Right, I'm officially declaring war on "thanks to" being used, especially at the beginning of sentences, to denote a negative cause. A silly example would be
Thanks to my cancer, I only have one year left to live.
Daft, eh.
The FT wrote today: "Thanks to the decline in CD sales..." when it meant "Owing to..." or "Following..." or "As a consequence of...".
For a fuller discussion, see this useful article:
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2014/07/thanks-to.html
