In the news

The release of Abdul Rahman is very good news; but in context, only a small victory. The real one will be when the law in Afganistan is changed to make this situation—where a man is sentenced to die for converting from Islam—impossible. After all, we invaded Afganistan to stop that sort of thing, alledgedly. Even more difficult will be to change the hearts of the local population, who according to one of the judges in the case were ready to form a lynch mob. We heard in the last few days a great deal from representatives of Islam in the media, telling us that the Koran does not require the death penalty for conversion. It isn't the largely secular population of Britian they need to be telling this to; it's their fellow Muslims. If that were being preached in mosques in the Middle East, rather than jihad, we'd have a lot fewer problems. I heard one commentator explain that everyone is born Muslim, some have the misfortune to be brought up in other religions. By that system, every non-Muslim male in the world deserves death.

At home, some bloke from Tyrone with more money than sense has paid £80 000 plus VAT for the numberplate BIG 1. He also bought BIG 2 and BIG 3, leaving him with a total bill of £150 000. That's the price of a small flat.
And in the department of You Can't Make This Up, a plane mean to land at Derry City Airport landed instead at the airstrip of the nearby Ballykelly army base (I drove a tank there once), the pilot having apparently becone lost in midair. To paraphrase one of the passengers: The pilot apologised for landing us at the wrong airport. I thought he was joking until I looked out the window and saw half the British Army running over taking photographs.