Hostage to Fortune 2007
| 11:58 UK time, Friday, 29 December 2006
Things I'd like to do and places I'd like to go in 2007.
Visit Turkmenistan to cover the election of the new leader. I went there 18 months ago and it fulfilled all my expectations of an Orwellian nightmare for the 21st century. I'd like to see what happens next - and ride some of their amazing .
Meet at least two potential presidential candidates for the 2008 election in the US. This will probably be easier than meeting candidates to the Turkmen presidential election - not least because there's more choice. Even though it's nearly two years to go, 12 possible candidates have made moves for the Democratic Party, 15 for the Republicans.
Visit somewhere that might do well out of global warming. Not to prove it's a good thing... polluting the planet is daft whatever its effect on mean temperatures. But I'm also sure that poverty is more of a problem than climate change in most of the places affected. Timbuktu is possibly one such place - it's been raining more heavily in some years recently, pushing back the desert. The bad news there is that the rain is washing away the ancient mud buildings, and more water is not what they need anyway - if it's dirty water.
Spend a night on manoeuvres with counterinsurgency trainees in the US training facility at . I'm trying to work out why a new counterinsurgency field manual and plenty of training haven't made more of a difference to the way the US army is operating.
And...
Get up to stage 2 in British Horse Society tests.
Whatever you wish for, a Happy New Year!
