The speed with which these annual year end articles come around is becoming quite scary, if one blinks another year has been ticked off and bagged.

2012 will be remembered by many for a multitude of different reasons, but for me it was a year of great events and milestones. First of all I was married, yes “management” decided it was time that I made a commitment and when “management” decide, then “I do”. It was also the year that I celebrated the big five zero, yes I turned an age that I still don’t even consider my Mum and Dad to be, an age that only headmasters, politicians and surgeons should aspire to.

Has the world gone completely mad? An Australian hiding in an Ecuadorian embassy in London, to avoid the Swedish sending him to America and probably on to a place in a Cuban jail owned by the Yanks, called Guantanamo. While the English also forget momentarily the sovereignty of embassies should be sacrosanct.

Japanese swimmers putting flags on some rocks in the sea, where no one lives, resulting in Chinese riots where it is acceptable to trash police cars, because they are Japanese models.

As the world worries about the extinction of the rhino and all other creatures being devoured by our Asian cousins, it is worth taking a moment to think of another local exotic that is now under threat.

Yes the “Independent Broker”, a brave, determined and industrious creature that has learned to adapt to its changing habitat and surroundings, over many years, but who now appears assailed from all sides. The advice that has been fed to the Minister of Finance and thus the FSB, is such that the independent man is being pushed to the very edges of the reserve as larger creatures, who were no doubt involved in this decision making process, are left to graze the plains alone.

The benefit of writing a column is that you get the wonderful opportunity to put onto paper things that otherwise sit and fester in your mind without any means of escape, for weeks if not months.

I also write a private diary, which helps between my more formal writing attempts. To be honest I do not know what I would do without this ability to clear the clutter. It is a little like the light in your bedroom as a child, for an hour or so every night you could read and through books travel the world and every possible dimension. Then click, the light goes off and Mom or Dad confine you to your own thoughts and sleep.

This last month has been an unbelievable world in which to live, natural and human disasters around the globe have belittled any problems or issues I personally have. The loss of family, friends, home, liberty and or respect simply dwarfs my problems and as far as I know those of the people close to me.