But with many workplaces facing the prospect of new salary freezes for existing employees, the prospects of significant raises are once again gloomy for 2012.

FORBES: Year-End Review: Small Workplace Asks, Big Career Wins

She was the sixth person I had met in a three-month period that had, in the span of a few weeks, moved here with her husband and children, bought or rented a home, furnished it, enrolled her children in schools and contributed to the once-gloomy Dubai economy.

FORBES: Dubai: The Sanctuary

And once on the trains, commuters - normally travelling in gloomy silence - cheerily exchanged stories about their first euro experiences.

BBC: EU praises euro changeover

It might be thought that once consumers pay more attention to their bank balances than to gloomy economic news, spending will pick up.

ECONOMIST: The economy

This said, their bounce-back is all the more impressive and the darkness is only really evident on one album - Romantic - which Catherall describes as "gloomy", quickly adding "but it was only the once".

BBC: Human League reveal Secrets

Bath is a glorious town: lovely crescents of white, upstanding houses instead of London's black, gloomy buildings or worse still piles of rubble that were once buildings.

NPR: Part One