U.S. Embassy In London Refuses To Pay Congestion Charge

The U.S. Embassy in London refuses to pay Mayor Ken Livingstone's £8 ($15) congestion charge. Since July 2005 American diplomats have racked up $1.6 million in unpaid fees by generating a whopping 350 car trips into central London each day, on average. Perhaps, it should be no surprise that Embassy staffers aren't fans of the Tube and double-decker buses. Before being sworn in as Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Robert Holmes Tuttle was a partner in one of the largest automobile dealer organizations in the United States. So, what are we to make of all this? A recent study of United Nations' diplomats unpaid parking tickets in New York City finds a direct correlation between the amount that diplomats violate a foreign city’s traffic laws and the level of corruption in their home countries.