After hundreds of auditions and nothing you're sitting home and wondering 'What am I doing?'

Now I know there are many Americans who say 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

Jobs are disappearing from every sector of the economy from engineering to health care workers forcing hundreds of thousands of families into unemployment and low-paying jobs.

Here in Silicon Valley I have taken part in hundreds of conversations trying to convince people to dive in and become entrepreneurs. All too often innovators with good safe jobs are unwilling to put their family's access to health care at risk by walking away from company-backed medical insurance.

With the loss of Free Choice Vouchers hundreds of thousands of workers will now be forced to choose between their employers' unaffordable insurance or going without health care.

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards commissions and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time money and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.

Today hundreds of millions dwell in freedom from the Baltic to the Adriatic from the Western Approaches to the Aegean. And while we must never take this for granted the first purpose of the European Union - to secure peace - has been achieved and we should pay tribute to all those in the EU alongside Nato who made that happen.

What Churchill described as the twin marauders of war and tyranny have been almost entirely banished from our continent. Today hundreds of millions dwell in freedom from the Baltic to the Adriatic from the Western Approaches to the Aegean.

When people talk of the freedom of writing speaking or thinking I cannot choose but laugh. No such thing ever existed. No such thing now exists but I hope it will exist. But it must be hundreds of years after you and I shall write and speak no more.

We don't really go in for big family dinners but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.