With only 30 shopping days to Christmas and Black Friday at the end of the week, retailers look as if they’re going to have a bumper time In the run up to the big day.

With many national retailers advertising massively reduced prices on major purchases such as domestic appliances and televisions, consumer organisations are advising caution following many misleading adverts last year.

I think the question we have to ask ourselves is: do we need it, can we afford it and is it really as good a deal as they say?

Dozens of Christmas adverts have started hitting our small screens promoting virtually anything and everything from food to cars.

The commercials this year are more like blockbusting productions than adverts and must cost the companies concerned a small fortune to make.

Sadly, the company that kicked off these mega Christmas ads, John Lewis, probably has one of the worst they’ve ever made, with a dog bouncing up and down on a trampoline. I don’t know what they were thinking of, as it certainly doesn’t relate my idea of Christmas.

It now seems to be a competition between adverts this year rather than between the stores themselves and if that’s the case, the winner for me features the lowly carrot and appears on all of Aldi’s adverts starting with Christmas Eve and continuing through to Christmas lunch.

I noticed a plethora of really great adverts on the internet in a huge variety of languages, many of which entertained visually despite not being able to understand a word being spoken.

There is also a variety of adverts from British businesses aimed at the international market and my favourite there was what I would probably call a coming home ad for Heathrow Airport that featured two teddy bears and is well worth having a look at.

It will be really interesting to see which advert turns out to be the nation’s favourite. I’ll watch with interest.

US needs to tighten its legislation on bribery

It seems a US bank has suffered the wrath of the Federal Government and has agreed to pay fines totalling more than £200 million.

JPMorgan Chase has to pay over its practice of hiring relatives of high-ranking Chinese officials in the hope of reaping business rewards. The fines followed after a three-year investigation by US regulators into a vast foreign bribery scheme.

Surely it’s about time the United States tightened up on bribery and introduced legislation similar to that in Europe.

Threat to West at its most dangerous in decades

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Russian fleet heading towards the Mediterranean with a final destination of Syria.

I was horrified when I saw the devastation caused by warplanes from the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov attacking the city of Aleppo. The United Nations, the so-called world peace keeping organisation, sits back powerless to do anything about it.

It would appear Russia is determined to wipe out any opposition to Syria’s President Assad, pictured, Isis or otherwise.

What’s even more worrying is that Russia will now have a base and a valuable ally in the Mediterranean for its warships.

The old USSR is definitely making a comeback and the threat to the West is more pronounced and dangerous now than its been for decades.