Music

It’s not been the greatest year, especially for those talented artists starved of media exposure and trampled under by the likes of Swift, Lipa and a few others who grab the spotlight and sales with maximum recording and marketing funds. But the market is over-influenced by the playlist-dominated BBC who monopolises the airwaves with its state-funded national and local networks. There have been some special musical moments including records by Nick Cave, Laura Marling, St Vincent, Leif Vollebekk, Princess Goes, Ani DiFranco, Joan As Policewoman, Bastille, Aborted, Willie Carlisle, Pallbearer, Orion Pax, MK.gee, Opeth, Make Them Suffer, Josh Ritter, and Fit For An Autopsy. Due to Brexit, UK artists are finding it difficult and more expensive to tour Europe, and it now seems that only the heavily streamed and wealthy mainstream acts can continue to spread their music far and wide.

Shit Floats

It’s been a year when extreme right authoritarian regimes have prospered and survived, despite being responsible for thousands of deaths, injustice, poverty and destruction. The far-right are winning political arguments (with anti-immigration featuring strongly) in Europe with France, Germany, Hungary, and Georgia in the front line. The leaders of China, Syria, Russia, Israel, and Myanmar in particular are getting away with the mass murder and imprisonment of millions, and destruction on an industrial scale. And it’s all done with impunity while the media provides acres of free publicity for the likes of Trump, Johnson, Farage and Musk. For some, inhumanity and self-interest is deeply engrained with little or no chance of enlightenment.

Youth

Here in the UK and I suspect in other parts of the West, compared with the past, young people are suffering in several ways. In particular, many are saddled with substantial University Fee debts and high interest rates payable over many years. Then there’s the housing crisis where the young are unable to find and afford rental accommodation, let alone think of buying a property. Many are still living with their parents in the hopeless endeavour of saving enough for a deposit. With the UK’s departure from the EU the young are now unable to freely live, learn and work in other European countries  and visa versa. The last fifteen years has seen the young treated as third-class citizens and it makes me think how lucky I am to have been born at a time when I was able to achieve without major struggle. Add to the above woes the high cost of living and the plight of the young couldn’t get any worse, or could it?

Man’s inhumanity to man seems to have no boundaries. And even the great global institutions seem powerless to stop the death and destruction that we witness day-in-day-out on our screens. Millions are homeless and starving in Sudan where terrorists murder, rape and rob freely. We can only stand by and watch as Gaza and its people are ripped apart, and by those whose people experienced the the horror of the holocaust when millions were murdered and starved. And yet the USA continues to supply the means by which such atrocities are carried out. While Israel has purposely delayed peace talks agreements, waiting for Trump to arrive, more die every day and even the last hospital in northern Gaza has been rendered inoperable with its patients and staff arrested. Shame on those who continue to allow this to happen. Shame on those who govern with both eyes on the polls and corruptly. Shame on those who think words alone will stop the slaughter. Shame on us all.