Chip fat could have weight implications

About half of the new cars sold in western Europe are diesel-powered, compared with five per cent in America.

This is because most Americans think that ‘… diesel cars are loud, smelly and environmentally unfriendly’, reports a leading US auto industry magazine.  Moreover, claims the publication, Americans do not understand any of the technology that has helped to make low-emission diesel cars so popular in Europe. For all they know, diesel cars run on chip fat.

Listen up, America. Diesel cars do not run on chip fat, or burger oil for that matter. If they did, not only would they be noisy and smelly, there could be weight implications, too.

Uh oh.....

I should like to suggest to Iraqi insurgents a novel and humane way to discourage American patrols from driving through the streets of Baghdad.

Instead of home-made ordnance. I recommend roundabouts. Dozens of them, if possible.

According to a recent report in The Economist, American drivers are baffled by roundabouts, and when one is constructed, State Troopers have to be stationed at the approaches to explain the operating principle – time and time again. Yanks just don’t get it, which perhaps explains why fewer than 1,000 roundabouts exist in the whole of North America, compared with 10,000 in the UK and 20,000 in France.

Apparently, Americans find leaving the roundabout the biggest challenge and some have been known to keep circling until they run out of fuel.

I’m not sure how, but the Iraqis seem to have got wind of my idea, at least according to a recent newspaper headline, which read: ‘Americans faced with Iraqi merry-go-round.’