Yesterday, the Lloyds HBOS group, Britain's biggest mortgage lender, warned the markets that for the year 2008, it was likely to make a 10 billion pound sterling loss. The loss was largely due to its subsidiary Halifax-Royal Bank of Scotland group, which had had its fingers badly burnt in the subprime market. Thus, Lloyds, a respectable, typically solid British bank, had actually made a profit of just over a billion pounds in profit, but had been dragged down by the massive 11 billion pound loss suffered by HBOS.

Here are the corporate losses by some of the leading banks and automotives in 2008. The sums are dollar equivalents.

Bank Losses

Royal Bank of Scotland- 41 billion
UBS- 22 billion
Citigroup- 19 billion
BoA-Merrill Lynch-15 billion
Lloyds-HBOS- 14 billion

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OK, here's a quick quiz. What radiological investigation would a pregnant woman have when she visits the obstetrician around 10 weeks into conception, to make sure her baby is alive and well?

A 35 year oild woman went to her doctor, complaining of a sudden severe headache, like a mule kicked her in the back of her head. Over the next 24 hours, the headache had hardly improved. What scan would her physician offer?

Finally, a 25 year old woman complains of tingling, numbness and weakness in her legs. The neurologist suspects multiple sclerosis. Same question. What scan?

If you got all three correct, congratulations. The first answer was an ultrasound scan, the second a CT scan, and the third a MR scan.

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Damning indictments of society often come in little columns, tucked away from the main headlines, in a reclusive corner of broadsheets. Sometimes they are picked up by bigger fish and made into a story; mostly they are destined to end up as tomorrow's fish and chips wrapping.

So it was with this little report, forgotten, almost a passing footnote in one of the British newspapers a couple of days ago. It simply read "Maternity Leave Harms Careers."

A year ago, the British government, which likes to be seen as family-friendly, took the laudable act of exending paid maternity leave to a year, so that women could spend more time with their tots and strike a proper work-life balance.

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Brace yourself folks, this is going to be a rant.

Make no mistake, I love the English language as much as the next man, perhaps a bit more, but there are certain phrases, spoken with particular inflections, that I find really, really annoying. There have been occasions when I have felt like making a sharp retort, but thankfully better sense has prevailed. So far.

I am sure you all have your pet peeves about the language. Here's mine. Three of them, in fact.

1. "My friend"- This is the one that I abhor most. You are all familiar with the self assured sneering types who use it as a putdown when they mean exactly the opposite. "Now there's a thought for you, my friend"...."I am afraid I can't help you there, my friend".

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Put some money on this October's Nobel laureate, folks. I think the prize has just been won by Cassian Yee from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Institute in Seattle.

Before I tell you what Yee and his team have achieved, take a look at why cancer of most sorts is so difficult to treat. Cancer cells are innovative, believe it or not. They mutate all the time, develop novel ways to evade anti-cancer drugs, and emerge with cells that are more robust, and multiply and spread easily. Essentially, it's like a parasite living inside the body that will, in due course, destroy its host.

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I'll use this entry to talk about something that is very close to my heart- Science. If you follow such things, you'll know that recently in Germany, kids as young as five are being presented with "science boxes" by world renowned engineering companies such as Siemens, Bosch and Thyssen-Krupp, with tasks that involve putting together electrical circuits that will light up bulbs, making a moving carousel, and so on. The idea behind this to stimulate a lifelong interest in science in very young children, who would then hopefully take up careers in engineering when they mature into young men and women. Germany's formidable engineering firms would thus never run dry of home grown scientists.

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The UK topped the league of arm exporters last year, with 10 billion pounds worth of sales, accounting for nearly a third of worldwide arms trade.

Editorialists lost no time in condemning their country's "shameful" record of making money out of warfare, pointing out that the bulk of these exports went to nations with dubious or downright aweful records in upholding regional peace or human rights, such as Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, and Columbia.

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As you get older and more cantankerous, you can't be bothered to sit around, waiting for people to reply to your rather nostalgic, sometimes despairing posts. Hence I thought of this blog idea.

ICF being my passion, I have stubbornly resisted the idea of starting an independent blog. Actually, I did succumb once, but didn't give the URL to a single soul. There are 200 or so hits on it- all mine, or at least that's what I think.

Here's my refuge from the bad ole world then. Any ideas that crop into my mind, I'll drop in here. If you want to read, you are welcome. Don't feel obliged though. I can be the greatest of narcissists when it suits me- all in love with my own lil self.

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