New Year Resolutions

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A very Happy New Year to you all.

We all say it don’t we? With such an air of optimism, a new spring in our step. Out with the old and in with the new. As midnight chimes on December 31st we kiss and shake hands with loved ones, friends, neighbours. Watch the fireworks and think about the coming year.

We make our resolutions to eat less, get fit, lose weight, give up smoking, drink less, work harder, work less, get married (or divorced- apparently January is the busiest time of the year for divorce lawyers. So much for the season of good will a few days ago). We hope for better in the New Year more out of hope than expectation but deep down inside of us we know that something will happen in this New Year that will surprise us, shock us, please us, disappoint us, and change us.

2016 was, in many ways, momentous, life changing, or maybe for many it was same old, same old. Looking at two very notable political events in 2016, I would suggest that for many it was not same old, same old, as people in their millions took to the ballot boxes to register their grievance at being ignored, betrayed, treated with disdain or left behind. These two events were, of course, the EU Referendum in the U.K. and the Presidential election in the United States. Huge statements of disquiet were made by the majorities to the dissatisfaction of the minorities. Public argument continues with the Referendum still not accepted by many who should know better – even the UK Ambassador to the EU resigned not quietly, suggesting in his resignation salvo that Whitehall doesn’t know what it is doing and doesn’t have the people in place to discuss the UK departure from a knowledgeable position. Apparently the EU people do but evidence of that given the level of mismanagement of the EU for decades seems a little thin on the ground. His parting shots underline that the elitist thinking of the left still thrives but whether it still prospers remains to be seen. Mrs. May is due to make a speech shortly that it can only be hoped makes our Government position clear but that, again, is a New Year wish more of hope than expectation.

Probably for the first time ever, the US has not universally accepted the election of a President. Referred to in the US as the “liberal elite” but given its roots in an over indulged middle class and an anarchic higher education establishment, more often referred to elsewhere as the left wing, protesters still camp outside of Donald Trump’s New York residence decrying the result and his unsuitability to be President. Unraveling the vote by these pseudo intellectuals is a New Year wish that isn’t going to happen but, as with the daily nonsense emanating from Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh, only serves to heap a level of scorn on two countries that deserve better.

So what can we realistically hope for in 2017?

Here are a few of my suggestions:

• ISIL will be defeated thoroughly in Iraq and Syria starting with the rout of Raqqa.
• Article 50 will be triggered in the UK and so will start our meaningful extraction from the undemocratic clutches of a corrupt and failing EU.
• A period of detente will be established between the US and Russia.
• Trump will show himself to be a better President than many thought and America might, once again, assert itself in a leadership role in the world.
• Following the collapse of the Italian banking system, the euro will start to unravel.
• France will elect a government that begins its own Frexit and thus set in motion the total collapse of the EU.
• The Southern European states will wake up to debts they can’t repay, unemployment they can’t sustain and start their own processes of leaving the EU that has impoverished them for far too long.
• The Scots will finally wake up to the damage being done to their country by an incompetent executive in Holyrood and so begin the process of ridding Scotland of the racist SNP.

 

There are then a few pipe dreams I wish would happen in 2017. They include

• The world’s religions coming together to stop talking about peace, harmony, care for the sick, elderly and disenfranchised and do something instead to embody the spirit of their gospels and harness what they share rather than what divides them.
• Poverty will be seriously tackled along with the diseases prevalent among the poor through inter-governmental action not just throwing money at the problems and hope they go away on their own.
• Serious development of action to cut greenhouse gas emissions or we won’t have a planet to make New Year wishes for in the future.
• Some despots will be overthrown such as Kim Jong Un in North Korea, Duterte in the Philippines and Mugabe in Zimbabwe, along with a host of others in Africa.

 

We can but hope as we enter this New Year. Repeating the same actions only serves to prove Einstein’s description of madness but, then again, the human race has shown itself capable of that over many centuries.

 

A very Happy New Year to you all.