HAPPY NEW YEAR

It is Wednesday 31st December 2025. Another last day of the year. It is sunny outside although only 1 degree centigrade above freezing. A lovely day to bring a rather ghastly year to a close. Of course the day itself is just an arbitrary choice made some time ago with the establishing of the Gregorian Calendar as a means of measuring and recording time and events. 

To some extent it coincides with religious activities and astrological events and as a consequence, there are as many new years as there are religions. It is the marking of a kind of first enlightenment on the part of its adherents  and believers, usually in line with the seasons involving seeding, growth, harvesting and repose, coupled with astronomical observations. There is the Chinese New Year, Iranian New Year, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish, Tibetan, Babylonian, Balinese, Hindu, Assyrian, Thelemic, Baloch Hindu, Nepal and a variety of other new years that the place throughout the ‘year’. It’s whatever you chose it to be. There is an extensive wikipedia entry on the matter of New Year. 

To most of the world however, the Gregorian Calendar is celebrated  as it ties in with commerce and global enterprise. Stock markets rely on it as does the daily planning of appointments for business, travel and leisure; in effect, running our lives in the 21st century. So the 1st January has become a day for celebrating new beginnings. It is the reaffirmation of progressive ideas and productive habits or the shedding of prejudices, harmful obsessions and proclivities. Perhaps it is merely recovering from a hangover. In any event, it is a pause for reflection. 

What seems to have become tradition in the media, leading up to the new year, is the retrospective examination of  occurrences in the previous twelve months. A look back, if you will, at the highs and lows of human and temporal activity. Some years have not been particularly successful, and indeed might be considered catastrophic. 

From my point of view, the world has gone into a decline since 2016 with the arrival of Brexit and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. When the electorate actually ceased to think and gave in to populism,  mendacious propaganda and the turning away from serious opposition to dictatorships, it has all gone wrong. Deliberate falsification displayed on the side of buses or on the brim of a baseball cap captured the imagination of the uninformed, the poorly educated and the complacent.I fear somehow, the hole we seem to have dug, or perhaps the sink hole that has occurred, is so deep that it may be hard to pull ourselves out of it; however, I do not despair. The realisation that Brexit was a disaster is apparent in the polls as is the realisation that Trump is at his lowest numbers. 2026 may indeed be a resurrection of some sort. 
 

These last nine years have seen a remarkable decline, aided by an unfortunate pandemic, and the lack of decent, intelligent and honest representative leadership across the globe. How is it that we have allowed Putin and others to become Putin, Trump, Orban, Boris Johnson, Lukashenko and so many other narcissists to become Chief Executives of Nations whose history tells them that should know better. Yet I do not despair. 2026 feels like a good number, It ends with a smile rather than an open mouthed grimace. There is hope in small things.