Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 4 April 2009

Sorry, Mr President, but bringing your own car to the G20 summit was plain rude

issue 04 April 2009

It’s the little slights that really hurt. The ones where they just don’t seem to have thought about it. Certainly, we’re all thrilled that the great President Obama has deigned to make a visit to this little island vassal state. But why did he have to bring his own car?

We have cars. Loads of them. And the thing is, Barack, ours even drive on the correct side of the road. Granted, they aren’t all so proficient at, say, withstanding a direct hit from an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) as your multi-ton behemoth (dubbed ‘The Beast’), but you’d be amazed at the number of RPGs we don’t have floating around in the UK. Or assault weapons of any sort, really. It’s probably something to do with the way that we can’t buy them at our local 7-Eleven of a morning, when we pop out to get some milk.

Even so, some of our cars probably could have managed it.

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