New Year! New Decade! New Hope?

I hope you all enjoyed your Christmas and New Year's Eve celebrations and that your hangovers aren't too heavy and pass quickly.

And talking of quickly - hasn't the first decade of the new millenium simply ripped through our lives? Now referred to as the "noughties" it has seen us throught the euphoria of promise that mankind reads into numerically significant ghanges of the ages throught to the biggest economic recession since the American "dust bowl" years epitomised by John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath".

So does the new decade bring new hope? Of course it does simply because if it doesn't then the recession will become the norm in the modern and developing world. So I wish you all a Happy, Prosperous and Successful New Year and everything you wish for yourselves.