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.

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.

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.

Have you ever watched someone become American? Last week at a national citizenship conference I organize thirty immigrants from 17 countries swore an oath and became citizens of the United States. It was a stirring experience for the hundreds of people in the room.

Parents of recovered children and I've met hundreds all share the same experience of doubters and deniers telling us our child must have never even had autism or that the recovery was simply nature's course. We all know better and frankly we're too busy helping other parents to really care.

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries too. Wright lived into his 90s and one of his most famous buildings the Guggenheim Museum in New York was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.

The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives homes and businesses lost ecosystems destroyed species driven to extinction infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.

I don't drive around London much. Any journey around Islington involves hundreds of speed bumps that seem to tear the bottom of your car off.

Of course everybody makes mistakes and we've all been young and stupid. But people need to have a sense of respect particularly in this business because hundreds of people are ready to take your place at any time. Maybe some people should think about that.

I don't know much about auctions. I sometimes go to previews and see art sardined into ugly rooms. I've gawked at the gaudy prices and gaped at well-clad crowds of happy white people conspicuously spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years.

Scholarship was one thing drudgery another. I very soon concluded that nothing would induce me to read let alone make notes on hundreds and hundreds of very very very boring books.