Petrol (Gas) hits £5 ($10) per Gallon (March '08): Oil will not see 100 USD again

We've recently returned to "two car" status - my runabout is a lovely drive, but I'm re-thinking the sense in owning such a lively car: I had cause to fill-up both mine an the wife's car in one day in March - the cost - a mighty £143 ($286) - at c.20 mpg for my motor, and with recent UK announcements on car tax, and congestion charges, the costs are becoming extraordinary.

Fuels costs are rising very fast even since march, and last week I attended a seminar which convinced me that Oil will never see $100 a barrel again (well not for long anyway) - so it is not going to get any better. Prices are up another 15% since March!

Still looking on the bright side - it should mean that my next car, another guzzler, will coming down in price fast!

I've seen the bullet holes of extremism: Gordon Brown has let us down

Though Al-Qaeda were allowed to operate out of Afghanistan by the Taliban, the war in Afghanistan was not self defense IMHO. The Taliban should have been persuaded to remove Al-Qaeda, especially if the Pakistani forces, and intelligence were used - after all it was apparently the American CIA and Pakistani SIS's handiwork to create the Taliban in order to bring some king of law and order to the country post the Soviet war, when Osama Bin Laden was funded by the CIA to train and arm the Mujahideen against the soviets, and then civil war in 1996.

Note Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban and Wahhabism/Sunni based organisations, and have a deeply critical view of Sufi and Shi'a Muslims, calling them as apostates, and often engaging in violence against them - I've seen the bullet holes myself in mosques as far away as suburban Karachi.

It does seem that the reason to go to war in Afghanistan was a pre-cursor to war was a pre-cursor only to going into Iraq.

Why Iraq: Oil. Even Greenspan admits it was so .

How ironic now that Bush is now thinking of military action against Iran - A democratic state (well since the US appointed monarch , The Shah, was overthrown), which is Shia - while the West continues being on great terms with Saudi Arabia - a monarchy, the home of Wahhabism, and most of the 9/11 terrorists. Seems like that the lesson has not been learned.

Meanwhile deaths in Afghanistan of western troops is on the rise, and the county is in the hands of drug lords, and the president Karzai lives up to his derogatory title of Mayor of Kabul. People of Iraq meanwhile pray for the westerners to leave so that they can rebuild their country and infrastructure. Nobody knows how many Iraq's are dead, where the oil has gone, nor what treasures from this historic land have been looted.

Its been five years since the war in Iraq was "won"!

How can the world allow itself to be scared into thinking that is right or just - or that this will contain the ideology that has generated the horrors of 9/11. Gordon Brown had a great opportunity to show courage and great leadership by declaring a withdrawal of forces from these two wars - I'm afraid he appears to have failed his country on day one as Prime Minister.

Paris & Southampton: Paying for housing " in kind", not to mention having a murder in the house

When I lived in a shared house (i.e. a house of bed-sits) in the Polygon in Southampton in 1986, I had just finished my Degree, and was in my first proper (professional) job. I remember paying £30.00 per week in rent, and sharing with a right lively motley crew of characters:

Bill - a nervous, 40+, reformed (tee-total etc) Geordie ex "merchant sailor" - which I assume at times was code for a variety of various times spent away

Liz - A vivacious young woman, teacher I think, from Portsmouth (or was it Gosling, or something), and non-resident, but frequent guest,

Goz - A skinny local lad, about whom I cannot remember much - he was only around for Liz, and only really interested in one thing - Liz.

Fitzroy - A flamboyant, chatty, rapping Jamaican lawyer from Willesden, London (who happened to go to law-school in Guilford with "Mo" my old friend, and ex president of Newcastle Polytechnic's Asian society - (it is a small world).

Sharon - a local 16 year-old run-away. Bubbly, blonde, erm an easy going kind of girl if you know what I mean.

Heather La-Valle - A blonde, attractive, petite, American 20-something, traveling around the world, currently with

Grant (I think) - an Aussie: These two were selling toys to feed their alcohol habits, and supposedly saving to travel to their next destination.

"Tracy" - I'm afraid her real name slips my mind. She was not around much.

The house was, fun, loud, and always filled with incident.

I remember someone having throwing a little party one night, and it seemed like half of Southampton was there - and none of the residents knew any of the "guests". I remember things started getting really crazy - like a very large black man, well-heeled in a pimpish kind of way asked another tough guy "DO YOU WANT SOME?!", with one fist clenching the guys collar, whist pushing him down hard to the floor, and raising his other large fist in the air ready to pound bone onto the already soaked, dirty carpet.

This was right outside my room doorway. I was scared - not only for myself, but for others in the house. I had to get to bed, as I had a flight to Holland the next day, for work. I locked the door, got some kip, and When I left the next day nearly all the "guests" had left.

What a night - I also had an eventful day/morning. but I'm getting sidetracked. I'll save my squash story for another time too, not to mention the Fraud Squad 6 a.m. raid. Boy I've had my moments of excitement in younger days!

What I meant to write about was this girl, Tracy. Often on a Friday night the landlord would come to collect the rent - and of course she would be short of cash. He would be upstairs talking to her for 20-30 minutes, and then leave seemingly happy enough. Payment in kind!

Liz was an attractive, slim young woman. but not someone we got to know all that well. Just as well....

At the time in Southampton there was a famous murder, and investigation. A local cabbie, last seen less than half a mile from the house had been found murdered. Sure enough it turned out "Tracy's" boyfriend was arrested, and charged. We'd had a murderer in the house!

The news that housing in Paris is getting so tough that landlords are now openly advertising apartments for "contre services" i.e. Property-for-sex ( http://snipurl.com/2mltj ) reminded me of Tracy, and the house near the old Southampton football ground, The Dell (now replaced with St Mary's). Decades later we cycle through good-times and bad once more, but people at the bottom of the ladder face the same struggle, and choices - victims of market dictat.