In our comprehensive monitoring of the global media – such is the research that goes into our informed opinions – one news item demands attention.

London’s Daily Telegraph reports that Latvia has just held a Blonde Weekend, complete with a parade of hundreds of bleached beauties, to “cheer everyone up”.

This might sound like the sort of idea traditionally associated with the stereotypical ditzy blonde – until you reflect on two facts.

First, if the real objective was to attract publicity, the Latvians have succeeded brilliantly. This blog, for example, is now mentioning Latvia for the first time. Now that we do so, we note that it looks like a good place to do business. Perhaps we should have said that before, but that we are doing so now is due entirely to a silly story about blondes – so is it really that silly?

Second, even the nominal excuse, to “cheer everyone up”, is not a bad idea in itself. After all the hopes of the end of the Cold War, the peaceful passing of apartheid, and the supposed triumph of Liberal Democracy, Peace, Reason, and Free Trade, the new Millennium actually sees the Four Horsemen trotting all over the place – War busier than ever in places like Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Famine in the global markets, Pestilence in the form of swine ‘flu, and Death in the growing realisation that human existence is actually far more precarious than we thought.

So there is a clear gap in the market for anyone who can cheer us all up – and concrete business opportunities for anyone who can think of ways to do it cheaply.