You're not cutting me much slack, Martin. I think you might have allowed more than 23 minutes before celebrating my failure to come up with anything good to say. Especially when you've tried to disqualify me from taking part. Fortunately I take the view that it's my thread as well as yours, so I'll chuck in a comment or two anyway.

The bits of the US I've seen have bowled me over: Chicago a little bit, San Francisco big time, and Alaska (where I spent most time) and the northern Californian coast probably more than anywhere I've been yet (except Scotland and the English Lakes here at home). Much of the time I was pedalling my way, so I had plenty time to take in the small as well as the big. Roughing it in hostels, as I did some of the time, I met some really great guys, as I did everywhere I went.

I also met people who irritated me by eating nothing but cookies, which they said was OK because they were "low fat" (LOL). And I was completely pissed off by the fact that in some stores it was virtually impossible to buy ordinary unprocessed food. Almost everything claimed to be low-fat, and even tea had to be flavoured with something else. I couldn't buy a toothbrush without having to choose from about 40. (When you've ben to places wehre people cannot afford toothbrushes, this can look pretty self-indulgent.) The reason all this irritated me so much, I think, is because Europe - with Britain in the vanguard - is desperately rushing to "catch up" with this idiocy.

I have a certain attachment to the UK, and also to Ireland where I've spent some years. But that does not incline me to respect a government now bringing in the odious device of house arrest as though we were in a tinpot dictatorship. Neither could I respect an Admin that has made America the first democracy since Britain in the Boer Wars to incarcerate innocent people in a concentration camp. But I was born in the UK and I am entitled to live here and argue my corner. That's democracy - or was.