Word: britishisms
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...Gordon Brown expected props back home for being the first European leader to enjoy President Obama's hospitality at the White House and only the fifth British Prime Minister ever to address Congress, he might have reconsidered the fourth paragraph of that speech. Like a nervous entertainer at a particularly rowdy children's party, Brown pulled his rabbit out of the hat almost at the start of his act. Her Majesty - Britain's Queen - had bestowed an honorary knighthood on "Sir Edward Kennedy," he announced...
...profile role in Northern Ireland's peace process, working to articulate the cause of nationalists whilst also sometimes criticizing Republican extremism. That's a fine balance which does not satisfy the pro-Irish Union, anti-Ted faction in Britain. "The knighthood is a grotesque insult to the memory of British service men and women who died serving in Northern Ireland," says Blaney...
...common with many Kennedy critics who have emerged from hibernation since Brown's announcement, Blaney is especially incensed by a remark the U.S. politician made back in 1971. In that year, Kennedy introduced a Senate resolution demanding the ouster of British military forces from Northern Ireland - or Ulster as the Irish called that part of the island. Said Kennedy: "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam... The conscience of America cannot keep silent when men and women of Ireland are dying. Britain has lost...
Early day motions rarely are submitted to debate, and in any case, Britain's monarch has already granted the award to Kennedy. The only remaining way to block the honorific, which Kennedy has accepted but not yet collected in the material form of a medal from the British ambassador to Washington, would be for Congress to intervene. Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution states that "no person holding any office of profit or trust... shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince...
...predecessor. Previously, a Venezuelan juggler would have to fly back to Caracas to apply for an extension, and by the time he made it back to England, his troupe may have moved on to Italy; now he can apply while working in the U.K. The old system also gave British embassies too much discretion in determining whether performers deserved their visas. Clay remembers a particularly troublesome ordeal last year involving a Chinese trapeze act, in which two boys swinging on distant lines would throw a somersaulting female performer between them. "The embassy gave visas to the two boys because they...