "The ignorance and incompetence I'm hearing from the media astounds me." Do it at a press conference.
How is it that this mayor has any respect at all? Honestly, is it just because he's black? Seriously, what would our press do to President Bush if he said that he feared the CIA was going to wack him? (as if the CIA would be handling domestic concerns, anyway).
Wow....I didn't realize so many elderly people had lost their lives. Very sad indeed.
Is Britain really that far gone?
How much do you believe the polls taken here?
"AN overwhelming majority of Britons -- are silly-ponce, butt pirates."
Actually I find these people who seem to hate the United States to be rather comical. It must be hard for them to hate us so much and yet spend so much time discussing our issues.
I think the last body count was 10,000 died countrywide. The vast majority of them were elderly who get left behind during the August holiday. The attitude was "they are already dead so dont spoil my holiday". I was astounded considering the outrage in the US when there were heat-related deaths in Chicago a few years before. This tragedy and death toll was underreported in the US and all media. Got to keep up the "France is a wonderful place to live" propoganda! It was appalling..and scarey!
"Bush bungled Katrina crisis, say Britons"
How so? The next time some idiot, anywhere says that Bush bungled this, ask HOW. I want specifics as to what Bush did wrong.
They were too close to see what happened and why. They were clearly victims of the worst of mankind, the wilding murderers and the elected/appointed local officials. Do I think that FEMA's Brown was watching TV as reporters expect? No.
They were very lucky because N.O.LA turned in less than one day into an American Liberian civil war socialist bird's nest with tens of thousands of chirping chicks demanding more than worms to live. Ugly.
They were in a huge severe storm leaving damage in an area larger than the British Isles.
They were very lucky. I wish them well. I wish us well.
"don't know LA has a governor"
LA has a governor? Who says?
Of course Europeans, even those of good will toward the US, would mistakenly think the Bush administration bungled the disaster response: THEY ALL LIVE IN UNITARY STATES AND DON'T HAVE A CLUE ABOUT RESPONSIBLITIES AND RIGHTS RESERVED TO THE SEVERAL STATES.
And this, of course, is also the reason a lot of Americans, who slept through
civics (like Nagin, Blanco, Dean, and most of the journalists) want to blame
Bush: they mistakenly believe the Federal government is an omnicompetent national government, rather than a government to which the states have delegated some powers.
What else could they think after the media has spent all this time telling the world that. Those in other countries can't be expected to know how our government works when our own citizens obviously don't.
Man, I hope that these clowns stay in London and that our adherents of the "religion of peace" will join them there.
if the UK had a federal system they might have a clue about why there is more to the US than the federal government.
How do you say "Shaddap" in The Queen's English?
Are they telepatic and/or psychic?
If so, why don't they buy the winning lottery ticket?
Brits waste money on a queen with no power, says blake6900
Oh yeah, they'd know.
That was the thanks he got for continuously bucking up their spaghetti-spines in WWII to never surrender (like the Frogs), but fight the bloody Krauts to the death if necessary. Without Churchill at the helm, Britain would've surrendered to Hitler ... Bet you don't remember the name of the forgotten bloke who the limey idiots elected to replace Churchill, do you? His name was Clement Atlee.
So pay no mind to idiotic British polls. They can't even run affairs in their own country properly! So they couldn't buy a clue which direction is up across the pond.
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