Specially for Independence Day, a blast of pure Americaphobia from across the pond: Britons tire of cruel, vulgar US: poll.

LONDON (AFP) - People in Britain view the United States as a vulgar, crime-ridden society obsessed with money and led by an incompetent president whose Iraq policy is failing, according to a newspaper poll.

The United States is no longer a symbol of hope to Britain and the British no longer have confidence in their transatlantic cousins to lead global affairs, according to the poll published in The Daily Telegraph. The YouGov poll found that 77 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement that the US is “a beacon of hope for the world”.

As Americans prepared to celebrate the 230th anniversary of their independence on Tuesday, the poll found that only 12 percent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975.

A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn’t care what the rest of the world thinks. …

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

US policy in Iraq was similarly derided, with only 24 percent saying they felt that the US military action there was helping to bring democracy to the country. …

In answer to other questions, a majority of the Britons questions described Americans as uncaring, divided by class, awash in violent crime, vulgar, preoccupied with money, ignorant of the outside world, racially divided, uncultured and in the most overwhelming result (90 percent of respondents) dominated by big business.

Apart from all that, how do you like us?

UPDATE at 7/3/06 9:34:53 am:

Here’s the view from the remaining sane Brits: The American dream has come true.

Eyes glazed with disbelief, Bill Bratton, the world’s most famous cop, ended a visit to London last week with: “Shame on you, the public of this country.”

The immediate reason for Bratton’s indignation was the row over a raid, based on faulty information, by anti-terrorist officers on a house in east London. The air was thick with accusation, demands for apologies, and lawyerly calculations of how many hundreds of thousands in compensation the property’s Muslim residents should be entitled to.

Bratton, architect of the New York crime miracle of the 1990s, now delivering similar results in Los Angeles (crime down 11 per cent in the past six months), has understandably had enough of Britain. We keep asking him how to tackle crime, and when he tells us to encourage civic responsibility, be merciless on minor offenders, and build more prisons for serious ones we choose to ignore him.