Happy New Year
By Richard North - January 1, 2023
This has not been a happy year and most people will probably be glad to see the back of it, I wrote in my personal New Year blogpost on 1 January last year. Sadly, I added, there are no high expectations for the coming year.
At the time, I was complaining of inflation, then at 6.8 percent, National Insurance changes about to take effect, huge energy bills in the offing, and Council Tax increases threatened. And, at that time, a new war in Ukraine was by no means a certainty.
The new year certainly did bring us the huge energy bills, which have dominated much of the discourse, inflation has effectively doubled since this time last year and virtually every economic metric one can imagine is showing a bleaker picture – against which we have the ever-present drumbeat of the Ukrainian war, nearly a year old and seemingly no nearer resolution.
Thus, one can only say of 2022 that this too has not been a happy year. It goes without saying that most people would be glad to see the back of it, but for the probability, on recent trends, that this coming year will be even worse.
As I wrote yesterday, if there was any inkling that the government was on top of its game, correctly identifying the range of problems besetting the nation and crafting a range of policies which are geared to address the issues, sentiment could be different.
But there is no one who can rightly say with any confidence that we have an administration, in the broadest sense, which is capable of even recognising the full extent of the problems besetting this country, much less dealing with them effectively and expeditiously. Experience leads us to expect that, in the main, our governments at the various levels will simply make things worse.
In what is a pre-election year, things may of course change, as the rival parties make a show of focusing on the issues, and the incumbent government seeks to address the concerns of disillusioned voters in an attempt to engineer its own survival.
Yet the sense that core capabilities are lacking tempers any expectations. The people we see holding the great offices of state show no signs of being up to the job, while rank and file parliamentarians constantly remind us of their irrelevance. If there is salvation to be had, it will not come from the centre.
This leads me to what I believe should be the theme for the current year – something to which I have alluded earlier – the need for self-reliance. When it comes to dealing with the failing systems of our nation, we are largely on our own and it is by our own exertions that we will keep the predators at bay.
Thus, while pessimism rules in our expectations of the government and institutions, we see increasingly the need to retreat from the public sphere to concentrate our energies on protecting our own. This substantially revises the concept of “community” and collective responsibility, as the fabric of society is stressed beyond its capability to respond.
However, this should not prevent us from seeking to isolate personal lives from the turmoil of government, as far as it is possible, enjoying simple pleasures and holding on to lifestyles which are sustainable at a family level. And if that requires raising the drawbridge and re-learning the art of constructive disobedience, so be it.
On that basis, despite the doom and gloom around us, there is no reason why I should not wish each of our readers, friends and family, their own individual happy new year, hoping they will be able to grab happiness where it can be found, enjoying it for what it is.
With that, in a year which will bring me to my 20th consecutive year of blogging, I must again thank the indefatigable Mrs EU Referendum, my family and our band of loyal readers and donors.