Promotional campaigns are all about optics and symbolism, so it's safe to assume that the organizers of the May 14 "Britain is Great" event in Manhattan's Meatpacking District hadn't noticed a large sign proclaiming "Prince Lumber" near the entrance to the venue. One of their two guests of honor, Prince Harry, had come away from his last trip to the US accused of lumbering his family with a fresh public relations challenge, after his hijinks in a Las Vegas hotel. By contrast, his current US tour, which started on May 9, has showcased him as an asset to the Windsors and the UK, a crowd-pleaser with a vocal female following. Screams of delight greeted the royal as he arrived with British Prime Minister David Cameron aboard a spanking new red double-decker bus to attend a reception highlighting their nation's strengths in technology, innovation and design. The latest iteration of London's iconic mode of transport is the work of Thomas Heatherwick, who also designed the Olympic Cauldron for the London 2012 Games. Heatherwick's bus looks stunning and when the doors had to be wrenched open to liberate the VIP passengers, that merely served to increase the excitement of Harry's fans and to remind the wider audience that some of the Greatness of British culture surely resides in its celebration of imperfection. (MORE: U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Visits U.S., but the Real Action Is Across the Pond) Britons mistrust things, and people, that are slick. It's a defect they detect in their smoothly eloquent Prime Minister, who like Prince Harry has been on a jaunt around the US. The British public aren't sure he's to be trusted, and a roiling battle with his own euroskeptic backbenchers has less to do with Cameron's stated policy on Europe—he promises an in-out referendum giving Britons the option to leave the European Union—than whether his mutinous troops believe he will really deliver it. It's not just that he proposes the referendum after the next election, and so would have to win the election to deliver(http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=world.time.com&blog=19871253&post=86607&subd=timeglobalspin&ref=&feed=1)
Via: TIME GlobalSpin