Hello and happy new year. Woohoo, et cetera.

I'd like to just nip something in the bud before it goes too far. This whole "Two Thousand and..." thing surely has to end now. The name of this year should be pronounced "Twenty Ten" in much the same way that 1918 was "Nineteen Eighteen" and not "One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighteen". Clearly.

OK, so 2000 was a special case: "The Year Two Thousand". And 2001 was "Two Thousand and One", because, well, that was what the book was called. And so the pattern was set for the rest of the decade. Fine - but not for the next ninety years, please. Save the extra syllables!