Another year in which nothing much changed for the better.

A Special Child Was Born

July

Nothing symbolised the lack of change more than the site of the world's media camped for a week in the street outside St Mary's Hospital, waiting for Kate Middleton to give birth. Throughout this bizarre vigil the BBC kept its viewers updated with images of the hospital's front door, accompanied by reporters telling viewers that nothing was happening.

Eventually Middleton gave birth, as did 2000 other women on that day but her child was born from the seed of William Windsor, so her child was special. Who knows what special gifts this child will bring to the world. Perhaps he will join the forces, learn to fly a helicopter and play polo well. Perhaps he will work as a tea boy for some second rate theatre company. Perhaps he will become a special envoy and fly all over the globe, with his over-sized ironing board, meeting and greeting and dining with murderous dictators. Perhaps he will dress like his grand father, talk to trees, set up a worthy trust, and spend his days wondering if his turn will ever arrive.

In truth, we simply don't know what specialness this new addition, to those who occupy the top of the social canapy, possesses, so we will just have to take it on trust and wait for special things to happen.

Canadian Import

Mark Carney took over as governor of the Bank of England and continued Mervyn King's craven grovelling to the debt burdened Sambuca City spivs via a do nothing 0.5% interest rate policy. Carney, however, put his stamp on things early by inventing something called 'forward guidance', i.e. letting the markets know that interest rates would not rise unless unemployment fell below 7%. He predicted that this wouldn't happen until 2017. It now looks likely that it will happen in 2014.

This situation will face Carney with two options, lower his unemployment benchmark so that it will not be reached sooner than 2017 or shift the focus of his 'forward guidance' away from the employment level and on to something more relevant like the national consumption of tea bags.

Television

Was television less awful in 2013? Did the programmers go out and buy a few new box sets to lull the nation into a comatose state? Was there less cheap pointless fly on the wall televison. Were there less celebrity chefs serving up their dynamic personalities along with everything that resides in their kitchens, the garden, the neighbour's garden, the supermarket, the farmers' market, the forests, the seas, outer space - now there's one they haven't thought of yet "Jamie Goes into Orbit" - yes please!

 

Mandela

The death of Nelson Mandela reminded everyone how little change and progress had come about since the end of Apartheid. And after a week of some of the worst BBC reporting of any event, except possibly the birth of a royal baby, the corporation was finally forced to acknowledge the reality of South Africa when a crowd of mourners booed President Jacob Zuma.

When Mandela was released from Robben Island in 1990 very few people on the planet failed to join in the celebrations of black South Africans. When black policeman massacred striking black miners at Marikana, August 2012, the world remembered the Sharpeville massacre in 1960 and had nothing to cheer about, mostly, the dead were shot in the back.

South Africa now belonged to Jacob Zuma and the ANC, and the Lonmin mining corporation. Lonmin, does that name sound familiar? It should do - its Lonrho, Ted Heath's "unacceptabe face of capitalism" still doing its dirty business under a new name.

Gangster Zuma and Lonmin are the reality of South Africa. They may drive Mandela's bones all over South Africa, until the cows get fed up with the flies but it will not change the signal fact - the constructors of Apartheid had a plan, the ANC couldn't plan a children's birthday party. Or more specifically, couldn't book a competent deaf signer, the man chosen by the ANC for the memorial service, Thamsanqa Jantjie, was clearly off his head and is now in a psychiatric hospital.

George Osborne

The silliness of George Osborne continued apace and the British Psychiatric Society are still refusing to acknowledge his silliness as a mental disorder.

Baronet in-waiting George continued to insist that Britain is booming and to make ridiculous claims on debt reduction and private sector job creation. Throughout 2013 George made visits to factories that make things, to make his announcements seem grounded in Britain's industrial resurgence. He dressed for the occasion, with overalls and hard hat although there was little under the hat that required protection from heavy falling objects.

George was all gloomy at the beginning of the year but by the end he was in self-congratulatory mode, having told the public sector workers to expect another year of pay freezes, sold Royal Mail for a song, and created a housing boom with his return to 95% mortgages. Well done, George.

PS. George's parents are still locked in a legal battle with St Paul's over their claim that the school missold the benefits of private education - citing George as proof.

Murder in Woolich

May

Following the killing of Lee Rigby in Woodlich, David Cameron and his chums on the Cobra team decided to crack down on the radical Islamists and their hate preachers. We're surprised they didn't call for a drone strike on Bradford as well... Allah Akbar.

But they have created a new strike force, in the shape of TERFOR (Tackling Extremism and Radicalisation Task Force). Perhaps it never occurred to these school boys that we are already paying the spooks from MI5 to deal with the extremists and radicals and if they fail, we can send in Cressida 'shoot to kill' Dick, the killer of Jean Charles de Mendes.... Allah Akbar.

The problem is Islam

Establishing TERFOR is typical of Cameron, a pointless jester. The problem to be tackled is Islam, not so-called Islamists. Islam is a political ideology with elements of spirituality thrown in to persuade its supplicants that there's a purpose to their subordination to the nostrums of long dead clerics... Allah Akbar.

A few years ago New Labour set up Prevent to deal the terrorist threat from within. They say the role of Prevent is now under review again, obviously everyone involved will have been working tirelessly, just like the spooks, behind the scenes, saving us, without us ever being aware of our salvation... Allah Akbar.

That's all good then, now all we need is a Data Communications Act, to go with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and those terrorist will wonder what's hit them... Allah Akbar.

Meanwhile, fly tippers and dog foulers had better watch out, the Coalition is not paying millions of pounds to Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems Detica for deep packet inspection for nothing....Allah Akbar.

The Prism

June

We discovered that the Empire of America is spying on the world of Internet communications using a snooping program called Prism.

At an internal presentation, given to NSA employees, it was revealed that the program was used to access data held by the world’s major internet companies, including Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo and Skype.

These companies all claim to know nothing of the program's use and are keen to assure citizens that they take your privacy seriously. All very mysterious, given that this has been going on for years and our own 'listening spooks' at GCHQ have been receiving reports from the NSA, acquired using the Prism program.

Politicians of all shades here also claim to know nothing about the program and its use or GCHQ's involvement. Laughably, opposition MPs are lining up to ask Theresa May, the Home Secretary, questions in the House on Monday - the odds of Ms May supplying a useful response are inestimable, according to William Hill, the bookmaker.

The interesting thing about Prism is that it is able to access the contents of emails and live chat. Which takes it way beyond the now in doubt Data Communications Bill, with its focus on capturing metadata, i.e. simply listing the destination and duration of communications.

Democracy in action

The story of Prism reveals democracy in action, politicians pass legislation to fight terrorism, meanwhile agents of the state subvert individual liberty without a remit from the legislators - apparently?

Public Relations Exercise

Update: Dec.

Many of the big Internet players have been complaining about NSA/GCHQ snooping but the list of complainants does not include any of the giant US telcos? The likes of Apple, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have formed a kind of protest group against the snoopers. Perhaps hopeful that their customers will swallow their hogwash about knowing nothing of the spooks' black boxes, that have been monitoring Internet traffic for years. In truth, their profits rely on them keeping on the right side of the Patriot Act.

Man of the year

Edward Snowden must surely be the man of the year, for blowing the whistle on the NSA's snooping and their tie in with GCHQ. And let's not forget poor young Bradley Manning, who was given 35 years in prison this year for being unpatriotic.

 

Sir David Nicholson, the man from Abattoirs-Are-Us

February

Nicholson said sorry for the 1200 unnecessary deaths at Mid Staffs but what exactly was he apologising for. Was he apologising for his abject uselessness as a manager, a fawning puppet, working at the behest of an antisocial diseased political mindset that thinks that healthcare can be run like a Brillo factory. Now, he's chief executive of NHS England but not so long ago he had clinical oversight for the Shropshire and Staffordshire SHA, you know, where the patients at the Mid Staffs abattoir were drinking the water from the flower vases because the nurses couldn't be bothered to give them a drink.

The Francis Inquiry into Mid Staffs told us that the target driven culture of the NHS must change but so must the indifference and ignorance of the politicians who feign astonishment when mass murder occurs on their watch. These are the people who publicly claim to know nothing about gagging orders and huge pay offs to those who wont toe the line but privately they condone the culture of silence - Andrew Lansley, Alan Johnson, Andy Burnham are all guilty.

In the case of Mid Staffs, Nicholson's behaviour was criminal beyond doubt and his reward, a better job with a bigger pay packet. The most important part of NHS England is the commissioning board, the body that supervises the spending of tens of billions by GP-led commissioning groups and Nicholson's the man in charge - he must know where all the bodies are buried to receive such a pot of gold.

Syria: The Carnage Coninues

It's December and the papers are full of news of the death of British Dr Abbas Khan in a Syrian prison cell. They say he hung himself and everyone else says he was killed by the regime. PM Cameron says it was terrible and has told Foreign Secretary Hague to write a letter to someone.

They say that a humantarian crisis on the scale of the 1994 Rwandan genocide is underway. Well, we remember that, you know, when everyone did bugger all but now its different, countries are queuing up help out, well, except Britain that is. As many as 16 countries have offered extra resettlement places to vulnerable Syrians. They say every little bit helps but in reality the world has given up on finding a resolution to Syria.

This is all rather strange because a few months ago Big Dave and Hague (and Ed Miliband) were looking to go to war in Syria, before they realised it was a very silly idea, that is, helping one faction of Islamist bigots defeat another group of Islamist bigots.

Dr Khan was a casualty of the regime's strategy of targeting all and everything to do with medical support for the opposition forces. The fact that targeting medical facilities is a war crime means nothing to Assad, the man is already as good as dead. And you are hardly likely to feighten a corpse with a letter from William Hague.

Technology Update

Good news, the youth are fleeing from Facebook, now deemed uncool and Facebook's attempts to break into the mobile space (note, space is the new 'in' word for the next few years) came to nought in 2013.

The mobile space is seeing a major battle between Apple and Samsung, essentially this is a battle of operating systems, expect Android and Samsung win out in the longer run but law suits in the US courts may slow Samsung's progress. Also Apple has just done a major deal in China. Also, the Windows phone is on the rise, now that the software has a Start button. And the poor old Blackberry, once the moble of choice for politicians and Tottenham rioters, is now gathering dust in the back of a million draws.

The tablet space is still firmly in the hands of Apple but expect more competitors like Tesco's budget priced Hudl that will seriously dent Apple's market ascendence, unless they re-think their top dollar price structure. The worry for Apple is that they do not know how to do cheap, witness the flop of 2013, the plactic iPhone 5C. Meanwhile its Amazon's Kindle that will fall first to the Hudl, unless Amazon decide to lose even more money selling the things.

The wearable tech space is currently in the grasp of Samsung but Google is also in with a shout, e.g. with Google Glass and assorted other gimmicks like watches that take pictures. This space may turn out to be a passing fad, once all the marketing hype fades and companies stop paying celebrities to use Twitter to tell all their 'followers' about their new watch. (Sad buggers)

We have seen lots of hype in 2013 over 3D printing, which is surprising because it's been around for decades but now prices are falling - yours for a mere $1500 dollars and when you get fed up with making ashtrays for yourself there's always eBay. These printers are used in industry for making design prototypes. For those only interested in making things for the coffee table would better off joining a pottery class.

We have also seen not a few false reports of the demise of the sturdy PC. It's probably true that many US companies are jumping ship, moving into the mobile space or having moved too late, going into receivership. However, the Chinese have other ideas, Lenovo have not given up on the PC and they are the biggest Chinese manufacturer.

In the entertainment space we have finally seen the death of 3D TV, a completely hopeless project, now hopefully forgot. Apart from the requirement to wear silly glasses, there simply wasn't any content for those expensive 3D TVs. Highstreet video rentals also disappeared in 2013 as Blockbuster finally bit the dust. No sympathy for this company who couldn't see how the market was leaving them behind and worse didn't even know which market it was in. Interesting to note, Blockbuster had the option to acquire Netflix in 2000 but turned it down?

In the games space we have two contenders as ever, the PS4 from Sony, which is straightforwardly a games console and the Xbox-One which, because it's from Microsoft tries to be a games machine and a home entertainment system. Who wins the battle doesn't matter to humans.

Something to chew on for 2014

Back in March, the Mail and the Telegraph told us that 1 in 30 will die before their time due to eating processed meat. Now, reading the funny papers you'd believe that the study this amazing fact came from was exclusively about the effects of processed meat. It wasn't, the study was broadly concerned with examining the life-styles of meat eaters.

The bottom line to this story is not that eating processed meat will shorten your life but eating cheap processed meat will shorten your life - it's cheap for a reason, it's designed for poor people.

So good journalism, rather than the churnalism we get from the Mail and Telegraph, would have reported that poor people are dying before their time due to the life-style choices that poverty forces upon them.

The press release that accompanied this study's results tells us:

"One of the difficulties in measuring the effect of eating meat on health is the confounding effect of lifestyle on health."

There you have it in a nutshell, without confounding factors the world would look just like the Mail and Telegraph thinks it looks.

So, if you do nothing else in 2014, focus on the confounding factors.

And keep in mind what Marshall McLuhan told us 50 years ago... the medium is the message, the content is "like a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watch-dog of the mind”.

 

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The Troubles

Can you hear the deafing silence from the media on events in Northern Ireland. The assassination of Pat Finucane, that came to light last year, couldn't be ignored. All the bombings and killings this year have been largely ignored.

We are currently being told that the 'final' obstacles to the so-called peace process, i.e. flag waving and marching are being mediated to a conclusion.

 

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