Picking on the Brits I: Paddlers, Not Ponderers

It's been a while since we picked on the Brits here at Kiko's House, but we're going to remedy that oversight in this and the next post, which no doubt will please our Aussie friends no matter their political persuasion . . .

Two years after it opened, the Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain is awash in controversy.

It wasn't supposed to be that way. When the US$5 million oval stone ring opened in London's Hyde Park to hoopla and tears in 2004, it brought Lady Diana's two families -- the Windsors and Spencers -- together publicly for the first time since the princess's funeral following a fatal car crash in Paris in 1997.

Designed by American architect Kathryn Gustafson, the fountain was meant to be a place where visitors could touch the waters and contemplate the world's favorite princess who never wore a seatbelt.

The fountain opened a year late and over budget and is a money pit. But the biggest problem is that the Brits apparently are "paddlers, not ponderers," as The Guardian New Blog's Tomi Ajayi put it in a story headlined "Pool For Scandal."

The fountain has become a safety hazard because people are not contend to merely touch the waters, but keep falling into them, as well as using them as a dog bath and diaper depository.

And, God Save the Queen, as a bloody urinal!

A PRINCESS'S POSTUMOUS PUBLICATION

Speaking of Lady Di, she's got a new diet book out which explores and explains alternative medicine. I know not whether she mentions anorexia and bulemia, both of which she battled through most of her adult life, but it's apparently getting good reviews from the medical establishment.

New York Post gossip queen Cyndy Adams has the scoop.