New Year, Old Irritations

I was watching the BBC coverage of the fireworks on New Year, when it occurred to me how London-centric it all was, (unless you were in Scotland, of course, in which case you got all that Hogmany bollocks instead). After all, London couldn’t have been the only place in England to have fireworks going off in celebration of the New Year, now could it? I mean, the BBC seem very keen to shunt its news coverage off to Salford, so why can’t they show someone else’s firework display in the name of regionalism? They could have come here, to Crapchester and televise ours. Not that there was any kind of organised municipal display in the park, you understand (the local council is too cheap to organise such a thing). But they could have sent a roving crew aroubd to catch people letting rockets off from their back gardens, stuffing bangers through their neighbours’ letterboxes or sticking lit Roman Candles between their arse cheeks. Still, if we had had an official display, I’m sure tat, like London’s, it could have illustrated some notable occurrences in the the town’s recent history, like that time Chicken Kong, the twelve foot tall mutant rooster and world’s crappest giant monster, attacked the bus station and damaged the upholstery on the number twenty seven bus when he pecked at it. Or some our noted bizarre murders, including a dead monk in a suitcase, a dismembered body in an oven and two buggerings to death with strap ons in a local brothel. We might not have the ‘London Eye’ to engulf in flame and explosions for a finale, but we could always blow up the local sewage treatment plant and send flaming turds streaking across the sky. I’m sure it would be very popular if televised by the BBC.

But hey, it’s a New Year, so we should all be full of hope for new beginnings, etc. The trouble with New Years are that it becomes rapidly apparent that nothing has actually changed once all the euphoria and resolution making has died down. Whatever was irking you in 2023 is still going to be irking you in 2024. The war in Ukraine will still be going on and Israel will still be invading Gaza, no matter how often you either wave placards saying ‘Stop the War’ or get ‘ceasefire’ trending on Twitter. Yeah, that’s right, I still call it Twitter – nobody calls it ‘X’ other than Elon Musk and his most ardent sycophants. Mind you, I think that I can guarantee that if Twitter irked you last year, it will irk you even more this year. I mean, Twitter has always been a hotbed of crazy conspiracy nuts, but since Musk bought it, things seem to have gotten worse. Before, if you were unlucky, one or two might pop up in a trending topic, (unless you deliberately clicked on an obviously crackpot trending topic, of course), nowadays it doesn’t matter how serious the topic is, you’ll find it just full of these idiots, spewing out their demented ‘opinions’. I’m guessing it is because, thanks to Musk and the ‘Nazification’ of Twitter, most regular, sane, people just don’t bother posting any more. (I increasingly find myself asking why I’m still there).

But some of their delusions are just so cracked that you are left wondering just how demented someone needs to be in order to swallow them. A lot of them still centre on the war in Ukraine, with the Putin apologists not just regurgitating every piece of Russian propaganda and disinformation out there, but also coming up with some bizarre shit of their own. Just the other day I came across one who kept posting in a topic which had nothing to do with the conflict, that aid to Ukraine is in fact the world’s biggest money laundering scheme. I’m not sure how they think it works – nobody is actually getting any money back for the weapons which are mostly donated rather than bought for Ukraine, in order that they can defend themselves against Russia’s unprovoked aggression. But I suppose that starting a war in order to launder money (which is presumably ‘dirty’ for some unspecified reason) is the obvious way to do it. Presumably Russia must be getting a cut as payment for invading Ukraine in the first place, in order to set it all off.

Still, the Twitter cranks have got a new conflict to spin their moronic conspiracy fantasies around in the form of the Gaza-Israeli hostilities. Here, it gets interesting with regard to who supports which side in the conspiracies they weave. Now, while you might expect it to be a simple left-right split, with the former favouring the Palestinians and the right Israel, a visit to any trending topic or hashtag about the conflict on Twitter will reveal a clear schism between different parts of the extreme right. I was, for instance, surprised to find Nick Griffin, late of the BNP, supporting the Palestinians, (not as surprised as I was to find that he was actually still around, having been eclipsed in the realm of right-wing lunacy years ago, by the likes of the EDL, UKIP and Reform). But when you think about it, his position makes sense – those Israelis are Jews, after all, and Nick is an old school right-wing extremist, true to his cracked principles. Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka ‘Tommy Robinson’), football hooligan, convicted mortgage fraudster and would be leader of the British ‘patriotic’ extreme right, on the other hand, favours Israel in the conflict, because in his wing of far-right extremism the Muslims have replaced the Jews as their main bogeyman, (presumably because they are easier for his idiot supporters to recognise – I mean, those Jews, they can look just like us you know). So we have the fascinating sight of Nick Griffin and his ex-BNP right-wing extremists lining up with the left’s Cult of Corbyn in supporting Hamas, while our other favourite British nationalist bastard, Yaxley-Lennon lines up with mainstream British politicians of all stripes in backing Israel. A situation which should give our legitimate parties and movements on both left and right cause for concern.

We seem to have wandered from the original point: the way the New Year is covered by the media. As a final thought on the subject, can those who produce those end-of-the year TV shows please spare us the continuity announcers and presenters patronisingly extending their sympathies to ‘people on their own at this time’. For God’s sake, just fuck off. I’ve already had to put up with this shit all over Christmas, all the faux worries about ‘loneliness at Christmas’ expressed by the media. Why can’t they just accept that many, if not most, of us on our own at Christmas and New Year are on our own by choice? It’s all part and parcel of this country’s obsession, or rather, this country’s media’s obsession that there is only one correct way to celebrate the festive season and if you do something different then you are a sad, miserable bastard. But is it really such an outrageous idea that people should be allowed to celebrate any way they like, (so long as they don’t shove it in everyone else’s face as the only way to celebrate the season), and is it so strange that for some us, that involves enjoying it on our own? OK, I know that I’m some kind of weird loner, you know, the sort of person the Daily Mail always stigmatises as being a potential serial killer or terrorist, but if you aren’t sufficiently at ease with yourself that you can’t enjoy your own company, what does that say about you?

Doc Sleaze