Tuesday 22 December 2015

All This In One Year!

At this point in the calender some poor hack on every newspaper is set on to write a review-of-the-year, but this year it writes itself.  Can all of this really have happened in 12 months?
  • Greece
  • migration tsunami
  • Conservative election victory ...
  • ... and wipe-outs for Miliband, Clegg, Cable, ScottyLab, Balls, UKIP...
  • Paris, terror, ISIS, wars & rumours of wars, more Paris terror
  • VW neck-deep in dooh-dooh
  • England wins RWC, oh, wait a minute, daydreaming there ...
  • oil to $36
  • rise of Corbyn
  • Osborne hands keys of our future to Xi
  • Sepp Blatter, IAAF etc
  • Ukraine down-and-out, Russia back onside
  • EDF starts building Hinkley Point, oh, wait a minute ...
  • interest rates on the rise
  • Merkel finally loses it
  • Osborne declares war on green crap
  • BE joins C@W
  • COP-21 a nullity
  • Corbyn becomes first Englishman in space
  • Cameron triumphs in Europe, oh, ...
Almost enough distractions to allow Osborne off the hook on tax credits.  Heavy, heavy stuff.  And still a few days left for Chilcot to deliver and the Third Runway to be announced!

(... what were tax credits again?)

ND

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Corbyn becomes first Englishman in space"

We should launch him as soon as you like Nick, on a one way ticket of course.

John in Cheshire said...

Anonymous @ 6.50 - I think farmers know how to deal with the runt of the litter. And it's quite cost effective.

lilith said...

You forgot

A man wins Woman of the Year award

The BBC to be known as The So Called BBC

Brits in large numbers thinking the Russian President has more balls and a better sense of humour than his USA counterpart.

dearieme said...

I can see why people might prefer Tsar Vlad to Emperor O. He's probably less of a marxist, for a start.

BE said...

2015 has been amazing.

CityUnslicker said...

very interesting year. 2016 will be more so I feel though.

US election
ISIS everywhere
Euro referndum
commodity shakedown
migration crisis continues

this is just the known knowns

lilith said...

Not reducing the budget deficit, another triumph.

A journalist today on So Called BBC radio 5, a So Called BBC Finance reporter, described hitting the target ceiling of this financial year's borrowing as an issue for reducing the... "So Called Deficit" Yes. He called the deficit the "so called deficit."

Anonymous said...

The George Osborne version of the shell game;

UK is absolutely potless, pee, pee, pee and always extracting more urine for more EUROPE, MORE and MORE welfare spending, more FOREIGN AID!, MORE and MORE welfare spending, NHS, Charidees, Soshul services and on on Syrians in Jordan, Germany or over here and not to mention all the AfPakBanglaIndian/and wherever else between here and east and south of Suez....... aaaannnnnnnnnnnnnddd...............he's got no pot to pi88 in.

What a trick it is!

BE said...

Nuanced point there, Anon, but well made.

James Higham said...

Merry Christmas to all at C@W, hope we charge on into 2016.

DtP said...

And Venezuela rejected communism much to the chagrin of lunatics.

Happy Christmas everyone - it's been emotional!

Timbo614 said...

* Warmest Year on record (especially this December!)
* Record rainfall in the north of England.
* Hedgehogs to become to bottom of the garden mythical beasts
* Solar plane circumnavigates the the world (OK it needed a few stops)
* Elvis still dead.
* Elon Musk wins lunar lander challenge but on earth.
* Timbo Pays off his interest only mortgage. :)


Bill Quango MP said...

One of those years that will have a few extra pages in the "The 21st century in pictures."

I think the real surprise was how some awful, awful events generated a worldwide response. A huge social outpouring of solidarity and support that lasted about a week...and was forgotten.

The Hebdo attack was January. Forgotten by March.
Same with the shooting on the beach of UK tourists.
An airliner full of passengers has a suicidal pilot who kills them all.
A jihadi on a train is narrowly prevented from massacring hundreds.

And its impact on all of us is ...about nothing.
People avoiding Tunisia..but still flew to Egypt. And still flew..despite the suicide pilots. Still catch the train.

The bloke on Question Time who said 'these Paris Attacks are as bad as WW2" was a complete ass.

Anonymous said...

"An airliner full of passengers has a suicidal pilot who kills them all."

I think we'll find that out to be a suicidal computer which couldn't be rebooted as planes are fly-by-wire.

And as a brave new digital dawn approaches what other computers will kill us - the new Chinese ones at Hinkley?

Nick Drew said...

An airliner full of passengers has a suicidal pilot who kills them all

I nearly included that one, but somehow today it just seems to be in the 'shit happens' category

(i.e. hopefully not the first leaf of autumn ...)

Jan said...

Well obviously the most significant event was BE joining the "staff" of C@W.....

....on a more sombre note we seem to be resurrecting our involvement in the Afghan conflict...but no "boots on the ground"

Happy Christmas to one and all

Nick Drew said...

most significant event was BE joining the "staff" of C@W...

if only he would do what he was told! (+:

H.X to you, too Jan

Elby the Beserk said...

"Blogger lilith said...
Not reducing the budget deficit, another triumph."


"So-called" deficit, please! As we both heard the so-called BBC say yesterday, on Radio 5. It that's a so-called deficit, god help us when we start running up real ones eh?

Elby the Beserk said...

Timbo614 said...
* Warmest Year on record (especially this December!)
* Record rainfall in the north of England.
======================================================

None of these "records" in any way statistically significant, as even the CET is c3% of the Holocene period. And the "record" rainfall was, it seems, recorded at a weather station that has only been active for c20 years, hence utterly insignificant.

Steven_L said...

England wins RWC, oh, wait a minute, daydreaming there ...

But England did win the Ashes, and from starting odds of 4/1. I note the BBC whitewashed cricket from SPOTY too. Joe Root gets 2000+ runs at at 60+, wins the Ashes player of the series award and no nomination.

Then one of the winning NZ teams bags the overseas award. Steve Smith cleans up at the ICC awards, but not a mention on the BBC. Mitchell Starc's 22 world cup winning wickets - at a strike rate of less than a wicket every 18 balls - and on flat Aussie batting tracks at 10.18 runs. No nomination.

BE said...

Nick, I will write more when I receive the auto-enrolment note ;-)

Osborne is failing to cut the deficit because the world simply refuses to recover fast enough for us to have an export-led recovery *and* because he keeps cutting tax. I think we can allow him some leeway. He does appear to be reducing the increase in spending in line with his promises apart from on welfare where he is held back by unelected lefties.

Anonymous said...

"George wanted a recovery to effectively rebalance the economy with a manufacturing drive foremost and through supply side reforms, a necessity!"

George Osborne, is a liar or, a historian playing at being a deluded mathematics lite Conservative fantasist and once, he is both.

Voting either Lavs and Tories, and expecting things to change? They are just two cheeks of the same arse. What we need, is a new electorate.

dearieme said...

"What we need, is a new electorate." We are being provided with one as you speak.

Scrobs. said...

You didn't mention that Scrobs grew a 54" circumference pumpkin this year, Nick!

And endured five hours of babysitting in one go on Monday!

Blimey, what is reporting coming to these days...

Happy Christmas you guys, you're still required reading!