Immig Rant

London is considered a melting pot of cultures and religions, and that's one of the things that makes it special. The level of diversity may not be same but the US is pretty diverse too with a lot of immigrant workers. You would think these countries would be proud of the contributions of these immigrants, but the way they refer to this workforce doesn't sound very thankful at all!
In the US, if you are an immigrant, you probably have one of the alphabets that lets you stay legally (F, H, J, L visas, etc) but at the end of the day, you are an Alien (Resident or Non-resident). The next time you enter the US, try filling out the port of departure as "planet far far away" and Flight number as "UFO-111" in that I-94 card. I hope those programmers writing the code for those expensive NASA probes aren't ex-INS officials. If they are, they will never be successful finding life on Mars. They may find a Mallu selling cup tea but that doesn't count.
For an immigrant in the UK, you either have a "Limited Leave to Remain" or an "Indefinite Leave to Remain" visa. It almost sounds like a court sentence "You have limited leave to remain" and you can hear an imaginary gavel hit along with it. The words "Limited" and "Indefinite" are the saving graces there. Otherwise, you wouldn't know whether to leave the country or remain in the country. I guess all those illegal immigrants have selective hearing when they heard their sentences - they just chose to remain, most likely indefinitely!
There must be other diverse countries and cities, but if these English speaking nations cannot find a comfortable term to refer to their immigrants, I dare not try and understand the visa systems of other countries.

A bi-partisan stimulus plan

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. While all the experts argue their hearts out on the root causes of the global downturn and all the politicians are trying to figure out how to become expert darners, it occured to me (and two other weirdos) that the solution might have actually been easy and cheap. Everybody that I have been catching up this new year has either been ill in the run-up to Christmas or around that time or shortly after that. And, not just for a day or two but for 2-3 weeks at a stretch. So, this would have prevented the majority of us from going to the high streets and even when the retailers tried to entice us with deep discounts, we were busy loading up our bodies with paracetamol, lemsip, day & night nurse, etc. So, if the government had vaccinated the whole bloody country, and then had planes hovering over the borders spraying Dettol disinfectants before Christmas, none of this - retailers shutting down, global downturn, etc - would have ever happened. So, the required solution was actually a "medical stimulus plan" to this financial problem, and would have definitely cost much less than 850 billion dollars for the US tax payer. The best part, it would have been bi-partisan! The saying goes "When the US catches a cold, the whole world sneezes". Just, this time around its a nasty cold and the time has already passed for my medical stimulus plan. Alas, very sad indeed.