Telling it like it is

Today I finally got the chance to drive on a racetrack for the first time. I spent the morning with a friend out at our local motorsports track doing a Ford Mustang track morning. We had about 30 minutes of classroom session flowed by a familiarisation lap around the track in a bus. At that point we each got assigned our own race-prepared Mustang and it was game on. We had to follow the instructor around the track in a procession. Every two laps, the lead student car went to the back so everyone got a chance to drive quick whilst following the instructor up close. Once our laps were done, we got to do a couple of laps as a passenger with the instructor driving. At which point we realised just how relatively slow we'd been going. I say relatively because we were 'only' doing 120mph on the front straight and 'only' averaging 50mph in the turns. So what. It seemed quick to me even though I know the car was capable of far more, and more importantly it was a blast. I can...

It was worrying but not unexpected to see Americans celebrating in the streets in the last couple of days at the death of Bin Laden. Problem is, it looked just like the mobs you see celebrating in the middle east after they've shot down a US helicopter, or after a successful terrorist attack. I'm sure the irony of that is lost on most Americans and from what was being said on the news last night, it looks like the country is split firmly in half again. Half the country think the world is a safer place and genuinely believe with all their hearts that this is the end of all the problems. The other half live in reality and understand that this is simply a big victory in an otherwise unwinnable war. The potential for retaliation is enormous and the most obvious target isn't the American public but the commander in chief. The best news to come out of the whole event wasn't Bin Laden's death itself - that was relatively minor. Rather that the SEAL team grabbed dozens of ...

I bet Dubya is absolutely fuming today. The one thing he couldn't do was done last night under a different President. Osama was killed in a US raid on a village in Pakistan. So we've cut the existing head off the snake - great news. Do we know the name of the new head yet?