No update since before the summer holiday. Oops.

Summer passed over fine. Jessica is now in her final year before secondary school, and my evenings are filled with visiting schools to assess which ones we want to put down as her preference. The whole idea that we might not be able to get her into the school we want to terrifies me. And that's not even mentioning the eleven plus, which is still around here, and which we've decided Jessica won't be doing.

We've bought another game which has captivated the kids at the moment. Called Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds. It's sort of like a computer based Star Wars wargame. Great fun. Even managed to get them running 2-player across the home network. That caused a few rows when one blew up the other's spaceships!

Very interesting blog article by Robert Peston. I normlly can't stand the man, but this article raises the possbility that the ongoing collapse of the west's financial institutions could end up with the Chinese owning much of what's left, as they are cash rich and not as exposed as western banks. I'm working on the Marxist analysis of what's happened as we speak, and how China could fit into it - something around the international division of labour, and how the proletariat has been 'out sourced' from the west to China.