The year that time forgot

Well, what a damp squib 2011 turned out to be, eh? The year when absolutely nothing newsworthy happened. Nothing at all. Nada, sweet FA… zip.  Oh yes, there was plenty of promise and I’ve been going through the all the newspapers but it’s all a con because, in the end, nothing changed. You’re still alive, the sky is still in the ‘up’ position and the earth continues to orbit around Strictly-cum-X-Freaks.

Let’s first explore the ‘natural’ events - I hesitate to use the epithet ‘disaster’ because nothing out of the ordinary actually happened.

Earlier in the year the Japanese tsunami failed, for the umpteenth time to obliterate a nation built on volcanic islands on the Pacific Rim, also know as the ring-of-fire because it’s where volcanoes erupt, earthquakes happen and tsunami are created. Then tornadoes struck the southern USA across – you’ve guessed it – The Tornado Belt, during the – yes, you guessed again – The Tornado Season. Quelle Surprise! Elsewhere, bad weather, floods, fire, landslip, brimstone, yada-yada-yada…

Global warming, sorry, climate change [finger quotes] the coming terror of the epoch, appears to have come to a halt while we all decide whether we can afford to believe in it or not. Meanwhile governments desperately work out how to claw back some of the ill-thought-out green subsidies that have resulted in enormous gains for cynical and exploitative enterprises. Here in Britain the forecast big freeze – so eagerly awaited by the beleaguered Millipede to bring good news in the form of pensioners dying from ‘vicious Tory cuts’ has simply failed to materialise – like it usually does. No climate change here then.

In world news, the Arab spring seems to have blundered through summer, autumn and winter, etc. Maybe they meant the Arab next Spring? So the Arab world remains fucked up by Arabs, as usual. There is no truce as yet between any combinations of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. There hasn’t even been a scaling back of Christian-on-Christian violence, for that matter – the Bethlehem monk fight was a blast but nothing new, they’ve been squabbling over whose version of the same imaginary friend is bigger for yonks.

Osama Bin Laden is still at large somewhere (there being absolutely no evidence to the contrary) Afghanistan is still a still a shithole and Iran still has designs on nuclear Armageddon. So what? I’d have been much more impressed if Bin Lid-on, Gadaffy Duck, Hamid Khazi[sic] and Ahmadinnerjacket had formed a gay boy band and released a cover version of 'I Will Survive' to take the coveted UK Christmas number one slot.

While we’re on leaders, top comedy clown Rowan Atkinson is still the Archbishop of Canterbury, the supreme being of North Korea is still called Kim and Miliband remains leader (last I looked) of the Liebour Party. David Cameron is still a toff, Clegg is still fagging for him but doesn’t like it and Boris continues to spank the arse out of Red Ken’s prospects of regaining the mayorship of London.

In yet more bad news for Labour, the economy has yet to collapse and the only outcome of the big strike is that we all hate public service employees just a little bit more now. Nobody even remembers the strike day and there hasn't been a public outcry - despite what the BBC wants you to think - about government cuts, in fact the public generally accepts that we can’t afford to pay for things we don’t need. Like any job with the word ‘outreach’ in the title.

The Euro has also resolutely failed to collapse yet, despite all the squawking. By the way, I forget, just how many days/weeks/months do we have to save the Euro now? I seem to remember it was ten days back in June yet the asthmatic currency of the Fourth Reich still lives to wheeze another day. The Germans and French hate us and don’t really want us in Europe at all – fuck me, I must have missed that antipathy during, let’s see now, the whole of my frigging lifetime. Nul point; nuff said.

But who cares? If you don’t drink yourself into a coma on New Year’s Eve, you’ll awake the next morning and as long as you don’t pretend to yourself that there’s something magical about just another a day – ask the Samoans – all will carry on regardless.

Oh, and we've had pandas before as well. Meet the new year, same as the old year...

Happy New Year!