Word: britain
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...this success and profile that have earned a young Hamilton comparisons with other sporting greats. His color - Hamilton's grandfather came to Britain from Grenada in the '50s - and the positive influence of his father, Anthony, have drawn parallels with Tiger Woods. Hamilton acknowledges that his participation could stoke interest among ethnic groups who may not be into the sport now. "Hopefully people that can relate to [me] will see that it's possible and also try to get into the sport," he told the BBC. Moreover, his youth, good looks and wholesome image are also likely to get marketers...
There's stiff competition - the handling of mad cow disease, the royal family's years of dysfunction - but it is hard to think of anything in modern times that has held Britain up to such, and such richly deserved, international contempt as the case of the 15 captured mariners in the Shatt al Arab. There was the original sin; messing about in lightly armed little boats in a waterway contested by Iran - a bit like poking a mad dog in the eye without being prepared to clobber it with a big stick if it bites. There has been the miserable...
...Britain get like this? How did a society whose professed virtues were once those of duty, honor and discretion become a place of in-it-for-myself, let-it-all-hang-out emoting? Step forward those two women whose influence, combined - though one suspects they loathed each other - shaped a nation: Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana...
Thatcher first. Her political party may have been called Conservative, but she was in truth one of the most radical leaders Britain has ever had. Thatcher could not abide the cozy and mildly corrupt arrangements that - as she saw it - had condemned post-1945 Britain to a managed decline, and was determined to blow them up. As one of her more waspish M.P.s once said, Thatcher could not see an institution without "hitting it with her handbag." But she never understood that once you removed the need to show deference to any institution - the BBC, the labor unions, the professions...
Diana's contribution was just as subversive of the old Britain. In her later life - through the hugs, the tears, the riveting BBC interview of 1995 - and even more in her death, the Princess of Wales turned traditional British values on their head. It was all right to cry! It was bad to suffer in silence, repress your emotions, say, "Steady on, old girl," and generally act in a tight spot like Trevor Howard on the train platform at the end of Brief Encounter. In today's remake, Howard would be bawling like a baby; or - as we now know...