Tuesday 3 January 2017

Hoping to Swivel in 2017?

So while we're all busy predicting for the year ahead, hark! - from stage left, the carefully orchestrated sound of New Year's whistling in the dark.  In Saturday's Grauniad we find a total of 22 reasons for lefties to be cheerful in 2017.**  Twenty two! - in the main newspaper section alone (the magazine had twelve pages of determinedly optimistic reckoning the previous week).  We get the message: you'd very much like to think 2016 can be put behind you without too much wailing & gnashing of teeth.  Haven't they seen BQ's video?

They could of course, and much against their better judgements, be normalising again: but it doesn't quite read like that.  Ostensible 'reasons' they seem to cling to:
  • lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place
  • chickens will start coming home to roost
  • it was all a big mistake
  • everyone's better natures will shine through
  • the checks and balances are about to come swinging into play
  • Germany / France / Netherlands do voting-type things so much better, and the show will soon be back on the road
  • folks like us at C@W can have our moment with BQ's 2016 video, but it'll soon be a fading memory
Now of course lefties tend to believe history is fundamentally on their side anyway.  This doesn't play well for them, in two ways.  (1) They ought to recall - it's been mentioned to them a lot quite recently - that it's a large part of why ordinary punters find them so insufferable;  (2) it makes the bulk of them strategically complacent (even while a hyperactive few dash around trying to stir things up).

So we should let 'em carry on in that vein; but it's hard not to point out that the last time they got two big electoral results they didn't fancy (Thatcher '79 + Reagan '80), there was no speedy resumption of normal service for them.  I'm old enough to remember very clearly how the British left comforted itself in the early eighties: it'll all be fine - just as soon as the miners come out ...

This time around, people of all political colours have been earnestly examining straws in the wind since 2008-9.  But as Paul Mason endlessly finds, a convincing new narrative has proved hard to conjure up - and not for want of trying

Perhaps 2017 will yield more clues for all of us first-draft-of-history merchants.  Meanwhile, real history is made by the do-ers; so back to some more immediately profitable demands on my time.

ND

________________
** That's five opinion pieces under the heading "Here's why there are reasons to be hopeful";  a full-page spread entitled "Reasons to be cheerful" (there are eight, apparently); the Letters page has a section called "Reasons to be cheerful about the world in 2016";  Hugh Muir opines that "History shows we're better than this"; and one Emine Saner - crazy name! - offers "Plenty to look forward to" - a further six themes, including "A new golden age of protest".  (It seems that on 20 February we can look forward to "the One Day Without Us boycott ... immigrants in the UK and their supporters taking the day off work in lieu of formal strike (sic) to show how vital their labour is".  It may, of course, lead people to reach quite another conclusion, but we shall see.)


9 comments:

  1. Any news the Left does not like is FAKE.

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  2. dearieme12:32 pm

    "22 reasons for lefties to be cheerful": the sour bastards are never cheerful.

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  3. "Now of course lefties tend to believe history is fundamentally on their side anyway."

    Where it isn't the BBC changes it to suit - in the name of entertainment. They busy themselves making lore. I only watched three things from the BBC this Christmas and all of it was heavily politicised and rewritten for the modern ideology:

    - Agatha Christie (Witness for the Prosecution)
    - Silent Witness
    - Sherlock Holmes

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  4. Anonymous3:51 pm

    Witless Silence - what utter tripe that was!! Two wrongs do not make a right, Dr Lovely Fox. Even I was cheering for the lady from the Border Agency.

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  5. For my sins over Christmas I watched "Still open all hours". We could not believe how bad it was even David Jason needs a script and someone to bounce it off!

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  6. I thought 10 Rillington Place was brilliant, then one remembered the Richard Attenbrough interview "We made this as a protest against hanging."

    Then the BBC angle became apparent.

    The newly improved version was riddled with snides against 1950s male chauvinism. I mean... Christie couldn't have been ALL bad !

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  7. I watched the first episode of Still open All hours.
    What a load of crap.

    Why did the artistic, pseudo-intellectual-wannabe hipster Granville turn into the grasping, mean Arkwright?

    it didn't make any sense.

    They are making a third series of it so i guess someone must be watching it.

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  8. ... because old people are not allowed to be nice if they are white, BQ. It's a simple BBC rule these days.

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