1989

A short post tonight. I was made redundant recently and today's my last working day with the company which has employed me since early 1989. There are other things in the offing, but it's a moment to stop and reflect - it's a long time.

In 1989 Margaret Thatcher was still PM. Today, we're looking back at ten years of New Labour (although not forward to another ten years, the way things are going). In the USA Ronald Regan was making way for President George Bush the First. Mikhail Gorbachev was president of the Soviet Union - if you were around at the time, did you predict that he'd be the last one, and the USSR would be dissolved without a world war two years later? Nelson Mandela was still in prison in Robben Island - who then knew that he's be released a year later, or be president of a post-apartheid state within five years. Tim Berners-Lee at CERN was coming up with something he called the World Wide Web.

A different world - the wider world and my little life have changed hugely in 18 years. So next time you turn on the radio and think you're tuning into the same old same old, consider this - things do change and the future will almost certainly not be like the past.