_And so, the end of the year is upon us. Another year over, and it seems to have absolutely flown by. 2012 promises to be a big year, what with the London Olympics, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the potential collapse of the Euro, and the Mayan prophesised end of the world!

For many of us, it is a time to relax and have fun with our families, to celebrate religious holidays, eat, drink and be merry, and recharge our batteries ready for the coming year.

However, as we drive along the roads, and see wreathes of holly or bouquets of flowers tied to lampposts, signs, fences, bollards and traffic lights, we remember that this time of the year is a very sad time for many people. People who may have lost loved ones around this time of year. For them , even as the years go by, Christmas is and always will be a very sad and painful time. People who have lost loved ones over the course of the last year may be feeling particularly emotional, knowing that this is the first Christmas they have spent without that loved one, perhaps for many years, and knowing that they will never spend Christmas with that loved one again.

Then there are those people who have found themselves out of work over the last year or longer, who are struggling to get by and don’t have the money for food, drink and presents. For them, affording every day commodities is enough of a struggle, without the luxuries of Christmas.

The release of the Military Wives Choir CD reminds us of those in the armed forces serving overseas during Christmas, and of the possibility of families receiving news on Christmas Day that their son, daughter, brother, father, mother might have been killed in action.

There are those who are homeless and sleeping rough for whom Christmas will be just another day. And of course, there are those who will be working all over Christmas because they have to, because they work in industries where people can’t just up sticks and go for three days. The police, the fire brigade and ambulances of course are the obvious ones, but all sorts of other businesses as well. IT support companies, with businesses expecting their websites to be maintained over Christmas, funeral directors in Merseyside, as people are as likely to die over Christmas as at any other time, coastguards, people on the ends of phones, electricity and gas providers, the list goes on.

So if you’re fortunate enough to be in a job where you can have Christmas off, don’t take it for granted, and if you’re lucky enough to be happy this Christmas then count your blessings. All the best for 2012 from the Brilliant Sites team.

_2011 has been an incredibly eventful year all round. Firstly, 2011 was the year of the Arab Spring. Although the spark that set of the chain reaction of events actually took place in Tunisia on 18th December 2010, 2011 will be remembered for the huge events which took places as a result of Mohammed Bouazizi setting himself on fire. Whilst events still rumble on, with Syria having seen an estimated 3000 deaths so far, it is important to remember how much change there has been so far. In January 2011, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia fled to Saudi Arabia after 23 years as ruler of his country. The following month President Hosni Mubarak resigned as President of Egypt after a 30 year rule, forced out by continuing protests in Tahrir Square in Cairo.  And, of course, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in Libya in August 2011, following 5 months of military action from various countries including the UK and a Libyan Civil War. He was of course then killed when he was found hiding in his hometown of Sirte.

Colonel Gaddafi wasn’t the only terrorist leader to be killed in 2011. On May 1st the world awoke to the news that Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda and the man responsible for the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington on 11th September 2001 had been killed in Pakistan and buried at sea. And, of course, in December 2011, the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il died at the age of 69. Whilst not killed, the former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic was finally captured in Serbia in May 2011 for war crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Balkans Wars.  And at the end of the year, the USA formerly withdrew from Iraq.

2011 was the year that a madman killed 76 people in Norway on the 22nd July, first by bombing the capital Oslo, and then going on a shooting rampage at a youth camp on the Island of Utoya. March 2011 saw a huge earthquake hit Japan, killing around 16,000 people and causing panic over the fate of its nuclear power stations. There was also famine in Southern Somalia for the first time in thirty years.

2011 was also dominated by bad economic news and with continuing worries for much of the year surrounding the potential collapse of the Euro. The EU had to step in to save Portugal and Greece during the year, a year which saw both the Prime Ministers of Greece and Italy having to step down and being replaced by unelected technocratic replacements – and in Italy’s case the whole government of Silvio Berlusconi was replaced by unelected technocrats. It was also the year that the head of the IMF, Dominic Strauss Khan, had to resign and step aside from the French Presidential Election due to accusations of a sexual attack on a maid in New York.

There was some good news in 2011 as well though! April saw the wedding of Prince William of Wales, the second in line to the British throne, to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey. They became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their wedding day, and their wedding was watched by an estimated 2 billion people around the globe. On the royal front, the Queen became the second longest reigning British monarch in May, and the first one to visit Ireland since 1911. The world’s first artificial organ transplant took place in July, and the world’s newest country, South Sudan, was created following their vote for independence. The Basque separatist movement ETA announced an end to its 43 year campaign in October. England won the Ashes in January, and the final Harry Potter film was released in July.

In politics, David Cameron’s Director of Communications Andy Coulson was forced to resign in January over phone hacking, a scandal which has rumbled on throughout 2011, with the closure of The News of the World Sunday newspaper, and Rupert Murdoch appearing before a select committee of MPs to answer questions. A referendum was held in May over whether the UK should adopt the Alternative Vote for General Elections, which was rejected, and the SNP under Alex Salmond won a majority in the Scottish Parliament, the first party to do so since devolution in 1999. August 2011 saw a week of riots across the UK, with businesses looted and burnt to the ground and some fatalities.  St Pauls Cathedral closed for the first time since World War II due to anti-capitalist protests outside. In October, the Defence Secretary Liam Fox was forced to resign, and he was replaced by the Transport Secretary Philip Hammond. There were mass public sector strikes in November, with public sector workers from teachers to car transporter manufacturers to civil servants going on strike over public sector pension reforms. And finally in December the Prime Minister caused a stir when he vetoed a European Union treaty over Eurozone finances.

2011 saw the deaths of actor Pete Postlethwaite, Elizabeth Taylor, golfer Seve Ballesteros, painter Lucian Freud, singer Amy Winehouse, Steve Jobs, boxer Joe Frazier, Welsh football coach Gary Speed and the 1st President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel. Finally, it should be noted that October 2011 was the month when the world population reached 7 billion. Quite a year, and 2012 is already looking to be even more eventful!

_Many offices or commercial buildings have a large amount of unused headroom which just goes to waste and is expensive to either heat or cool. At the same time, there are many businesses who would love to expand, either by taking on more staff or taking on more stock, but feel they can’t buy more premises or buy or rent larger premises at the moment because of the somewhat precarious economic situation. Yet the two situations can be quite easily combined with the clever use of a mezzanine floor.

Mezzanine Floors are relatively quick and easy to install in a building, and can be custom designed for whatever purpose you want and need. So, for example if you have a large warehouse space, and have been using a third of it for office space until now, thus dramatically reducing your storage space, you could install a mezzanine floor and have all of your offices on the mezzanine floor level, whilst keeping all of the ground floor level for your storage.

If your commercial premises are for retail rather than storage or offices, then a mezzanine floor could also help you to greatly expand your floor space. You might have been in many stores that appear to have two floors, whereas in fact all they are is large warehouses with beautifully finished mezzanine floors installed, often with a wood effect finish and glass and steel balustrades to really make them look classy and stylish. Beautiful flowing staircases leading up to what are in effect large balconies really are fashionable and really give a shop a professional look.

Not only does installing a mezzanine floor in either your offices or retail store mean that you can have up to double the amount of space utilised without having to acquire new buildings, extend your current buildings or swap your existing building for a larger one, but it also freshens up your business dramatically. For your customers, it is quite exciting and refreshing to come into your store and realise that it now has an “upstairs” section, as it means more of their favourite products, new areas to explore, and it makes their shopping experience more interesting. For your staff, it is also refreshing as it gives them a change of scenery at work, but also means they have more space to get around in, store stuff in and work in, meaning they are no longer working in such cramped and crowded conditions.

Mezzanine floors can be tailored and made according to your exact specifications and requirements and can be made to look extremely attractive, so don’t just think that they look like standard warehouse steel structures. They really are a fantastically cost effective way to expand your business, so well worth at least looking into if you are considering or wanting to expand.

_ For many elderly people, having cataracts is an incredibly limiting experience.

A cataract is a cloud that forms across the lens of the eye, and can vary in severity from very slight to causing the sufferer to have no sight, and therefore can lead to the person with the cataracts going completely blind if they are not treated. Cataracts usually affect both eyes, hence although the word cataract is singular; it is usually referred to as cataracts because they generally come in pairs. The normal case is for one eye to get a cataract first followed by the second one at a later point.

It always used to be the case that doctors would wait until a cataract was “ripe” before carrying out an operation on the patient’s eyes to remove the cataract. However, it is now felt that the operation can be carried out at any point, although it is best to wait until the cataract is causing problems with vision before carrying it out as the operation still carries some risk. Saying that, it is an operation that is carried out under local anaesthetic, and the patient is allowed to go home the same day.

Despite this relatively simple operation, according to the World Health Organisation, age-related cataract is the cause of 48% of blindness in the world, an incredible 18million people. Cataracts are therefore the leading cause of blindness in the world. It is a sad fact that in many countries surgery is not advanced enough to be able to remove cataracts, and that is why millions of people are left without sight, without being able to see their loved ones, family and friends again because cataracts have made them totally blind. Unsurprisingly, it is the poorest countries as always that suffer the most, and therefire almost all of Africa is the worst effected by blindness through cataracts, with large numbers also in Indonesia, South East Asia, the Middle East, and to a less extent in India and Central America. As with most types of illnesses, the more elderly the population gets, the higher the number of people suffering with cataracts. It is also thought that the destruction of the ozone layer will lead to more ultraviolet radiation, leading to more cases of cataracts in the following years.

It is particularly sad that cataracts have blighted so many millions of peoples of lives, because they are so easily operated on, and even if surgery isn’t available there are other forms of medication out there that have been developed that can reduce the impact of cataracts if not cure them altogether. Eye drops containing N-Acetylcarnosine have been clinically proven to treat and reverse cataracts. Two drops, twice a day for six months sooths and improves vision without surgery. It is when you read cases like this that you realise the importance of science, research and discovery, and think about how something like this can change the lives of so many millions of people.

_Mary Portas, the star of the popular TV show, Mary Queen of Shops, unveiled her report in the state of Britain’s high streets last week and her recommendations as to what could be done to improve fortunes in Britain’s town centres. But will they really make a difference.

Commenting on her proposals, Mary Portas said that “the model of the High Street is so outdated. It is working in the same way that it did in the 1960s, but the 1960s are no longer here.” The British High Street has been in gradual decline for a long time, and has seen some major casualties in recent years because of the recession. Perhaps the biggest name to go under in the recent economic downturn was Woolworths, which went bust at the end of 2008, to the great sadness of many people across the UK who had bought their toys, clothes, stationery and, of course, pick and mix. In fact, statistics published by the government published at the same time as Mary Portas’ report showed that a third of High Streets were degenerating or failing. Many of the small, local businesses that used to inhabit the High Street have gone – with small local bakers having been replaced by Greggs and local pubs having been replaced by Wetherspoons. Neither of these are  major problems, as Greggs is very popular on the High Street and Wetherspoons tends to do the High Street a service by buying up old, run down pubs that have gone out of business and retaining them as a presence on the High Street. But the replacement of favourite businesses with charity shops, mobile phone stores, pound shops and health food stores has hardly done wonders for the High Street. Whilst some useful shops remain, like Boots, Argos, the occasional IT support Leeds shop and maybe a chain book or DVD store, most of the good stores are now out of town.

In the last decade, out of town shopping centres and online shopping has risen dramatically. Those looking to revive Britain’s High Streets should perhaps consider why out of town shopping centres are so popular. Firstly, everything you need is generally under one roof at an out of town shopping centre – and that doesn’t just mean shops. The restaurants, the cinemas, the bowling alleys, etc. everything is there in one place not just for a shopping trip, but for entertainment to break up the often tediousness and hard work of a day of shopping. With an out of town shopping centre, it is not just a case of you go to the High Streets and trudge up and down a long, winding road in the rain making your purchases, going from one end of the town to the other to find what you need. Instead, you can go and meet your friends for breakfast, do some shopping, have a coffee, do some more shopping, have lunch, do some more shopping, then maybe watch a film or go bowling before having a meal in the evening. What’s more, everything is under one roof and doesn’t involve your feet killing you by the end of the day. People have less free time these days – so the free time they have they would rather spend enjoying than trudging around on the High Street. It is the same reason why online shopping is so popular – it is quick, easy, and far less time consuming.

Mary Portas recommended in her report that town centres should be run more like businesses, with “town teams” responsible for developing businesses in the town centre and on the High Street. She also suggested a relaxation of the licensing rules to allow people to set up market stalls, an end to restrictions on night time deliveries, affordable town centre parking and a national market day.

_I was speaking to an elderly person the other day, and the internet came up in conversation. They said that they honestly could not see the point in it, that it was just a fad, they didn’t understand why people use it, and couldn’t see what anyone had to gain from it.

Despite my protestations, I could not make this person understand the importance of the internet. Yet there is a huge amount to gain from the internet for elderly people as well as young people.

For example, there is the ability to keep in touch with people. When Friends Reunited was first created, it was seen as revolutionary, because it enabled people to get in touch with their old school friends, which in some cases they might not have seen or heard from for perhaps as long as 60 years. It was the precursor really to the social media era, when along came sites like MySpace, Bebo and Hi5, before finally Facebook. Because of sites like this, people can now keep in touch with each other much more easily than ever before. Many elderly people now use Facebook and other such sites as a way of keeping in touch with their friends and relatives, catching up with people that they haven’t seen or heard from for years and viewing photos and videos. In short, as people become less able to get around with ease, the internet helps to make sure that they are still able to keep in touch and not lonely. An email will get there in seconds, whilst a letter would have taken weeks.

Then there are such issues as being able to buy products online, to browse through online shops without having to try to get from shop to shop on the high street – often a daunting enough task for those of us who are able bodied, but as we get older it becomes even harder to get round shopping malls, high streets and supermarkets. So, for example, if the prospect of going up and down each aisle at the supermarket seems daunting, there is the option to shop online through your favourite supermarket. At Christmas, mega online stores such as Amazon mean you can search for and buy Christmas presents without having to battle through the Christmas rush. In fact, the internet can be used to buy all sorts of things, so you can go to www.carbatterywarehouse.co.uk and order a new car battery, sent next day delivery if your car goes wrong, or submit photos to specialist websites and get personalised cards printed. Because of the internet, the world is your oyster when it comes to shopping. You can even buy things from all over the world, greatly expanding your scope. With sites such as Ebay, it also means you can sell your belongings easily if you want to make more space.

Then of course there is the educational factor. With the internet you have access to informative sites, such as the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia, a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, blogs, dictionaries, books, articles and whatever else might take your fancy. With online search engines such as Google and Bing, all you have to do is type something into the search box and you have your answer within seconds. For entertainment, facilities such as the iPlayer on the BBC means that you can catch up on any of your favourite programs that you missed, by downloading them quite easily. In short, the internet can be quite life changing, and make life so much easier.

_It has often been the case that people have seen getting financial advice or having a financial adviser as an extravagance that they cannot afford. People have perhaps felt that why should they spend money on getting someone to tell them how best to look after their money and make more money. Maybe the general feeling has been not to spend money on a financial adviser for a start. This might have been the case when the economy was doing well. Back then house prices were rising strongly, and so you pretty much knew that you money was a safe as houses if you invested in bricks and mortar. However, since the market collapsed 3 or 4 years ago, the housing market hasn’t really recovered, and has instead been flat lining. This leaves you with a decision – should you invest in property now when it is still a relatively low price, or should you rent for now. Is now a good time to get a mortgage?

Stocks and shares were always also seen as another sound investment, but the FTSE-100 has been particularly unstable in the last couple of years, reaching unparalleled lows, and for anybody who doesn’t know what they are doing then they are a bit of a minefield. You don’t want to enter at the wrong time and suddenly find yourself in deep financial trouble. Similarly, government bonds were always seen as the closest thing you could get to a safe investment, but even those aren’t looking that great any more.

That of course leaves the option of just putting your cash in the bank, but any saver will know that this is not a great option at the moment.  With interest rates at an all time low, savers get very little return on their cash in the bank, and whatever interest they do get is pitiful compared to the high rate of inflation, meaning that your money will be worth less money when you take it out of the bank than when you put it in.

An example of what can go horribly wrong with your finances was the Icelandic banks investments of a few years ago, where people rushed to invest their money in Icelandic banks, only for them to go bust and for the British government to use terrorism laws to try to recover the money. With the Eurozone going through an incredibly unstable time, and Ireland, Portugal, Greece and now Italy having gone through incredibly choppy waters, it is hard to know where best to invest your money. If the Euro goes down, it will have grave repercussions on the rest of the world, and most of all on the UK.

The way the UK and global economy is at the moment, making large and long term investments without a good financial adviser would be like jumping out of a plane without a parachute. All the signs are that the UK is about to go back into recession, if it hasn’t already done so. Now is not the time to leave your financial affairs to chance, but instead leave it to the professionals.

_2012 is going to be a fantastic year for Great Britain, a chance to really appreciate our fantastic country and to celebrate all things British. Two major landmark events will make this the case. The first will be the 2012 London Olympics, the first Olympic Games to be hosted in Britain since the post-Second World War 1948 games. The opening and closing ceremonies will be a fantastic chance for countries around the world to see the best of what Britain has to offer, for the thousands of people coming around the world to experience a British holiday, and for British people themselves to take great pride in our nation, as hopefully we perform as well in London as we did in Beijing in 2008.

The second, perhaps less talked about but in historical terms far more important, event will be the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. On February 6th, she will have been Queen for 60 years, an event which will be celebrated with an extra Bank Holiday in June. What is so special about this event is that she will only be the second monarch in British history to have been on the throne for 60 years. The only other monarch also happened to be female, and was of course Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 until 1901, a total of 63 years. At the moment Queen Elizabeth looks to be in very good health, and so the chances are very high that not only will she reach the 60 year milestone, but that she will overtake Queen Victoria to become Britain’s longest monarch ever.

2012 will therefore be a year of celebrating Britishness, and what better way to do so than by buying a used caravan and instead of going abroad for your holidays, spending some time exploring the great British countryside. There are plenty of used caravans for sale available all over the country at extremely low prices, which are ideal for hitching up to the back of your car and getting out there and see what the country has to offer.

There is nothing more British than a caravan holiday in the British countryside. It gives you the freedom to go where you want, when you want, for as long as you want. It means you can change your plans at the last minute, drive all through the night if you want to, and if you’re tired sleep during the day. It means that your holiday is entirely in your hands. And there is so much to see. From the beauty of Scotland to the incredible scenery in North Wales, and from the idyllic setting of the Lake District to the rugged natural coastline of Cornwall. You don’t have to go far to find a beautiful part of the UK just on your doorstep. And, if you have the time, why not go the whole hog and celebrate 2012 by taking your caravan from one end of the country to the other, to truly appreciate the range of different cultures and places within our own borders. As long as the Mayan prophecy about the world ending at the end of 2012 doesn’t come true then it should be a fantastic year!

_When we’re young, we don’t really appreciate the importance of oral hygiene. Perhaps not until we reach teenage years and start noticing that members of the opposite sex won’t go near us because we have bad breath, or that we start wearing mouthguards whilst playing sports do we first start to understand the importance of looking after our mouths!

However, taking good care of our teeth and mouths is something that needs to be ingrained in our conscience from a very young age. Parents need to bring their children up so that brushing their teeth twice a day, once in the morning before going to school and once at night before going to bed, is as normal as walking, breathing, eating etc. They then need to be encouraged to use dental floss regularly, to use mouth wash after brushing, and to make regular visits to the dentist.

Why? Well regular teeth cleaning removes plaque and tartar from teeth, which helps to prevent gum disease which causes at least one-third of tooth loss in adults. We all know people with either false teeth or no teeth at all, which makes them look far older than they actually are.

Plaque is a yellow sticky film on teeth and gums. The bacteria in it changes carbohydrates in the food you eat into acid which erodes your teeth and leads to you having cavities and thus fillings. It irritates gums, making them bleed easily and pull away from the teeth, which creates cavities for bacteria to fill. This in term causes the bones around the teeth to be eroded, causing gum disease. Eating the right food and not eating snacks helps to combat this, as does making sure you brush your gums as well as your teeth.

Whilst the message about brushing twice daily seems to be getting through, flossing probably hasn’t as much. Yet flossing is vital, as it removes the decaying food and the plaque from between the teeth, which brushing often doesn’t do as the gap between teeth is so tight. It is recommended that you floss once a day BEFORE brushing to allow fluoride toothpaste better access between teeth.

It is also extremely important to clean your tongue – again, something that isn’t as often thought about as tooth cleaning. This removes the coating of bacteria from your tongue which causes bad breath, tooth decay and gum disease.

The key aim is to make sure demineralisation of the teeth doesn’t exceed remineralisation. Plaque and tartar increases demineralisation, so the above steps are essential to combat it, but eating the right foods is also important. Whilst fluoride in toothpaste helps, milk and cheese are rich in calcium to strengthen your teeth, and fibre rich foods and sugar free gum increase the flow of saliva for remineralisation. Green tea, fruit and veg and sesame seeds are also good. Crisps and chips, sugar, fruit juice, vinegar and sweets are all bad for oral hygiene. Smoking is also bad for teeth.

An argument often heard is that oral hygiene is some sort of new phenomenon, and that it is all a money making scam from dentists and oral hygiene companies. The truth is that oral hygiene goes back beyond the beginning of recorded history, with excavations all over the world showing that sticks, twigs, bird feathers, animal bones and porcupine quills have been used as prototype toothbrushes, and looking after your mouth from a young age is far more cost effective than having to deal with gum disease and other oral problems when you’re older.

_Normally in a recession or in tough economic circumstances like the ones we are currently in, one of the first things to go out the window are our environmentally friendly, eco-friendly, green credentials. In normal times, people are prepared to pay that bit extra because it is for the environment and will factor in how environmentally friendly a company is when choosing whether or not to use it. Then, when a recession comes along, all of that is abandoned, and the cheapest, most cost effective company is used instead. People suddenly forget about doing their bit for the environment and only care about making sure the pennies can be stretched as far as possible. 

However, in this recession and in the subsequent tough economic times, the environment does indeed still seem to be up there. Maybe it’s because people have grasped just how serious the environmental situation is. Maybe the last two winters being extremely harsh, with snow and ice not seen in the UK for many years, brought it home to people. It is worth noting that there were major fuel protests in the year 2000 over the price of fuel, and petrol then was around 75p per litre. It is now around £1.30 per litre, and despite the recent debate in Parliament on the price of fuel, and despite the occasional grumblings and mutterings, people seem to have got on with it, tolerated it and accepted it. Despite people being out of work, unable to get around, there hasn’t been that major outcry over fuel, and it hasn’t been brought down, partly because the tax is needed to bring some much needed cash into the treasury’s coffers, and partly because the government knows that the environmental lobby would be up in arms. At one point the government wouldn’t have worried too much about upsetting the environmental lobby. But they recognise the strength of the green movement now. It might have taken 21 years since the 1989 European elections for the Green Party to make a break through, but last year, 2010, despite the economic conditions which dominated the General Election, the Green Party won their first seat at Westminster with Caroline Lucas becoming an MP.

A quick browse of Google shows that many companies, including ones that perhaps you wouldn’t expect, are parading their environmentally friendly credentials to the UK. Put recycling Leicester into Google and you get a skip hire company coming up on page 1 beneath the local government sites. They say they are committed to recycling everything possible from their skips o reduce landfill waste, whereas normally you would just expect a skip hire company to send the waste in their skips straight to landfill. If the recession carries on it is hard to say how long being green will remain a priority, but at the moment it still seems to be very much in people’s mind. How the winter effects this one way or another will be very interesting.