NCE everyone got over fears of the Millennium Bug and realised the lights were still on, the ‘noughties’ continued in much the same vein as the preceding century. There was domestic strife in the form of a foot-and-mouth outbreak, during which more than six million sheep, cattle and pigs were culled and burnt in pyres, ruining livelihoods and lives. There was global terror in the appalling 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers and, in 2008, another UK recession, which put the nail in the coffin of New Labour. More positive 21st-century phenomena were the term to ‘Google’, which entered the in 2006, and the now near-ubiquitous iPhone, which arrived here in 2007.
