I am on holiday now for a fortnight so I hope I will get back to my GTD way of life. I have lots to do in the time and I wonder whether GTD will get me nearer to completing the list than is the usual case.

I heard James Lovelock (Gaia) this morning saying that it is now too late to halt climate change due to CO2, but that we should be looking to mitigate the effects. Is he right?

He certainly appears to sense the mood of fatalism in the general public. It's going to happen anyway and there is nothing much we as individuals can do about it.

At 66 I will probably be not greatly affected, but my grandsons should be alive at the end of this century if a little aged. Will they make it and will life be worth living?

I have slipped up and GTD has fallen by the wayside this week. Why I don't know. But unlike any other system of organising my life, I am suffering withdrawal symptoms. Tomorrow must be GTD restart day.

Again today there has been an announcement of personnel cuts in an NHS hospital. Over the last few years, more money than ever before has been poured into the NHS. There have been considerable increases in salaries but even so, what has happened to bring about this state of affairs?

It is not that long ago that Gordon Brown was proposing to cut civil service jobs. Instead we have had increases in administrative staff in Whitehall and the NHS, and now we are going to lose productive hospital staff. All this is against a background of massive tax increases.

Why do we swallow the idea propogated by Gordon himself that he is a prudent iron chancellor?

The more I read about Gordon Brown, the more I ask myself why have we all be lulled into such a false sense of security.

Take pensions. By altering the tax regime, he has effecively wiped out the company final salary pension scheme as we know it. With ever increasing numbers of people dependent on the state, either through salaries or benefits, our Gordon is leaving a debt which future generations may refuse to honour.

Is it really just his longwindedness, his pose of gravitas, his convoluted sentences that have allowed him to get away with this increasing mess over nearly ten years?

Blair's spinning is like a child's top compared to what Gordon has achieved.

Plagiarism is rife in British schools and Universities and even Oxford is having a problem. Why fight it? Why not accept that the assessment procedures have to change to reflect the real world?

Let students use the internet and google to prepare themselves for work where these skills wil be neccessary, but assess them under exam conditions, live, testing their search skills and their subsequent analytical skills under the scrutiny of an examiner. That way they cannot use prepared work or other peoples'.

Off for a couple of days to the Lake District and for once I am ready on time....good old GTD.

How absurd can you get? A man has been prosecuted for putting a bag of his household rubbish in a public litterbin.

I think authority now goes for the easy target be it large or small and just ignores anything more difficult, like global warming.

I really do feel that GTD to use the acronym is helping me be less stressed. We are off for a short weekend break and I am sure I will not think so much about what has to be done while I am away.

Why do people in power act just as goofily as the rest of us and never learn from history. I have a sense of deja vue with Tony and his cronies. This government is showing the same symptoms of malaise and decay as John Major's last Conservative government.

Whatever the real truth of Tessa's relationship with husband David Mills, it certainly is complicated and his financial dealings are Byzantine. It all reeks of sleaze and corruption, even supposing there was nothing untoward.

And yet it does look like an endurance time trial. If the press can keep it going long enough and there is nothing better to get their fangs into, then Tessa will go. Nothing will actually ever be proved.

I have recently come across "Getting Things Done", the book and its cult following. Why have I not seen this before? After working the system somewhat vaguely for a week I seem to get far more done with less stress. Lets hope it lasts.

It's Sunday afternoon and bitterly cold, at least for Scotland at this time of year. Our exact location on the East Coast of Scotland just near Arbroath and across a narrow stretch of water from St Andrews often escapes the worst of the weather. Even today we have not had the forecast snow which no doubt will have fallen just a few miles away. The sun has shone brightly most of the day, though the light is fading now.

We have had hardly any rain since Christmas and the barometer has had unusual periods of steady low pressure covering most of the UK. This is much more what you would expect of a period of high pressure.

How can anyone realistically deny that our climate is changing? But maybe we humans are not the only cause.