'Y' is for the Year 2012!

2012 Review

At 1 am on January 1st 2012, I hastily got bored of 2012, the first ten minutes as usual was full of fake optimism, at the stroke of midnight. I did what everyone else did; I resurrected a cheeky gleeful smile and air-kissed people I knew and didn't know. Not, that I care to fully remember the superfluous annual ritual nor could recall most of the episode sixty minutes after the event. By 1 am, I was unaware of eighty percent of what happened in 2012: why should the 8783 hours to come be any different? Low-n-behold, they weren't. In fact we were to have an extra 24 hours, due to it being a leap year - when leap year arrived - it leapt onto March 1st rather than onto 2013; wotta con! - You can see where it went wrong?

The floatation of Facebook in May lacked helium - as its inflated price tag of 66 billion deflated like a 'whoopee'-cushion - but in the meantime made Zuker 'gold berg' the 23rd richest mammal - very fishy? The following week he marries - into piranha invested waters - Two experiments in two weeks! This gave out warning signals for investors who're eager for web based corps going public. Didn't they learn anything from the dot.com bubble that splattered spectacularly all over the NASDAQ in 2000? No, probably too engrossed in their PS gaming consoles to pop their nerdy heads up from their joysticks. 4G networks got a mobile platform, although in months will be replaced by 5G - hence why our unsavoury administration cashed it in for a tune of 9 billion pounds to balance the treasury books. Meanwhile they also cashed in on Northern Rock at a 450 million pound deficit after promising the taxpayer four years ago they'll reap the rewards in shares, laugh out loud, couldn't write that without laughing - Notably, one of the biggest rip-offs in banking history done right under our noses - yet hardly a murmur about the façade. During the same time frame dodgy banker Bob Diamond was centre of attention under the Barclay's libel fiasco which tampered with banking interest rates - still no jail sentence, unlike the UBS (Swiss Bank) ex-Trader, Kweku Adoboli got a seven year sentence for a 2.3 billion pound banking fraud In November. This equates to: 899,843.51 GBP per day wiped off. In real terms, on this premise, you'll be in jail for ten minutes for a lifetime of illegal parking and not paying council tax!

Obama won a second term in the White House after a dismal campaign by the Republican Mitt Romney - a remarkable achievement considering the US economic crisis. Obama-Care a watered down version of our NHS proving enough to dislodge the Romney challenge, not forgetting the 15 billion dollar monthly QE that had been forged, to sustain a failing economy built on capitalistic values. A series of Fiscal Cliffs waits, having just hurdled one five days ago - the next one is in March 2013. The financial pantomime continues......... Obama rightly snubs 'Osbornomics', (Osborne has been sledge-hammering UK's Welfare, NHS, and Economic Trading Capacities, since he took office - and the OBR will take 'all' the flack) as does the IMF (International Monetary Fund). Instead our ludicrously expensive reform bills plow deep into the Treasury's expenditure in 2012 - approx: 212 billion pounds worth! 'Spending when the sun isn't shining' - whilst deliberately cutting the most vulnerable in society - waging a war between the 'shirkers and the strivers', and blaming the Euro-zone instability for UK's flat-lining economic growth in 2012. Basically the plan isn't working, our infrastructure is crumbling due to lack of funding and the coalition has aimlessly plodded on. And this is after just a quarter of the scheduled cuts laid-out until deadline day in May 2015. The half-way prognosis of this administration is shocking - living standards has dropped considerably, vital resources have been liquidized, energy bills amount to over 12% of middle income earner's wages, and public sector wages have been frozen for five years. Worse still Cameron states: "we are on the right track." - The same track that has hiked up 19% on rail fees, to go to work in one year. The UK's rail infrastructure is one of the worse in Europe yet is the most expensive; the program defies logic. Therefore makes our railways uncompetitive compared to standard rail networks in the EU - which in-turn disables British steel and manufacturing corporations further still as they opt for cheaper transit in Northern Europe; offloading up to 20% of their depleting workforce in 2013.

2012, was the year we lost the space-men / Neil Armstrong and Sir Patrick Moore - but we did witness a giant leap for mankind by Felix (Latin for 'lucky') Baumgartner in October 2012. Ye-es, I observed the space leap and for forty seconds of him freefalling I must admit I turned off due to boredom. He was in a tailspin at the time which is apparently dangerous because he could lose consciousness and his brain may explode. The commentator seemed unconcerned that Felix had broken the human sound-barrier, naturally I took it for granted it was broken, thanks to gravitational pull (Newton's Theory) - well he did leap from space to earth - for instant fame - the problem is... most of the UK population have forgotten him; nevertheless, there is only so much time you can assign to watching a man plummet to earth - Anyway I had to see how bad Rylan Clark was on X Factor and Gary Barlow's negative comment. I didn't make a meal out of Felix; on the basis I'm feline free - alas it was memorable and history was in the making. Not that many would remember the Austrian space-adrenaline junkie's name in a charity pub trivial quiz. Whoever he was, he's known as lucky to his friends. Lucky isn't a term I'll use when a budding eighty one year old restorer decided to resurrect a painting of Christ in the late summer of 2012. One of the biggest bungles in restoration history by a frail lady called Cecilia Giménez who was an avid church-goer. She turned Elias Garcia Martinez's "Ecce Homo - Behold the Man" painting into a 'Telly-Tubby'. Destroyed beyond recognition, restoring experts mused over it claiming proper restoration was impossible. Meanwhile hordes of support for the frail old lady stated that the painting should be renamed "Ecce Homo - Behold the Monkey" and that the nineteenth century painting should be left untouched. Brian Sewell (Elderly Art Critic) has been stunned into silence at the art atrocities of 2012, especially as Rothko's 1958 canvass "Black on Maroon" was defaced in October 2012, the perpetrator, 'Yellowist' Vladimir Umanets from Poland unrepentantly argued he had improved the abstract masterpiece - suffice to say, he must be a Lib Dem supporter, well, that's what the Poles are saying. He's currently defacing a cell wall at the taxpayer's expense. It reads: "I must refrain from defacing a Rothko canvass, especially in the name of his founded movement" - signed: Vladimir Umanets.

In 2012, the 'Arab Spring' descended down the same route with the 'Muslim Brotherhood' just like Hosni Mubarak. The people's Party emulating the old dictatorship. Robert Fisk's observation proved correct; 'a grotesque changing of the guard' scenario. Revolution via online networks, proving that vast numbers of people in one place can scare dictatorships, cause mayhem, creates panic and dehumanization, as every mortal soul becomes sub-human in the eyes of barbaric regimes. Their people visually contorted with grotesque anger depicting a Francis Bacon canvas - walking anuses shouting absurdities and squawking in pain. War creates diseased minds; it filters into souls - falling foul, in the name of religion (s) secularism. The M E's unrest is a testimony to this ideology. Eventually, the 'Arab Spring' could over-spill against the western world it is already happening in Iran and Syria. Rhetoric is pointing in this direction; worrying signs indeed for 2013 and beyond. A total of sixty five wars have burned the ME and Asia between 1990 and 2010. In comparison the UK have only been in 5; UN orientated missions, dedicated to peace and securing a life-line to Afghan women and children. Thankfully, at last, 5 thousand troops will be offloaded elsewhere in 2013, leaving the Afghan nation to their inevitable consequences. The Russians couldn't do it in the 1980's with twenty thousand more men, so be ready for another Robert Fisk type to write much of the same in fifteen years time. It all goes back to the Ottoman Empire - not that our coalition listens to our historians; nor comprehend the severity of our innate actions, that'll leave fresh scars and create terrorists, inspired by those who've existed before them, they'll be fighting under a new terror-cell brand for exactly the same delusional reasons - Sadly, the 'Arab Spring' wreaks of unrelenting wars which we in the west have a lot to answer for. After 2012 - 2013 is far more a dangerous world.

Meanwhile, we put far too much onus on celebrities as we flick, or click onto whom gets voted off, voted in, and causing a din in the 'Celebrity Big Brother House'. We're politically naïve as our interest dwindles and like wooly headed morons we walk the fiscal tight rope like lost sheep in Kabul. One of the realities of a capitalistic state - trying to work out how to recoup the 9.3 billion Olympic price tag and wondering how to build on an Olympic legacy that has only been endorsed for a couple of years? A Bradley Wiggins only comes round every eighty years or so, and his mullet even longer. Most of our Olympic golden boys and girls are retiring, opting for lucrative careers in 'after-meal speeches, and parading as Ambassadors of their sport. Why not? Footballers are expected to get a minimum of 3 million a year, plus sponsorships -why should Olympic Gold Rowers train like a machine daily - for a fraction of that take-home pay? Give credit where credit is due; our Olympians gave us Brits a bounce in our step for four weeks of 2012. It looks as if I'll have to indulge in a grandiose daily dose of Glenfiddich or purchase a space-hopper for the same affect - There's no contest, I know what one I will choose.

We've had 187 hours of 2013! Undoubtedly, the rest of the year will be a complete blur.