The teenage years are a confusing time. Many changes are happening. The teenage mind is being wired up for the next sixty years or so, it has to cope with mortgages, taxes, wrinkles, grey hair and evolution's favourite: babies. And during this period of reengineering the average teenager can do some very embarrassing or downright dangerous things.

I am afraid my mind is going through this process at the moment.

I thought I had gotten away with it, my 18th birthday just around the corner, the light at the end of the tunnel. But alas, those chemical bastards made a charge at the end and bit me in the ass. I am ashamed to tell you that something I'm going to do is both embarrassing and highly dangerous. This blog, for one post only I hasten to add, is going to get political.

I don't know how widely reported this is, but the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has been doing some renovating as of late. Not to his home, to the homes of thousands of his citizens. Renovating is completely the wrong word because he has had these townships bulldozed to the ground leaving thousands of Zimbabweans homeless. Mugabe says he's trying to cut crime. Those who don't fear him say he's trying to oppress or eliminate his political rivals, which you'd expect to be quite numerous after 25 years of the same government.

Needless to say this is a major breach of human rights.

Hold up, did you say 'a major breach of human rights'? Why yes I did. Can we think of any other individual to have the same qualification to his name? Maybe one with a moustache? And sitting on a rather large source of oil? Yes, I know, I'm quite ashamed to jump on this bandwagon. But let's do a comparison for the fun of it.

Iraq:
Saddam Hussein, a bloke in charge for a long time, commits crimes against human rights.

Zimbabwe:
Robert Mugabe, a bloke in charge for a long time, commits crimes against human rights.

Iraq:
Exports: (a lot of, 83%ish) crude oil, crude materials excluding fuels, food and live animals
To: US, Spain, Japan, Italy, Canada

Zimbabwe:
Exports: cotton, tobacco, gold, ferroalloys, textiles/clothing
To: South Africa, Zambia, China

Iraq:
Action: INVASION!!!

Zimbabwe:
Action: Well, we'll wait and see.

When some serious metal was itching to roll into Iraq, we had weeks and weeks of reports of just that, sometimes and entire evening broadcast was devoted to it. Bush and Blair side by side, ready to lead their troops with the 'evidence' and moral high ground into battle from afar. This evening's BBC news broadcast, where I heard about the events in Zimbabwe, the story was the headliner (at least that's something) and lasted approximately ten minutes including a short statement from our home secretary, Jack Straw, and his American counterpart, who I'm not going to even try and spell. No statement from Blair as he was busy pissing off Europe, and no statement from Bush who one can only assume was busy looking for the Vaseline for when Tony came running crying "All those older boys are picking on me!!".

Mr Straw and counterpart were asking African countries to not let this happen. I guess the Coalition won't be rolling into Zimbabwe any time soon.

The next story was about how fuel prices keep going up.

As I said at the beginning, this is an embarrasing one off foray into letting politics creep onto this blog. I apologise profusely for any naivety shown, or for any anger of the teenage variety.