2016/2017

I rarely tweet myself but I did actually send someone a 'Merry Christmas!' via Twitter on Christmas Eve and received a reply saying, "I think it's been a good year", to which I replied saying, "So do I. Here's to 2017!" (We were talking politics, of course). 

Stephen Pollard has a fine piece in The Times today expressing much the same sentiment, headlined "For me, it’s been an annus mirabilis". It begins:

I barely seem to have had a conversation this past week without it ending in a cheery “Let’s hope 2017 is better!” — as if it’s a statement of the blindingly obvious with which any stranger would agree that this has been a terrible year. 

Which presents me with a dilemma. Do I treat it as a pre-new-year version of “How are you?” No one in their right mind would reply to that greeting with a genuine answer. “Oh, you know: too many headaches, my back hurts and the cancer isn’t going away.”

Or do I point out that not all of us think 2016 was a disaster? For some of us — the majority, in fact — 2016 was a wonderful year.

Believe me, I’m tempted. Because it’s precisely the cosy, smug idea that “we” all think 2016 has been horrendous that led to the very developments that “we” all so deplore. By which, of course, “we” mean above all Brexit and the election of Donald Trump. 

I did hear quite a lot of Radio 4 yesterday and enjoyed much of it but, curiously, that "cosy, smug idea" that "we" all think 2016 has been "horrendous" kept cropping up in one form or another - along with other related "cosy, smug ideas" of the kind Radio 4 listeners are so often 'treated to'.

Among the things I heard, for example, was Mark Tully on Something Understood asking (re the angels promise of good will on earth to the shepherds), "Where is 'good will' in the politics of hatred unleashed this year?", and Sheila Hancock on Just a Minute's panto special saying that her 'one wish' would be "that 2016 never happened". (The audience laughed, clapped and whooped, and she then clarified that she was talking about Brexit - which they'd evidently already guessed!)

Then there was Marina Warner on From Our Home Correspondent using another panto-related piece to wax indignant about "headlines against Poles and Romanians and refugees or other stock figures of the new populism"- plus the inevitable anti-Murdoch, anti-Tory-governments jokes from Jeremy Hardy on I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue, and Sheila Dillon on The Food Programme's 'Wild Boar' Christmas special suggesting that wild boar "does seem to embody a kind of masculinity that seems kind of old-fashioned".

Plus there was Sunday's Christmas special from Hampton Court Palace on the state of religion in England in 1516, with Ed Stourton saying, "Listening to you describe the tide of nationalistic feeling at the time [of Henry VIII's split from Rome], I couldn't help be reminded of our own recent referendum campaign", and Mariella Frostrup beginning Open Book by announcing, "Bolstering borders has been a frequent topic of debate of late so today we've decided to abandon them altogether" and end the programme by announcing, "We're looking forward to another 12 months of transcending borders to bring you the best of books, near and far, in 2017".

Now, much of what I heard on these programmes was interesting and enjoyable but the messages sent out by them - often incidentally, often far from incidentally - were almost always of this "cosy, smug" variety. 

2016 certainly was a "terrible" year when it came to BBC bias (the worst for years, in my opinion). In that respect, yes, here's to a better 2017! Much improvement is needed.