I am sitting in my office looking out on a beautiful day. The sun is shining and although it is not hot, we have a temperature of about 53 degrees F and a soft SW breeze. The leaves on the trees are yellow and gold and the sky is light blue with small patches of white.
My wife is polishing the wood block floor and there is a delicious smell of polish mingled with a beef casserole in the oven.
I should hear about the monoclonal antibody on Monday afternoon. The delay has been because the chairman of the Committee (don't you hate that word) has been on annual leave and nobody has been brave enough to take the decision until he returns.
I was told by a patient who was an Insurance man that taking out Private Medical Insurance in the UK was not cost effective. Companies like PPP and BUPA were frauds against the general public. You can get a good deal through a company scheme, but if you have to fund it yourself, you would find it more cost effective to put your money in Unit Trusts via a PEP or ISA scheme that shields the growth from tax and draw on it when you need it. This is what I shall do if the answer on Monday is NO.
Talking of medical insurance, it seems to me that NICE has taken a strange view of what medication it should be supporting. If it were dealing with car insurance rather than medical insurance it would not be funding low cost items. We all have an excess on our car policies. The first £350 of damages incurred in an accident I pay myself so as not to lose my no-claims benefit. I can afford to pay that myself. It's the £10,000 write off bill and the £1 million damages when the other driver loses a limb that I want help with. So it should be with medical expenses. I can buy my own indigestion medicine, I need help with long term treatment for a handicapped child or maintenance therapy for cystic fibrosis or for cancer therapy.
My general health is quite good though I have to be careful only to eat small meals. My main problem is ascites - fluid secreted by the cancer and accumulating in the peritoneum between loops of bowel. At some stage this will need to be drained away with a thin plastic tube under ultrasound guidance.
My daughter the hematology registrar is on-call in Oxford this weekend. Among her patients is one who has a very difficult lymphoma with translocations on both chromosome 14s at the site of the promoter for the Ig heavy chain gene. On one chromosome the translocation is to BCL-2 and on the other to c-myc. This is a very rare combination and in the literature there are no long term survivors. It is ironic that I described the first such case back in the early 1980s.
My son, the F1 engineer, has finished his globe trotting to Grand Prix and in future will be in charge of procuring and providing at AP Racing. He has been thrown in the deep end with a computer glitch which he has sorted much to the approval of the CEO.
My older son, will be emigrating to New Zealand on Jan 7th. He has been head-hunted to do healthcare risk management there. Apparently his Visa came through in two days, so keen were they to have him. He is glad to leave the CQC which has become mired in an internecine dispute engineered by a two supposed whistleblowers. One is a passed over inspector, not clever enough to advance in her division (she can't grasp Bayesian statistics) and now angling for 'constructive dismissal' and the other is a Board Member who was appointed for her special interest in mental disease; her special interest being that she had suffered from it and was getting increasingly disturbed as the year went on.
My older daughter took voluntary redundancy earlier in the year and has set up her own company doing business analysis. In the meantime she is in partnership with her step-son in an arts and crafts business which is making and selling objets-arts around Christmas time.
I ought to explain what the monoclonal antibody does:
Every cell in the body needs to either grow or die. This is as true for normal cells as cancer cells. Each cell receives a growth signal from a growth factor which reacts with a growth factor receptor on the cell surface. This message is then transmitted to the nucleus where a transcription factor sets the cell dividing at its set rate. This will be different for a skin cell compared to a blood cell compared to a brain cell. Cancer cells will tend to divide faster.
The message must be taken from the cell surface to the nucleus by a series of second messengers. Mistakes (mutations) can take place in the growth factor, the growth factor receptor, any of the second messengers or the transcription factors. A common mistake is in the second messenger k-ras and it is known that these monoclonal antibodies, which block the epidermal growth factor receptor do not work very well if k-ras is mutated. Happily mine is not.
In view of the fact that my disease is very indolent (in its metastatic form it has been present for over 3 years) the cancer does not seem to be carrying too many mutations and I have every hope that EGFR blockade with this monoclonal will be successful.
In the football it is an important weekend for the Premier League. Chelsea have just beaten Newcastle and later today Man U play Aston Villa, Spurs play Bolton, and Man C play Norwich. These are all games that could go either way and the Champions will come from this group of clubs. England were fortunate with the draw for the European Championships and will not have to meet a really top team until Wayne Rooney returns from suspension.
In the News today is a report which suggests that 3000 women in Britain are suffering from so-called "honor beatings" from family members because of the alien "shame culture" brought into Britain by (mostly) Muslims. And Jacques DeLors, the instigator of the Euro, has admitted that it was badly introduced since most countries, including Germany, broke the entry rules.
For all Biblical Creation Society members who may be reading this blog, thank you for your prayers. Another explanation for why my cancer has taken so long to kill me is that I am being sustained by the prayers of Christians all over the world, and because in response to those prayers the Holy Spirit still finds me useful where I am am rather than in taking me home. If that is the case would you pray that he keeps me free from pain and keeps making innovative suggestions on how I may more easily bear this period of difficulty. In particular I should like wisdom on when it would be right to tap the ascites.
It has been a very eventful week with fillings falling out, dishwasher delays, eyesight tests, earwax bothers, monoclonal hold-ups, bad days, good days, CT scan, visits from children and grandchildren, reading too late some nights, sleeping too long some mornings, a fall down stairs, and difficult decisions; but the Lord has brought me through all this and does sustain me in the worst of times.
I have discovered that the nicer you are to other people the nicer they are to you.
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Showing posts with label News. Show all posts
Saturday, December 03, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Bournemouth in the news
We have had a week when Bournemouth has made the front page of all the UK national newspapers. First it was the floods. Running through the center of Bournemouth is Bourne stream, about 5 feet wide. On Thursday last we had 2 inches of rain in about 2 hours and the place was flooded. The stream overflowed its boundaries and became a lake. The promenade became a waterfall and Westover Road split, as gas pipes burst.
The next day everything was cleared after a remarkable work party and cleaned the streets. All was set for the Bournemouth Air show. Then the tragedy of the lost wing man of the Red Arrows. It seems that it was a bird strike that caused the loss of power. The pilot bravely flew his plane away from the village of Throop before crashing on the banks of the River Stour. He apparently ejected but at too low an altitude.
The next day everything was cleared after a remarkable work party and cleaned the streets. All was set for the Bournemouth Air show. Then the tragedy of the lost wing man of the Red Arrows. It seems that it was a bird strike that caused the loss of power. The pilot bravely flew his plane away from the village of Throop before crashing on the banks of the River Stour. He apparently ejected but at too low an altitude.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Silly Season
They used to call August the silly season when politicians and journalists went away on holiday. The newspapers were stuck with stories of cats stuck up trees. Not so this August. These are the current stories: 1. Riots in the UK; 2. Famine in the horn of Africa; 3. America's credit rating degraded; 4. The Euro collapsing; 5 War in Libya; 6. War in Afghanistan; 7. Atrocities in Syria; 8. The aftermath of the Norway Massacre; 9. The aftermath of Levi-Strauss; 10. England walloping India in the Test Match.
It's not a day when Sports News makes the front pages, but it might be a good day to bury bad news.
This is the day that a major new treatment for CLL was announced. I will cover it maturely when I have all the background, but I have blogged about this approach in the past with some enthusiasm since I heard about its proposed use in ALL at GTAC. Mind, I can't find where I put it, so perhaps it was a comment rather than an entry. Never mind I shall definitely write an article about it.
It's not a day when Sports News makes the front pages, but it might be a good day to bury bad news.
This is the day that a major new treatment for CLL was announced. I will cover it maturely when I have all the background, but I have blogged about this approach in the past with some enthusiasm since I heard about its proposed use in ALL at GTAC. Mind, I can't find where I put it, so perhaps it was a comment rather than an entry. Never mind I shall definitely write an article about it.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Snippets from the news
Has the "Peace Process" worked in Northern Ireland? Things are undoubtedly better than they were, but don't kid yourself that everything is cured. Look at these figures:
There are still more than 1,100 people who are on terrorist death lists in Northern Ireland who are being allowed to carry guns for their own protection.
Terrorist bombing incidents are at their highest level in eight years – 100 in 2010-11 (and no, it's not Islamists).
Terrorist attacks are seldom solved – 12 of 272 such attacks between 2008 and 2010 have been successfully detected.
People are still being driven from their homes. The number rose by a third in 2009-10. Terrorist and sectarian intimidation was cited in 85 per cent of these cases.
Sectarian incidents rose from 1,595 in 2008-09 to 1,840 in 2009-10 – a 15 per cent increase. Sectarian crimes in the same period went up from 1,017 to 1,264 – a 24 per cent increase.
British people cannot give blood in America because of BSE. People from America cannot give blood in Europe because of West Nile Virus. There is apparently an ‘epidemic’ of West Nile Fever in North America. The United States has a population of 311 million. Last year, the entire country had 629 serious cases of this virus – 144 of them fatal encephalitis. In 24 of the 50 states, there were no deaths at all. Five states had only one death each; another five only two. There were precisely no cases of West Nile in this country in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010. There was one in 2006 (from Canada) and one in 2007 (also from Canada).
Nobody in this country has any discretion or control over this rule, because it was made by the EU (our real government). Directive 2004/33/EC of March 22, 2004, over which you, I, the Blood Service and Parliament have no control, demands this concrete-headed regulation.
Why does the Archbishop of Canterbury (in his new guise of Left-wing politician) speak as if it was obvious that we should treat people who can work, but won’t, in the same way as we treat those who are truly in need?
In St Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, Chapter 5, we read: ‘If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’
In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, St Paul rubs it in, in that way he has: ‘This we commanded you, that if any will not work, neither shall he eat.’
Germany has decided to close its nuclear power stations in case they get hit by a tsunami or an earthquake. Germany’s dirty secret is its unfashionable and un-green attachment to coal. Because Germany has oceans of the stuff, and because Germany’s coal miners are better organised and led than ours were and mostly because German coal is conveniently near to the surface meaning it can be strip mined by a bloke on a bulldozer, Germany never fell out of love with the black stuff the way we did (a lot of it is a very soft and very dirty type of coal). As a result Germany still make a great deal of its electricity (nearly half) by burning coal, a major source of the 830m tonnes of CO2 the Federal Republic emits annually. That total figure amounts to about 10.15 tonnes of CO2 for every German compared to 9.25 tonnes in the UK and 6.4 tonnes in France where they are more dependent of nuclear.
About a quarter of Germany’s electricity comes from nuclear power and so the dramatic closure of all of Germany’s nuclear plants in the next decade will push up emissions dramatically. In fact, German energy-industry emissions are about 355mt a year, so the nuclear shortfall could result in a 70-million-tonne increase in carbon emissions every year if the balance is taken up by fossil fuels. Perhaps, like me, the German government secretly does not really beieve in CO2 being the driving force behind climate change.
The outrages in Syria get worse. The supposed 120 security forces killed in Jisr al-Shughour has never rung true. From other sources we hear that many in the Syrian Army mutinied when ordered to fire on unarmed civilians. It was these mutineers who were killed by the military secret police. After so much faking of evidence by the Libyans earlier and by Hezbollah a couple of years ago, I never automatically believe anything that an Arab Muslim tells me. However, to give the other side of the story (also from an Arab Muslim) Sergeant-Major Ali Hassan Satouf claims to have deserted. When he was sent to the port refinery of Banias to fight “terrorist armed groups” he did not hesitate — until he realised that he had been deceived. “We didn’t find any terrorist groups,” he said in a video released last week. “We found only peaceful demonstrations." The sergeant-major describes how soldiers broke into homes in a village and stole private property before arresting dozens of men, prompting women to pelt them with stones. “In response to the stone-throwing, we were ordered to open fire ... and we had a massacre. Four women were killed.” (Only a small massacre then).
A senior Turkish official said 4,300 Syrians had crossed into Turkey. “All the accusations of residents sheltering gangs are false,” said a man from Jisr al-Shughour. “And we never asked the army for help or to enter our town. It is them firing on us.” The regime has sought to play down a video that shows Syrian soldiers beating shackled prisoners and placing weapons on corpses which appear to have been shot at point blank range.
Also in the Muslim world Pakistan was in shock today after two explosions in the northwest city of Peshawar killed at least 34 people and left a further 100 injured, many severely, in one of the deadliest attacks since last month's US mission which ended in the death of Al-Qaeda figurehead Osama Bin Laden. The explosions occurred in a neighbourhood of the city which houses military personnel and has many political offices, and which has been the site of bomb attacks in the past. The first blast took place shortly after midnight and was the smaller of the two. As emergency services made their way to the scene of the attack, a suicide bomber rode a motorcycle carrying 10kg of explosives to the site and detonated his deadly payload.
The head of Al-Qaeda in east Africa, who was accused of playing a key role in the bombing of two American embassies in 1998, has been killed in Somalia, police said yesterday. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was reportedly shot last week after an exchange of fire at a police checkpoint. He had been travelling on a fake South African passport. Mohammed had spent 12 years on the run after the bombings in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, which had killed more than 240 people and brought Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to world attention.
What with the slaying of Al Qaeda's Ilyas Kashmiri in a drone attack in Pakistan, Western force seem to be getting more successful. Perhaps because of intelligence gathered from the attack on Bin Laden?
There are still more than 1,100 people who are on terrorist death lists in Northern Ireland who are being allowed to carry guns for their own protection.
Terrorist bombing incidents are at their highest level in eight years – 100 in 2010-11 (and no, it's not Islamists).
Terrorist attacks are seldom solved – 12 of 272 such attacks between 2008 and 2010 have been successfully detected.
People are still being driven from their homes. The number rose by a third in 2009-10. Terrorist and sectarian intimidation was cited in 85 per cent of these cases.
Sectarian incidents rose from 1,595 in 2008-09 to 1,840 in 2009-10 – a 15 per cent increase. Sectarian crimes in the same period went up from 1,017 to 1,264 – a 24 per cent increase.
British people cannot give blood in America because of BSE. People from America cannot give blood in Europe because of West Nile Virus. There is apparently an ‘epidemic’ of West Nile Fever in North America. The United States has a population of 311 million. Last year, the entire country had 629 serious cases of this virus – 144 of them fatal encephalitis. In 24 of the 50 states, there were no deaths at all. Five states had only one death each; another five only two. There were precisely no cases of West Nile in this country in 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010. There was one in 2006 (from Canada) and one in 2007 (also from Canada).
Nobody in this country has any discretion or control over this rule, because it was made by the EU (our real government). Directive 2004/33/EC of March 22, 2004, over which you, I, the Blood Service and Parliament have no control, demands this concrete-headed regulation.
Why does the Archbishop of Canterbury (in his new guise of Left-wing politician) speak as if it was obvious that we should treat people who can work, but won’t, in the same way as we treat those who are truly in need?
In St Paul’s first epistle to Timothy, Chapter 5, we read: ‘If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.’
In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, St Paul rubs it in, in that way he has: ‘This we commanded you, that if any will not work, neither shall he eat.’
Germany has decided to close its nuclear power stations in case they get hit by a tsunami or an earthquake. Germany’s dirty secret is its unfashionable and un-green attachment to coal. Because Germany has oceans of the stuff, and because Germany’s coal miners are better organised and led than ours were and mostly because German coal is conveniently near to the surface meaning it can be strip mined by a bloke on a bulldozer, Germany never fell out of love with the black stuff the way we did (a lot of it is a very soft and very dirty type of coal). As a result Germany still make a great deal of its electricity (nearly half) by burning coal, a major source of the 830m tonnes of CO2 the Federal Republic emits annually. That total figure amounts to about 10.15 tonnes of CO2 for every German compared to 9.25 tonnes in the UK and 6.4 tonnes in France where they are more dependent of nuclear.
About a quarter of Germany’s electricity comes from nuclear power and so the dramatic closure of all of Germany’s nuclear plants in the next decade will push up emissions dramatically. In fact, German energy-industry emissions are about 355mt a year, so the nuclear shortfall could result in a 70-million-tonne increase in carbon emissions every year if the balance is taken up by fossil fuels. Perhaps, like me, the German government secretly does not really beieve in CO2 being the driving force behind climate change.
The outrages in Syria get worse. The supposed 120 security forces killed in Jisr al-Shughour has never rung true. From other sources we hear that many in the Syrian Army mutinied when ordered to fire on unarmed civilians. It was these mutineers who were killed by the military secret police. After so much faking of evidence by the Libyans earlier and by Hezbollah a couple of years ago, I never automatically believe anything that an Arab Muslim tells me. However, to give the other side of the story (also from an Arab Muslim) Sergeant-Major Ali Hassan Satouf claims to have deserted. When he was sent to the port refinery of Banias to fight “terrorist armed groups” he did not hesitate — until he realised that he had been deceived. “We didn’t find any terrorist groups,” he said in a video released last week. “We found only peaceful demonstrations." The sergeant-major describes how soldiers broke into homes in a village and stole private property before arresting dozens of men, prompting women to pelt them with stones. “In response to the stone-throwing, we were ordered to open fire ... and we had a massacre. Four women were killed.” (Only a small massacre then).
A senior Turkish official said 4,300 Syrians had crossed into Turkey. “All the accusations of residents sheltering gangs are false,” said a man from Jisr al-Shughour. “And we never asked the army for help or to enter our town. It is them firing on us.” The regime has sought to play down a video that shows Syrian soldiers beating shackled prisoners and placing weapons on corpses which appear to have been shot at point blank range.
Also in the Muslim world Pakistan was in shock today after two explosions in the northwest city of Peshawar killed at least 34 people and left a further 100 injured, many severely, in one of the deadliest attacks since last month's US mission which ended in the death of Al-Qaeda figurehead Osama Bin Laden. The explosions occurred in a neighbourhood of the city which houses military personnel and has many political offices, and which has been the site of bomb attacks in the past. The first blast took place shortly after midnight and was the smaller of the two. As emergency services made their way to the scene of the attack, a suicide bomber rode a motorcycle carrying 10kg of explosives to the site and detonated his deadly payload.
The head of Al-Qaeda in east Africa, who was accused of playing a key role in the bombing of two American embassies in 1998, has been killed in Somalia, police said yesterday. Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was reportedly shot last week after an exchange of fire at a police checkpoint. He had been travelling on a fake South African passport. Mohammed had spent 12 years on the run after the bombings in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, which had killed more than 240 people and brought Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to world attention.
What with the slaying of Al Qaeda's Ilyas Kashmiri in a drone attack in Pakistan, Western force seem to be getting more successful. Perhaps because of intelligence gathered from the attack on Bin Laden?
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
What's happening in the world?
As the end of my chemotherapy gets closer I find that I am just gritting my teeth and hanging on. I am confined to the house because the side effects (especially stomach cramps) persist all the time. Next Tuesday will be the start of my final course. After that the moment of truth when I have my CT scan.
Yesterday I had a visit from Dr Brian Koffman and his wife, who are taking a vacation in Europe. (Regular readers may know of Brian who is a GP from California who has CLL and ITP and has had quite aggressive treatment for them). They had just been in Venice, Rome, Naples and Florence and had had a few days in England with friends. It was a pleasant Spring day and they had a chance to appreciate the sea front here. We had a couple of hours together. We share the experience of being doctors and patients at the same time.
I am afraid that I have been unable to write very much recently. I have put my mind to more mechanical tasks of SUDOKU and model making. I finished a goods depot for my model railway and may make a start today on an engine shed.
The book I am reading at the moment is Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch. It is a look at Conspiracy Theories. A strange fact is that the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana are all linked by a complicated conspiracy, but the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan was just an isolated event by a lone weirdo.
I shall be reviewing the book in the future. In the meantime we have been watching two great world events take place in our living rooms: the disasters in Japan and the uprising in Libya. Obama's response to Libya has much in common with the America First Committee, which opposed FDR's tendency to meddle in foreign wars. Acts passed in the 1930s prevented America giving aid to Abyssinia when invaded by fascist Italy to the republican government of Spain when Franco's fascists rose up against them, to China when Japan marched into Manchuria, and allowed Hitler to occupy the Ruhr, to annexe Austria and march into the Sudetenland unopposed. For a superpower whether or not to act as the world's policeman is always a dilemma. It is probably true to say that it should always act in its own interest, but that does sometimes require prophylactic action. Perhaps Pearl Harbor would have been forestalled if action had been taken over Manchuria. Perhaps World War II would have been prevented had America joined the League of Nations. Perhaps the current mess in the Middle East would have been prevented had Eisenhower supported Britain, France and Israel in 1956?
What has happened in Japan is, of course, awful. One of the spin-offs has been a hardening of opinion against nuclear power. This knee-jerk reaction ought to fade away on mature reflection. Where else is sufficient energy going to come from? Lessons should be learned, however, principally that we shouldn't build such power stations close to where they can be damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis.
Yesterday I had a visit from Dr Brian Koffman and his wife, who are taking a vacation in Europe. (Regular readers may know of Brian who is a GP from California who has CLL and ITP and has had quite aggressive treatment for them). They had just been in Venice, Rome, Naples and Florence and had had a few days in England with friends. It was a pleasant Spring day and they had a chance to appreciate the sea front here. We had a couple of hours together. We share the experience of being doctors and patients at the same time.
I am afraid that I have been unable to write very much recently. I have put my mind to more mechanical tasks of SUDOKU and model making. I finished a goods depot for my model railway and may make a start today on an engine shed.
The book I am reading at the moment is Voodoo Histories by David Aaronovitch. It is a look at Conspiracy Theories. A strange fact is that the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana are all linked by a complicated conspiracy, but the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan was just an isolated event by a lone weirdo.
I shall be reviewing the book in the future. In the meantime we have been watching two great world events take place in our living rooms: the disasters in Japan and the uprising in Libya. Obama's response to Libya has much in common with the America First Committee, which opposed FDR's tendency to meddle in foreign wars. Acts passed in the 1930s prevented America giving aid to Abyssinia when invaded by fascist Italy to the republican government of Spain when Franco's fascists rose up against them, to China when Japan marched into Manchuria, and allowed Hitler to occupy the Ruhr, to annexe Austria and march into the Sudetenland unopposed. For a superpower whether or not to act as the world's policeman is always a dilemma. It is probably true to say that it should always act in its own interest, but that does sometimes require prophylactic action. Perhaps Pearl Harbor would have been forestalled if action had been taken over Manchuria. Perhaps World War II would have been prevented had America joined the League of Nations. Perhaps the current mess in the Middle East would have been prevented had Eisenhower supported Britain, France and Israel in 1956?
What has happened in Japan is, of course, awful. One of the spin-offs has been a hardening of opinion against nuclear power. This knee-jerk reaction ought to fade away on mature reflection. Where else is sufficient energy going to come from? Lessons should be learned, however, principally that we shouldn't build such power stations close to where they can be damaged by earthquakes and tsunamis.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
News
I've not been blogging much recently as I have not been feeling too well. Apart from the usual side effects I have had a blocked and runny nose with lots of sneezing and a headache, though no sore throat or other symptoms of a cold.
I have not been thinking very deeply, just watching the blue tits and four squirrels squabbling over the bird food we have put out. Apart from them I have spotted several species of dove, a couple of robins, a pair of chaffinches, blackbirds, crows, a jay, a pair of magpies, the odd sparrow and a herring gull. The weather has been a mixture of dull overcast days of drizzle and warmer sunny days. Early Spring has arrived. We have crocuses and daffodils out and the few snowdrops are finishing. The Forsythia is blooming and the first Camellias are out. Magnolias are in full bud and we are expecting quite a show.
We have just finished a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which took us the best part of a month (held up by 5 pieces that fell on the floor). I have also set up the track for the electric train set that I had for Christmas and am making a start on the models. I added some more DVDs to my collection. They are a mixture of old films and new, films I missed and some I wanted to see again. They are in no particular order: Park Row, Pulp, Dressed to Kill, The Last Picture Show, Frighteners, Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Borat, Signs, A Serious Man, Waltz with Bashir, District 9, Vicky Christina Barcelona, A Star is Born, A Letter to Three Wives, Scanners, Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Andromeda Strain, Hotel for Dogs, On the Beach, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Invention of Lying, Carrington, Nashville, Stardust, Born on the Fourth of July, A Man for All Seasons, Carlito's Way, Inkheart , The Heiress, Adam, The Wrestler, Local Hero, The Parallax View, and Public Enemies. The only film I have watched recently is Mr Blanding's Dream House.
I have been reading Virtue Reborn by TN Wright, the present Bishop of Durham. It is quite a difficult read. Since a couple of his previous books have been Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian (not Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity) I think he may see himself as CS Lewis of the Forties brought up to date for the Noughties. But his books are much longer and don't have that easy application to the common man. Still I will review it in detail at a later blog.
I have not been thinking very deeply, just watching the blue tits and four squirrels squabbling over the bird food we have put out. Apart from them I have spotted several species of dove, a couple of robins, a pair of chaffinches, blackbirds, crows, a jay, a pair of magpies, the odd sparrow and a herring gull. The weather has been a mixture of dull overcast days of drizzle and warmer sunny days. Early Spring has arrived. We have crocuses and daffodils out and the few snowdrops are finishing. The Forsythia is blooming and the first Camellias are out. Magnolias are in full bud and we are expecting quite a show.
We have just finished a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle which took us the best part of a month (held up by 5 pieces that fell on the floor). I have also set up the track for the electric train set that I had for Christmas and am making a start on the models. I added some more DVDs to my collection. They are a mixture of old films and new, films I missed and some I wanted to see again. They are in no particular order: Park Row, Pulp, Dressed to Kill, The Last Picture Show, Frighteners, Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Borat, Signs, A Serious Man, Waltz with Bashir, District 9, Vicky Christina Barcelona, A Star is Born, A Letter to Three Wives, Scanners, Where the Sidewalk Ends, The Andromeda Strain, Hotel for Dogs, On the Beach, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Invention of Lying, Carrington, Nashville, Stardust, Born on the Fourth of July, A Man for All Seasons, Carlito's Way, Inkheart , The Heiress, Adam, The Wrestler, Local Hero, The Parallax View, and Public Enemies. The only film I have watched recently is Mr Blanding's Dream House.
I have been reading Virtue Reborn by TN Wright, the present Bishop of Durham. It is quite a difficult read. Since a couple of his previous books have been Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian (not Surprised by Joy and Mere Christianity) I think he may see himself as CS Lewis of the Forties brought up to date for the Noughties. But his books are much longer and don't have that easy application to the common man. Still I will review it in detail at a later blog.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Review of the Decade
Undoubtedly the most significant even of the decade was the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York City by airplanes piloted by Islamic terrorists on September 11th 2001. It was horrific because it was an act of premeditated murder perpetrated before our eyes on the world’s television screens. It was significant because it was the model for similar attacks in Bali on October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta which killed 202 people, 152 of whom were foreign nationals (including 88 Australians), and 38 Indonesian citizens; in Madrid on March 11th 2004 when 191 train commuters were killed in the morning rush hour; in London on July 7th 2005 when 52 commuters were killed on the underground and on a bus by suicide bombers and in Mumbai between November 26thand November 29th 2008 where gunmen killed up to 175 people. There were many other attempts at mayhem including those of Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, the 2007 attempt to blow up London night clubs and Glasgow airport terminal with car bombs and the recent attempt to destroy an airliner in Detroit with an ‘underpants’ bomb.
These attempts have been foiled by increased security and by plain incompetence on behalf of the bombers. The security services, themselves are not without their incompetent qualities, witness the shooting of the innocent (though illegal immigrant) Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, at Stockwell Underground, the day after a failed bomb attack on the Tube.
Part of the terrorist’s raison d’être is to invoke such an oppressive reaction that Western civilization would grind to a halt. Although, this has not happened, the increased security at airports has been intrusive and is set to become more annoying.
The other response to the terrorist attacks has been the start of two major wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Winning such a war is not a problem; winning the peace is. As well as countless suicide bombers in both Iraq and Afghanistan there have been atrocities elsewhere in the Middle East including bombers in Turkey and Jordan. Asymmetrical warfare has entered our vocabulary. Relatively primitive technology, cunningly placed, is extremely effective, especially when the operatives are prepared to die for their cause. One notable fact about such wars is that they are fought mainly in the newspapers. The terrorist cannot hope to defeat the powerful armies of Western nations, but aims to inflict so many casualties that the Western country loses the will to fight. Even so single-minded a country as Israel found this to be true in its confrontations with Hezbollah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2008/9. Propaganda (much of it based on faked photographs) was the greatest weapon of the Islamists. This tactic began in Viet Nam and thus far an effective counter has not been produced.
Often forgotten among Islamist atrocities is the massacre at the Beslan school in North Ossetia in September 2004. Another important strand in World events has been the resurrection of Russian power since the fall of the Soviet Union. President and now Prime Minister (and perhaps to be President once more) Putin has rebuilt Russia sufficiently to throw its weight about again. Powered by vast natural gas reserves, it is able to blackmail Eastern European states like Ukraine into submission and overcome Georgia by the weight of its armed forces. It feels sufficiently confident to murder a Russian dissident, Alexander Litvinenko, with Polonium 210 on the streets of London. This is reflected in a simultaneous weakening of British power as exemplified by the capture of fifteen Royal Navy personnel by Iranian revolutionary guards when they strayed into disputed territorial waters and by the kidnapping of a yacht owned by British tourists from under the nose of the Royal Navy by Somali pirates. How one yearns for the days of Margaret Thatcher.
The other major story of the Noughties has been the collapse of financial institutions and the consequent worldwide recession. Beginning in the United States in 2007 it has been linked to reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. Credit was easy to get and this fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices. The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. On September 14th 2007 savers began to queue to withdraw a total of £1 billion from branches of the Northern Rock Building Society after hearing that the Bank of England has arranged an intervention package to rescue the bank, which ran into difficulties as a result of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Things seemed to stabilize a little but with loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, on September 15th 2008, a panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance. Iceland, home of three banks that had grown beyond their means of support, became the first Western democracy to become bankrupt.
One factor that economists seemed to have ignored was the growth of China. Within domestic economies in the West governments followed extremely inflationary policies with massively increased public spending and the creation of bureaucratic monstrosities as industrial jobs were exported to third world economies. Individuals felt rich because the paper price of their properties increased massively. They were able to borrow against these inflated prices and spend the money on foreign imports. China, meanwhile, expanded its industrial base and refused to revalue it currency. With the electronic goods, the West was importing deflation (in the form of cheaper manufactured goods) to counteract its domestic inflation.
As the recession has deepened, Western governments have adopted Keynesian economic practices and printed more money, thus devaluing their currencies while building up huge debts and hastening the day when they become vassal states of China and the commodity-rich states of the Middle East. Politicians have become distrusted. An expenses scandal in Britain has made politicians as hated as bankers.
We have had our share of natural disasters during the past decade. Worst of all was the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 which killed nearly 230,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were the hardest hit. It was caused by an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Several other earthquakes were hugely destructive including the October 8th 2005 Kashmir earthquake which killed over 80,000 people mainly in Pakistan, the May 12th 2008 in the Sichuan province of China and killed at least 68,000 people and the December 26th 2003 Bam earthquake in southeastern Iran which killed 26,271 people. Hundreds of thousands of people with a different skin hue dying a long way away, somehow did not have the impact in the news that the 1,836 killed along the U.S. Gulf Coast, as Hurricane Katrina struck. This was dwarfed in effect by cyclone Nargis which made landfall in Burma (which the ruling junta have renamed Myanmar) in 2008 causing catastrophic destruction and at least 146,000 fatalities. Every nation has its news priorities as this report shows: Sixty-seven British people lose their lives when four planes are hijacked by terrorists. It is the largest UK death toll in a single terrorist attack. This was how one website reported 9/11. As earthquakes go, we were more interested in what happened nearer to home on April 6 2009: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near L'Aquila, Italy, killed nearly 300 and injured more than 1,500.
Not all disasters have been natural or terrorist induced. In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in Queens minutes after takeoff from JFK International Airport, killing all 260 on board and Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry to Earth, killing all seven occupants. Air France Flight 4590 Concorde crashed during takeoff from Paris after its fuel tank caught fire, killing 9 crew and 100 passengers as well as four on the ground; the entire Concorde fleet is grounded for one year, and is eventually retired.
There were 22 other air crashes during the decade in which more than 100 were killed, and countless others where fewer than that number were eliminated. Most recently, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 occupants.
Talking of deaths the decade has said goodbye to several well known names: actors Jason Robards, Julie London, Richard Farnsworth (Straight Story), Sir Alec Guinness, Walter Matthau, Sir John Gielgud, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Hedy Lamarr, Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Sims, Jack Lemmon, Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Richard Harris, Leo McKern (Rumpole), Rod Steiger, Dudley Moore, John Thaw (Morse), Alan Bates, David Hemmings, Donald O'Connor (Singing in the Rain), Charles Bronson, Katharine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Robert Stack, Richard Crenna, Howard Keel, Christopher Reeve, Janet Leigh, Fay Wray (King Kong), Marlon Brando, Tony Randall, Peter Ustinov, James Doohan, Anne Bancroft, Eddie Albert, Sir John Mills, Sandra Dee, Dennis Weaver, Shelley Winters, Yvonne De Carlo, Ian Richardson, Gareth Hunt (New Avengers), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny) , Jane Wyman, Moira Lister (Red Shoes), Deborah Kerr, Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider, Richard Widmark, Charlton Heston, Mel Ferrer, Cyd Charisse, Van Johnson, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden, Patrick Swayze, Natasha Richardson, Brittany Murphy, Jennifer Jones, Gene Barry, Richard Todd, Edward Woodward, Patrick McGoohan, Natasha Richardson, Norman Painting (Phil Archer for 51 years in the long running radio series), and Joseph Wiseman (Dr No); film makers, Roger Vadim, Stanley Kramer, John Frankenheimer, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, John Schlesinger, Ismail Merchant, Robert Wise, Carlo Ponti, Sydney Pollack, Ken Annakin, John Hughes and Anthony Minghella; writers Malcolm Bradbury, Barbara Cartland, Anthony Shaffer, Douglas Adams, Robert Ludlum, Leon Uris, Arthur Hailey, John Fowles, Susan Sontag, Muriel Spark, Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Mickey Spillane, Peter Benchley, Kurt Vonnegut, Madeleine L'Engle, Norman Mailer, George MacDonald Fraser, Philip Jose Farmer, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Crichton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harold Pinter, John Mortimer, John Updike, J.G. Ballard, David Eddings, Frank McCourt, Troy Kennedy Martin and Keith Waterhouse; comedians, Victor Borge, Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, Spike Milligan, Ned Sherrin, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Ronnie Barker, Red Buttons, Bernard Manning, Clement Freud and Danny La Rue; musicians, George Harrison, Isaac Stern, Chet Atkins, Perry Como, Ray Conniff, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, Johnny Cash, Bo Didley, Maurice Jarre, Maurice Gibb, Elmer Bernstein, Artie Shaw, Howard Keel, Ray Charles, Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd), Long John Baldry, Freddie Garrity, Gene Pitney, Wilson Pickett Luther Vandross, Tony Meehan drummer with the Shadows, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ivor Emmanuel (Zulu), Frankie Laine, George Melly, Luciano Pavarotti, Oscar Peterson, Edmund Hockeridge, Humphrey Lyttelton, Eartha Kitt, Michael Jackson, Mary Travers (survived by Peter and Paul), Les Paul, Stephen Gately (Boyzone) and Dave Dee (of Dozy, Mick and Titch); politicians, Pierre Trudeau, Abba Eban, Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Ronald Reagan, Eugene McCarthy, Kim Il Sung, Mo Mowlam, Robin Cook, Edward Heath, John Kenneth Galbraith, Caspar Weinberger, Slobodan Milosevic, John Profumo, Boris Yeltsin, Raymond Barre, John Biffen, Ian Smith, Saddam Hussain, Benazir Bhutto, Robert McNamara, Edward Kennedy and Cory Aquino; journalists, Alistair Cooke, Johnny Carson, Art Buchwald, Bill Deedes, William F. Buckley Jr, Charles Wheeler, Walter Cronkite, Ludovic Kennedy and Brian Barron; scientists Sir Fred Hoyle, Sir Joseph Rotblat, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Teller and Francis Crick; royalty, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Prince Rainier and King Saud; religious leaders, Pope John Paul II, Oral Roberts, Chad Varah and Ruth Graham; sportsmen, Sam Snead, Max Schmeling, George Best, Bob Woolmer, Alan Ball, Arthur Milton (the last player to play both football and cricket for England), Fred Truman, Brian Clough, Colin McRea, Ingemar Johansson and Bobby Robson; daredevils, Thor Heyerdahl, Paul 'Red' Adair, Neville Duke, Steve Fossett, Robert "Evel" Knievel and Sir Edmund Hillary; from the world of fashion, Estee Lauder, Anita Roddick, Lord Patrick Lichfield and Yves St Laurent; campaigners, Rosa Parks, Simon Wiesenthal and Andrea Dworkin; and a miscellaneous group that includes Lady Bird Johnson, Alex Comfort, Bobby Fisher, Magnús Magnússon, Marcel Marceau, Kerry Packer and Paula Yates.
The decade has been one of increasing technology. We all now have flat screen televisions and monitors, mobile phones have become hand-held computers that take pictures, film has almost disappeared as our cameras have gone digital, and even I have an MP3 player, though not a Blackberry nor Bluetooth and I don’t Text. Although some still cling to vinyl, music has now become ‘downloaded’ (though I don’t know how to do it). VHS has been replaced by DVD but now broadcasts are recorded straight to hard drive in order to ‘timeshift’. Fast-forwarding has made the TV advert extremely missable and companies have had to think up new ‘business models’. Broadband is ubiquitous and with it have come Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Everyone has a SatNav except me. People seldom play games on their computers now; instead they have dedicated games machines like the X-Box and the PS3 or even Nintendos. To counteract the couch-potato-ness of it all they have Wiis.
The two big science stories of the decade have been the completion of the Human Genome Project and the start of the Large Hadron Collider experiments. In Medicine we have seen a plethora of new anti-cancer drugs often too expensive to be used, and prospects for successful gene therapy. Stem cell therapy has been much talked about, but little has come of it so far. More important than any of these has been the reduction in smoking, often following legislation. Medics are now campaigning against excessive alcohol consumption. We have had epidemics of Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, MRSA, foot and mouth and c. difficile, we have had scares about MMR and gene therapy; they have all been hyped by the press.
Climate change has been on everybody’s lips. In order to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ we have seen a re-emerging of nuclear power, wind turbines and ‘biofuels’. The ‘Climategate’ e-mails threaten what had been a consensus amongst climatologists. The newspapers have to have something to write about.
In August 2006 Pluto was demoted to a "dwarf planet" after being considered a real planet for 76 years. Other "dwarf planets" in our solar system now include Ceres and Eris, previously thought of as ‘asteroids’.
In the arts, the most popular books have been the Harry Potter series followed closely by the works of Dan Brown, but I have appreciated The Kite Runner as well as works by Ian McEwan, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and John Le Carre. The movie event of the decade was The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but we must also mention Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind , Chicago , Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire.
In sport we have been astonished by Tiger Woods (who has suddenly fallen from grace), Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Christiano Ronaldo, the Williams sisters, Kauto Star, Michael Schumacher, Joe Calzaghe, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong and Shane Warne. Drug assisted performances remain a problem. remarkably, England twice won the Ashes and we were introduced to WAGs.
Television has been dominated by ‘reality’ and ‘talent’ shows. I have never watched one though we bought Susan Boyle’s record this Christmas. Of note otherwise were The Wire, The Sopranos and The Office. Dr Who returned to British television.
DNA continues to acquit people on death row, but not Harold Shipman who the GP who is reckoned to have murdered over 200 ‘heartsink’ patients. Pedophilia has horrified people throughout the world. Many have been caught with computer technology, but the murders of two little girls in Soham and the abduction of Madelaine McCann remind us that it is still a problem for us.
Illegal immigration is a problem in both the UK and USA. In 2004 Twenty-three Chinese illegal immigrants drowned, trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, as they harvested cockles. The 9/11 disaster precipitated a wariness of Muslims. The Danish cartoons controversy made people wonder why we should be especially sensitive to Islam vis-à-vis Christianity. Political correctness reigns.
The largest expansion to date of the European Union took place in 2004, extending the Union by 10 member-states: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta and Cyprus. Europe now has even more porous borders. The Euro has been adopted by 12 European countries and has been growing in importance. In 2009 the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, effectively a Constitution for a United States of Europe.
Although homosexual marriage is allowed in a few American States, the Civil Partnership Act, which came into force in Britain in 2005, gives same-sex couples the same rights as hetero-sexual married couples. The first civil partnership lasted a single day.
One longs for the day when the newscaster will start his bulletin with the words, “Today, nothing newsworthy happened. However, here are some names to conjure with, names that will be in the headlines tomorrow: David Beckham, Shami Chakrabarti, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, Camilla Parker Bowles, Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Manmohan Singh, Nancy Pelosi, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul.
These attempts have been foiled by increased security and by plain incompetence on behalf of the bombers. The security services, themselves are not without their incompetent qualities, witness the shooting of the innocent (though illegal immigrant) Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, at Stockwell Underground, the day after a failed bomb attack on the Tube.
Part of the terrorist’s raison d’être is to invoke such an oppressive reaction that Western civilization would grind to a halt. Although, this has not happened, the increased security at airports has been intrusive and is set to become more annoying.
The other response to the terrorist attacks has been the start of two major wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Winning such a war is not a problem; winning the peace is. As well as countless suicide bombers in both Iraq and Afghanistan there have been atrocities elsewhere in the Middle East including bombers in Turkey and Jordan. Asymmetrical warfare has entered our vocabulary. Relatively primitive technology, cunningly placed, is extremely effective, especially when the operatives are prepared to die for their cause. One notable fact about such wars is that they are fought mainly in the newspapers. The terrorist cannot hope to defeat the powerful armies of Western nations, but aims to inflict so many casualties that the Western country loses the will to fight. Even so single-minded a country as Israel found this to be true in its confrontations with Hezbollah in 2006 and with Hamas in 2008/9. Propaganda (much of it based on faked photographs) was the greatest weapon of the Islamists. This tactic began in Viet Nam and thus far an effective counter has not been produced.
Often forgotten among Islamist atrocities is the massacre at the Beslan school in North Ossetia in September 2004. Another important strand in World events has been the resurrection of Russian power since the fall of the Soviet Union. President and now Prime Minister (and perhaps to be President once more) Putin has rebuilt Russia sufficiently to throw its weight about again. Powered by vast natural gas reserves, it is able to blackmail Eastern European states like Ukraine into submission and overcome Georgia by the weight of its armed forces. It feels sufficiently confident to murder a Russian dissident, Alexander Litvinenko, with Polonium 210 on the streets of London. This is reflected in a simultaneous weakening of British power as exemplified by the capture of fifteen Royal Navy personnel by Iranian revolutionary guards when they strayed into disputed territorial waters and by the kidnapping of a yacht owned by British tourists from under the nose of the Royal Navy by Somali pirates. How one yearns for the days of Margaret Thatcher.
The other major story of the Noughties has been the collapse of financial institutions and the consequent worldwide recession. Beginning in the United States in 2007 it has been linked to reckless and unsustainable lending practices resulting from the deregulation and securitization of real estate mortgages. The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around the world. Credit was easy to get and this fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities, which served to reinforce the risky lending practices. The precarious financial situation was made more difficult by a sharp increase in oil and food prices. The emergence of Sub-prime loan losses in 2007 began the crisis and exposed other risky loans and over-inflated asset prices. On September 14th 2007 savers began to queue to withdraw a total of £1 billion from branches of the Northern Rock Building Society after hearing that the Bank of England has arranged an intervention package to rescue the bank, which ran into difficulties as a result of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Things seemed to stabilize a little but with loan losses mounting and the fall of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, on September 15th 2008, a panic broke out on the inter-bank loan market. As share and housing prices declined many large and well established investment and commercial banks in the United States and Europe suffered huge losses and even faced bankruptcy, resulting in massive public financial assistance. Iceland, home of three banks that had grown beyond their means of support, became the first Western democracy to become bankrupt.
One factor that economists seemed to have ignored was the growth of China. Within domestic economies in the West governments followed extremely inflationary policies with massively increased public spending and the creation of bureaucratic monstrosities as industrial jobs were exported to third world economies. Individuals felt rich because the paper price of their properties increased massively. They were able to borrow against these inflated prices and spend the money on foreign imports. China, meanwhile, expanded its industrial base and refused to revalue it currency. With the electronic goods, the West was importing deflation (in the form of cheaper manufactured goods) to counteract its domestic inflation.
As the recession has deepened, Western governments have adopted Keynesian economic practices and printed more money, thus devaluing their currencies while building up huge debts and hastening the day when they become vassal states of China and the commodity-rich states of the Middle East. Politicians have become distrusted. An expenses scandal in Britain has made politicians as hated as bankers.
We have had our share of natural disasters during the past decade. Worst of all was the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 which killed nearly 230,000 people in fourteen countries, and inundating coastal communities with waves up to 30 meters (100 feet) high. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand were the hardest hit. It was caused by an undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean. Several other earthquakes were hugely destructive including the October 8th 2005 Kashmir earthquake which killed over 80,000 people mainly in Pakistan, the May 12th 2008 in the Sichuan province of China and killed at least 68,000 people and the December 26th 2003 Bam earthquake in southeastern Iran which killed 26,271 people. Hundreds of thousands of people with a different skin hue dying a long way away, somehow did not have the impact in the news that the 1,836 killed along the U.S. Gulf Coast, as Hurricane Katrina struck. This was dwarfed in effect by cyclone Nargis which made landfall in Burma (which the ruling junta have renamed Myanmar) in 2008 causing catastrophic destruction and at least 146,000 fatalities. Every nation has its news priorities as this report shows: Sixty-seven British people lose their lives when four planes are hijacked by terrorists. It is the largest UK death toll in a single terrorist attack. This was how one website reported 9/11. As earthquakes go, we were more interested in what happened nearer to home on April 6 2009: A 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck near L'Aquila, Italy, killed nearly 300 and injured more than 1,500.
Not all disasters have been natural or terrorist induced. In New York City, American Airlines Flight 587 crashed in Queens minutes after takeoff from JFK International Airport, killing all 260 on board and Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry to Earth, killing all seven occupants. Air France Flight 4590 Concorde crashed during takeoff from Paris after its fuel tank caught fire, killing 9 crew and 100 passengers as well as four on the ground; the entire Concorde fleet is grounded for one year, and is eventually retired.
There were 22 other air crashes during the decade in which more than 100 were killed, and countless others where fewer than that number were eliminated. Most recently, Air France Flight 447, an Airbus A330-200 flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed in the Atlantic Ocean killing all 228 occupants.
Talking of deaths the decade has said goodbye to several well known names: actors Jason Robards, Julie London, Richard Farnsworth (Straight Story), Sir Alec Guinness, Walter Matthau, Sir John Gielgud, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Hedy Lamarr, Nigel Hawthorne, Joan Sims, Jack Lemmon, Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Richard Harris, Leo McKern (Rumpole), Rod Steiger, Dudley Moore, John Thaw (Morse), Alan Bates, David Hemmings, Donald O'Connor (Singing in the Rain), Charles Bronson, Katharine Hepburn, Gregory Peck, Robert Stack, Richard Crenna, Howard Keel, Christopher Reeve, Janet Leigh, Fay Wray (King Kong), Marlon Brando, Tony Randall, Peter Ustinov, James Doohan, Anne Bancroft, Eddie Albert, Sir John Mills, Sandra Dee, Dennis Weaver, Shelley Winters, Yvonne De Carlo, Ian Richardson, Gareth Hunt (New Avengers), Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny) , Jane Wyman, Moira Lister (Red Shoes), Deborah Kerr, Heath Ledger, Roy Scheider, Richard Widmark, Charlton Heston, Mel Ferrer, Cyd Charisse, Van Johnson, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden, Patrick Swayze, Natasha Richardson, Brittany Murphy, Jennifer Jones, Gene Barry, Richard Todd, Edward Woodward, Patrick McGoohan, Natasha Richardson, Norman Painting (Phil Archer for 51 years in the long running radio series), and Joseph Wiseman (Dr No); film makers, Roger Vadim, Stanley Kramer, John Frankenheimer, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, John Schlesinger, Ismail Merchant, Robert Wise, Carlo Ponti, Sydney Pollack, Ken Annakin, John Hughes and Anthony Minghella; writers Malcolm Bradbury, Barbara Cartland, Anthony Shaffer, Douglas Adams, Robert Ludlum, Leon Uris, Arthur Hailey, John Fowles, Susan Sontag, Muriel Spark, Evan Hunter (better known as Ed McBain), Saul Bellow, Arthur Miller, Mickey Spillane, Peter Benchley, Kurt Vonnegut, Madeleine L'Engle, Norman Mailer, George MacDonald Fraser, Philip Jose Farmer, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Crichton, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Harold Pinter, John Mortimer, John Updike, J.G. Ballard, David Eddings, Frank McCourt, Troy Kennedy Martin and Keith Waterhouse; comedians, Victor Borge, Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts, Spike Milligan, Ned Sherrin, Bob Hope, Richard Pryor, Ronnie Barker, Red Buttons, Bernard Manning, Clement Freud and Danny La Rue; musicians, George Harrison, Isaac Stern, Chet Atkins, Perry Como, Ray Conniff, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee, Johnny Cash, Bo Didley, Maurice Jarre, Maurice Gibb, Elmer Bernstein, Artie Shaw, Howard Keel, Ray Charles, Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd), Long John Baldry, Freddie Garrity, Gene Pitney, Wilson Pickett Luther Vandross, Tony Meehan drummer with the Shadows, Mstislav Rostropovich, Ivor Emmanuel (Zulu), Frankie Laine, George Melly, Luciano Pavarotti, Oscar Peterson, Edmund Hockeridge, Humphrey Lyttelton, Eartha Kitt, Michael Jackson, Mary Travers (survived by Peter and Paul), Les Paul, Stephen Gately (Boyzone) and Dave Dee (of Dozy, Mick and Titch); politicians, Pierre Trudeau, Abba Eban, Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Ronald Reagan, Eugene McCarthy, Kim Il Sung, Mo Mowlam, Robin Cook, Edward Heath, John Kenneth Galbraith, Caspar Weinberger, Slobodan Milosevic, John Profumo, Boris Yeltsin, Raymond Barre, John Biffen, Ian Smith, Saddam Hussain, Benazir Bhutto, Robert McNamara, Edward Kennedy and Cory Aquino; journalists, Alistair Cooke, Johnny Carson, Art Buchwald, Bill Deedes, William F. Buckley Jr, Charles Wheeler, Walter Cronkite, Ludovic Kennedy and Brian Barron; scientists Sir Fred Hoyle, Sir Joseph Rotblat, Stephen Jay Gould, Edward Teller and Francis Crick; royalty, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, Prince Rainier and King Saud; religious leaders, Pope John Paul II, Oral Roberts, Chad Varah and Ruth Graham; sportsmen, Sam Snead, Max Schmeling, George Best, Bob Woolmer, Alan Ball, Arthur Milton (the last player to play both football and cricket for England), Fred Truman, Brian Clough, Colin McRea, Ingemar Johansson and Bobby Robson; daredevils, Thor Heyerdahl, Paul 'Red' Adair, Neville Duke, Steve Fossett, Robert "Evel" Knievel and Sir Edmund Hillary; from the world of fashion, Estee Lauder, Anita Roddick, Lord Patrick Lichfield and Yves St Laurent; campaigners, Rosa Parks, Simon Wiesenthal and Andrea Dworkin; and a miscellaneous group that includes Lady Bird Johnson, Alex Comfort, Bobby Fisher, Magnús Magnússon, Marcel Marceau, Kerry Packer and Paula Yates.
The decade has been one of increasing technology. We all now have flat screen televisions and monitors, mobile phones have become hand-held computers that take pictures, film has almost disappeared as our cameras have gone digital, and even I have an MP3 player, though not a Blackberry nor Bluetooth and I don’t Text. Although some still cling to vinyl, music has now become ‘downloaded’ (though I don’t know how to do it). VHS has been replaced by DVD but now broadcasts are recorded straight to hard drive in order to ‘timeshift’. Fast-forwarding has made the TV advert extremely missable and companies have had to think up new ‘business models’. Broadband is ubiquitous and with it have come Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Everyone has a SatNav except me. People seldom play games on their computers now; instead they have dedicated games machines like the X-Box and the PS3 or even Nintendos. To counteract the couch-potato-ness of it all they have Wiis.
The two big science stories of the decade have been the completion of the Human Genome Project and the start of the Large Hadron Collider experiments. In Medicine we have seen a plethora of new anti-cancer drugs often too expensive to be used, and prospects for successful gene therapy. Stem cell therapy has been much talked about, but little has come of it so far. More important than any of these has been the reduction in smoking, often following legislation. Medics are now campaigning against excessive alcohol consumption. We have had epidemics of Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, MRSA, foot and mouth and c. difficile, we have had scares about MMR and gene therapy; they have all been hyped by the press.
Climate change has been on everybody’s lips. In order to reduce our ‘carbon footprint’ we have seen a re-emerging of nuclear power, wind turbines and ‘biofuels’. The ‘Climategate’ e-mails threaten what had been a consensus amongst climatologists. The newspapers have to have something to write about.
In August 2006 Pluto was demoted to a "dwarf planet" after being considered a real planet for 76 years. Other "dwarf planets" in our solar system now include Ceres and Eris, previously thought of as ‘asteroids’.
In the arts, the most popular books have been the Harry Potter series followed closely by the works of Dan Brown, but I have appreciated The Kite Runner as well as works by Ian McEwan, Ian Rankin, Michael Connelly and John Le Carre. The movie event of the decade was The Lord of the Rings trilogy, but we must also mention Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind , Chicago , Million Dollar Baby, Crash, The Departed, No Country for Old Men and Slumdog Millionaire.
In sport we have been astonished by Tiger Woods (who has suddenly fallen from grace), Roger Federer, Usain Bolt, Christiano Ronaldo, the Williams sisters, Kauto Star, Michael Schumacher, Joe Calzaghe, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong and Shane Warne. Drug assisted performances remain a problem. remarkably, England twice won the Ashes and we were introduced to WAGs.
Television has been dominated by ‘reality’ and ‘talent’ shows. I have never watched one though we bought Susan Boyle’s record this Christmas. Of note otherwise were The Wire, The Sopranos and The Office. Dr Who returned to British television.
DNA continues to acquit people on death row, but not Harold Shipman who the GP who is reckoned to have murdered over 200 ‘heartsink’ patients. Pedophilia has horrified people throughout the world. Many have been caught with computer technology, but the murders of two little girls in Soham and the abduction of Madelaine McCann remind us that it is still a problem for us.
Illegal immigration is a problem in both the UK and USA. In 2004 Twenty-three Chinese illegal immigrants drowned, trapped by rising tides in Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, as they harvested cockles. The 9/11 disaster precipitated a wariness of Muslims. The Danish cartoons controversy made people wonder why we should be especially sensitive to Islam vis-à-vis Christianity. Political correctness reigns.
The largest expansion to date of the European Union took place in 2004, extending the Union by 10 member-states: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta and Cyprus. Europe now has even more porous borders. The Euro has been adopted by 12 European countries and has been growing in importance. In 2009 the Lisbon Treaty was adopted, effectively a Constitution for a United States of Europe.
Although homosexual marriage is allowed in a few American States, the Civil Partnership Act, which came into force in Britain in 2005, gives same-sex couples the same rights as hetero-sexual married couples. The first civil partnership lasted a single day.
One longs for the day when the newscaster will start his bulletin with the words, “Today, nothing newsworthy happened. However, here are some names to conjure with, names that will be in the headlines tomorrow: David Beckham, Shami Chakrabarti, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan, Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, Camilla Parker Bowles, Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Manmohan Singh, Nancy Pelosi, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul.
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