Can it really only be something like 44 weeks until the American election? Its surprising how fast time flies when there’s a two year build up to an election. Unlike the British system, where we get our elections over and done with in the space of a month, America stereotypically does things bigger, more dramatically, with infinitely more amounts of faffing about. Its happening earlier than ever this year too: the parties will have their candidates decided by early February – and then they’ll have a nine month gestation period before the election, where a new President is born, and the other candidate is mercilessly aborted (metaphorically speaking).
What surprises and yet horrifies me about American elections is just how different the Presidential candidates are to the people we’d consider suitable for Prime Minister over here.
In Britain, if someone professes to be a gun nut, you’d want to keep a close eye on them, and presumably, not get on their bad side – and if they really love guns, you may label them a psychopath. By contrast, in America, someone who loves guns in the perfect candidate for President – and it’s the people who want to get rid of guns who are the loony crackpots.
The weird thing is that the people who love guns most, usually the more conservative candidates, are also the candidates who claim to be big on “valuesâ€, the obvious implication being that the other candidates are more morally bankrupt – call me insane because I disagree, but I think it’s probably hard to be morally wrong if you’re the one who’s anti-guns.
Similarly, over here if a politician said that they thought a magic man in the sky created the Universe in six 24 hour days only a few thousand years ago, and that the collective body of scientific discourse over the last few hundred years is wrong, they’d be rightly laughed out of the Westminster village. In America, on the other hand, there are three Presidential candidates – Tom Tancredo, Sam Brownback and arguable frontrunner Mike Huckabee, who all reject the theory of evolution. And if you’ll allow me to grossly simplify, I find it a bit terrifying that aside from the obvious fact that they’re clearly driven by religious dogma rather than actually thinking about it, it’s a bit worrying that men who can’t grasp GCSE-level science will have the finger on the nuclear button.
There is one Presidential Candidate who we wimpy, secular Europeans can relate to, I think. Dennis Kucinich seems pretty cool – he’s all for universal health care, ratifying the Kyoto protocol to reduce carbon emissions, getting out of Iraq, getting rid of the death penalty and increasing gun control – the sort of things that we’ve got used to assuming politicians have as their policies (can you imagine the PM saying the environment isn’t something we need to care about?), so he sounds great.
Unfortunately for Dennis though (yeah, that’s right, we’re on first name terms), is that the Americans think that he’s a nutter. In the Iowa Democratic caucus, he won a staggering zero percent of the vote. And you don’t need to be an electionologist to realise that’s not very good. Poor Dennis.
Happy New Year, everyone! New Year is an important time – we have to celebrate an arbitrary passage of time, buy replacement calendars and breathe a sigh of relief that we’ve lasted another year without ice caps melting and drowning us all. New Year is also a time for self improvement – it’s the point in a year that “I’m on a diet†sounds most plausible even when uttered by the fattest of people. It’s when New Years Resolutions begin and fail.
I’ve been trying to come up with some New Years Resolutions myself, but given that I’m pretty much perfect, it leaves very little room for self improvement. Sure, I could resolve to be a little more modest or realistic when evaluating myself, but resolutions are supposed to be achievable. Pipe dreams are all well and good – but it won’t surprise you to learn that I’m no plumber. It’s why I spend my time writing drivel rather than fixing sinks and that sort of thing.
So anyway, instead, I’ve been considering some New Years Resolutions for some other people.
For a start, how about United Nations General Assembly Resolution 217 A (III) of 10th December 1948, otherwise known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Places like Saudi Arabia, Iran and China have been putting this off for years. I mean, sure, I guess oppressing women or torturing people or whatever has become something of a tradition for these countries, but if they want, this year could be the year that they decide to get their act together. Maybe King Abdullah could do with losing some weight too – that absolute power must mean he never has to lift a finger.
Another resolution the same countries, as well as loads of others could try and stick to this year could be resolution A/RES/62/149 – which as the exciting codename makes obvious, is the recently passed United Nations resolution about getting rid of the death penalty. Its not legally binding, because it was a General Assembly Resolution rather than a Security Council Resolution (ie: because the poor countries get to vote on it, it doesn’t count), but New Years Resolutions never are – you’re supposed to just have a damn good go at it anyway, and then inevitably share anecdotes in mid-January about how you’ve broken all of your resolutions. But you have to try in the first place, and that’s the main thing.
So there are just two resolutions that a few countries could try. The thing is though, is that I don’t think my ideas are going to have any effect… because annoyingly, Iran, Saudi Arabia and China, all have entirely different calendars to us. As everyone knows, Chinese New Year is in February – apparently this year the human-rights oppressing Olympic hosts will be Year of the Wolf (In Sheep’s Clothing). And Iran has its own Persian Calendar – which I guess is useful as if anyone complains that “the oppression of women in Iran is like the Middle Agesâ€, they can reply “well, it is literally 1386!â€
I know what you’re thinking: “how did James spend New Years Eve?”. Perhaps somewhat predictably, I went down to London to watch the fireworks and all that. It was certainly a once-in-a-lifetime event. I mean, sure, you could do it again, but whether you’d want to is another question all together.
We drove down to London, parking at Finchley Central tube station on the outskirts, and caught the tube in. We made our way to Westminster, and more specifically, the excellent pub at the Namco Station on the South Bank. Unlike normal pubs, this pub is built into an arcade, so has a bowling alley, arcade games and dodgems. Its literally the best pub ever. So we spent the last few hours of 2007 behaving like teenagers.
Unfortunately though, at about ten o’clock, they closed off the whole South Bank, because that was where all the fireworks were going to be – so we were kicked out on to Westminster Bridge with two hours to spare. There were no drinks for sale on the bridge, and we didn’t have the foresight to bring any, which meant the two hours passed exceedingly slowly.
I tried to pass the time by doing some Peter-Kay-esque observational comedy. “Remember stuff from years ago? Eh? Eh? Remember when we had to manually type custom ringtones into black and white mobile phones? What’s with that? And when you go in a lift, right, you press the number of the floor you want to go to… but why is there a doors close button? The doors are going to close anyway! What’s with that?”
Eventually, midnight arrived, and some fireworks exploded, that sort of thing. Unlike poor Diamond Geezer, we had the best place in London. Being on Westminster Bridge, we had a full view of both Big Ben striking midnight, and the fireworks display on the London Eye. The fireworks were pretty spectacular, as you’ll see in the video:
After the fireworks display, the organisation of the event sort of fell apart, as nearly all 700,000 revellers descended on Waterloo tube station to get home (Westminster and Embankment were closed). And it turned out that the pub wasn’t reopening after midnight, so we had to join them. After faffing about for about an hour I cleverly hatched a plan to head to Southwark station which was just a bit further a long – which turned out to be a good idea, as there were only around 100,000 people who had that same idea.
But we eventually got back and it all worked out alright. I think being in London was a good idea. Really.
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