I think it's reasonably sexy

Seeing our British cousins in a funk always saddens me, and it's worse when they seem ready to riot in Piccadilly over high matters of state. So I performed a research study in hopes of offering wise counsel from the Colonies.

That is, I carried a copy of the portrait around, all over the length and width of Camp J country. I enquired of every chap I know, "Would  you (a) kiss this woman and (b) willingly have her on your arm in the A-list haunts of local society such as the American Legion Club?"

To a man, nearly,  it was "Yep" or "Damned Straightt" or "You Bet."  The single exception was my very youngest interviewee who hesitated, shrugged, then brightly added, "But my dad sure the heck would."

It exactly the result I predicted and verifies my suspicion that the English aren't really all that upset about the picture. They are just in one of their periodic states of  national ennui when any excitement, any controversy at all, is embraced as a welcome relief from the boredom of being in Britain.

Personally, I don't think the Kate picture dustup has legs. There just isn't enough emo content in the "poortrait"  argument to excite even an East Ender for very long. What the Sceptred Isle really needs is a good old-fashion war crisis, what with muskets and cannon and brave leftenants waving swords as they lead their companies into into wog hordes.

To that end, and out of pure motives -- a shot of Red Bull injected directly into John Bull's national arteries -- I've dispatched a courier to Buenos Aires suggesting that now would be a compassionate time for a new move against the Falklands. The last one was was such sport, eh wot?