myp wrote:
Mr Chris wrote:
Obama's not going to be much better for us. He dislikes the British anyway.
Really?
[citation needed]Read his books.
See
here, for starters.
Quote:
For despite Westminster's glutinous admiration for the new administration, there are signs the Obama White House is not that interested in the UK. The Ministry of Defence report pointing to doubts in Washington as to the effectiveness of Britain's armed forces is only the latest sign of a cooling in the "special relationship". Aside from the friendship education minister David Lammy enjoys with the president-elect, there has been a lack of government engagement with the transition team. Indeed, Downing Street officials came away from last summer's Obama talks with little sense of the future president's commitment to Britain's broader, global concerns outside of strategic US priorities. And it was not without note that Obama gave his signal address in Berlin, not London. None of which should have come as a surprise. Given that Dreams From My Father has topped the bestseller list since November, we should all be aware of Obama's ambiguous regard for the British. Of course, there is an abiding suspicion of Britain as the former imperial power in Kenya, with allegations that Obama's grandfather was tortured by British forces during the struggle for independence. Equally painful no doubt are Obama's memories of attending a stag do in Wokingham in 1996 involving a St Trinian's strippergram.
But whenever the British appear in Obama's autobiography, they play the caricature of reactionary old-world fogeys. On his flight to Kenya, Obama sits next to "a pale, gangly youth" in an ill-fitting blazer who condones apartheid South Africa. On safari, he meets the Wilkersons - British doctors working in Malawi who found England "terribly cramped" but could never really call Africa home: "'Sins of the father, you know'." And as Obama boards the train out of Nairobi, he thinks of his grandfather's struggle and conjures up "some nameless British officer" surveying the imperial landscape: "Would he have felt a sense of triumph, a confidence that the guiding light of western civilisation had finally penetrated the African darkness?" Finally, he imagines his late grandfather sitting out his old age in a freshly scrubbed hut but still hearing "the clipped voice of a British captain, explaining for the third and last time the correct proportion of tonic to gin".
Also
this. There's loads more around - a drip drip drip of signs that he's not at all bothered about us.
Do some searching on the web for "Obama" and "British" or "Gordon Brown" and see what else comes up.