The NZ experience of sea-fishing is somewhat different from my previous experiences on the Grand Union Canal in London. In fact, the most likely thing I’d catch there would be a various species of supermarket trolley. However, we were good citizens and always threw them back in, thus ensuring a sustainable supply for future generations to enjoy.

No, the fishing I did on holiday was completely different. On Boxing Day, we headed off out of Whangaroa Harbour and caught all manner of things: Snapper, including Ian’s 9kg whopper, Blue Cod, Rob’s Mau Mau (x2 in rapid-fire succession), Tim’s massive John Dory, several Scorpion fish, Parrot fish, Moray eels, 1.5m long sharks (flapping around all bitey-bitey on the deck of the boat until restrained by the Cap’n), and Barracuda. On another trip, I managed to land not one, but two Kingfish, first by trolling a lure out of the back of Tim’s boat, and then by jigging off the sea-bed - about 10m deep at that point. As you can see, I’ve even managed to drop in some of the lingo, demonstrating just how much of an expert  I have become.

It’s just a shame that if there is a swell of more than about a metre, I start to feel all pukey and nautious after about 10 minutes.  I’m not kidding. I took off my hat at one point to discover I’d broken out into a cold sweat, dripping off my brow.  I have a feeling that this kind of response may possibly limit my sea-fishing activities. I know Tim looked disappointed as I asked him to power up the boat before I added to the various manner of baits he was carefully laying in the area.

So, I think I will invetigate surfcasting instead. I have no idea what equipment I’ll need, what I’ll catch, how to recognise what I’ll catch, what bait to use, or what to do with a fish once I’ve caught it. But surely, these are all mere trifling matters that can be sorted out along the way. Along with cricket, this is surely set to become one of my greatest time-wasting opportunities  (surely, you mean thinking opportunities - Ed) ever.

Here’s a rough plan of the route:

Wellington > Waikanae > New Plymouth > Cook’s Beach >< Whitianga > Cathedral Cove > Hot Water Beach > Auckland > Whangarei > Te Ngaere Bay > <Whangaroa >< Kaitaia > <Te Ngaere Bay > Matauri Bay > Pahia > Whangarei >< Tutakaka >< Whangarei Heads >< Auckland > Wellington

I’m just a little bit tired, but what a great trip. Photos to be posted a little later this week. Work tomorrow - sleep now.

Later in the day we took Tim’s boat out for a fish and I caught my first kingfish on a trolling line and then another on a jig. Unfortunately, both were undersized and went back in.

My sealegs didn’t last too much longer so we headed back to shore for a supper of blue cod and scorpion fish fillets we’d caught earlier in the week. A few drinks later and it was January 1st 2009. Happy New Year to all reading this. May you bob along happily along whatever wave you are traveling upon.

PS All last weeks posts were uploaded through my WordPress App for the iPhone - great little app.

Kate, Rob and I set off at 730am to get the tour bus in Kaitaia at 9am, and we made it with a little time to spare. The day was pretty full. Cape Reinga itself on a rare still and sunny day, with the different characters and colours of the Tasman Sea and Pacific Ocean clearly visible. Sand toboganning on the dunes at Te Paki Stream at the top of 90 mile beach was fun, though Rob looked ill after climbing the dune the first time. And 90 mile beach itself was calmness, not at all like it’s usual wild west self. A long, tiring but satisfying day, finished off with fush and chups at the Manganui fish and chip shop. World famous in New Zealand and deservedly so.

Xmas day was lovely, arriving for brunch in Te Ngaere Bay, followed by boules, beach cricket and a big turkey dinner. Boxing Day was enjoyable on a deep sea fishing charter all day. But the best experience had to be yesterday when I was being towed on an inflatable ring behind a speedboat when a large pod of common dolphins happened to come into the bay. I spent a good few minutes with them leaping around me and one even sped along side me for a while, surfing on the bow wave of the inflatable ring as we went across the bay together. Totally magical.

It is fantastic to have my old childhood friend Rob here to visit me. I know he doesn’t read my blog, but if you ever do mate, I’d like you to know that I love having you over here to visit me. This is probably going to be a very different Christmas to anything you’ve ever experienced. It hasn’t been and won’t be the boozy wintry London Christmas you know so well. We’ll be staying at a pretty plush little place up in Northland, by the Bay of Islands in New Zealand with my girlfriend’s family. It will be in the middle of nowhere and we will go fishing and catch our supper, explore the sea and islands by boat, and generally chill out away from the commercial crowds. Another experience we will share together, my good friend.

As well as killing as many people as possible, it’s been written that one of the goals of the militants and their masters may have been to plunge the region into dangerous confrontation. With an election coming up, the Indian government cannot afford to look weak in the face of such a challenge. Unfortunately, any possible threat of action against Pakistan will produce a reaction that is likely to pour fuel onto the already roaring fire of instability. A move of Pakistan troops from the Afghan theatre of operations to the Indian border as a visible show of force to meet a perceived threat would be disastrous, leaving an open door for the Taliban and associated entities to promulgate in the region. Bang goes Obama’s strategy of placing the screws on the Taliban and forcing them to the negotiating table.

Hence the confirmation of Clinton as Secretary of State and dispatch of Rice to India. Both these events were probably in train anyway but are now seen as crucial in trying to persuade India to step away from the brink. An escalation such as 2001 when suicidal terrorists targeted the Indian Parliament could take the nations again to the brink of war. Despite numerous provocations over the past years, and links to an out of control Pakistani military and intelligence operation, India has managed to limit its response. Tragically, Indian bureaucracy and lack of adequate training and coordination has left it open to this kind of event - though it is not alone in the world. This kind of attack will now be seen as a  viable way of gaining attention and political capital, dark though this may seem.

From Pakistan’s point of view, they are in a very tricky position. Any escalation will be frowned upon by the USA on whose aid it has come to depend. It is in danger of being seen as the failed state it perhaps really is, and their government is in an even more parlous state than India.

Whether the Indian state can continue to mollify public opinion without taking military action against its neighbour remains to be seen. I hope it can resist and find a way through the dilemma and not to step  into the trap that has been set before it.

It’s been good getting back into a bit of a routine after the last two weeks traveling, though I really enjoyed the second week in London once I adjusted to the time difference and got over that first week of a holiday when you’re trying to wind down.

My first game of the cricket season went well yesterday. It was an eventful first over, that’s for sure. I opened up the bowling attack asusual, and the batsman tried to slap my first ball (good length, outside off stump) through mid-wicket and got a top edge to mid-off. Weird. I then bowled what was called a wide (very harshly). Then a leg-bye. Then the other opener tried exacly the same shot as the other opener with the same result. The next ball was a dot-ball, followed by a plumb LBW appeal which was turned down. A dot ball finished the over - 2 wickets for 1 run. I finished up with 3-34 off 8 overs, and our opposition got 214-8 off their 40 overs. We knocked that off for the loss of 2 wickets in just over 30 overs, and I didn’t need to bat. But I did end up with an impressive case of wind-burn as the Liardet fields are very exposed and we had some kind of mother of a northerly gusting all afternoon long. My ears were seriously ringing after I got home.

The bonus is that I don’t feel too sore at all this morning. Amazing. So, off to town for a bit of lunch, the papers, and the library. Ah, routine.

New Zealanders in their wisdom have showed Helen Clark the exit and have elected the National Party into power, under John Key - who will most probably form a governing coalition with ACT and United Future and possibly the Maori Party too. Indeed, Clark and Cullen lost little time in resigning as the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party, and a new leader and deputy have already been selected - Phil Goff and Annette King. So, going back to work in central government next week is going to be an interesting environment. I anticipate a lot of re-drafting of the ‘Briefing to the Incoming Minister’ going on.

As I type this on the flight from Seoul to Sydney, I’m taking a chance to reflect upon what has happened over the past two weeks. I’ve  spent some good time with my mum and dad, helped them purchase and bed in a new laptop - an MSI Wind U100 netbook, and bring them up to speed. My parents have never even used windows before, Still, my dad sent me an email which I received in Seoul and we even managed to skype for the first time internationally too - so I regard that as a success. Good going Mum and Dad, if you’re reading this

I’ve caught up with friends - old and new - and met babies that I’ve not had the chance to meet yet. There are still more friends and babies to see, but there never is enough time when I get back to London to do all the things I have to do. I spent a fair amount of time sorting out some potential work stuff too - I’ll write about that another time - and it was good to re-connect with ex-colleagues and friends too.

I am returning to NZ refreshed - in my mind if not my body to start off with, as I fear the jetlag will be something special. Barely a month to go until two weeks off for Xmas. I’ll be heading up north with Rob, as he comes to visit me on his world tour, arriving in Wellington on Dec 16th.

My Ssambab is here. Yum. Will write / post after dinner, movie and hopefully sleep until Sydney.

I have built up something of a liability in the number of miles I have nestled in my account due the traveling I have racked up over the past 3-4 years. So, the Lufthansa deal is bad news in that it probably spells the end of the bmi diamod class scheme which will likely be replaces by the Lufthansa ‘Miles & More’ programme, known by some as ‘Miles & Less’. A recent precedent from Lufthansas takeover of Swiss Air means that its likely we’ll see some kind of transitional period. But if and when I re-qualify for Gold status this year, I think its time to start burning miles on some buying tickets for some planned trips and reducing my liability of miles - which are about to become far less valuable than they were.

Seoul seemed a little more americanised than I perceived Tokyo to be. Notsurprising I guess given that there is a US Armed Forces base in the city. Last night was fun - I had dinner at my hotel in the cetre of the city after a transfer process that took about 1.5 hours. I wandered around for a while and enjoyed the usual late night city street life that is common in Asian cities. But with the added time differences, i was pretty tired by 1030pm, so I headed for the hotel, bath and bed.

The morning was a little frustrating as I headed for a Korean style spa and sauna in the Hongsik University district that turned out to be closed down, By the time I got back to the hotel, there wasn’t really a lot of time to do much else. I should have called ahead I guess. If I’d have known it was closed I may have gone for a hike or the Seou Tower instead. Never mind. I got to try the subway which was pretty much like Tokyo and Osaka. I guess if you’ve been brought up and lived in London for years as well as ventured on the Tokyo metro system 3 times in the last 2 years, another subway systen set of hieroglyphics becomes relatively easy to decipher.

As I sit on this London-bound Asiana 777, I lament the lack of AVOD entertainment system with only broadcast video available. Still, I guess we have personal screens at least and I have a row of three to myself. The iPhone might get a quick run out as I have an episode of Cowboy Bebop to watch now that Hancock has finished on the Asiana system. I would watch a Korean film, but I can’t figure out how to get the English subtitles up.

We’ve just crossed over into Mongolia - about 10 hours to London.

I will resurrect my old desktop system for them so they can start to use Skype to conference with my sister and I across the UK, Greece and NZ. I’m pretty sure the old pentium system can handle it, but there is an element of doubt. Last time I had it running it was on Windows 98. I’m hoping that XP Home edition won’t be beyond its reach.

The service on Asiana is good, but the selection of fayre is a bit limited compared with the likes of Singapore and Air NZ long-haul products in economy class. Or even Lufthansa actually. I was pretty lucky in that my trip to the UK, Japan and India in February and March this year was in Business class, so my comparisions might be a little offside. But I think it’s fair to say that the service on Asiana is very good, but not best in class by a long chalk. Still, the flight is probably only 60-70% full, so there is plenty of room to spread out, even if the Star Alliance Gold seat blocking I was assured of didn’t work out. I’ll be keen to see if things are stepped up a notch atIncheon tomorrow - it’s often the case that airlines flying out of their home hub tend to step it up a little.

I’m looking forward to getting to my hotel and getting out for a little walk in Seoul tonight and perhaps even getting to go for a spa if there is plae close by. Asiana are laying on a tarnsfer, a hotel nearthe centre of the city and breakfast and dinner vouchers as part of the deal. The other side of the deal is that my flight tomorrow doesn’t take off until 1.30pm. So, it’ll takeme a while longer to get to London, but I’ll get a good night’s sleep on the way. That suits me just fine on this trip.

A quick changeover in Sydney, but I have been told I need to pick up a boarding pass and change terminals too for my Asiana flight from Sydney to Seoul. I won’t have much time to spare in a lounge, but what time I can spend will be in the Qantas Club as it is a code share and there is no Star Alliance lounge in thatterminal, I think. The Air NZ iinternational Koru Lounge is nothing to write home about - nothng like as nice as the Chistchurch or Auckland longes whch ihave used in the past. But, pleasant nonetheless.

After presenting on the Tuesday and the Wednesday, I had a relatively easy day yesterday. I had quite a busy time, with both work and social stuff. Dinner on Mt Coot-tha with Greg and Stephen from Queensland Health on Monday night followed by some work at the Queensland Health offices on Tuesday morning. Tuesday afternoon was the workshop, after which I met with my traveling mate Nick. We met in Queensland about 8 years ago, just before I started my clinical training in London. He was a teacher and I was an academic. 8 years later, he has married a Queenslander and has been living and working in Brisbane for 3 moths now and settling in. It was great to catch up in person, even if briefly. Wednesday was the conference and conference dinner, followed by Thursday at the conference again And last night I met up with my friend Claire - an Aussie who I met originally in London. She brought her daughter Ava along who was keen to meet again. Last time I saw her, she was 9 months old  she turns 5 years old on Saturday. Ava was keen to see who this Sarb bloke was who was shown in pictures holding here as a wee infant. A funny dinner and she’s a lovely little girl - Claire in understandably proud of her.

Up at dawn this morning - 5am - to get to the airport for my flights to Christchurch and then on to Wellington. I struggle with smaller time zone shifts more than the larger ones, so I’m feeling a little tired and jaded. I probably look it too as I forgot my shaving gear. Home soon. For a few days at least.

I have Greg and Stephen from Queensland Health picking me up at the other end to talk about the workshop we’re running tomorrow. So, I’m going to do a little reading of my presentation and the course handbook again once this film is over - I think I’ll have enough time. And I’ll listen to a little Belle & Sebastian  and Kora while I’m at it.

Ed Norton has just swallowed a USB stick.I think I should be paying more attention to the film.

I accept that the US$700 billion bail-out bill has deflected a lot of attention, as well as the completely nonsensical pork-barrel clauses that have nothing to do with anything. Child-size quiver of arrows, anyone?

I accept that the market gyrations over the last week have been rather sobering. Anyone wanna buy a bank? Going cheap?

I accept that the Palin-Biden VP debate in the USA has been a circus to behold. I loathe the way Sarah Palin’s ability to avoid answering questions is lauded as a success. I am embarrassed by the way that a lot of USA media have focused upon personalities and not on content.

I accept that the re-inclusion of Peter Mandelson into the fold of Gordon Brown’s UK Cabinet after his re-shuffle was somewhat of a surprise. I also think that is one of my more spectacular under-statements.

I also accept that in the New Zealand election, well …… not much really. I understand that the election campaigns will officially be launched this weekend. Here’s hoping things kick off soon.

We know that prices have gone down in the UK - though there are big regional differences. Prices have also gone down a little in NZ, again with big regional differences - Wellington hasn’t dropped as much as other regions. Although I’m tempted to get into the housing market from an emotionally driven point of view, my more rational  reading of the current situation is that we are not anywhere near the bottom of the economic cycle just yet. I think we are in a slump, but we’re still at the start of it, on the way down. As Warren Buffet said on the news last night, who knows whether it will last 6 months or 2 years, but it’s going to get worse, and significantly so.

So, I’m still sitting out on the sidelines for a while yet and I’m going to try to force myself to remain out too. For the forseeable.

Anyway - a list of to-dos for increasing my blog links and footprint:

• Increase my use of tags and categories - even after three weeks of tagging using wordpress, I’ve seen an increase in google search hits. I sill need to tag my archive of 200+ posts
• Use trackbacks more - a good explanation here.
• Submit a posts and page sitemap to Google - did this earlier this morning.
• Relax my commenting sign-in but use a spam filter - done.
• Use blog listing sites more - to do.

If you get a chance and you’re relatively new to blogging and you’re a small business, this is a great workshop to attend. Even if you’ve been blogging a while, there are some juicy nuggets there, and Richard and Hamish are very responsive and experienced. I’m looking forward to a follow-up coaching session which is free, as is the workshop. Contact The Biz Centre to find out more.

It is a sweet irony to me that those who are against this bail-out are the staunch Republicans who deem this state interference in the market to be as bad as communism. They are comparatively un-evolved when it comes to their Republican cousins in the upper echelons of power who dreamed up the strategy of privateers taking all of the profits and offloading all risk and debt to the taxpayer.

I imagine that the wrangling over this matter will continue. In the meantime, there are several bank failures to mull over - and they are failures in that they cannot survive without state takeover or state legislation being over-ridden in order for takeovers to take place, takeovers which would fall foul of monopoly regulations in other times. This includes Wachovia in the USA, Bradford & Bingley in the UK and several European banks including Fortis. Wachovia is an interesting case for NZers. It  owns the entire South Island electricity grid and the Green Party here are calling for the assets to be bought back when the resources of Wachovia are rationalised.

And as a related sidenote, ne of the most popular articles on the Guardian website at the weekend was John’s Gray’s piece on the possible end of the USA economic empire - I thought it was a fascinating piece and posted a link to it on twitter. And here is a great piece on the Sarah Palin phenomenon too - top writing.

Other highlights for me today included Karl Chaffey talking about many bluetooth sniffing things and detailing how much data he picked up from discoverable bluetooth devices he sniffed just walking past several sites in Auckland. Karl has a degree in physics and psychology and looks like someone I should probably have some shared interests in and should get in touch with. He also put us on to various bluetooth sniffing techniques, such as: Bluesnarfing, Bluebugging, Bluesmack, Bluestab, Bluespoof, Carwhisperer, HidAttack, Remote root over BT, iBug, Blueprinting and BTCrack. Worth chasing up for experimental purposes I think.

The highlight of the day for me, just before fatigue tuned me out was Paul Craig talking about how much data he was able to find just using Google that botnets had harvested from internet users daily activity, including webmail, credit card details, usernames, passwords, and all sorts of other private data. It was hair-raising stuff. Fortunately, Google seem to be on to it, but the amount of data that has been harvested via botnets is truly frightening. As Paul quoted, people underestimate the value of their information thinking that there is no reason for people to target them. There is, and they are. If I learned anything over the last few days it is how I need to understand VMware and to set myself up a couple of VMmachines. i will also perhaps start to take a bit more interest in the IP addresses that visit my blog and understand a bit more about what they are trying to do and what they know about me. Paul also unveiled a new trojan that reveals a previously undocumented Windows XP and Vista vulnerability. I won’t say much about it here, as I’m sure it will hit the media soon. Moth trojan is what you need to google.

What with getting up early after the kicking-in of daylight savings time here in NZ, I was pretty tired at the end of the day. Toby’s offer of a free ticket to go and see Wellington Phoenix play couldn’t tempt me from a bath and my bed.

Back to work - Monday morning and snacky time is over.

Earth is a beautiful film which I found stirring. Not so much for the undeniably stunning way the animals were portrayed on screen, but for the moving images of our Earth pacing through it’s seasons. The most disturbing thing though was the woman behind me as the credits rolled who complained,

‘They always say that it’s humans’ fault that this is happening and that we can do something about it. What can we do? ….. Oh, don’t lecture me! I just don’t think we can do anything.’

I have to wonder what the hell she was doing at the film. Granted, there was a lot more ooohing and aaaahing at the cute baby animals and booing of the carnivores as they hunted, but I was just dumbfounded.

Cartel gave voice to a more ideological expression of hacker orientation and activity, or hacktivism, than the other more technical looking sessions. He talked about the proposed bill to look at rights pertaining to stop and search - which purports to give powers  to police to pry into computers seized in search.

He questioned some of the  wording in the draft bill, asking whether this gives authorities the potential opportunity to make unauthorised changes to your laptop. What iI think follows this is the question around how is this governed or forensically controlled? I’m not sure whether the draft legislation attempts to address this, or even wants to.

Cartel continued and talked about how customs agents at Auckland airport had demanded the authentication passphrase for his notebook user account and removed the laptop from his sight for 45 minutes.

When he got home and scanned his notebook for the activity that took place h found out that they looked at his attachments of emails while it was out of sight. He enquired after the fact and after something of a runaround he was told they were allowed to do this but would not say what law gave them the power to do this.

As a result of his experience, he told the conference that he has set up a script for duress authentication with a layer that is triggered after putting in duress password and also encodes what is done to your notebook when it is out of sight and has unauthorised access. A class example of hacktivism.
Lots more highlights of the day until it got a little over my head. Eon and Oddy talking about how they portscanned the whole of the .jp domain and found unprotected conference cameras and pwned them and showed us the results and gave some tools to try and play with (that’ll take me a while). Another big highlight for me was Peter Guttman talking about how easy it is to scan and clone RFIDs in passports and credit cards (the litte gold chip), and the type I and type II error tensions inherent in establishing and implementing biosecurity systems. They just don’t work and in no way live up to their manufacturer’s claim. In fact, most RFIDs that claim to be encrypted are nothing of the sort. Scary, and well-worth knowing, though I have been something of a skeptic of RFID chips for a while. In fact, I deliberately applied for my renewed UK passport on the last day possible in New Zealand to ensure it was issued WITHOUT an RFID chip in it, even though my passport still had 6 months to run.

Chips and tinfoil hats aside, it was a great day, though it got a bit techy for ignorant me towards the end of the day. Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow will bring - my first ever hacktivism conference continues …

Last week I attended Software Freedom Day in Wellington, directly after finding about the Games, Geeks and Gadgets event. Both were run by Unlimited Potential and pretty well too, at a very human level in terms of scale with a friendly bunch of people attending to boot. Both of those events were of interested to me just because, well, I’m a bit of a geek - not to put too fine a point on it. In the past couple of days though, I have been to two more presentations of a techy variety, to do with my job in emergency management. The first was a product pitch for data connections via the BGAN network linking through inmarsat satellites. Essentially, this is the kit that TV reporters use when wanted to use a a visual feed from far flung places. The stream is uploaded live via satellite and distributed once it reaches its destination. We’re interested in these in case of communication breakdown in New Zealand in case of emergency so we can get areas back on line and sending information and requests through an information sharing network. Great little units. And this morning, I went to a briefing on how to use Google Maps. Some very interesting developments for the public sector, and there were several agencies represented at a well-attended seminar jointly run by the only reseller agent for Google Maps in New Zealand - Project X (the crew behind zoomin.co.nz maps too).

This weekend, I’ll be spending most of my time at Kiwicon 2008. This is a full-on hacker conference - alternately billed for those in the corporate world as of interest to those interested in security issues. I prevaricated a little earlier this week as I’ve been feeling a little tired, but the line-up looks pretty good - though Saturday is of more interest to me than Sunday.

I have become way more interested in this technical side of things over the past few months. I’m not sure if this is a function of the times, or how easy it seems to be to get involved in this kind if thing in Wellington. I’m sure its a little of both. I’m sure though that my involvement wouldn’t be nearly as high if I was still based in London. It would just take too long to participate in all the things I am interested in doing.

I’m approaching tomorrow with a little trepidation. I’m in no way a hacker - more an informed tinkerer. Informed enough to install ZoneAlarm and have it switched on tomorrow.

I smell a rat. A big one. Bush is going on TV tonight to make a case for speedy action to bully Congress into releasing funds for the Paulson plan to bail out the banking sector. Interestingly, I wonder who Paulson reports to or gives oversight to his plan. At the moment, I believe there is very itte ubic regulation on what he is planning to do, and if Bush gets his way, even less as Congress is pressured to write a blank cheque to socialise an unbelievable mountain of private debt.

People are feeling panicked and fearful, However, I m reassured by the public polls in the USA expressing skepticism over plans to intervene in the markets in this way. I hope that oversight is put in place - and quickly, though I suspect that further emergencies may emerge which may seemingly force action sooner rather than later.

I’d better get to the next session - locational privacy.

The recent fall of the US dollar meant that the cash-rich Chinese government hoard of currency has taken a bit of a pounding. The recent increase in value would have been somewhat pleasing for those holding US dollars, but I’m pretty doubtful that will continue. Indeed, China might find itself in the position that it’s key markets may have imploded if the USA and Europe are headed for deep and entrenched economies. 

The recent bounce in share prices over the past couple of days does not signal increased confidence in the markets in my opinion. I think it is more a function of the ban on short-selling. This is the practice of borrowing shares to sell them, in the hope of buying them at a cheaper price later. As the positions were unwound, this would lead to an increase in price. Two things happened at once in the last couple of days - injection of liquidity into the markets by the central banks and the temporary ban of short-selling. I think they are confounded and that most people are attributing the stock market bounce to the increased liquidity in the system. My hunch is that this is a false attribution. 

A lot of analysts reckon this isn’t over by a long shot. I’d have to agree.

Peston goes on to speculate that the Chinese state , if it marshaled all the resources available to it through sovereign funds, and cash-rich institutions , could end up snapping up some of the major names in investment and retail banking, and with it a stake in the heartlands of both the UK and the USA - perhaps even wider afield.

My sense is that is not an unrealistic possibility. It may be hidden from our direct gaze, but I could see this happening. And quickly too. Sobering times.