First Night Back

Back to work tonight, made sure I went to bed for 2PM so that I could get a few hours sleep before the kids came home. I carried out some spring cleaning on the computer this am, tidied up the external hard drive and deleted a large number of duplicate files. Then I located a number of audio-book torrents, some for me and some for the kids. In bed I listened to the latest Economist audio edition;

what a BUMMER man.



The recession (depression) is as bad as I thought it was and is getting worse by the day. In addition, their special feature on China, confirmed everything I've been thinking, and Deb's been pooh-poohing, for some years.



China it knows it's in the ascendant and may well take the chance, now afforded it, to extend its power even further, especially in SE Asia.



With any luck, the knock on effect of the down turn will cause such internal unrest that it will constrain what it can do, 20 million and counting have lost their jobs in the last 6-12 months. You can't invade anyone if you're tied up at home. Mind you, saying that, how many countries have started a war in order to quell internal unrest - anyone remember Idi Amin.

Where’s Bird-Flu when you need it, assuming of course we develop a vaccine before it does too much damage in this part of the world?



Joking aside, who’s joking, a massive pandemic only kills a fraction of the population and given the size of the Chinese population even this is unlikely to have any really significantly material long term effects.