Politics
Highlights and lowlights
Published 19 December 2005
January
- King Charles II, who created the Post Office, is probably shifting uneasily in his grave, for New Year means farewell to the Royal Mail monopoly and hello to a postal free market, courtesy of the Postal Services Act 2000 and an obscure outfit called Postcomm. Don't expect to see the milkman delivering letters just yet, though. It's an expensive market to enter.
- The trial of former Soho nightclub bouncer Abu Hamza begins in earnest at the Old Bailey. The radical imam known to red-top headline writers as Hook denies 16 charges, including urging followers to murder non-Muslims, inciting racial hatred and possessing a document that could be useful to terrorists.
- Benjamin Franklin turns 300 on 17 January, a special day not just for Americans (founding father and all that) and physicists (he put the plus and minus into electricity), but for all who use catheters and bifocals (which he invented). If you're moved to pay homage, his only surviving home, 36 Craven Street in London, opens to the public on the big day after a lavish renovation.
- Consider staying in bed on 24 January. According to the Cardiff University formula [W + (D-d)] x TQM x NA, that is the day when post-Christmas tristesse, credit card bills, seasonal affective disorder and failure to keep New Year resolutions all collide most viciously in our subconscious. You've been warned.
- The Global Development Conference meets in St Petersburg, Russia. This is the next in a series that last surfaced in London before the Gleneagles summit, when the theme was Africa. It's professionals, not politicians, and this time they are worrying about whether big institutions are making any difference.
- Steven Spielberg, the man who made a Hollywood movie about the Holocaust, ventures back into the moral minefield with the release of Munich, billed as his greatest movie gamble. It recounts the sequel to the murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics - a series of revenge assassinations by Mossad,
the Israeli secret service.
- Polish your Magic Flute and make sure your Cosi is fan tutte. The year's really big cultural anniversary, Eurovision aside (see May), is Mozart's 250th. The works could hardly be described as neglected now, but in the coming months few of us will escape exposure to the vast output of the puckish genius born on 27 January 1756.
February
- You've read the book and seen the film; now it's sing-along-a Lord of the Rings. The premiere of the £11.5m musical may be in Toronto, but if the orcs and ents put bums on seats there, they will be wreaking havoc in a theatre near you sooner than you can say Mordor. Co-producer Kevin Wallace is promising an "awe factor", so maybe Michael Ball will play a hobbit. Awww.
- After three years, the judges in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic retire to consider their verdict. The charges against the former Yugoslav president include breaching the Geneva Conventions, violating the laws of war and crimes against humanity. Oh, and genocide.
- Lewis "Scooter" Libby is back in court, and not for the last time. Dick Cheney's former chief of staff was one of the most powerful men in the US until he resigned to face trial on charges of obstructing justice, perjury and making false statements in connection with the illegal leaking of the name of a CIA agent.
- The US congressional committee on Hurricane Katrina reports on who was to blame when the devil was allowed to take the hindmost in New Orleans. Bush has admitted to serious problems at all levels of government, but what about the state of the levees? What about global warming? And should he have let two whole days pass before breaking off his Texas holiday?
- Winter Olympics in Turin: catch them while the globe is still cool enough. Britain wins the odd medal at these (remember those Scottish women curlers), though we had to give one back last time thanks to the skier Alain Baxter's unfortunate Vicks Inhaler habit. Otherwise it's clench your bum for the luge, bend your knees for the downhill and be very careful with that doppel lutz.
March
- At the time George W Bush talked about bombing al-Jazeera he couldn't even understand what the Arabic-language TV station was saying, so what will he think when, starting in March, the outfit begins beaming out its rather different take on life in English? Sir David Frost, among the presenters, should keep his tin hat handy.
- The inquiry that the Home Office tried every legal trick in the book to prevent is due to deliver its report on the murder of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham Young Offenders' Institution. The teenager was locked up with, and then beaten to death by, a notorious racist. The prison service is in the dock.
April
- Venus Express arrives. Five months after blast-off from Russia, the European Space Agency's spy in the sky gets in position over our nearest planetary neighbour, ready to beam back news about its pock-marked surface and its hurricane-force, furnace-hot, sulphuric acid atmosphere. And they say this is where women come from.
- Centenary of the San Francisco earthquake. At 5.12am on 18 April 1906, California shook with a force estimated at around 8 on the Richter scale (which did not then exist) and a 270-mile gash opened along the San Andreas Fault. At least 3,000 died and about 300,000 were left homeless, but not a cent of federal money was made available for rescue or reconstruction.
May
- Diplomatic horse-trading will by now be reaching frenzy point in New York as the United Nations seeks a successor to Kofi Annan as secretary general. Consensus has it that it is Asia's turn, so diplomats from Sri Lanka and Thailand are pushing hard for the job, but (surprise, surprise) the US does not subscribe to the consensus. So, with the arch-neocon Paul Wolfowitz now ensconced at the World Bank, what price Donald Rumsfeld as the world's chief peacemaker?
- Congratulations, and celebrations. I want the world to know it's the 50th anniversary edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. High time, surely, for a Cliff revival. And let's hope we get to hear again Switzerland's fab 1956 winner, "Refrain", officially described as a "melancholic number about the colour of rain, the inevitability of growing up and feeling sorry". You couldn't make it up, Terry.
June
- World Cup 2006 kicks off: 30 days, 12 venues, 32 teams and 64 matches, but only one Sven-Goran Eriksson. Will Germany win? Will France flop? Will the Brazilians stroll it? Or will Becks, Wayne, Rio and the boys upend history and earn themselves knighthoods like Sir Geoff and Sir Bobby? Whatever, get the beers in for 9 June and (like Hunter Davies, page viii) turn off the phone, and the rest of the world, for the duration.
July
- It's not even worth the call to the bookies: the government's latest review of the country's energy needs is due to report mid-year and is certain to call for nuclear power to be resurrected from the grave to which Chernobyl consigned it 20 years ago (anniversary: April). Next up: whose backyard will they put it in?
- The verdict on Herceptin, the drug that made headlines when women said they had been "left to die" when denied it. The European Medicines Agency will give its decision on Roche Pharmaceuticals' application relating to use of Herceptin in early-stage treatment of certain forms of breast cancer.
August
- A timely anniversary: on 27 August 1956 Calder Hall power station was linked to the national grid, making it the first nuclear reactor in the world to supply civil power on a regular basis. It was seen as a national scientific triumph and a symbol of hope for a country short of energy, though in fact the electricity was only a by-product: for its first decade the reactor (at Sellafield) was primarily used to make plutonium for British nuclear bombs.
September
- Student debts will no doubt rise and official cash registers will certainly jingle as British universities start charging £3,000-a-year tuition fees. Only eight universities plan to charge less: Thames Valley; Writtle College; University College Northampton; Greenwich; York St John College; Trinity and All Saints College; College of St Mark and St John; and Leeds Metropolitan. Part of the cash goes to bursaries (typically between £300 and £1,000 per year) for lower-income students.
October
- No Britney in a wimple, alas, nor even Scarlett Johansson, but Andrew Lloyd Webber's West End revival of The Sound of Music is bound to pack 'em in, the more so if he solves his Maria problem through a TV talent show. No prize for the first sighting of a headline saying the tills are alive.
- It won't be the first time you hear about the matter this year, but October is the target for Iran's first nuclear plant to go critical and start generating electricity. Built with Russian help, the aptly named Bushehr reactor (located rather less aptly in Iran's Shiraz region) has caused fury in the US and more measured anxiety in Europe.
- Elections in Brazil: is this the end for President LuIz Inacio Lula da Silva and his Workers' Party? Their long march finally brought them to power in 2002, but they have been battered by lurid corruption scandals for the past year. Lula's chief rival is Jose Serra of the Social Democracy Party, whom he beat last time. All now depends on how dim a view the electorate takes of parliamentary vote-buying.
- The national minimum wage goes up by 30p to £5.35, which is good news for 1.4 million people. The change is subject to confirmation by the Low Pay Commission in February. The development rate (for workers aged 18-21) could go up to £4.45 from £4.25.
November
- US midterm elections: 33 Senate seats, the whole of the House of Representatives and 36 state governorships are up for grabs, though for most of us the big questions will be how much egg lands on Dubbya's face and who runs the Senate. Hillary Clinton, Arnie Schwarzenegger, Ted Kennedy and Jeb Bush are among those facing the voters.
- England's fight to retain the Ashes begins in Brisbane. The Aussies are rubbing their hands, but history offers some encouragement for Vaughnie, Freddie, Tresco and the rest: the last time an England side tried to do this - after triumph at home in the summer of 1985 - they went Down Under and won, Mike Gatting leading them to a 2-1 victory in 1987. After that, though, there was a bit of a drought.
December
- According to a promise made by Tony Blair in 2002, Britain will be a broadband nation by year's end, with internet access in all primary and secondary schools, as well as connections in surgeries, hospitals, primary care trusts and across the entire criminal justice system.
- We didn't like rates, we didn't like poll tax and we don't like council tax. An inquiry under Sir Michael Lyons into tax and local government will report in December on whether there is a workable scheme we will put up with. The definition of a thankless task.
Iraq: Exit the Brits
"Within one year," Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, said in November, "Iraqi troops will be ready to replace British forces in the south." It looks like he was right and 2006 will be the year when all but a rump of our 8,000-strong force departs. The US, too, will trim troop numbers from today's 150,000, maybe down to 100,000. George W Bush may say that "in Iraq there is no peace without victory", but his Republican Party is more concerned about the midterm elections (see November) than his desire for vindication. Besides the 2,100 death toll and the relentless humbling of US power, there is the small matter of a $300bn bill to pay. The "Iraq-isation" of security will accelerate, the democracy-building process will be presented in the best light possible and the terrible carnage of the insurgency will slowly become somebody else's problem. They hope.
Nuclear weapons
The Royal Navy's Trident II nukes may have nearly 20 years of service left in them but, if the government thinks it can get away with it, 2006 will be the year the order is placed for their replacement. John Reid, the Defence Secretary, has laid the groundwork for new nukes by "calling for a debate" (while preventing his backbenchers from voting on it) and ploughing roughly £5bn into extra facilities at Aldermaston. The total cost will be well over £15bn and the (current) official rationale, according to Reid, goes like this: "I defy anyone here to say that we will not need a nuclear weapon in 20 to 50 years' time."
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