Posted on 05/26/2011 11:01:12 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
President confronted by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, over America’s failure to pay the congestion charge.
Amid all the glad-handing and rictus grins that greeted Barack Obama everywhere he turned during his whistlestop visit to the British Isles, Boris Johnson will undoubtedly have made a particular impression upon him.
At the end of the state banquet in the president’s honour at Buckingham Palace, the Mayor of London took the opportunity to have a quick word. “Could you please write me out a cheque for £5 million?” Johnson asked him.
The request for the president to settle the congestion charge bill that his country has run up was made with charm. The president smiled broadly. If he was about to reach for his chequebook, however, the swift intervention of Louis Susman, Obama’s ambassador to London and his former fund-raiser, put paid to that.
“I think this is a matter where our position is already well known,” he said to Johnson with a steely glare as Obama departed. Still, Johnson was delighted to have got his request in. “Mission accomplished,” he texted a colleague afterwards.
The American Embassy owes a total of £5,291,520 in unpaid congestion charge bills, which makes it the worst offender among the diplomatic missions in the capital.
America’s fuel-guzzlers beat even their opposite numbers at the Embassy of the Russian Federation, who owe £4,416,720, and Japan’s, who have £3,651,780 outstanding.
Two thirds of the embassies in the capital pay the congestion charge. British diplomats in America, by contrast, pay road tolls when required.
Johnson and Obama have a special relationship. When the mayor first
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I guess at least the parents & grandparents did. Odd that Britain would credit France so much, too; the first war (in which they lost 1.7 million men) had left them with little will to fight.
I was just joking about the British giving credit to the French!
From yur lips to God's ears.
You are correct.
I remember that story. Hussein is just like ALL liberals: a deadbeat.
That's brilliant.
Obama’s never looked better. Is there a teleprompter in the exhibit?
We need a Like button on FR.
“Memo: The Allies won the war. It was not just the USA, or Britain, or the Soviet Union.”
With out the second front with the Ruskies, Britain might have been saved but the rest of Europe, and maybe N. Africa, would still be German.
Especially if Hitler had not declared war on the USA. Then the war against Japan might have been over by early/mid 1944, if we had concentrated on the country that had actually attacked us.
We pretty much bankrupted England with the Lend/Lease program. The US made the Brits give up its holdings in the US in return for a bunch of obsolete destroyers. After Hitler declared war on the US then the question is how much of the debt was just our share of the war?
I don’t think we asked the Philippines to pay us for saving their butts. Of course if MacArthur had had a clue before the Japs attacked then maybe Bataan could have been avoided. I never understood why the Admiral in Hawaii was crucified for being unprepared but MacArthur was celebrated for deserting his command in the field after having been even less prepared.
You don't say?.........................
Here ya go!........
“Johnson and Obama have a special relationship.
You don’t say?”
Obama has always been fond of Johnsons.
If I was Lord Mayor of London, whenever a property reached, say 5 million, in unpaid road charges, I’d get the council backhoe to give them a moat.
This “congestion” charge is all about looney “greenery” imposed by Ken Livingston, the moron former commie mayor of London. I wouldn’t pay it either.
I’m on the fence about this one. America should pay our debts to our friends.
On the other hand, “congestion” sounds like a codeword for anti-CO2 nonsense. Is it REALLY about congestion or is it just another global warming scam tax? If it is because the Chicken Little Climate Alarmist Loonies are forcing people to pay it because SUV’s make polar bears die, then I wouldn’t pay it on GP.
We are right NOT to pay the ‘charge.’ Boris tries to get around this TAX by calling it a ‘charge.’ By international agreement in 1960 or thereabouts diplomats around the world are not subjected to TAXES. [We DO pay if we’re parked illegally, break speed laws, etc.] But we are not paying this TAX on general principle.
Exactly right re: the congestion charge. And as of early this year, the size of the ‘congestion zone’ has been quite reduced.
Sorry; that threw me for a loop!
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