Bad New Year

 Every year for the past few, I have included in my new year greetings words to the effect that: "it must be better than the year just gone.". Every year, those words have proved mistaken. So in this first minute of 2022, as a sort of juju, I offer my estimate of why the twelve months to come threaten to outdo 2021 in awfulness.

Firstly, politics. Here, Johnson will be eased aside as prime minister since even the dimmest of Tory back-benchers can see that he is no longer an electoral asset. However, there will be no change in the direction of this government, just as Thatcherism continued when Major replaced Thatcher. Immigration policy will be more unfair, public demonstrations will be inhibited, voter suppression will be enacted and it looks unlikely that corruption of our political system will be tackled. Indeed, it appears likely that our only watchdog, the Electoral Commission, rather being given more teeth which it needs, will be muzzled and its budget cut. 

The USA, after a respite from the Trump years, looks like suffering a reverse. While the conservative Supreme Court is, as anticipated, not attempting to undo federal law, it has already started to back out from overruling law passed by States, no matter how illiberal. Since the majority of State seats is Republican and States have control of voting methods within their boundaries, it is probable that the electoral scales will be tilted away from the Democrats and towards an increasingly reactionary Republican party with consequences for the rest of the world.

Across the Irish Sea, the pent-up anger resulting from Johnson and Frost's dodgy compromise with the EU over NI trade, and their later U-turn, will surely burst out.

On the world scene, disasters due to climate change show no sign of abating. Nothing is being done to stop the civil wars in Africa and the Middle East. Nothing is being done to remove the illegal genocidal regime in Myanmar.  The flow of refugees will therefore not abate. The dictators in China and Russia seem intent on making a military strike this year.

Nor have leaders in the West taken on board the likelihood of a new contagious epidemic of animal origin, not to mention the propensity of corona viruses to continue to mutate.

It makes me wonder whether I want to see another Christmas.