Should Old Acquaintance be forgot

Achievements need to be remembered, shared and celebrated.  In mid November, for Nigel Farage this meant a reception hosted at the Ritz with him as guest of honour.  Between backslaps from the Barclay brothers and Jacob Rees-Mogg he spoke to the room, declaring “For those of you who aren’t particularly happy with what happened in 2016, I’ve got some really bad news for you – it’s going to get a bloody sight worse next year.”

On reading these words I set down my gin and tonic and took pause to reflect on the year.  And so, my remote chum this blog continues.  When I briefly paused from its writing the year was but half way through.  In the UK, we’d gone through a tedious and alienating referendum vote but what else could the year throw our way.

And scene!

It’s summer. OK, summer for the UK which means more rain but it occurs in longer hours of daylight. The majority have spoken with the referendum vote being 52-48% in favour of the country leaving the European Union.  Democracy prevails.  David Cameron, channelling Little Lord Fauntleroy to the end retreats on to his own stumps and triggers resignations across the spectrum. Roy Hodgson and Sam Allardyce take turns at resigning from the England job.  Len Goodman retires from Strictly. Mel and Sue walk away from Bake Off.

As the aftershocks from Brexit continued the Euro 2016 football tournament proved a welcome distraction albeit briefly before Wayne and the lads maintained the theme of the year.  As Roy sat alone in the changing room practising his resignation speech with significantly more rigour than his team had done with set pieces, his ears surely must have filled with the sound above of a reasonable proportion of the Icelandic population synchronising impersonations of viking seagulls.  I wonder if he, like those who also fell away this year, reflected on the chain of events that led him to his downfall.  There was no option for him but to stop passing the port.  You can't be responsible for burning the aspirations of a nation on a pyre of inanities and expect to turn up to the FA with a song in his heart and a vision of the future. These are the preserve of the victors. For the losers a bitter point settling autobiography, an appearance on the One Show in a sweater and an inability to look anyone in the eye ever again awaits.  For the triumphant Brexiters they...they...hang on, they resigned too! Michael Gove and Boris Johnson, surfing the wave of brexit took the opportunity to turn on each other like cornered dogs.  Nigel Farage stood down from UKIP citing job done and a desire for his life back. Whilst writing this at some months distance allows for a retrospective “see later” at the time we were left with replying that we’d like our country back.  In the days following Brexit there were reports of laminated cards with hateful messages being pressed into the hands of immigrant children, with similar messages being daubed on entrances to immigration centres.  Team Hate’s electorate Pandora's box was fully open, giving certain sections of the population license to share their true feelings for people looking a bit not from around here.  The 48%, soon to be rebranded “remoaners” briefly sought ways to visually identify themselves to each other through the wearing of safety pins.  It makes travelling on public transport a calmer affair if you’re reasonably confident the person sat next to you isn’t on their way to a nursery to smear dog excrement on its door.

David Cameron hadn't even put his Aston Villa (or was it West Ham) scarf in the bin before prospective replacements began to thrust themselves into the media glare. Like a crypt releasing the afterthoughts of Hades the Conservative party put forward its greatest and best candidates.  Within days of Dave stumbling back to Oxfordshire, the eldritch forms of Liam Fox, Theresa May, Andrea Leadsom and something called Stephen Crabb crept into the daylight.  Politics own dead cat bounce mascot, Boris Johnson, always one to play his hand last also circled the pit.  As the deadline for submitting nominations drew closer Boris unexpectedly announced that he would not be standing.  He hadn’t blundered into the career wood chipper unaided and it was seen as being beyond coincidence that across town at the same time Michael Gove was announcing his own candidacy.  Pre-press conferences Gove had been known as a  Johnson supporter but in his speech declared that he had “come reluctantly to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead”.  The last time someone was betrayed to the extent Boris was by Michael Gove involved Mufasa and his brother Scar.  Gove’s treachery poisoned his own campaign.  Crabb withdrew as no one even in his own party had heard of him.  Andrea Leadsom, a relatively recent member of the back benches went on a charm offensive, repeating in interviews that she could become “the new Margaret Thatcher”.  It gives genuine insight into the Conservative Party that such a proposition is presented as a positive marketing decision rather than a threat from history.  The MPs voted and it quickly became apparent that there was a clear standout leader in the polls.  The country would have its first zombie Prime Minister, Theresa May, representative of the undead for at least the last decade.    The bloodless coup was over and an unelected Prime Minister would lead a country with an unelected cabinet with a mandate built on interpretation of a single issue referendum rather than any manifesto commitments.  Everything that had brought the conservatives to power the year before was now moot, as were its figureheads.  Chancellor George Osborne, David Cameron’s replacement in waiting for 2020 quietly exited the stage.  

The country was slowly tearing itself apart.  There was a need for clarity, an emboldened vision for the new course the country was heading upon in response to the referendum.  The City of London, whilst enjoying the plummeting pound needed to know whether it was relocating its banking operations to Frankfurt, Paris or the Cayman Islands. Foreign nationals needed to know whether they could stay in the country, as did people from the UK living across Europe.  Petrol prices were rising as were other goods.  There was a supermarket war over marmite. A strategy of what was going to happen and when needed to be outlined.  Theresa May stepped forward as Prime Minister and spoke to the world. “Brexit means Brexit” she intoned.  In the hours and days that followed this detailed pronouncement commentators marvelled at its brevity, its reassurances to the 52% and that it wasn’t giving too much away to those dodgy types over the channel and the coming negotiations.  It was only as the weeks mutated into months that we realised that she was providing the complete Government policy on the matter.

Fortunately for us her new cabinet would fill out these gaps and collectively take us forward.  Why with Liam Fox, normally best suited to being led from a crime scene with a bag over his head being now Minister for International Trade and David Davis, a man who in other times would be shot by his own men before the start of battle acting as Minister for Exiting the European Union the country’s future surely cannot be in doubt.  Round this out with Philip Hammond in the Treasury, Amber Rudd in the Home Office and of course Boris Johnson in the Foreign Office and it’s a stella cabinet to be sure.  Sorry, let’s wind that back.  Who’s is the Foreign Secretary for the UK, the head of all ambassadors, the lead diplomat? It surely can’t be the man who associated the EU’s policy on unification as being akin to Napoleon and Hitler,  Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing or described Hillary Clinton’s appearance as a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital.  Of course he’s our foreign secretary.  This is 2016.  Since taking up his ministerial role he’s largely kept his head down and only once accused Saudi Arabia of abusing Islam and acting as a puppeteer in proxy wars.  As he’s settled into his leather office chair there’s been less talk from him of the promises made during the referendum campaign.   One of them, that an extra £350M could be spent on the NHS every week if we left the EU was very popular and Boris and co toured the country in a bus sporting it on its side in very large letters.  With the culling of tweets and web sites many promises evaporated shortly after June 23rd but this one was hard to remove from the public consciousness.  The new government were quick to distance themselves from promises that they weren’t involved in making.  Like many politicians, Boris comes across as at best ambivalent on policy but definitely pro power and office.  There's a strong culture of debating in some of our better schools. There is an art to arguing a position even if you have no personal investment other than to win the debate.  The problem with politics is that every now and then you are called to actually give a shit. As the implications of the referendum vote hit home Boris came across as someone looking for a house trophy rather than the mandate to invoke article 50.

So far, so Conservative Party.  But what of the official opposition? The Labour Party.  Born out of the trade union movement, an institution, rightly or wrongly that a generation of workers are separated from the party was increasingly isolated from its electorate and the politics of the day.  When the need for a strong voice challenging the Government was at a paramount it was instead inwardly focussed on a battle between the Parliamentary wing and Trotskyist Momentum.  Jeremy Corbyn had come to power as a result of activism from below, he was an outsider to the Parliamentary wing.  He was a fantastic campaigner within his own party but less so representing it in Parliament or putting his message across to the whole electorate.  His lukewarm campaigning to remain in the referendum resulted in further instability and a new leadership election.  He won again, by a clear margin.  He offers very little in opposition or to non-hard left voters.  The traditional Labour heartlands are preyed upon by others, be it Scottish National Party call for independence or UKIP’s messages of hate.  This is 2016.  An unelected Government is running the country to their own agenda and the official opposition is provided by ex-England captain Gary Lineker on Twitter.

INTERLUDE:

It’s spring.  I’m parked up in a car in the middle of nowhere, well. Nidderdale actually.  I’ve got a Duke of Edinburgh group out in the field on an expedition.  If I’ve calculated things right they’re going to walk by me in the next half an hour.  It’s a sunny day but cool. Easter was only last weekend.  My tent was frozen over this morning.  As I lurk in my car the radio plays the Sunday afternoon football game.  Leicester City, improbable league leaders were, in season terms, heading into nosebleed territory. Everyone was waiting for them to fold under the pressure.  We’re deep into the match and the score is 0-0. Not enough.  Time ticks down. Pressure mounts.  A long ball is punted upfield for Vardy to chase.  He scores. Then someone else does. They win. They keep winning. It’s 2016.  

It’s Autumn. After months of campaigning the American presidential election is drawing towards the only thing that ever mattered, the vote.  Whilst we’re distant, removed and should treat it no differently to the upcoming French and German elections the shadow the US casts across the globe causes us to hold our gaze.  It’s sport and spectacle too.  The personalities, the politics, the issues are all fabulously grotesque.  That people should be denied access to health care.  That women should denied access to abortion clinics.  That mass shootings occur with such regularity that if they make the news it’s at the end after a story about an animal giving birth in the local zoo AND the answer is to give more people guns, not take them all away.  And and and.  It’s a very right wing country, conservative, in love with a white picket fence myth of the past that probably never was.  How a country of over 300 million people ended up with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton as the “best” two people to vote for is worthy of significant retrospective inspection.  Perhaps it was because he had no policies, no political back story or just a weakness in the Republican Party that had pervaded it for a decade that resulted in Trump gaining its reluctant nomination.  Clinton was the reverse, part of the party machine, serving in office at different levels, steeped in politics.  He could do no right but suffered little in doing so. Whether it was insulting racial minority groups, religious faiths, the disabled, women or grieving parents of the armed forces his polling fluctuated but always rallied.  Clinton was always the clear leader in the polls.  A safe pair of hands.  Nothing inspiring. No vision but neither a crass idiot.  For the every pussy grabbing real fire the Trump team had to put out Clinton’s team had to cope with an increasing wave of fake fires. That she used private email whilst secretary of state looks plain dumb but is ultimately dull. There’s more mileage in linking her to a paedophile ring.  Or a puppet of the Islamic founder of ISIS, President Obama.  And so on.  Whilst Trump had a Cambodia Year Zero themed closet full of skeletons I’m sure both sides resorted to peppering each other with fake and real assaults.  Clinton was always ahead in the polls but Trump was getting closer.  Whether the Billy Bush audio recording came out too early, or the pop-up FBI investigation into emails was perfectly timed we know one thing.  It’s 2016.  Clinton won the popular vote but Trump got the votes distributed in the states where it mattered and he is the the president elect.  There are just enough white people in the country to hold the conservative line, to buy into making America great again by revoking decades of globalisation, ripping up free trade agreements, that manufacturing can return and a 32 year old woman in Wyoming can earn a good living and make t-shirts cheaper than a 10 year old child in Vietnam, that global warming is a myth and coal should be dug up out of the ground and burnt with abandon and principally that the enemy is without and they can be held back, repelled and crushed keeping the within, the myth the same.  As the outsider candidate Trump has trimmed his sails to more establishment winds.  His cabinet is a list of big corporation chums and billionaires.  The election wasn’t just for the presidency, other seats in Government were up for grabs too.  The Republican party now control the presidential office, and both the senate and congress.  They can pass any act.  The far right are in power and there is no redress.  

Considering he wanted his life back it was somewhat surprising to find Nigel Farage in the US speaking on behalf of Trump at election rallies.  His message was that as with Brexit “real people” could have a voice in elections and get what they wanted.  The aftershocks of 2008’s financial crash continue.  Whilst City traders might have had their bonuses capped for a few years there are many in the country who have seen their pay frozen and with inflation seen household budgets fall year on year.  For this treading water/slowly drowning majority any life jacket, even a search light across the water feels welcome.  The message of the right compels.  Our lives would be better if it wasn’t for them coming over here, stealing our jobs, our homes, our school places, our status quo.  Everything repeats.  We’re in the 1930s.  WARNING WARNING could we please, please not repeat what came next.  Let’s not schism and fragment.  The EU’s mission may well have mutated over the years but one if its original visions was to create political and economic stability, to integrate and prevent the conditions that resulted in two world wars been fought across it in 40 years.  Hello Brexit.  Is that bells I can hear ringing?  

And so, dear reader, safe in your tropical retreat, aware of earth’s peril like the Tracy family but with the phone of the hook, now that I’ve warmed up my fingers again I sense that 2017 might warrant more regular updates.  2016 has been a year or political storms, upsets, celebrity deaths, mass terrorism and long running wars.  2017 awaits.  We pause. It can’t be as bad as 2016 can it?. Can it?

Jump!

If pressed beyond “I dunno” my son describes what I do at work as “going around chatting to people”. Whilst I might dress this up under the guises of team building, networking, operational engagement and the like to the untrained, testosterone driven, self obsessed, teenager eye this could be mistaken for merely some office “bants”.  Not that such a phrase would be warmly received by said charge. He welcomes my attempts at modern parlance with all the relish of David Cameron shaking hands with an unwashed voter.  This in turn invigorates me to further explore the lexicon of “the street” safe in the knowledge that whilst I may never be “cool” I can at least find new ways to infuriate him and at the same time extract amusement from the situation. Ah a tale as old as time.

Where was I? Oh yes, chatting. With our offices spanning four sites across the city centre I spend a proportion of each day walking between buildings, preferring a bit of face to face over the telephone, video conferencing or instant messaging. Label me old fashioned if you will but if I'm going to call someone a cunt I prefer to do it in person.  These walks, so commonplace have become routine and often autopilot takes over.  One morning recently I was crossing the main city square and slowly I noticed that it was quiet. No. Different. There was no traffic. Police cars were everywhere along with a couple of ambulances and a fire engine so large it was last seen parked outside the Towering Inferno.  People were out on the streets. In retrospect there are always folk milling about all hours of the day. Get a job, hippies! Wrote the man, presenting his views from the curbside. So ok, we’re all off chatting somewhere, it's the modern workplace. Blah blah blah. At one corner of the square a crowd is gathered and in deference to modernity at least a third of them are taking photos on their smartphones. Before us, maybe 4 metres off the ground stood a man perched up a lamp post. Is this a suicidal call for help? A protest? I turned to a guy stood next to me and asked. He had no clue but was recording it for posterity/Facebook just in case. I asked the same question of a policeman and whilst I can't recall his exact words if surmounted to that he was there to guard the tape strung across the road. Everyone was just waiting. I had chats to impose my will on people via the mask of bonhomie so opted to resume my journey.  An hour later and I'm passing back through the square. Everyone's kept their places, bar the fire engine, presumably when they realised a step ladder or a few assorted throw cushions from the department store across the road could save the day.  Boring! Nothing's changed. No one knows anything. Everyone’s transfixed. I stomp off to my lair.  He was up there for five hours in the end before being talked down by trained officers. Yeah, ok, he could have jumped into rush hour traffic from his shallow vantage point but there was a greater chance of him scuffing his knees. The news reports were the same as any other, a loose accumulation of facts and observations and an abrupt halt. No conclusion. No why.  With no updates my thoughts returned to earlier in the day, stood amongst a group of strangers waiting for another stranger to do something.  A level of disinterest in the reasons but still hoping for activity.  Someone to shout “Jump”.

Whilst we might have longed for Euro 2016 with its saturation coverage to drive the referendum from our consciousness the news media has maintained a dogged enthusiasm for over sharing constant updates from both sides of the debate.  The heavy handed “Project Fear” tactics of the remain campaign distanced themselves from the electorate and allowed team brexit to strangely seem calm, considered and a positive choice.  Stranger still, Michael Gove has come across quite well in a variety of interviews and debates.  One has to stand back, recall his destruction of the education sector and identify him as a cancerous presence in our society, a cheerleader for an agenda we are as yet not party to.  The polls say it’s going to be close.  We flick back to whichever match is on and try and dwell on why there are so many late goals and not the spectre of Nigel Farage opening champagne bottles on the morning of Friday.  

Away from Europe in either of its current affairs or sporting manifestations the news has been, to put it bluntly, shit.  At a nightclub in Miami a gunman shoots 49 people dead and wounds over 50.  It’s a gay nightclub that’s been targeted by someone purportedly sympathising with ISIS.   They’ve been self radicalised on the internet apparently which astonishingly isn't a euphemism and more a cypher for “not from around here”.  As the days pass and the camera crews decamp from an anonymous patch of concrete a block or so away from the club stories start to surface about the killer making so many reconnaissance trips to the club the source of the gay hatred suggests a more personal turmoil.

Meanwhile back nearer home we’re sat relishing a brief moment of football inspired levity as England fight back to beat Wales when news breaks, even to us in a pub, that a local MP has been murdered. The Lady Di-ification of Jo Cox in the aftermath of her death comes across as partly the media celebrating something other than the referendum to focus on.  The local girl made good, a dedication to good causes both in her community and those affected by war overseas are all to be championed. That the killer shouted “Britain First” as he attacked and then later in court declared himself as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” drew inevitable links to the referendum campaigns.  Who’d have thought peddling a daily diatribe of hate would inspire the worst in people.   

It’s Wednesday night.  The polling booths open tomorrow.  The atmosphere is strange.  There’s a subtext of anger. Whichever side loses isn’t going to simply accept it and move on.  I love my county, my country but this is the first time in my life when I’ve actively thought about leaving it and removing myself from these people, those I walk amongst, those driven by hate, by fear, by loathing of difference, happy to externalise all of their problems, happy to blame, to be told that it’s ok to feel what they’re feeling to vote for hate, to vote for them, those whose motivations are manifestations of a greater hatred, to those who vote for them,  to separate, to isolate, to drive to the bottom, to be distracted as rights are lost, to ensure they sit still and do what they’re told, to accept the sham of parliamentary democracy, to descend into poverty and watch millionaires on television talk of tough times, to wait to be told who to hate next.  Did someone shout jump?

Has anyone told you that you’ve got a great charter?

I’m walking through the city at noon.  Bored office workers channel brownian motion whilst I behave like they belong to a sect for which my membership has lapsed until a shop window reflection, all skewed tie and rumpled shirt compels me to return to the herd.  As we decide which plastic foreignesque boutique outlet to request to warm up a healthy and exciting frozen lunch for one pumped out of an industrial estate in Northampton the night before my attention is drawn to something in the middle ground ahead. A queue. Hey, it’s England, you're no doubt pointing out. This was long though, snaking out of a shopping mall and stretching out for two blocks through the pedestrianised wasteland that is modern city centre retail. Has one of our political thought leaders come to say something unfounded on Europe in a confident and overbearing manner? Judging by the queue’s demographic, clusters of excited tweenagers and the odd uncomfortable parent I suspected Michael Gove is more likely to be tipping his latest barrel of invective laden waste into another city.  So what was going on? My curiosity/ennui civil war resulted in me walking towards the head of the queue.  This better not be another Apple release my interior dialogue intoned.  It wasn’t early morning though and again, the demographic was wrong, not bearded 40 somethings in cagoules clinging to the idea that the latest iPhone will cement their status as a hipster.  I’m in the centre of the mall now. In front of me is a cardboard shelter, shielding the queue from what lay within.  I walk around the deck of the mall and opt to descend an escalator to spy on the inhabitants of the flimsy enclave.  There’s logos on the inside...The high street stationers WH Smith.  Not exactly rock and roll.  Within it stands some young 20 something bloke calmly posing with his arm around a stranger whilst she sorts out her selfy stick.  I have as much recognition of the star of the show as the two bored handlers marshalling the queue through the sheer power of their blue polyester company sweatshirts.  The escalator continues down and he passes from view.  I can’t pretend my finger is on the pulse of contemporary society.  By using the phrase “contemporary society” I admit I am further distancing myself from team snapchat.  But hey.  I can tell the difference between Iggy Azalea and Jacob Rees-Mogg.  I have a vague understanding as to what’s “going on” but this anonymous bloke in his cardboard den was drawing a complete blank.  I google the shopping mall.  This has got serious.  I’m using my phone’s data allowance on this quest.  A tweet from the mall that morning proudly announces that _____ _____ will be appearing that day.  The name, the brand, draws a blank too.  I google his name.  His twitter feed backs up that he’s in the city doing his thing but I’m still none the wiser as to what/who this character is.  Another google later and I’m hit with a set of video links.  Ah, he’s one of them.  A youtuber, getting a couple of million hits per video which is entering the advertising revenue cut territory that means you can start to pretend it’s your job.  I’ve gone this far, I might as well look at the videos and see what he’s about.  Is he a singer, a poet, a philosopher?  Not really. His theme seems to be “lifestyle” which is a very polite way of saying he films whatever’s he’s up to, pushes it out on youtube and counts the hits.  It could easily be described as being about nothing.  So there we have it, the modern age in miniature.  A man films himself as some sort of testament of nihilism and millions watch.  It’s a movement. It’s today. It’s the abyss.

The days flutter by.  90 minutes motoring through a car park that on maps is still listed as the A1 and I find myself in Lincoln. The journey was an exercise in frustration. The road was clogged with drivers determined to dwell in the right hand lane when that was clearly my lane as I had places to be. Lincoln apparently.  Never been before. Lincolnshire’s one of those counties that seems cut adrift from the rest of the county.  All married cousins, pigs being elected mayor and the War of the Roses still being played out in the fields around distant hamlets.  Cutting out from the A1 across the flatlands the roads quieten.  Once over the 40p toll bridge, a price no doubt set by Ethelred it’s quieter still.  I reached the outskirts of Lincoln or what I assumed was the town.  The GPS in the car had packed in with the word “Dragons” scrolling from left to right on the screen.  The traffic levels began to increase.  Roundabouts, bypasses, bridges thronged with traffic all intent apparently to never investigate the strange lands to the west.  The county itself is like some new size-zero zeitgeist model.  Straight up and down with the bumps not worth investigating.  That said, the part of Lincoln on a hill has been occupied for millennia and it was there that I found myself amongst bemused foreign exchange students stood on the ramparts of a rather fetching castle looking out on what could have been quite the vista if it wasn’t a town frozen in time beneath encompassing sombre grey clouds.  At Runnymede, Surrey the go to places for signing defining pieces of legislation and feeding the ducks the magna carta was signed.  From that point on, all men, even the King was subject to the law of the land.  Seeing as that’s the last time we’ve ever got near a bill of rights in this country it’s something we still cling to when we forget we’re a new peasant class to our new overseas friends with their love of our tax efficiencies, high rise property investment opportunities and media suppression.  Seeing as it was 1215 and the a photocopier was a few wars, plagues, enlightenment, industrial revolution and so on away they made numerous copies of the document of which four remain today.  A surefire way of keeping such an important document safe was to send it to Lincoln.  This they did and it remained safe on the hill until they stopped worshiping goats in 1953 and began to wonder what the strange marks on the flat thing meant.  As great charters go I have to confess that to see it in person is a somewhat underwhelming experience.  A small faded sheet of paper behind security glass in a darkened vault.  Without it how would our sham parliamentary democracy take root? It’s good to know that right to justice and a fair trial is written down for the record so we can nod to it when taking steps to maintain the status quo.  

Speaking of dismantling society the European referendum campaign continues to tighten around us, the poor electorate, a political boa constrictor way passed hunger and now just on a killing spree. Whilst it's heartening to see the deep cuts both factions of the Conservative party have been taking out of each other the savagery on show makes me wonder how they’ll even be able to pretend to be friends again on June 24. On this day either Cameron will be resigning or the heads of Boris, Gove and Grayling will be on spikes outside parliament. There doesn't seem to be much wriggle room between these two outcomes. This political self harm should be an open goal for the Labour Party but the apparent love child of Gareth Southgate and Chairman Mao, Jeremy Corbyn continues to muster the political verve of a prize winner for a competition he can't recall entering.

There's still two weeks to go before the vote. Fortunately there are but three sleeps until Euro 2016 literally kicks off.  Please ISIS, don’t wake us from this long planned blissful football coma and bring us back into the wider world and force us to press the red button to vote for airstrikes in somewhere 10 minutes into a news bulletin. Ah football. Let us gently relax into your all consuming succour.  Who will win? France, Germany, Spain? They're the favourites.  Or are they?  What do favourites mean any more?  A century may have elapsed since Einstein first wrote of special relativity but those old myths, like gravity, still make sense to us on a day to day basis, especially in our local model.   Football’s myths are no different.  One such trope of is the cream rising to the top.  You’re a good player so you move to a bigger club. You earn more money. Your team mates are better. Your chances of winning increase.  This football gravity has seemed to operate for years.  A side like Liverpool finds itself in limbo. As it gains success its best players are stripped away as they move to European club giants.  It stays where it is, players flow through it.  The cream onwards to Barcelona, Munich and the like.  They in turn strip the cream from smaller clubs.  This season Leicester City have been a weasel in the LHC. Football’s had to look at the evidence and change the model.  Whilst welcome, we shouldn’t pretend it’s a fairy tale.  They’re owned by billionaires.  Some of the players have at times in their lives been better suited to Crimewatch than Match of the Day.  The style of football is anti-possession, play on the break, keep a rigid shape. Be lucky.  But these are the negatives.  They also exhibited the behaviours or a genuine team.  They were the sum of their parts.  Different players stepped up through the season.  There’s an argument that this was a perfect storm of peers, a group of people from the manager down who were on second or third chances, who would only succeed if they worked together and didn’t deviate down the star laden ego monster route that seems endemic across the game.  You have to congratulate them.  No football fan can defend the status quo. Other teams played worse too. Manchester United continue their post Fergusson quest for identity.  Manchester City at times looked like the Harlem Globetrotters with a terrifying front 6 but with a weak defence and strategic shifts over managers saw them simply petered out.  Arsenal despite coming 2nd look like they’ll never win anything again under Wenger.  Spurs were a fantastic, young, hungry side that played good football but showed frailties in the run in and eventually imploded.  Leicester won. Every neutral championed them.  “Next season’s a clean slate - we can do a Leicester”  every fan intoned.  However, faint football gravitons are starting to be detected.  Ultimately, only one team wins.  The odds aren’t stacked in most teams favour.  Uncertainty is the narcotic that fuels football.  The maybe.  The dream of tomorrow’s victories.  Maybe Fulham and Leeds will get promoted and then one will go on to win the premier league the season after.  Maybe, but probably not.  England might win Euro 2016.  I’d settle for a decent style of play.  Despite all this reasoned downplaying of our chances the fan’s voice inside me jumps up and down shouting “What about Vardy’s pace? Kane’s Thor's hammer shot? The skills of Ali?  The Rooney swansong?” Three Lions starts playing and I’m digging out my England flag.  France should win. But maybe, maybe we can do a Leicester...

This is a brief time period not set for the history books, the time before the tournament, the referendum. The outcomes.  The quest for light relief is endemic in the news media.   A university banning graduates throwing mortar boards in graduation photos over health and safety grounds? Good. Tell us more.  Add the detail that photoshopped headwear will be added later.  Better. Ok ok, this kind of bullshit curios get thrown up every week.  Sometimes though you learn things and you have to split your life into before and after moments.  For me it was watching a documentary about men dressing up as dogs. They’re called the pup community.  Pitched as a set of socially anxious people looking to follow a simpler set of life rules it’s rooted in gay kink culture.  The documentary portrayed it as something asexually benign but it’s all blokes with half of them in leather and latex with dog masks on.  Life’s a broad church and all that but it’s fucking weird.

And in that Thought for the Day moment we can clumsily conclude that this is telling us something about our lives today.  The unexpected can be victorious.  This can be a football team, a random internet vlogger or a maybe just a set of terrible human beings intent of returning our country to feudal times.  In time,after years of darkness maybe we’ll get another charter.  An attempt at making things better. It feels a way off now.

I came like a king and left like a legend

Friday morning commutes are great.  With the growth in working from home/indifference/unemployment there are less people on the trains.  The atmosphere is different too.  On Monday the carriages are full, the travelers withdrawn, clenched almost,  steeling themselves for the vocational storms to come.  By the end of the week we’re all a little more relaxed.  If we weren’t British we might even entertain the idea of high fiving each other as we walk down the train aisle to our favourite seat, whooping and exclaiming “we’ve made it” to each other.   Seeing as we’re very much in the land of tea, passive aggression and lives index linked to property prices it’s a bit more subdued but the vibe’s still there.  The guy with the beard and the overstuffed rucksack who always sits two rows down to the left glances at me and that’s our celebratory salute.   Yeah baby! it’s Friday. We’re coasting to the weekend.  I take my seat, yeah my seat, the one I always sit at when it’s free, the one at the table half way down the carriage facing forward.  Diagonally from me is some bloke I’ve never seen before.  It’s allowed, strangers are permitted to use our train carriage.  I’ll let him off just the once.  Work’s taking over a bit. Same old story.  Won’t bore you with the details.  I often spend the journeys reading something I’d never find time to in the office or going through the emails that have come in overnight.  Or I’m playing backgammon on my phone in a long running battle to the death against the computer who often cheats, especially when it beats me.   Anyway, I look up from my screen and my attention passes over to the guy across the table.  He’s on his phone looking at shit.  Everyone’s on one or more devices.  No one’s talking.  I catch sight of his screen.  He’s on some dating app.  He’s looking at pictures. He’s swiping. He looks at a picture for a second and he swipes.  An appraisal of a life to date in over less than a heartbeat.  Not that I’m nosey of course, but even though they’re upside down I realise that all the pictures of men.  He’s on grindr..  Hey ho, this is modernity in itself. This is contemporary society in which a young gay man can be comfortable in his sexuality and be able to look for hookups in a relatively public location.  And then I think about the time. It’s 6:20am.  Scheduling! No one should be swiping left or right that early in the morning.    

It’s light when we commute now, even on the first service into the city.  The darkness of winter is in our past. We pretend it won’t soon return.  The trees speed by in our windows.  As do houses, roads, rivers, aspirations and time too. From arriving in the station there’s more of a bombardment of the senses. Travel here. Wear this. Drink that. Amidst it are the rolling news tickers: sports team beats sports team, actress holds perspex trophy.  But these are the welcome diversions.  In 2016 there has been but one news story for us.  Europe. To stay or go.  On June 23 the country will vote in a referendum to remain in the European Union.  From Christmas onwards the campaigns for and against have ramped up with daily headline attracting statements.  There’s no actual debate, just strongly asserted statements as to what will happen if we leave or stay.  The tone was set early and it quickly became a daily attrition between the campaigners, the media and us, the poor bedraggled voters who can’t think for ourselves.  One time, back in February you could see the barely concealed joy on a newsreaders face to be reporting on a collapse of a power station with workers either dead or missing.  It was something not about Europe.   Other than that and the odd refugee boat sinking in the Med it’s all been Europe, Europe, Europe. Brexit, Brexit, Brexit. Remain, remain, remain. If a story can be spun beyond Europe’s event horizon it's linked too. There’s no escape. The refugee crisis is down to us not being able to control our borders. If we leave then our security is weakened and we’ll be knee deep in terrorist attacks. Different tranches of leading business people tell us we’ll be going back to the stone age or overtaking China economically. Not having to implement Brussels’ rules will allow us to have whatever shaped bananas we want and none of that pesky human rights legislation. And on and on it deluges.  David Cameron is waging a campaign based on fear opines Team Brexit before pausing and adding that by next year children will be placed in labour camps as part of a Euro technocrat Sharia state.

Ah yes the politicians. This is all of their Christmases at once. From being a near 5 year irrelevancy comet we’re getting a bonus year of them shining in the spotlight. It's a well worn trope but there’s a strong assertion that Europe has been a cancer within the Conservative party for a generation.  Leadership for both campaigns would come from their own ranks.  Members of the cabinet, mostly ones you wouldn’t want to be left alone with, vanguards of humanity like Iain Duncan Smith, John Whittingdale, Chris Grayling, Theresa Villiers and Priti Patel formally announced that they would be campaigning to leave.  Boris Johnson stayed quiet initially courting press attention in a classic will he won’t he story like some fresh off the production line porn star deciding whether to do anal. With the flash bulbs popping Boris came out as team Brexit or anti-Cameron based on some spat at Eton 30 years ago.  With Boris it’s difficult to move beyond the suspicion that the real prize for him here is the role of Prime Minister and Europe just a high value piece worth sacrificing on the board.  Rest assured, with Boris seizing the campaign reigns we were a hop skip and a jump from him waving cornish pasties from a battle bus whilst comparing the EU’s ideology to that of Nazi Germany.

It’s not all about the Conservative Party of course.  If we look at the activities of the official opposition, the Scottish National Party, we can see a strong pro-European stance with the added risk of the UK voting for exit resulting in renewed calls for devolution and the breakup of the union.  Of late Nicola Sturgeon has kept a low profile. This is probably for the best. Whilst Dear Leader stylee popular north of the border in England she comes across as unbearably smug. And Scottish. If you squint she’s quite Thatcheresque. If not in policy but in power suits and cult of personality she’s one step away from decrying “the mars bar’s not for deep fat frying”.

Labour look on in their new befuddled mannerism. Whether it’s favouring the European movement of Russia in 1917 a mistrust of the anti-democratic European power base or a sign of in-party feuding their response was slow and limited. Begrudgingly coming out as pro-remain early but then not campaigning for months as if it was a filthy act he'd committed whilst blackout drunk and wasn't “that kind of guy” Jeremy Corbyn has shown all the passion for Europe as Tottenham Hotspur, going missing when it counts.

My favourite of all the arguments is that Europe erodes our sovereign democracy.  I’ve not voted for a victorious MP for most of the elections I’ve voted in so excuse me if I feel that I’ve spent the majority of my democratic life feeling unrepresented.  And for those victorious parties that have governed over the years what have we experienced?  Just a flip flopping of policies to suit their own agendas, which results in little more than lapping waves at a shore than anything of lasting permanence.  Countries need a long term strategy, a vision.  Politicians operate in pragmatic short termism.  Sovereign democracy is a cheerleader for the status quo and you have to infer promoted by those who desire to advantage of such short termism.  This is the religion of the stock market, of investing in sub second trades, not in a company to grow in the future.  If we get rid of those European busy bodies we can do away with all the human rights nonsense, workers protection, minimum wages and the like.  Maybe if the proletariat can take their rightful place back in those dark satanic mills we might have a chance of making Britain Great again.  Speaking of lowest common denominators much of this wonderful election appears to be coming down to money.  The relatively affluent want to stay in even if that’s less a drive for greater European unity and more not upsetting the economic apple cart. The less affluent want out big style on the bet that exiting will mean all foreigners driven from our shores and a possible uplift from this economic pogrom.  Our economic culture is the lowest bidder winning the contract.  This is why we outsource overseas, why Romanians are picking our Fruit, the cliched Pole putting in our new bathrooms.  And the very people team Brexit are turning to are the ones at greatest risk.  There’s a dark humour indeed in willfully voting to be exploited.    

I guess we can blame Europe on Charlemagne.  King of the Franks in the middle ages, in part the founder of both France and Germany, he had aspirations to control much of western Europe.  Not exactly a Team Brexit pin up.   I’ll close with one of his bon mots - “Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must know what is right.”  For many voters in this referendum there’s genuine uncertainty as to what right is.  Scheduling again is a problem On 23 June we’ll all be voting. For something. Or nothing. Or both.

2015: Riding the woodpecker of destiny like the weasel of opportunity

When computers compress data to save on space they use mathematical formula that can return those long chains of 1s and 0s back to their original state, or degrade them to a close approximation.  Our brains often take a bolder path to storing the data we take in each day, they just delete as much as they can get away with so that consciousness retains a narrative strand with us at the centre and not a disjointed set of fragments that are alien to us and ultimately maddening. We recall hearing a Taylor Swift song for the first time and whether we like/dislike it....but not the smooth texture of the handrail of the third stairwell in the train station, which pocket we placed our house keys or the phone number of the person we only pretended we'd call back.

Add to this hero's journey we pile on the external stimuli - other people, all 8 billion of them with their presentations of their narratives.  There's going to be a lot of deleting going on as our brains sift our signals from their noise.  We aid each other to speed along the editing process.  I am happy. I am sad. Often we need more.  I am sad because a stranger could make you sad so I want to make me and you happy. The stranger is a bad person. The stranger must stop listening to their narrative and start listening to mine.

Time passes. Indexes are re-indexed. We eat, we sleep, we love, we hate. We stand waiting for public transport to take us home, late from a meeting to discuss something abstract that was both too important to miss and irrelevant too. We borrow, we buy.  People live, people die.  We breath in, we breath out.  We stand on a beach, our toes enveloped in surf as gentle waves lap against the shore.  The climate is failing, the news report relays. We catch dolphins off our bow and trail them across the bay. Meetings. Deadlines. Reports. Successes. Failures.  France is at war.  We sit halfway up a mountain in a sea of trees looking out across a valley, they Pyrenees lie beyond hazy in the distance.  There is a stillness that we won't be able to recapture for the rest of the year.

Another year has passed. Summarise it. Draw from the index, represent the past. Change the story. Make it suit the narrative.  It's all noise.  There is no signal.  Keep it light.

"Je Suis Charlie Hebdo" we all write on Facebook. It's January 2015. TV is just wall to wall dieting and healthy living shows so we reluctantly watch the news. A small group of terrorists machine gun the editorial team of a satirical magazine in Paris as a reprisal for featuring Allah in a cartoon. There are marches.  People on mass declare they are not scared, mostly on social media.  Asteroid 2004 BL86 flies by at 3 times the distance from us as the moon.  It'll be the closest fly by until 7 August 2027.  Syriza sweep to power in the latest round of Greek elections promising to roll back austerity and renegotiate the national debt.  The ebola outbreak in West Africa continues to be contained by a mixture of local and international efforts with an efficiency that soon takes it off the news agenda, unless the odd white person briefly contracts it.

We suffered what was then in February the novelty of a maritime tragedy as hundreds of migrants are suspected of dying in the Mediterranean in an attempt to cross over from Libya to Italy.  They were definitely migrants. The argument over them being refugees was months away. What was causing people to leave Eritrea on mass and risk their very lives to escape would be something we just wouldn't get around to chatting over in 2015.  Rita Ora, Charlie XCX and James Corden needed their airtime too you know.   A ceasefire in Ukraine was agreed. Not with Russia of course, they had no involvement in he destabilising of a whole country because it democratically started looking to the West.  As a polar vortex fell over America temperatures collapsed. Niagara Falls froze over.

In March in the UK the pre-election budget favoured the old over the young, throwing a bone to savers and promises of changes to inheritance tax in the future. No one said the Conservative Party didn't understand it's voter demographic. Those studying the figures a little deeper see a pattern of Government spending that can only balance the books through significant welfare cuts.  An election, a new budget, a revolt in the Lords, these are all for later.  For now it's smiling politicians, promises and little talk of tomorrow's "difficult decisions".  Meanwhile in a hotel in North Yorkshire, Jeremy Clarkson pauses from denying climate change to strike a producer in the face over the lack of hot food and give exasperated BBC bosses enough of an excuse to take Top Gear off the air.  In 2016 the programme will return but with new hosts.  Clarkson et al suffered the indignity of not getting their BBC contacts renewed by signing for Amazon at massively inflated salaries.  Good to see money putting 1950s racism in its place.

On 23 March an Airbus 320 slowly descended from its cruising height, the co-pilot at the controls steadily and quietly breathed as he adjusted the autopilot.  Within minutes the plane had crashed into the side of a mountain in the Alps.  The flight recording not only recorded the calmly deliberate actions of the co-pilot but those of the pilot's desperate attempts to regain access to the cockpit, smashing a fire extinguisher against the locked door to a backdrop of the passenger's screams.  Everybody died, including the suicidal co-pilot.  As soon as mental health issues were suspected and no link to ISIS had been established the media moved on before the debris had been removed from the scree slopes.

April sees another 700 migrants feared dead in a Mediterranean shipwreck. UKIP's Nigel Farage speaks at Strasbourg of the dangers of waves of millions of immigrants coming from Africa and within their contingent half a million Islamic extremists arriving in Europe posing a direct threat to its civilisation.    To bring April to a close, at a depth of just over 8 km below Nepal an earthquake of 7.8 strikes taking close to 9000 lives.

May starts with Mayweather beating Pacquiao in a boxing contest more about over hyped promotion and revenue streams than the event itself, something lacking in quality, arriving many years later than it should have taken place when the fighters were at their peaks.  It would be a month of gladiatorial contests in the UK with the General Election. Taking the boxing's lead it also resulted in a lack of spectacle, smatterings of disappointment and limited appetite for a rematch.  May is the month of the "Shy Tories". A species of voter unable to reveal their true intentions of pollsters.  Minor percentage point shifts cause the end of many politicians careers.  Meanwhile, David Cameron untroubled over whether to appear smug formed the first Conservative government to rule the country for 18 years. Multinationals, non-doms and most of the print media held their equivalents of street parties.  Hard working Britons look to keep their heads down before being invoked in rhetoric in around 5 years.  France forces supermarkets to give unsold food to charities.  UK equivalents consider doing likewise.  On the 23rd Ireland becomes the first country to legalise same sex marriage, a move that gets repeated in other countries in the coming months.

FIFA officials are arrested on corruption charges in Switzerland. The naive/hopeful amongst us see this as the beginning of the end for Sepp Blatter and his FIFA cabal. If this is the case then it's a long goodbye. He finishes 2015 suspended from FIFA and many of his colleagues facing legal charges.  His head remains not a pike.  The world cup tournaments to Russia and Qatar remain as dubiously awarded.  FIFA looks to carry on.  Football for all its multimillion pound television deals and media saturation suffers.

June brings Greece back under the spotlight with a spot of defaulting on a debt repayment, the collapse of the eurozone, western civilisation, cats and dogs living together.  Most of the month is spent in emergency summits with the noble aspiration of avoiding theming Europe as a Mad Max film.   On 26 June Seifeddine Rezgui spoke to his father on his mobile phone, finished the call and threw it in the sea. The kalashnikov was hidden in a sun shade.  After firing on the tourists on the beach he entered the five star hotel and attacked people until security forces arrived and shot him.  38 people died, 30 of them British.

Iran reaches a nuclear deal in July with the rest of the world.  With this and offering to bomb ISIS in Iraq they are going to have to do a great deal of "death to west" stuff to get back up the Axis of Evil League Table.  To further sprinkle a spirit of optimism in the month the US and Cuba resume diplomatic relations after just 54 years.  Luckily David Cameron brings us back down with a charming speech on immigration, talking of "a swarm of people coming across the Mediterranean seeking a better life, wanting to come to Britain". It's a lot to go on - the temerity of people to not want to die of poverty, that their movement is equated as being like insects.  But there's more.  "Everything that can be done will be done to make sure our borders are secure and make sure that British holidaymakers are able to go on their holidays". Good. The last thing we want is the humble British tourist being put unable to lie on a li-lo in the sea for all the dead bodies washing up on the shore.

August. Summer time. The news (or more importantly, its reporters) goes on holiday.  Off duty US soldiers prevent a terrorist attack on a train in France.  China's economy has a bit of a wobble, devaluations occur and the rest of the world financial market put on tin hats.  In post hand wringing repetition another 200 people die in the Mediterranean in a single attempted crossing..

September sees the swarm take on a very human guise.  A picture of a drowned child on a Greek beach fills the media.  This is now a crisis. Refugees from principally Syria and Afghanistan are streaming across Europe.  Most countries are open armed, Germany and Sweden especially.  Britain remains Little Britain until a whipped up public outcry causes the Government to begrudgingly relent.  Because mainly it's an odd numbered month Greece has another general election.  Back in the UK it's the party conference season and for some the knives are out.  In one of those purely coincidental events, at the start of the Conservative party conference a non-dom who may or may not have been promised a cabinet role in the previous government only to find the way barred due to the coalition took his bat and ball home, paid for a hatchet biography to be written resulting in allegations of David Cameron spending quality time with a pig's head whilst participating at an initiation ceremony at university. In other ham fisted moments the Labour party, in full recoil mode from the values that got it elected in 1997 retreats from the political centre and welcomes Jeremy Corbyn as its new leader.  A man of principled strong left wing views.  A collector of manhole cover photographs. A bogey man of much of the print media, determined to take us back to the three day week of the 1970s and probably communism too.  He is all of these things.  Corbyn is such an honest and unpolished a figure on the political stage it is un-nerving. I like him but then I'm not a Labour Party member. 2020 may well see George Osborne installed at No.10 but it's still an improvement on Ed Miliband politics as vacuum years. The month closes with France launching airstrikes against ISIS in Syria.

On 26 October the Lords vote down the inevitable bill to remove Tax Credits from people who don't vote Conservative. This is portrayed as the death of democracy and that the Lords will need reforming as they have chosen not to respect the wishes of the House of Parliament.  Bar maintaining the status quo it did invite the question what they thought the purpose of the House of Lords was. In a Halloween special a Russian plane was initially reported as crashing on leaving Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt but within days was declared as a terrorist incident with a bomb being placed on the jet.  Russia steps up airstrikes in Syria, even hitting some targets not on Bashar al-Assad's hit list.

In November Paris experienced a terrorist attack across the city. In world terrorism league tables it's the 9th worst attack of the year. I defy you to name the #1 - just 2000 estimated deaths by Boko Haram in Nigeria in early January during a 4 day massacre. Anyway, back to Paris. More death. More fear. More anger. People changed their facebook logos to having a French flag background apparently equating a single mouse button click to an expression of empathy for the people involved in the attack, a reinforcement of support of Western values and decrying of immigration being used by terrorists to get into Europe.  The city itself is now a status symbol, as rumours of terror attacks were associated with other cities across Europe they receive the tag Paris-style.  To ensure tensions didn't get any more heightened in the region Turkey opted to shoot down a Russian fighter jet for straying over its territory.

December continued to be all about France but this time attention was on the World Climate Deal which after years and months of negotiations an agreement was reached. Fraud! was the immediate cry of James Hansen, father of climate change awareness.  He viewed the talks as one of promises, not actions.  We will literally have to see if the politicians come through with what can only be electorally unpopular measures.  Climate change is part of the popular consensus, but so is Netflix (chill optional), Left Shark, buy two get one free, The Only Way is Chelsea, A Place in the Sun and Sia, so good luck with that.  Hey they would lie to us would they? That'd be like an international car company programming their cars to misrepresent their environmental credentials when plugged into monitoring equipment.  Please hold, we're just getting some news from Germany and Volkswagen....oh.  What is clear is that our climate is changing in front of us. On 1st July the UK was experiencing a heatwave, by 26th it had experienced record breaking amounts of rain. August was a washout.  September was the warmest ever. 2015 was declared the warmest year on record. In November we all took a bow as the world reached 1 degree centigrade of warming. December saw the NOAA report that record high temperatures were affecting sea ice in the arctic.  Following the NOAA's lead, the Met Office in the UK is now naming the storms that cross the UK.  It is heartwarming to know that a house has been flooded by Eva or that someone's lost their roof to Frank.  It rained somewhere between 3 and 4 times the average for December in the north of the UK. My village has three roads running out of it.  One was flooded.  One was over a floodplain that was more akin to a lake.  The other was clear but leads to West Yorkshire so we won't speak more of it. But I digress.  From whatever yacht you're currently fouling you might not notice it but the water levels getting a little higher every day.  

So that's 2015 in a nutshell. What can we look forward to in 2016?  If 2015 is a trend then sadly it's a cunning mix of terrorism, climate change and more Demi Lovato.  But this isn't the big picture - the World Health Organisation don't have terrorism in their top 20 deaths in 2015.  I won't do the full run down but it's a familiar list of circulation, respiration and cancer related conditions.  By 2030 they predict that more people will die from road injuries than HIV/AIDS.  I guess I still will be on the road by then.  All in all I'd stay on the boat.  For the UK there's the bonus of a referendum on Europe which will in all likelihood stabilise the Tory party but in doing so destroy the Union.  Further afield we have the US presidential election to entertain us as we welcome Donald Trump into the hot seat.  

Raise a glass to the sun and welcome 2016.  We’re going to need a bigger woodpecker.