Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

Now that the UK New Years Bank Hol­i­day is now over and every­one has gone back to work, we can start the whole pro­cess over again. Whilst I enjoy the Christ­mas cel­eb­ra­tions, I dis­like west­ern New Year’s cel­eb­ra­tions; it leaves no room, nor is sym­path­etic to those that don’t go out, spend­ing 3 times the usual going rate get­ting trol­lied and vomit­ing pro­fusely in unusual loc­a­tions. Then again, I quite under­stand why people do sub­scribe to that rite year in, year out. Without it, New Year’s Eve/Day in the UK is actu­ally quite, well let’s face it, boring.

Each and every year I have sat at home, cup of tea in hand, watch­ing the New Year roll in, I have been sub­jec­ted to utter self-congratulatory tripe on ITV in the form of a “Spe­cial” edi­tion of the usual Saturday-Night Prime-Time dross, as they embarass­ingly pat them­selves on the back for yet another year of dire “Celebrity” and “Real-life” and overly-scheduled docu-soaps, soapy-dramas and panto-soaps that are neither funny nor enter­tain­ing. Or even if they were, they are now on so often that the writers can’t keep up and have lost the will. Then there’s the trite BBC cov­er­age of London’s pathetic attempts of pub­lic cel­eb­ra­tion inter-cut with satel­lite cov­er­age of cit­ies that know how to do it prop­erly (New York, Sydney etc).

You see, it doesn’t mat­ter how much money Ken Liv­ing­stone throws at Fire­works Coordin­at­ors, or whatever the offi­cial title is for “light-the-blue-touch-paper-and-run”. We are always going to look like the poor rela­tion against those that cel­eb­rate the New Year because they are proud of who they are, what they have and what they are going to achieve.

Us, the Eng­lish? Proud? Not on your Nelly. Our Gov­ern­ment drums it into us that our national flag and Saint’s Day are sym­bols of oppres­sion and racism. Lon­don cab­bies can’t fly the St George flag on the day of our Saint for fear of upset­ting tour­ists, for­eign­ers and illegal immig­rants. Brit­ish WW2 vet­er­ans are sub­ject to legal action for fly­ing the flag of the nation they fought for and were pre­pared to die for. It’s a mys­tery. Surely, those that have spent hard-earned cash/many hours on a long-haul flight/many hours lay­ing silently in the back of European haulage vehicle in order to be here, are aware that they are here and are com­fort­able with that fact?

Our Gaelic cous­ins on a neigh­bour­ing island put us to shame — cel­eb­rat­ing their her­it­age whilst let­ting every­one else in on the fun, St Paddy’s is even a big hit across the pond and Down Under.

Else­where, we have a class sys­tem that doesn’t work (did someone men­tion fox hunt­ing?), a Royal Fam­ily that doesn’t so much reign, up-keep much-loved tra­di­tion and incite national pride as so much as act as a vacuum for pub­lic money, exist with no other func­tion than to open NHS Hos­pit­als and incite national embar­rass­ment (a spare-to-the-Heir in a Nazi Uni­form, any­one?) and a PM that wasn’t so much re-elected as just “left to get on with his own knit­ting”. Pre­sum­ably because every­one else was get­ting on with theirs, as almost 40% of the eli­gible UK pop­u­la­tion couldn’t actu­ally be arsed to vote.

We reside in a (not very) United King­dom; we are Eng­lish yet at sport­ing events where the Eng­land teams com­pete, we sing the National Anthem of Great Bri­tain; we are part of a con­tin­ent to which we have no mem­ber­ship, we have a com­mon­wealth with no colo­nial power.

With that sort of iden­tity crisis going on year after year, it’s no won­der we cel­eb­rate with a anti-climactic party pop­per and our heads down the lav.

Happy New Year, everyone.…Make mine a double vodka and Coke…