I feel as if there's been simply too much on this blog about the UK. For Macmillan the UK represents about 15% of our people and about the same proportion of our sales. Of course it's important and the issues affecting the UK quite often have global implications but my mind turned elsewhere - to Asia where we have seen and are continuing to enjoy exceptional growth across a range of activities and territories.

Earlier this year we launched a web landing page for these operations which you can find here. I'll mention just four of the many new initiatives.

Just over a year ago Pan Macmillan Asia opened its doors as a sales and distribution agency for all Macmillan and Holtzbrinck USA and for a number of highly successful third-party publishers such as Rodale and Granta. The next step is rapidly to build our service for Australian publishers who rightly see Asia as a natural export market for them.

A little earlier we established a mainland Chinese publishing operation with the top Chinese publisher FLTRP. Our joint textbook programme, New Standard English, already has sales of more than 50 million copies a year and is growing alongside a raft of other initiatives.

Macmillan Production Asia has sourced print for Macmillan companies in Asia for decades but only recently have we offered this service to non-Macmillan companies. The year has begun with excellent new business in Germany, Greece, Mexico, and Australia. And it's not just books - MPA can supply globes, diaries, MP3 Players and deckchairs.

And finally Nature Asia Pacific which is launching new journal services in Chinese, Korean and Japanese; working with scientific and academic societies; building websites for better dissemination of both Western and Asian research and helping industrial companies comunicatte with their markets.

There is a great calypso, London is the place for me, but Asia is where it's happening.