Happy New Year

I should wish you a prosperous and happy new year. I began it by reading the final 50 pages of Andy Beckett's When the Lights Went Out: A History of the Seventies. It felt very fitting to conclude 1979 on the first day of 2011.

Then, a Tory government which got elected by pretending to be nice was planning a full-scale attack on the poor. A Labour government which had got as much right as wrong fell because it seemed exhausted and directionless. The faces on the television were remarkably similar, and the reactionary jokes of the Tarbucks, Mannings and co seemed little different from those of the Boyles, McIntyres and their lazy ilk. Cities were falling apart and the country was the preserve of the rich, a bunch of amoral toffs with little experience of or care for the lives of the rest of us.

Plus ça change, plus ça meme chose.