Has the Party for 2012 Begun?
I have been watching the European Athletics Championships from Barcelona and enjoying them tremendously. It seems to me that the athletes, who seem to be performing better than they usually do, are enjoying themselves immensely.
Is this the 2012 effect, because everybody wants to appear at their own Olympics? But it all bodes well especially as I suspect it isn’t just the athletes who are getting ready for the Games.
And talking of the Olympic party in 2012, is it going to be a bit different from the original plans, due to the multi-national and multi-racial nature of the UK.
Let’s take the Irish! They are a very keen sporting nation and have had quite a bit of success in the past and like to support their athletes. So London will also be Ireland’s games as well, as they will never get closer. There will be one hell of a party if any of their competitors strike gold.
I suspect too that other nations, with large immigrant commnities in the UK, will also join in and hopefully create a very vibrant Olympic atmoshere.
Do We Need Trident?
Trident is going to cost £20 billion to replace and the government has announced that the MoD must find the full cost from its budget. So if we renew it, other programs will have to be cut back.
I don’t think that we now need programs such as Trident! When we had an obvious enemy in the Cold War, it was different, but suppose some Iranian terrorists planned to let off a bomb in London, would being able to bomb Teheran deter them? Of course not! Perhaps all we need is a few submarine- or air-lauched cruise missiles, so that we could make sure that we got some revenge.
I also question other programs like the two aircraft carriers. For the type of wars we would fight today, it would be better to stay with our current smaller ones and Harriers.
The trouble is that defence has nothing to do with what you need, it’s all about pride. If say the French have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers, our politicians feel, we should have them too.
It could be argued that the British intervention in Sierra Leone to help end the civil war there is a model for how our forces should be used to bring peace and stability to the world. Have we got the right forces and equipment to do the same again?
Personal Security From American Express
I have all of my credit cards registered with a security program from American Express, so that if I lose my wallet. it’s just one call to stop everything. When I registered, they also sent me a rather nice key fob,so that if I drop my keys, it would increase the chances of their return.
A couple of weeks ago, I dropped my camera somewhere. It was only a fairly cheap Nikon, but I liked it and it has taken most of the pictures here. So I phoned Amex to see if they had some tags with which I could label my personal belongings.
I got a whole load of goodies yesterday.
American Express Personal Security
Note the security label inside the phone.
So all in all a good set of tags, from just one call to Amex.
The Anonymous Widower 