Mad#3

This is Wimbledon finals week end and the weather perfect (Serena beats Venus, who owns the trophy from last year, having beat Serena. Got that?). More puffy clouds sail overhead on an otherwise blue sky. London has a bad rap for weather as we get about the same as San Francisco or approximately 600 mm per year. The difference being ours spread across the year and we have moods from January that are grey and cold. Indeed, the Southeast has had several droughts including 2006 when Thames Water, which supplies eight million people in London, applied for a "draught order." Anyone flouting drought orders fined £5,000 in magistrates’ courts or an unlimited fine in the Crown Court. In '77 a draught forced water rationing throughout London and punters had to line up each morning with a five-gallon drum; otherwise, nothing (source: black cab). Can you imagine this in Knightsbridge or Belgravia? Well, anyway, Wimbledon spends £100 million on a retractable roof and for the first time in, like, forever, play has not been delayed due to rain. Go figure.

In other celebrations, Gay prides marches across London commencing in SoHo Square and concluding at an after-hours party that goes until tomorrow. I note happily that the festivities sponsored by Lloyds TSB, the Metropolitan Police Department, Coca Cola and HomoVision TV (which my juvenile could not resist noting). Boris will be out there and it is something we should be proud of and so we are.

Of course the July 4th a rather Big Celebration in the US-of-A though dampened by the entire country being broke and no money in many small towns for fireworks. As a nation we own $12 trillion in debt that broke the Times Square clock, which had to be enlarged for the figure. This excludes unfunded liabilities like social security or medical care which take our obligations to $40 trillion according to many economists; we don't include these figures because they are social obligations which can be modified or eliminated by acts of Congress. So Generation X fucked and as for Generation Y? Well, the planet may be coughing to its end so party like its 1999. But let us be happy for 1776 which gave us a bold and brave new nation based on ideas of liberty and self-realisation that hold true today. The Bill of Rights, those ten simple sentences, a wonderful experiment never before seen though Rome came close in principal. The most powerful - No. 10 - I am reminded by Tim also the most remarkable:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. "

In other words, unless otherwise stated, we can do whatever we damn well feel. God bless America. And I do mean this with all my heart. Despite Nixon and Bush, our country tries, really tries, to error on the right side of civil liberty.