What is it about the United States? I admit to having a love-hate relationship. For most of my career I have worked for US-based employers and have had a demanding, but rewarding work environment. I have been mainly fairly treated and occasionally seen dodgy practices, but would not single out the US for that as I have seen the same in Europe. I have also found many people in the US to be extemely hospitable opening up their homes on light aquantance; something I have not often seen in more 'reserved' countries like the UK or Germany. However the flip side is that I have often been confronted with a superficial, shallow welcome - "I'll invite you round before you leave" - which is not sincere and which would lose considerable face in most European countries.

For the last 20 years I have hypothesised that the US is a bimodal country while most European and Asian countries are unimodal. Just take body mass and fitness. Over this period I have noticed that the US has significantly more "spacehopper" shaped people, yet also more superfit people who spend a massive amount of time, energy and money keeping fit.

OK, I have been digressing... When it comes to politics I have often had a much more critical view of the United States and its projection of economic and military power. The same applies to HMG here too! I have often felt it was important for us in the UK to take a distinctly different stance on some issues while remaining allied on most issues. Iraq was a classic failed opportunity. Iraq was a horrible dictatorship but not a haven for terrorism before the US/UK invasion. Why did we not speak out? I could write resentful essays on this...but I am getting even further from the subject! .

Despite my love of many places and people in the US over the last 35 years, one thing I have never understood is the attitude to energy. In 1973 there was a major energy crisis that affected most of the western world. At that time I recall from my school lessons, the USA was the largest single supplier of oil in the world yet was still dependent on importing oil from the Middle East. This struck me as being very strategically dumb given both the level of energy wastage in the US then with massive "gasguzzling" motor vehicles, virtually no public transport and the high political risks of the Middle East. The obvious solution was to be dramatically more energy efficient and be independent of outside oil suppliers. There was also good research taking place in the US at that time (as good as anywhere else) on saving energy yet little seemed to be applied in practice. But OK.. that was the view of a then naive teenager!

But what was strategically dumb in my teenage years seems to be repeated in my middle age. SUVs are widespread in the US even though they depend on energy from politically dodgy sources. The US out of all large developed countries is the only one that has a fighting chance of being energy self-sufficent but does exactly the opposite of achieving that. What an own goal!! It makes me sad for my really good US friends.

So what about George Dubya? On one hand he is disarmingly honest about some of his past sins like drinking, yet fails to see the moral issues around things he has initiated e.g. Guantanamo Bay. I think that US foreign policy has some rightful concerns about security but has screwed up most of the rest. Since we British have naively followed Dubya we ought to be doubly ashamed as our history should have taught us better. But back to Duwya, he has just asked the Saudis to increase oil production so that the price he pays to import it goes down. Why should a country like Saudi Arabia that is economically dependent on oil redcue its own income to suite George? It is not surprising they did not warm to the idea.