February 2019 – A breath of fresh air.

The Molloy household all went skiing this month.  As my son was booked into his first ski trip with his school and I’d landed a decent 6 month contract last summer, Sonja and I decided top take our daughter skiing during the same week.   It was just magnificent. Everybody loved it. I haven’t been skiing since 2003. It was so good to be breathing in the Alpine air and carving down the slopes again. I plan to post another blog entry to cover the Ski trip.

As the beginning of the month the UK was frozen and covered with snow and ice across the country. By the end of the month temperature records were being broken across consecutive days peaking at 21.2° in Kew Gardens.  Can’t help wondering if human activity may be a contributing factor to  this odd weather pattern.

At the beginning of the month, President Tump announced that the U.S is pulling out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The very next day Russia followed suit.  By the end of the month it was all kicking off across the India Pakistan Border: The world watched on as India launched air-strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan in response  an earlier terrorist hit that was launched from Pakistan killing 40 Indian military personnel.  Pakistan, being agitated by the airstrike and have now shot down an Indian Mig-21 fighter that had strayed into it’s airspace.  So we have another two nuclear powers squaring up.

UK economy takes another hit as Honda announced this month that it’s shutting down its car manufacturing plant in Swindon. Thousands of jobs will be affected, both at the plant and across the supply chain. This comes after the announcement from Nissan earlier in the month to say it’s reversing plans to produce the X-trail in UK, switching back to Japan instead.

The UK Government remains fixated by Brexit. Theresa May is now regularly subject to humiliating defeats in the Commons on her various Brexit proposals and plans.  Labour has stated it will back a 2^nd referendum.   We seem to be under serious risk of exiting with no deal at all at the moment.

I’m down to monthly contract renewals now at Sky,  as one key stakeholder is bold enough to continue to funding the work.   He’s taken a new role though, so it won’t last.  If I was a betting man they’ll put it into the road-map for next year, which means I’ll be out of here very soon. That will be a shame as I’ve enjoyed working at Sky.