My wife and I have been very happily married for 33 years. There has been very little tension in our home apart from the normal challenges any family faces. Our late baby is now 18 and living with us. He goes to College and has every gadget known to man. He expectsa lot but gives little---totally spoilt---and fawns on his mother. He and I have shared interests for years and I have tried to make up quality time but it is not the quality time a 40 year old can give a teenager. I am nearly 60 a...

I really fluffed. I had wanted to paste my latest MERNEWS article into Joeuser (The Iraq thing), and I ended up posting many articles at once. I'm sorry. MERNEWS is one of my hobby blogs and it contains comments and editorial reflection on the current news. I would like it to grow a bit before exposing it too much (if it growsat all!). You are probably asking: How does MERNEWS get its news? Well, Reuters would not consider us, or SAPA or USN. But we do have our resources. And our editorial...

What can be done about Iraq? MERNEWS editorial. By MERNEWS Iraq is in a mess--a real mess. MERNEWS believes that this mess can be sorted out but it is going to cost a fortune. Why are terrorists (kindly called insurgents), still pouring into this country? Why are car bombs still going off daily? MERNEWS reports that if Bill Clinton is worried and criticizes the Bush administration for errors in Iraq, then we are hearing from someone who speaks with authority. Clinton (speaking in Dub...

Answers (Carefully researched and documented on many sites) 1.Which other President was decorated for service in WW2? ---George H.W. Bush 2.Which 2 Presidents were assassinated in the 20th Century? ---Easy one: Mc Kinley and JFK. 3.How many Presidents were Generals before being elected President? ---Easy again: IKE 4.Which President was never elected President by popular vote? ---Easy Again. Ford. 5.Which two Presidents were born with different surnames? ---Not so easy: Clinton (Wil...

I love Americana and I have an extensive library of books, although I have never been to the US. Here's a quiz on Presidents. Try to answer off the bat. Most are easy but I've tried to throw in one or two puzzlers: All the answers apply to the 20th Century only! * Which President, other than JFK and Ike, was decorated for service in WW2? * Which two presidents were assassinated in the twentieth Century? * How many presidents were Generals before taking up office? (20th Century only). * ...

Some of the most famous men in history have been smokers. Churchill puffed away on noxious Cuban cigars; Eisenhower smoked himself silly during WW2; Anwar Sadat smoked a smelly pipe ---and the former South African President, and Nobel Peace Prize winner, F.W. De Klerk, smoked two packs a day. The 40's, 50's and 60's were decades when smoking was the norm rather than the exception. In the 70's,as health concerns developed (actually it was much earlier, but the anti-smoking brigade took up its ...

Last week's London Sunday Times has an editorial and a full page article on Robert Mugabe, the fool who runs tinpot Zimbabwe. The Times editorial wonders (rightly), why Mugabe was allowed to fly to Rome last week to attend the 60 th anniversary of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. Now MERNEWS has a problem with that too! How can a senile old man, subject to sanctions by the UN itself, be flown by Kofi Annan to Rome just so that Mugabe could rant and rave at George Bush and Tony Blair?...

Personally, I think Dubya's news conference yesterday (28-10), was a disappointment. He threw out all the old cliches about 9/11 and terrorism and how America was making itself safe. He should have thrown a nasty, full-on curve ball at Syria and Iran. All he did was mention them in passing. Had he been told to hold his tongue by his advisors? Did he decide to play a waiting game? He said (rough quote):"Countries like Iran and Syria are not helping the movement against terrorism." Sheeit,...

Robert Mugabe is not an evil person. He is just completely stupid. Here is a man who took over one of the breadbaskets of Africa (Erstwhile Rhodesia was the biggest tobacco producer in Africa and a major exporter of maize and sorghum.) Now they have nothing in Zimbabwe. They rely on aid and that aid goes to Mugabe supporters. Mugabe is intent on raping his country and proving that the British (whom he hates with a passion), are the one's responsible. This old idiot has brought his countriy to...

Britain: Tuesday: 21 June 2005. The Daily Express reported today that people have a "helpline" if they want to report "sneaky smokers", i.e. smokers who try to sneak a quick puff in a banned area. Nothing wrong with telling smokers off if they smoke in a non-smoking area. We smokers go along with this. What we do not go with is the fact that we may be spied upon, tittle-tattled upon and looked upon as social outcasts. If we are going to be reported so that we have to be fined then I think ...

Robert Mugabe must go. He is senile,affected mentally and a tyrant. Let's put aside, for now, what he did to the white farmers.Now he is making many Zimbabweans suffer because of his moves to crush the MDC. His forced removals of families, total mismanagement of a failing economy, and his dictatorial "South American-like" purge of the opposition smacks of Noriega-type thinking. Everyone is against Comrade Robert but he continues to smite his own people with misguided attacks on their liv...

Robert Mugabe must go. He is senile,affected mentally and a tyrant. Let's put aside, for now, what he did to the white farmers.Now he is making many Zimbabweans suffer because of his moves to crush the MDC. His forced removals of families, total mismanagement of a failing economy, and his dictatorial "South American-like" purge of the opposition smacks of Noriega-type thinking. Everyone is against Comrade Robert but he continues to smite his own people with misguided attacks on their liv...

This is a completely new column from the United Kingdom. It is topical and controversial, as it's meant to be. No conclusions should be drawn as to bias, but there will be anti-US sentiments and pro-US sentiments expressed. I sit on the fence as there's bad and good in every society. I admire the United States of America and the United Kingdom as well so let's say that I praise where praise is deserved and come down hard on the lawmakers when it is deserved. NEWS AT FIVE will report weekly on...