Sift through your memory bank and you'll find the memories you cherish rarely involve earning a living, filling the car, lagging the loft or posting something trivial on Facebook. The golden moments, the vivid vignettes, almost always encompass time spent with parents and siblings, shared jokes, outings great and small, being rained out of tents, sliding down the stairs on a tea tray... Children need their parents' company to thrive and flourish. Parents need to revel in their children's presence to feel they are doing a good job. Thirty six minutes a day means something is rotten in the state of British family life.

Galloping to the rescue astride a milk white stallion comes the nation's Fairy Godmother Mary Berry. Mary knows how to solve our family time famine. She wants us in the kitchen, chopping onions together, peeling apples, mixing pastry, rinsing blackberries and generally preparing food from scratch, then sitting around the scrubbed pine table to eat the scrumptious fruits of our labours. Mary of course is absolutely right. The family that cooks together eats together and the family that eats together chats, argues, discusses and debates, teaching and learning without even realising it.

As long as you eat together, talk about your day, have a laugh, a tiff and hatch a plan for the weekend, you've achieved your object. Ditto with a takeaway. Chomp your fish and chips in happy unison, no need for a table, the sofa will do, just turn off the telly and concentrate on getting to know one another again. You don't need to impress your flesh and blood with your culinary skills. The true winners are those who realise 36 minutes a day does not constitute a worthwhile family life and take steps to do something about it.

While the rest of the nation coped with an unprecedented squeeze on incomes, City workers were enjoying the high life, with the top 2,700 taking home an average of £1.6 million each. The figure – which makes Britain’s financial elite the highest paid in Europe – flies in the face of the banks’ repeated claims that they have scaled down enormous pay rewards in the wake of the financial crisis.

Last night there were claims that the sector had learned nothing from the greatest financial crash for decades – a crisis that their own greed and incompetence was in part to blame for. The figures also follow a string of scandals at the country’s lenders over miss-selling, failing to help struggling small businesses, and rigging lending rates. Campaigners said that while City salaries have soared, ordinary families are still facing the worst squeeze on household income in living memory.

Deborah Hargreaves, chairman of campaign group the High Pay Centre, said the report made a mockery of the banks’ claims to have reined in lavish payouts. ‘This goes to prove that the idea that banks are cutting back is a lie,’ she said.

‘They claim they are showing restraint – but everyone else is suffering from cuts in living standards while bankers are living the high life.’ John Mann, the Labour MP and member of the Treasury Select Committee, said: ‘The banks are failing to lend and giving themselves staggering increases in pay. This is despite the fact that the reason they are doing well is because of quantitative easing – in other words taxpayers lending them money.’

"Future world wars will be mainly focused on water needs, knowing the current unavailability. We don't want to reach that and have to work to avoid it," he said. "We are threatened with this intriguing issue and have to co-operate to come up with long-term solutions for it."

Shaikh Khalid was speaking during the launch of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - the Regional Bureau for Arab States (RBAS) report on water governance at the Sheraton Hotel yesterday. He called for an agreement with neighbouring countries on water boundaries so projects could be implemented whenever funding was available.

"We in the Gulf have excellent financial resources, but still need to work on getting more human resources that are qualified and experienced to preserve water," said the minister. "Water scarcity and rarity doesn't just concern one country or several in the region, but the whole Arab world, and this is why we need to get financing from banks like the African Arab Bank and the Islamic Bank for Development."

He attributed the vast bubble to "symptoms of excess liquidity." Faber said the markets, which have reached record highs, could still rise before the bubble bursts, if stimulus programs such as the Federal Reserve's massive monthly bond purchases and super-low interest rates continue. "Now can the market go up another 20 percent before it tumbles?" Faber said on "Squawk Box". "Yeah, it can go up even more, if you print money."

Warning investors that they could see disappointing long-term returns in equities, Faber said he thought a correction in equities was overdue when the S&P 500 index crossed 1,600 points. The benchmark index surpassed 1,808 points this week.

Official media said that Japan is the "prime target" and it is an "urgent task for China to further train its air force to make full preparation for potential conflicts." Japanese lawmakers, meanwhile, are pushing for a bill "demanding an immediate withdrawal of China's ADIZ."

While the Western world goes on its merry way buying S&P futures, China's concluding message rings its most defiant so far, "We are willing to engage in a protracted confrontation with Japan. Our ultimate goal is to beat its willpower and ambition to instigate strategic confrontation against China."

Iran will not dismantle its nuclear facilities, President Hassan Rouhani said in an interview with The Financial Times published on Friday, after a historic deal between Tehran and world powers. Asked by the newspaper whether dismantling Iran's atomic facilities was a "red line" for the Islamic republic, Rouhani replied: "100 per cent".

Israel has bitterly opposed the deal struck in Geneva last weekend, saying that any pact with Tehran must have the sole purpose of dismantling Iran's nuclear capability. Pending negotiations for a broader agreement, the deal struck in Geneva early November 24 calls for a six-month's freeze of Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for limited sanctions relief.

But it does not call for dismantling Iran's nuclear facilities.

D’Souza explains, “One of the predictions is that Obama would spend money promiscuously to raise the debt in virtual indifference to the impact of the debt on American citizens. In fact, Obama has been racking up the debt at the rate of $1 trillion a year. The debt has doubled in Obama’s term in office.”

Obama’s plot to “drag the economy down” and redistribute American wealth to the rest of the world – and financially cripple the nation – he explains, “is a transfer of hundreds of billions, in fact trillions of dollars, out of the United States and into other countries.” In his addition to the film, D’Souza also explains exactly why and how. “Obama wants to shrink the influence of American foreign policy” by “undermining our allies and … allowing our adversaries to remain in power.”

In an email announcing the film update, D’Souza wrote, “There are those within our country that seek to undermine America's exceptionalism and ‘take us down a notch.’ What’s worse is that one of those people happens to be the president of the United States. “When I directed ’2016: Obama’s America’ over a year ago, I prayed that I would be wrong. The damage that I predicted Obama would do to our country could never be worth an ‘I told you so.’

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t wrong. Wielding a weaponized national debt and a disdain for our standing in the world, President Obama draws us nearer and nearer to the dystopia that I warned against in 2016.”

For years, Chinese naval officers have told their US counterparts they are uncomfortable with America's presence in the western Pacific - and Beijing is now confronting strategic assumptions that have governed the region since World War Two. China's recent maritime muscle-flexing in disputes over the Paracel islands and Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea and over Japanese-administered islands in the East China Sea has stirred concern and extensive backroom diplomacy in Washington.

But it took the events of the last week to spark an immediate and symbolic response from the United States - the unannounced appearance in the zone of two unarmed B-52 bombers from the fortified island of Guam, the closest US territory to the Chinese coast. China's unilateral creation of the zone - accompanied by warnings that it would take "defensive emergency measures" against aircraft that didn't identify themselves - has raised the stakes in a territorial dispute with Japan over tiny, uninhabited islands in the area.

Even as some suggest Beijing's move is already backfiring, experts in China say it is a part of a long-term effort, carrying broader historic significance for the United States as the traditional provider of Japanese security.

China wants all aircraft there to file flight plans and identify themselves. The US, Japan and South Korea say they have flown military aircraft in the area unannounced. But China said it scrambled fighter jets on Friday. The move was to monitor US and Japanese aircraft in the zone. The establishment of the ADIZ has caused widespread anger, with the US state department calling it "an attempt to unilaterally change the status quo in the East China Sea" which will "raise regional tensions and increase the risk of miscalculation, confrontation and accidents".

But on Friday, the state department said the US government "generally expects that US carriers operating internationally will operate consistent with Notams [Notices to Airmen] issued by foreign countries". It added: "Our expectation of operations by US carriers consistent with NOTAMs does not indicate US government acceptance of China's requirements for operating in the newly declared ADIZ."

Japan has instructed its aircraft not to observe China's rules. But a number of regional commercial airlines - including Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Korean Air - have said they will comply.

Speaking at the Western Wall for a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony, Netanyahu compared Iran’s nuclear program to a darkness that would be forced out by Israel, referencing a popular children’s song for the holiday. “We came to drive out the darkness, and the largest darkness that threatens the world today is a nuclear Iran,” he said. “We are bound to do all we can to prevent this darkness. If possible we will do this diplomatically, if not we will act as ‘a light unto the nations’.”

Netanyahu has been castigated at home and abroad for taking a harsh stand against the US and Europe for signing the deal, with critics claiming he is deepening Israel’s isolation while strengthening the Iranian regime. The prime minister, however, said he had “not given in to delusions” that Iran would pull back its nuclear program, comparing the nuclear deal to a failed diplomatic initiative meant to stymie North Korea’s nuclear program.

“I believe in speaking the truth, and standing for important principles in order to ensure peace in the world and our security, and of course our peace,” he said. “We will continue to act in this spirit.”

Beneath the inoffensive exterior Angela Merkel is a fanatic. She does not posture, she does not strut as most do. She does not shout the odds, rant or preach like so many. But her smooth destruction of her one-time patron and mentor Helmut Kohl gives the measure of her ruthlessness in pursuit of her goal.

That is the complete - and I mean total - unification of the countries of Europe, Germany included, into a single super-state. Nothing, absolutely nothing, must be allowed to stand in the way of that divine vision. And that includes the withdrawal of the UK from the EU. Because such a withdrawal would not end there.

Established in the European Free Trade Association with Norway and Switzerland, with guaranteed membership of the Single Market as now but without the wholesale removal of our sovereignty to Brussels, others might then find our situation enviable and wish to follow suit. That could start the unravelling of the woollen sleeve. And that for the quietly smiling German chancellor must never be allowed to happen.

If David Cameron wins in 2015 he has pledged to start "renegotiating" our terms of membership and, when he has achieved the best he can, to offer us a referendum on our choice of destiny: in or out. [If] the polls show we are going to vote to leave, then you will see that Mutti Merkel is not so mumsy after all.

For the third time in 100 years Germany has made up its collective mind on the future of Europe and does not intend to be gainsaid yet again by this blasted little offshore nation and its dreadfully disobedient people.

If land shortage led to hunger the people of Singapore would be starving. Those of Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea would have their begging bowls out. The Japanese would be raiding the garbage pails in order to eat. Yet all are among the wealthiest and best-fed people in the world. The starving are not those who lack land but those who lack prosperity. A prosperous society can feed itself. If Sir David's equation was right, we British would eat less well than the folk of Mali because their land is bigger. Well we eat better.

I have been in places with masses of land - Africa for example. The earth is rich, the rivers flow, the rains usually come, beneath even the arid land there are aquifers and lakes of fresh water. Yet the people drive their stringy cattle from muddy water hole to water hole - and drink the same water. They are desperately poor and thus hungry and, from drinking filthy water, diseased.

What is the solution? More aid? There is no end to the appetite of the corrupt. They appear in Europe: fat, sleek, limousine-carried while their wives empty Bond Street. And not one is living off his official salary. The cure? I do not know, but shoving their people full of contraceptive pills isn't it.

The new law would dramatically expand the definition of official secrets and journalists convicted under it could be jailed for up to five years. In reality, reporters covering Fukushima have long been harassed and censored.

The Australian, November 25, 2013 reported: Japanese press baulks at push for ‘fascist’ secrecy laws. Taro Yamamoto [an upper house lawmaker] said the law threatened to recreate a fascist state in Japan. “This secrecy law represents a coup d’etat by a particular group of politicians and bureaucrats,” he told a press conference in Tokyo.

“I believe the secrecy bill will eventually lead to the repression of the average person. It will allow those in power to crack down on anyone who is criticising them – the path we are on is the recreation of a fascist state.” He said the withholding of radiation data after the Fukushima disaster showed the Japanese government was predisposed to hiding information from its citizens and this law would only make things worse.

The Asahi Shimbun newspaper likened the law to “conspiracy” regulations in pre-war Japan and said it could be used to stymie access to facts on nuclear accidents.

What is the alternative to the present system of debt serfdom and rising inequality? Eliminate the Federal Reserve System and revert to the national currency (the dollar) being issued by the US Treasury in sufficient quantity to facilitate the production and distribution of goods and services.

Is this possible? Not in our Financialized, Neofeudal-Neocolonial Rentier Economy; What we are discussing is what will replace the current system after it self-destructs.

According to them, we are on the verge of another recession, and this one will be far worse than what we experienced during the last financial crisis.

Marc Faber, the noted Swiss economist and investor, has voiced his concerns for the US economy numerous times during recent media appearances, stating, “I think somewhere down the line we will have a massive wealth destruction. I would say that well-to-do people may lose up to 50 percent of their total wealth.” When he was asked what sort of odds he put on a global recession happening, the economist famous for his ominous predictions quickly answered... “100 percent.”

Faber points out that this bleak outlook stems directly from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s policy decisions, and the continuous printing of new money, referred to as “quantitative easing” in the media. Faber’s pessimism is matched by well-respected economist and investor Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital. Schiff remarks that the stock market collapse we experienced in 2008 “wasn’t the real crash. The real crash is coming.”

Schiff didn’t stop there. Most alarming is his belief that daily life will get dramatically worse for US citizens. “If we keep doing this policy of stimulus and growing government, it’s just going to get worse for the average American. Our standard of living is going to fall... People who are expecting Social Security can’t get all that money. People expecting government pensions can’t get all their money... We simply can’t afford to pay them.”