When does the new decade start?

On a forum I belong to, some one wrote that today was the start of a new decade. I wrote back and said that this was not true and that the new decade does not start until Jan 1st 2011. This started a bit of a discussion and other people wrote that as 2000 was the start of the century 2010 was the new decade. This really got me going.

I searched through both my own library and in the internet on the subject.

My searches show that 1001 was considered the start of the second millenium and that 1101, 1201, 1301, 1401, 1501, 1601, 1701, 1801, 1901 were considered to be the first year of their respective centuries + 1, that is to say that 1901 is the first year of the 20th Century.

On this basis a decade starts on a year whose last digit is 1 and ends in a year that ends in 0!

People whose attitude is that the past is bad and never studied history decided through their lack of knowledge to promote 2000 as the the start of the 21st Century even though historians and scientists tried to advise them.

Of course these same people did not read T.E.Lawrence (they prob. do not know who he was!) on how to deal with arabs nor the many journals of soldiers of the Raj who fought on the North West Frontier and because of this, our poor soldiers have been put into the current mess.

I also blame the so called Y2K bug as it was professionally known but the popular press changed to the Millennium Bug