OK THEN....

Well that didn`t last long.   Since I announced my `retirement` from these pages a few days ago, I`ve been inundated with a handful of requests to keep posting, so I`ll have another go. 

I think the problem I had was one of despair really.   Maybe it was the `festive season,` but I suspect it may have been that almost every day I see reports about things that make me despair at the state of the world.   Well, the world`s fine - it`s just the people in it.   As I look around, I see murders (14 over the Christmas and New Year period in the UK alone - so much for the season of goodwill,) I see threats in the Middle East, uncertainty in the Far East, financial and political chaos in the Eurozone, poverty in Africa, futile loss of life in Afghanistan, tribal bloodshed in Iraq, oppression in Syria and it`s hard to find anywhere in the world where there isn`t some kind of crisis either looming or here already.

I think what compounded the felony was the American Presidential Primaries, which kicked off in Iowa last week.  Seems the Republican Party may come up with a choice between a Barbie`s Ken lookalike from central casting and another one who seems bent on invading Iran if he gets the White House job.   Now there is much to admire in America, but the selection of the leader of the western world ain`t one of them.   We may have been lucky in the past with a few Presidents who have turned out to be presidential, but by and large they have been a pretty underwhelming bunch of power hungry egomaniacs who have either bought the job or been pitchforked into it.   

And I`m not at all sure it`s any better over here where again and by and large our politicians are there to serve their own ends rather than the needs of those whom they represent.   And you wonder why I get withdrawal symptoms.   Anyway, I may have finally recognised that my rants are a release valve for me and my inner turmoil and so it might be good for me to rant away regardless.   Well, you did ask for it.