That Was the Year That Was.....

...and, to be honest, not a particularly good or memorable one in this parish at least.

Those of you who have stuck with this meandering series will probably have read last year's End of Year review where I marked 2012 as a 5 out of 10.  Re-reading it just now that seems about right, and makes it increasingly difficult to apply a rating to 2013.  I signed off last year reporting of my pending unemployment, and looking back I was very optimistic about this year to come.  As you will know from other entries (notably What A Difference a Year Makes: Scraping Past the Scrapheap) that optimism was ludicrously misplaced, and 2013 was a year of virtually constant struggles.  Apart from those on the work (or lack of it) front, there were others of a far more personal nature - thankfully not health related - that I will not go into on this forum but which caused an equal, perhaps greater, amount of stress and unhappiness.  Sadly, they are still lurking in the background and drag themselves forward from time to time, and continue to wreak a certain kind of havoc with my life and that of my nearest and dearest.  Whatever else happens this year, I intend to lay them once and for all and get back to a normal, happy life.  So if any of the perpetrators (you know who you are.....) are reading this, be warned.

So it took much longer to find gainful employment than I had expected, but I'm now about half way through a good six month assignment in Qatar (I've posted three or four accounts about the place, so I'll leave you to re-visit them at your leisure).  Suffice to say, it's going well and I'm enjoying my time (and the work!) there very much.  I'm off on the World's Five Star Airline again next weekend for another month in the sun.  But all things come to an end, and I'll be moving on to something else in the spring, all things considered.  I need to make plans and work on the options currently on the table once the holiday week is over - so, Constant Reader (to borrow from Stephen King - I hope he won't mind), if you have any bright ideas do get in touch.  And that is a serious request - use the Comments section below to do so.



What of the rest of the world?  Funny, maybe it's because of my own travails this year, but I've been somewhat detached from what has been going on elsewhere, and relatively little has captured my imagination as has been the case in past years.

Both the Catholic and Anglican churches have new leaders (Pope Francis and Whatsisname, the Archbishop of Canterbury).  The Pope seems a decent bloke, certainly one for the masses (if you'll excuse the unintentional pun) and if he can survive the Vatican Mafia that seems to have dominated the Church for too many years, and make the structural changes he seems committed to, then perhaps he will enter history as one of the best Popes ever.  The new bloke in Lambeth Palace seems pretty sharp too - at least with his past business life he's perhaps more in touch with what his congregation really thinks and needs than past more academic minded incumbents have been, but with a faith that seems even more riven by confusion and in-fighting than the Roman one he has his work cut out.

Both of them, of course, have to face up to the seemingly inexorable rise of Islam, and in particular its militant bastard offshoot.  For some time now Islam has been the fastest growing faith in the world, and sadly since the middle 90s Militant Islam seems to be growing even faster.  I confess to not being anything remotely resembling an expert in Islam, but it seems to me that up until then it was basically a peaceful faith, in much the same way as Christianity (in all its various guises).  Yes, there have been wars between Christian and Muslim, going back a thousand years and more to the time of the Crusades, but by and large both communities have got along side by side quite happily.  Quite what has caused this explosion (often quite literally) of Militant Islam I don't really understand, But it seems to me the gravest danger to non-Muslim people the world over.  How to deal with it should be uppermost in the minds of religious leaders and governments everywhere.



Ah, governments.  That is something I have noticed this year - a paucity of effective ones.  Obama, as I said last year, has got his second term, but so far it hasn't gone well.  All year he's been locked in battle with a Republican Congress whose every move has been to block everything Obama has tried to do - and yes, I know that is what "The Opposition" is supposed to do.  But when a law has been passed and signed into effect already, then trying to gets its repeal on funding issues and technicalities, using tactics that cause the entire government (in England it would be termed the Civil Service and public sector) to shut down seems to me to be taking Opposition way too far.  It's verging on revolution, not opposition.  Especially at a time when a Budget needs to be passed to avoid the potentially catastrophic default of the most powerful and largest economy on the planet, that would inevitably take down many people in many countries who have not the slightest interest in the petty squabbles of the Democrats and the GOP.  Thankfully, sense prevailed at the eleventh hour (well, nearer 10 to 12 actually) and a deal was reached to prevent that happening - for a few months anyway.  Look out for Round 2, sometime this spring I think.  The sad thing is, it's left Obama, who I honestly believed would make a massive difference not only to the US but to the rest of the world too, facing a legacy of two terms of failure. 

Things aren't much better in the UK.  As I said last year, the Coalition (as Coalitions do) is busy trying to be all things to all men, and thus managing to please nobody.  Mixed messages, obfuscations and downright lies seem to come out from the partners - if you can call them that - on an almost daily basis.  The Labour Party seems weak and ill-led and does not offer a meaningful alternative, except in the realm of mixed messages, obfuscations and downright lies.  The smaller parties don't matter. I remember many years ago, back in the days of the Blessed Margaret, attending a dinner where Jeffrey Archer (yes, him, when he was still popular and held political ambitions and had not yet been stung by the Press) was guest speaker.  He was actually (and I almost hate saying this) very entertaining.  But at the time, shortly after the Falklands War I remember, Maggie was unassailable and the Labour Party under Foot unelectable.  As part of the Q&A session, I alluded to this and asked him if Britain was in danger of becoming a one party state with a virtual dictator and was this a good thing for the country.  I can't remember his answer, but I do remember him saying it was the best question he had been asked all night.  It seems to me now, looking in from the wider world outside, that Britain is actually in a worse mess now as it's almost a No Party State.  I look and I don't see a politician worthy of the name and capable of running the country.  It's a very sad state of affairs.

Across the rest of Europe, there has been little to cheer either.  As expected, Merkel was re-elected, although perhaps not with the ringing endorsement she expected, the Greeks continue to battle their bankrupt way from one crisis to the next, as do the Spanish, Portuguese, Cypriot and Irish.  In Italy, Silvio's past finally came home to roost, he was convicted of various tax offences, bribery and corruption, kicked out of politics altogether and although escaping prison is effectively under house arrest - though probably without the usual electronic tag on his ankle as that would spoil his Gucci loafers.  The place just doesn't seem the same without him.  Eastern Europe continues to evolve.  On January 1, restrictions on Bulgarian and Romanian nationals being able to enter other EU countries, notably the UK and Germany, are being relaxed, prompting panic stories in the UK press about floods of benefit scroungers, thieves and hookers invading the country after UK jobs or, more likely, social security payments.    It's interesting to note that the other countries affected, if you can call it that, by the relaxation have made little or no comment and seem unconcerned.  So it seems the Little Englander mentality is in rude health even if the rest of the country is going to the dogs.  This is also a sad state of affairs.  It's also incredibly offensive to the vast majority of Bulgarians and Romanians, who are ordinary hard working people seeking only a better life for themselves and their families, and who are prepared to travel abroad to do so, perfectly legally and in a manner that very few British people seem prepared to do.

China continues to boom in a quite extraordinary way.  It's even managed to land a rover on the moon, the first country to do so since the Yanks and the Russians way back when.  As a further example of its continued Westernization, it's also allowed China Telecom, apparently the biggest mobile network in the world, to flog iPhones.  Apple and its fanboys (and stockholders) must be ecstatic.  The country has also been rattling sabres with Japan, as it does from time to time, over a handful of uninhabited islands in the South China Seas that both countries lay claim to.  Since the islands are just chunks of rock in the middle of nowhere, I assume mineral or oil wealth must be at stake or something.  Across in North Korea, the Man with the Dodgy Haircut celebrated the anniversary of his accession as Supreme Leader Mark III by having his uncle (apparently his closest advisor) publicly dragged out of a government meeting, tried, convicted and shot on various anti-government charges including "failing to applaud loudly enough", all in the space of a week.  The man is clearly nuts.

India continues to puzzle me.  For a country with such vast economic potential and a growing tech-savvy middle class, it is also in many respects a very backward country.  At the end of last year, a 21 year old girl was savagely gang raped on a late night Mumbai bus by 7 men, including the driver.  She subsequently died from her injuries.  The men were tried, convicted and sentenced to hang, apart from one bloke who did the job himself one night alone in his cell.  The country, from start to finish, was in uproar, with protest marches demanding better treatment for women and harsher sentences for sex crimes, and hand-wringing ministers insisting they would introduce measures to do so.  On the first anniversary, almost to the day, in the same city, another young woman, out alone, was gang raped, not once but twice on the same evening.  Clearly, the message that women are not inferior to men and not merely male playthings, isn't getting through.  Meanwhile, the majority of this rich country still lives in the most appalling poverty, lacking the most basic services.  Nothing changes.

Nelson Mandela died.  So did Peter O'Toole, a wonderful actor, and Iain Banks, a wonderful writer.  The Duchess of Cambridge (sorry, Kate Middleton) had a son called George, and the papers were full of the fact that Prince William changed the boy's shitty nappy and collected them both from hospital wearing Levi's rather than a lounge suit.  Well, good for him, says I. 

Time Magazine announced that from a short list including Butcher Assad of Syria and whistleblower Edward Snowden, sometime of Washington D.C but now living in Moscow until he can find somewhere better, its 2013 Man (or Woman) of the year was......Pope Francis.  A decent enough choice, but quite how Assad, who continues to slaughter his own people with a variety of weapons including chemical and biological even made the short list is beyond me.  It's also beyond me how, after nearly three years of this murderous activity, the rest of the world - in particular the UN, the US and the EU - continue to do no more than condemn it in "the strongest possible terms" - as if that will make any difference to the bastard. 


So all in all, it's been a fun place, this planet in 2013. 

But even for us it wasn't all doom and gloom.  In May my boy John got married, and we all flew over for the nuptials.  I'm delighted to say that Kuba and Ally were the most beautiful ring bearers ever, and that I was a very very proud and happy father watching it all.  I also finally have a photograph of me surrounded by all five of my brilliant kids.  It was a lovely weekend and we had a great time.

We managed to get our couple of weeks at the seaside here, despite all the shite at that time going on, and enjoyed ourselves (though perhaps not as much as other years).  For obvious reasons, we didn't manage our foreign holiday to Spain or somewhere, and I for one missed it.  Please God we'll make up for it next year - I quite fancy Croatia or Crete myself, but we'll see.

The kids are well, growing fine and more gorgeous by the day, and I'm glad to say doing well at school.  We have a First Communion to look forward to in May, and hopefully all the boys will come over from England for it.  That will be a fun few days, as the event is a couple of days before Ally's birthday.



A grading then?  Well, if 2012 was a 5 then this one......thanks to John's wedding and the last few weeks in Doha I can give it a fairly generous 2.5.  I really hope (and expect) 2014 to be a lot better.

So Season's Greetings to you all.  A Happy New Year, and may all your hopes and dreams come true.