Spot the odd one out...?
It's been quite a grim year, if I ever wanted the prize for the biggest understatement for the sake of politeness. From countless massacres to the shedding of malign leaders, royals to riots and a slice of captivating court trials and inquirers which have internationally knocked every existing soap opera off the ratings scale. However, if you've happened to have switched off from the media this festive season, there have already been a myriad of retrospective programmes which have all notably attempted to remain wearily optimistic about the events which for some will not be the same again, and indeed, will be an uncertain period of tumult when stability may not return for a long time yet. This will be a far riskier outlook to what will be a much awaited new year and perhaps some of those challenges which may just be around the corner of 2012.
However, there was a very good programme which I have listened to recently and would also recommend hero journalist Alex Crawford's (now OBE) perspective of her year in the Gulf on Sky News for the 'best' of 2011:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b018g29l
To begin with an international outlook, any fool with a shred of political know-how will be aware of a certain election in a very large and (by a margin now) the most powerful. Of course, the US elections of 2012 are by any stretch of the imagination as exciting at the moment as George Osbourne's next budget statement. With a recent article in The Times caricaturing the seven Republican candidates as the seven Republican dwarfs, it is all the more evident that journalists are catching hopes of bolstered Democrats for candidates such as Oopsy (Rick Perry) and, my personal favourite, Nohopey (Michele Bachman). Indeed, it takes no matter of advanced analysis that the shockingly appalling foreign diplomacy who believe in America, the world saviour, and isolating themselves in a throwback to responses after WWI. With Obama's strategic triumphs over Bin Laden and the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq, he remains the short term preference over what many are seeing the other prospective candidates as "loony tunnes" . If one must insist on a feasible challenger alongside Obama, the uninspiring Mitt Romney is perhaps just conservative enough to only drag America back to the Bush years, and that alone is saying something with Ron "Drug advocate" Paul as Romney's bane of the month in Iowa being as undeserving of a platform to speak as that of fascist Marine La Pen in France.
However, one columnist which has struck me so far has commented on the fact that the Left of America (i.e. Obama) as the most "dangerous and damaging President the US has ever known." and the Right as "pulling up the drawbridge against that terrifying place called ‘abroad’, it seems that there will be no satisfactory solution for the Americans in the coming year. Despite Obama's near-50% popularity, with debt still over $10 trillion and unemployment by the next election on the scale unseen since the depression, who in their right minds would take the poison chalice. Naturally, in spite of those Americans (and as evidenced in Wall Street already) who are extremely discontented with their government, Obama holds ground and it is my solemn hope, with perhaps the largest supply of nuclear weapons to destroy the planet and the last standing moderate, Obama must be victorious if America's house is not going to be forever more plagued by ill-thought Christian fundamentalism clashing with 21st century secularism, which, quite frankly, the Western world has long accommodated to go back now. It does not bode well for the best of combinations and for those who might be considering this farcical election as too much to even be true, Orwell quotes "The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
And my next set of bets for the new year: Sarkozy out, Syria regressing into a feudal state (after a hollow civil war, which Assad may be forced out far too late anyway) and, if by Spanish estimates recently to cuts in their defect, protests and stand-offs which only reflect the anarchy taking place in Greece.
Indeed, with the turmoil of the EU, Merkel and Sarkozy should not yet be counting their blessings as any requests for bailouts by Spain and Italy will pose the significant risk of borrowing money that doesn't even exist through the IMF or the World Bank. If not economic catastrophic, then surely political uprisings against the technocratic powers which engulf the face of democracy itself shall only lead to further problems. The Gulf had suffered decades of 'rule by the few', but Europe has been the founding father of democracy itself. People power has certainly not diminished yet by a long shot, as its contagion spreads westwards now towards Russia...
And what of our domestic issues. A 16-24 non-working population which has broken the record since it began, an apparent slip-back into a so-called 'mild recession' and an Olympics which is already being compared to a security state. If all these difficulties are going to be realised, as many who are pessimistic will brace themselves for the worse, another few unlikelihood's I think that may be already off the agenda, before they've even started are Cameron showing his muscle in Somalia and Scottish independence being achieved sooner rather than later. But Salmond is determined to see complete devolution, and though it is difficult to envisage the much derided country leave the UK after centuries of unity, the First Minister has complete autonomy against all other opposition in Holyrood and I certainly wouldn't laugh at this idea now than I used to. Another matter of the UK scaling down the relationship with the monsters in Europe seems another false hope, which though I am for one to see a similar relationship the Swiss and Scandinavian countries have with the EU, it is an almost impossibility that any separation of the continents are going to take place, as Calamity Clegg and his Meddling Liberals see that their agenda for political division with the government that they are supposed to serve dissolve into internal posturing of their Europhile preferences. Did I once remember Aristotle saying that the educated and wise men should only be fit to lead. Clegg may be a public school boy, but come 2015 we shall see those seats in the Commons wiped off the face of Westminster history. Moreover, whilst Cameron may enjoy his ride in the polls after a successful year, Labour on the warpath for their Brownie badges now and whilst Milliband might be a slave to politeness and poor statesmanship, there is only one pair of Balls in this shadow cabinet (if you get my drift).
What else to say. Will climate change and global warming return to the agenda once more? What of the right-wing extremists that plague the Western world now (one, ETA, which will be silent from now on in the Spanish coasts)? Undoubtedly, there is far greater risk of more devastating natural disasters than ever before and Dictators still sit at the helm of a minority of impoverished nations, but surely after a year of domestic and international issues scarping the barrel in terms of hope, the only only way surely now is northwards? Well, in the famous words which perhaps many now know "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth." (Yes, I am aware this is a prayer).
*I will disclaim any liability if these suppositions are wrong. I cannot see into the future in these situations.
Indeed, with the turmoil of the EU, Merkel and Sarkozy should not yet be counting their blessings as any requests for bailouts by Spain and Italy will pose the significant risk of borrowing money that doesn't even exist through the IMF or the World Bank. If not economic catastrophic, then surely political uprisings against the technocratic powers which engulf the face of democracy itself shall only lead to further problems. The Gulf had suffered decades of 'rule by the few', but Europe has been the founding father of democracy itself. People power has certainly not diminished yet by a long shot, as its contagion spreads westwards now towards Russia...
And what of our domestic issues. A 16-24 non-working population which has broken the record since it began, an apparent slip-back into a so-called 'mild recession' and an Olympics which is already being compared to a security state. If all these difficulties are going to be realised, as many who are pessimistic will brace themselves for the worse, another few unlikelihood's I think that may be already off the agenda, before they've even started are Cameron showing his muscle in Somalia and Scottish independence being achieved sooner rather than later. But Salmond is determined to see complete devolution, and though it is difficult to envisage the much derided country leave the UK after centuries of unity, the First Minister has complete autonomy against all other opposition in Holyrood and I certainly wouldn't laugh at this idea now than I used to. Another matter of the UK scaling down the relationship with the monsters in Europe seems another false hope, which though I am for one to see a similar relationship the Swiss and Scandinavian countries have with the EU, it is an almost impossibility that any separation of the continents are going to take place, as Calamity Clegg and his Meddling Liberals see that their agenda for political division with the government that they are supposed to serve dissolve into internal posturing of their Europhile preferences. Did I once remember Aristotle saying that the educated and wise men should only be fit to lead. Clegg may be a public school boy, but come 2015 we shall see those seats in the Commons wiped off the face of Westminster history. Moreover, whilst Cameron may enjoy his ride in the polls after a successful year, Labour on the warpath for their Brownie badges now and whilst Milliband might be a slave to politeness and poor statesmanship, there is only one pair of Balls in this shadow cabinet (if you get my drift).
What else to say. Will climate change and global warming return to the agenda once more? What of the right-wing extremists that plague the Western world now (one, ETA, which will be silent from now on in the Spanish coasts)? Undoubtedly, there is far greater risk of more devastating natural disasters than ever before and Dictators still sit at the helm of a minority of impoverished nations, but surely after a year of domestic and international issues scarping the barrel in terms of hope, the only only way surely now is northwards? Well, in the famous words which perhaps many now know "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth." (Yes, I am aware this is a prayer).
*I will disclaim any liability if these suppositions are wrong. I cannot see into the future in these situations.
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