Dan, it's not just the Welsh service sector. The only place in at least Wales and England to get good service is at a pub. Or McDonald's.

I also find it rather ironic that a Briton would complain about the "democratic deficit" of a transatlantic talking shop while ignoring the 800kg gorilla in Brussels that has far more impact on most Britons' daily lives. Indeed, I think the term "democratic deficit" was coined to describe that very institution.

“There's a lot of hostility to Tony Blair in the U.K. right now over Iraq. There's a lot of hostility to him among the U.K. conference attendees as well. I suspect that in a few years time many moderate Brits will long for him the same way many moderate Dems are now wishing they could nominate Bill Clinton for a third term.”

We should never overlook the fact that Tony Blair and the Bill Clinton of 1992 likely have at least one thing in common: they are perceived to be too conservative by those who currently dominate their respective political parties. The moderates are rapidly being marginalized. Those who formally were considered the lunatic fringe are now the mainstream.

"Dan, it's not just the Welsh service sector. The only place in at least Wales and England to get good service is at a pub. Or McDonald's."

Did Dan expect anything different in a socialist country? The British Isles still have not gotten their act together after kicking Winston Churchill out of office. Maggie Thatcher was able to accomplish only so much. Socialist economies always encourage laziness.

while ignoring the 800kg gorilla in Brussels that has far more impact on most Britons' daily lives

While this isn't really the place to discuss Crooked Timber articles, Chris, if you reread mine you'll notice an offhand reference to issues of democratic deficit being exactly the reason for my opposition to UK membership of EMU.

I'm guessing that, its generous endowment aside, the BAP didn't cough up for decent travel expenses. I can therefore more or less guess which hotel DD is staying at ...

From

"Dan, it's not just the Welsh service sector. The only place in at least Wales and England to get good service is at a pub. Or McDonald's."

"Did Dan expect anything different in a socialist country? The British Isles still have not gotten their act together after kicking Winston Churchill out of office. Maggie Thatcher was able to accomplish only so much. Socialist economies always encourage laziness."

Or Americans are just spoiled rotten by fast food convenience and our overly-materialistic culture. Attitudes toward "time" are an aspect of cultural more than a narrower political result.

There's a lot of hostility to Tony Blair in the U.K. right now over Iraq. There's a lot of hostility to him among the U.K. conference attendees as well. I suspect that in a few years time many moderate Brits will long for him the same way many moderate Dems are now wishing they could nominate Bill Clinton for a third term."

Ah, the heat of the moment. Iraq will cool down over the next year and with it much of the heated atmosphere in the UK. Those who will never forgive Blair for Iraq wouldn't have voted for him anyway. All the others decide on domestic issues like health, crime and education.

It's not difficult to predict that Blair will win the next general election in 2005 or 2006 (although the Tories look a bit more dangerous now).

Blair is currently the longest serving head of government of any major powerful state; my guess is he still will be when others have long been forgotten...

Here's a nice bet: London gets the Olympic Games in 2012 - and Tony Blair will be there as Prime Minister (alongside the Queen in her Diamond Jubilee Year)!

Daniel: points taken.

ESP: not speaking for David, but timeliness has nothing to do with my general assessment of British service, snarky aside about McDonald's notwithstanding. I wouldn't attribute it to socialism or anything like that; the best I can tell, it's a cultural difference. That being said, service in general has declined on this side of the Atlantic too, which I'd probably attribute to more Americans treating service positions as jobs rather than long-term careers.

What exactly is Bush doing in Britain? Is he really trying to finish off Blair? I thought they were friends?

In qualified defence of the Welsh, I'd point out that Cypriot brandy is not exactly the national tipple of Wales, and that if you eat in cheap Greek restaurants more or less anywhere, you get what you deserve.

Um Dan,

Your parochialism is showing. You may or not be aware of this, but Britain's parliment has more than two parties. They come in three basic flavors: conservative, moderately liberal, and liberal. And Labor is the moderately liberal party. In the last political upheavals in the minor elections over there, it wasn't the *Tories* that gained from Blair's pratfalls but it was the ultra-liberal party. Also it has been Gordon Brown's position over there in Labor that has been strengthened by Blair's Iraqi egg on face, and he is the more liberal of that alliance. In other words, the net effect of Tony Blair's privatization drive and war efffort was to shift Britain to lean more heavily liberal.

Thomson's similar ignorance of British parlimentary and political dynamics led him to a similar style of conclusion.

Golly, thanks for that Nell McAndrew link. Yummy, yummy, yummy. My goodness.

You get good service in an American restaurant because the customers are paying part of the waitstaff's wages in tips.

You don't get such good service in a British restaurant because the restaurant owner pays the staff the legal wage per hour, and the customers offer tips only as a voluntary gratuity, rather than as an essential part of the waitstaff's income.

So in American restaurants, waitstaff hover, knowing they won't get paid their wages unless they make the customers very, very happy. In British restaurants waitstaff just need to do their job to get paid their wages: the tip is a nice extra.

That's socialism for you: makes the working classes independent and uppity, and right-wingers like David Thomson don't like it.

Good Grief, Mr. Jesurgislac: So now socialism fosters independence?

Douglas Adams wants you to be very careful "at the next zebra crossing".

Good Grief, Mr. Jesurgislac: So now socialism fosters independence?

Yes. As commonsense will tell you. UK employees don't have to panic about losing job-related health insurance: they have the NHS. They're independent of their employers. UK waitstaff don't have to worry about their customers refusing to pay their wages: they get a guaranteed minimum wage and tips count as an extra. Whereas unfettered capitalism fosters dependence, as we see. ;-) Douglas Adams, a Brit, would appreciate this point. Shame he's dead.

Mr. Jesurgislac,

Thankfully he didn't live to see his Isles rapid take on Iraq, had it not already happened, he surely would have had his heart attack after last nights spectacle.

As to his memory, I rather think his take on your social policy, labor groups and civil servant unions is summed rather handily here:

"Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was not a pleasant sight, even for other
Vogons. His highly domed nose rose high above a small piggy
forehead. His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to
play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well,
and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea
depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.

Not that he ever went swimming of course. His busy schedule would
not allow it. He was the way he was because billions of years ago
when the Vogons had first crawled out of the sluggish primeval
seas of Vogsphere, and had lain panting and heaving on the
planet's virgin shores... when the first rays of the bright young
Vogsol sun had shone across them that morning, it was as if the
forces of evolution ad simply given up on them there and then,
had turned aside in disgust and written them off as an ugly and
unfortunate mistake. They never evolved again; they should never
have survived.

The fact that they did is some kind of tribute to the thick-
willed slug-brained stubbornness of these creatures. Evolution?
they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused
to do for them they simply did without until such time as they
were able to rectify the grosser anatomical inconveniences with
surgery.

Meanwhile, the natural forces on the planet Vogsphere had been
working overtime to make up for their earlier blunder. They
brought forth scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, which the
Vogons ate, smashing their shells with iron mallets; tall
aspiring trees with breathtaking slenderness and colour which the
Vogons cut down and burned the crab meat with; elegant gazelle-
like creatures with silken coats and dewy eyes which the Vogons
would catch and sit on. They were no use as transport because
their backs would snap instantly, but the Vogons sat on them
anyway.

Thus the planet Vogsphere whiled away the unhappy millennia until
the Vogons suddenly discovered the principles of interstellar
travel. Within a few short Vog years every last Vogon had
migrated to the Megabrantis cluster, the political hub of the
Galaxy and now formed the immensely powerful backbone of the
Galactic Civil Service. They have attempted to acquire learning,
they have attempted to acquire style and social grace, but in
most respects the modern Vogon is little different from his
primitive forebears. Every year they import twenty-seven thousand
scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs from their native planet
and while away a happy drunken night smashing them to bits with
iron mallets.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz was a fairly typical Vogon in that he was
thoroughly vile. Also, he did not like hitch hikers."