That was the Year that was

New year is always a time for looking back, and I'm no exception...




So what has been going on in the last year? Has anything I've said borne even the slightest resemblance to the affairs of the real world? Well, predictions about the Tory party aside I rather think that I've been fairly prescient about quite a few things. Other rants have been perhaps less relevant to life, the universe, and everything but at the end of the day, fuck 'em! I enjoyed writing them and that's sufficient for me!

I may as well start with the Tories actually. The one thing that I did get right was the demise of the Lord High Foetus himself, Mr. William Hague. However, seeing as the election was rather one sided I can't really claim any credit for predicting the results. That would be rather like sending Boy George to a Taliban meeting and 'predicting' that they might not get on. What I utterly failed to predict was the outcome of the subsequent leadership battle. My money would have been on Portillo or Clarke coming out on top rather than Ian Duncan Smith aka Darth Tory. Yet it appears that I failed to take a few key factors into account. The fact that Darth is a carbon copy of Hague (with a few key differences; he is taller and has less charisma...) seems to indicate that the Tories simply do not pay any attention to the electorate at all. Darth is continuing along much the same route as Hague did and if anything is even more right wing than his predecessor. So apparently the Tories don't think that their loss was the fault of their unelectable people and policies. No, they believe that we, the electorate, simply got it wrong. By elevating Darth to their head they see it as giving us another chance to make amends for our mistake in not electing them last time. And you thought *I* was arrogant...

I should also briefly touch on more unpleasant matters before moving on. Before summer I wrote a fairly meandering piece about the murder of children, lamenting how we all seemed to accept this less attractive element of the summer. And, as always, a murderous paedophile once again marked the long, hot summer days with a kidnap and murder leading to a broken little body being found a few days later. Now maybe it's just because I'm paying even more interest in the news these days, but the case of Roy Whiting and Sarah Payne seems to be different to all that have gone before. Mr. and Mrs. Payne are pressing for a change in the law to try and avoid a repeat of the anguish they suffered, and the mood of the country seems somehow different to how it was after previous kidnap/murders. People seem less willing to "...just fucking accept it" than they were before. Being the optimist that I am (!) one can only hope that these seeds of determination bear some fruit. Of course, if I were cynical I would point to the fact that not only did I have to check the internet for Sarah's name as I'd forgotten it after a few short weeks but that the law proposed by the Payne's, a copy of the USA's Megan's Law, doesn't actually work very well in America.

Internationally I suppose that there is only one event that preys on my mind. September 11th changed everything, but isn't curious how everything seems to be the same? Before Sept 11th I wrote about Israel's persecution of the Palestinians, Dubya's Son of Star Wars project being absolutely toss all use against a terrorist attack, abuses of power in the UK and US which lead to important negotiations and other events which we have a right to know about being kept secret, about how there was one rule for the rich nations and one for the poor, and all the other sort of things that get on my liberal bloody nerves. I now look forward to a year of writing about the advent of full scale civil war in Israel, Dubya explaining how the terrorist attack couldn't have been prevented by the Son of Star Wars which proves how much we need it, the US and UK wanting to conduct the trials of senior Al Quaida and Taliban officials in private, and how it's simply not on for India to use the suicide attack on their parliament as an excuse to go to war with Pakistan but it's perfectly okay for the US to bomb Afghanistan for much the same thing. As a side issue, perhaps Dubya himself read my rant in the middle of August comparing the US administration to that of the Taliban (I sent it to the White House email address but alas I didn't receive a reply). I can only assume that his admiration for the Taliban was such that he felt the need to annex Afghanistan altogether...

Of course good things did rise from the ashes of the World Trade Centre (aside from the smug satisfaction I got from correctly naming him as the probable culprit a few hours after the event). Back in June I bitched in an epic manner about the lack of justice meted out to the various tyrants and dictators that litter the planet. At least now a couple of them are being made to sweat (Milosovic and Omar Mohammed; I wouldn't really like to be them right now!) although honesty compels me to acknowledge that the only reason for this is because they pissed off the big boys. Had they been sensible and limited themselves to the annihilation of their own people then they'd have been left alone to continue their deranged and genocidal policies freely. The people of America also went a long way to dispelling the myth that they are all a bunch of emotionally immature drama queens with their dignified response to the September 11th atrocity. Whilst the world held it's breath in expectation of the fury that we all felt sure would emerge we were instead greeted with the sights and sounds of a wounded nation genuinely puzzled at what it had done to make people hate it so much and, for the most part, seeking to understand what it was that motivated the hijackers so that any repetition could be avoided. Okay, admittedly it is a case of "This will make the world better for America, therefore it's a good idea" on the part of the US government, but frankly I'm more than willing to overlook the motivation if it generates the results. In any case it would be churlish to criticise a government solely on the grounds that they want to do more to protect their own citizens. Even if it does think of it's citizens as beer guzzling, TV addicted profit generators...

An interesting point has also been the role of religion in the recent conflict. I stated that I couldn't understand why people chose to put their faith in a particular dogma or tenet of religious faith. I concentrated on the different offshoots of Christianity, but Bin Laden et al are an equally good if not better example. Their particular brand of Islam is anti Semitic and anti progress. Both Sunni and Shi'a Islam urge respect toward Jews and Christians. The Moslem world was also the inheritor of the Greco-Roman cultural tradition of discovery during the Middle ages (a time when we were busy nailing people to bits of wood and setting fire to them for declaring that the earth went round the sun). It now occurs to me that these numerous quasi-religious sects and cults say more about the prejudices, beliefs, and mental state of their founders than about the nature of God.

Drugs have of course been interesting this year. Not in *that* respect (well...no more so than normal) but by the fact that the government faced calls in Parliament to decriminalise cannabis. Calls from (of all people) Peter Lilley, a Tory M.P. no less! And to an extent they responded. Dope is now a category C drug in the UK so you can still be arrested for possession with intent to supply and you can still lose your liberty, but if you're a casual user and are caught then confiscation and a warning should be the norm. Although this is still rather irritating as it means one will have to then go and buy some more, at least one will not have to do one's buying in prison. That said, I still don't think that the change in the law goes far enough as it has failed to remove the criminal element from the equation; if I want to get stoned I'm still lining the pocket of crime in order to do so.

Law and Order has also been a talking point; Thompson and Venables have thus far failed to produce the butchery of our nations youth that was predicted by the Sun and so discussions have began to focus on people who actually do present a credible risk to the public, although as I said earlier it remains to be seen whether anything really will change with regard to protecting the vulnerable from predatory criminals. There are no such concerns about protecting us from predatory Tories of course; dear old Jeff Archer is (to my delighted surprise) having rather a rough time of it in prison. The poor psychotic gent failed to be rated as trustworthy enough to warrant being 'imprisoned' in an open jail. So now he languishes in a category C world living a category C life. It's gratifying to see that the spirit of justice is not completely dead just yet.

As to my various statements of confusion about the world of love, dating, sex, and marriage...well to be honest I remain equally as perplexed and haven't yet seen (or done) anything to change my views there. Having seen my friends going through an odyssey of failures and bitterness I confess to finding the whole thing confusing. That said, my own love life has grown less complex and more fun and a very close friend whom I based the rant about the dating rule of Not Seeming Too Keen is now in fact very keen indeed on a particular chap and she is in the early stages of being blissfully happy. So perhaps the new year will see me less inclined to wax vitriolic about affairs of the heart. Or even just affairs.
I've enjoyed writing the 90 thousand odd words that have made up these rants and I'm hoping that you've enjoyed reading them, or at least got some kind of catharsis out of them. Here's to a year of interesting times. Cheers.