Obama bin Landen has had his fate seal'd.

This Monday, it would appear that the menace at the top of America's most wanted list was finally killed. But is this a good thing?

Monday morning saw a raid carried out by the crème de la crème of American Special Forces, the US Navy Seals [Seal's official site]. They carried out a meticulously planned raid on Osama's $1m compound, located less than a mile away from the main military institute in Pakistan, with the intelligence aid from the CIA. The result of which saw bin Laden shot above his left eye in a 'precision shot' (whoever said that is an idiot), his youngest wife and five more of his guards killed; with 2 taken prisoner. None of the soldiers taking part in the raid were killed or injured, but it would seem that even after this remarkable feat, the Americans couldn't help but put their trademark fuck up to the operation - but crashing one of their helicopters into the wall of the compound.

Nice one: Apparently caused by a mechanical malfunction.

After the raid, bin Laden's body was flown to a US carrier floating to the south of Afghanistan where he was 'cleansed' and given a traditional Islamic funeral before being buried at sea to stop his grave becoming a shrine to extremists.

When I woke up at 5.30 Monday morning for work, I turned the telly on and through my bleary eyes could've of sworn that I read, "Michelle Obama has been killed". I thought 'Oh my goodness!', blinked a few times and realised that what it actually said was "Osama bin Laden has been killed". I must say, there was some relief, swiftly followed by my mumbling, 'well, that's alrigh' then'. And since then the story has pretty much blanketed the news - with journalists and anchormen and women cursing their bad luck at having to get up extra early to practice the pronunciation of bin Laden's closest mates.  

But for me, there wasn't a feeling of joy. There wasn't a feeling of a chapter in history being finished, and this surprised me. I felt very neutral. I didn't feel the urge to tell everyone and I didn't feel the need to jump up and down and throw my arms in the air. 

I think this was to do with the fact that Osama wasn't really anybody who (contrary to popular belief) was actually dangerous. Yes, he had quite a ridiculous mindset and preached about it - it's the prats that believe what he had to say that are dangerous. Killing Osama has changed nothing, somebody will have replaced him, and when they die, somebody will replace them too. It's like the hype in Chelsea's £50m deal for Torres, only for him to make no difference and be an utter let down. The only thing 'good' about this is that it has pretty much super-glued Obama's re-election. 

If anything, it has caused a martyr. However, this remains to be seen, but if it turns out to be true, then it would justify Bush's decision to let bin Laden escape certain death in 2001. Either way, life will go on. People will still go to work, take their children to the park and go on holiday; no differently than before. 

No matter how you look at it, not very many people are particularly saddened by his death, not in Europe, America or even the Middle-East. 

This week sees a pretty major political domestic event too, the AV referendum. After a strong belief in the FPTP system, I have slowly been swayed away from it and come to the point that I don't really have a bias towards either First Past The Post or Alternative Vote systems - for this reason, I probably won't be placing my vote on it since I'm willing to be carried along either path that the country decided to go down on this (I would rather a form of PR). If you are unsure about what I am talking about, or still don't quite understand either voting system, this guy pretty much does a good job of summing it up. It is quite lengthy, but worth the read and pretty much sums up everything I have to say on the matter.

I would also like to congratulate Prince William and (now) Princess Kate on their marriage on Friday, 29th. For all those who watched it you can't deny at least some sense of patriotism for the whole affair, no matter how much you took the piss out of it all before hand; and for all you whom missed it - unlucky. But here's a brief sum up: a typical English royal get together with a very to-do execution of events including, but not limited to; horses, expensive cars, a huge abbey, extravagant clothes, the Queen and sand. Unfortunately I couldn't watch the whole thing since my draconian employer wanted me to earn them yet more money, but from what I hear, it all went rather smoothly in that very English way. 

I would also like to thank this same employer for letting me celebrate my Easter 'holidays' and get on with the college work that I had a lot of to do (which I should be, but haven't been doing, now) and thus my long spate of blogging silence. I love my job.