A very merry Reviewtide to you all. We are, of course, in the days between Christmas and new year: season of reviews of the year, quizzes of the year, people of the year, lists of the year and predictions for next year. I can't be sure that this is the perfect pairing for the increasingly attritional diet of leftovers and Chocolate Oranges that constitutes so much of our intake at this time in the calendar, but the news sommeliers have decreed it must be thus so long ago that you might as well argue against gravity as try to resist.
It is a time for reflection. Which is to say a time to wonder vaguely whether having 20-20 memory on how many days Kim Kardashian's marriage lasted, but having forgotten the order in which Libyan cities fell to the rebels, counts as displacement activity – or just early onset nihilism.
Occasionally, North Korea will get up a state funeral to oblige the reader, but very little cuts through the enforced Looking Back, and not much more through the Looking Forward. Even Nick Clegg – now polling somewhere near negative infinity – has been firing out sub-reflective video messages into the encircling darkness, warning that "the next year will be one that poses many great challenges for everyone in Britain". Whether the deputy PM reached the comic heights of Enver Hoxha's new year address in 1967 is debatable. "This year will be harder than last year," the Albanian leader informed his people. "It will, however, be easier than next year."
The trouble is that this year's news had such a thick-and-fast quality to it that it already felt like living through a review of a year, if not a review of a decade. The experience of reading it in telescoped-down form in an actual review of the year is so dizzying that editors should probably cover-mount motion sickness pills.
Yet such a voluminous staple has Reviewtide become that the next logical step should see it recognised as a version of news itself, and reviewed accordingly. A few years ago, the awards industry inaugurated the Awards Awards. Far from being an Onion headline, this was a genuine awards ceremony designed to recognise the best awards ceremonies of the year. So let us hope it is not long before a meta-layer of sifting and ranking is added to Reviewtide. Indeed, were I to risk a 2012 prediction other than "the news will get even bigger", it would be that next year will see the inaugural Review of the Reviews of the Year, in which a big name writer like Martin Amis or maybe Katie Price delivers a several thousand-word review of the reviews of the year.
Many of us already have our Person of the Year of the Year for 2011, after the BBC this week decided to winsomely give one of its women of the year slots to a panda. Meanwhile, in a time-pressed media increasingly dominated by lists, List of the Year of the Year is a helluva crowded field. But I'd settle on a press release from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, headlined "Top 10 Antisemitic Slurs of 2011". On first glance I assumed the document to be a parody, but it seems the modern mania for ranking things in lists of 10 really has spread to the business of chronicling antisemitism. Alas, it was impossible not to imagine the countdown being delivered in Smashie and Nicey tones – "at four, it's John Galliano with the hot rockin' 'I love Hitler'" – but I suppose the centre must be congratulated for finding a new way to deploy this most knackered of media devices.
Prediction-wise, you can scarcely move for publications crowing that they foresaw various tech trends, but on Arab springs and Bin Laden takedowns and the like there are rather more studied silences. Obligingly, Foreign Policy magazine has dredged up some of the worst predictions of the year, which include corkers such as Hillary Clinton's January assessment that "the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people". But the publication graciously acknowledges that even geniuses can get it wrong, as evidenced by Thomas Edison's 1911 predictions for the year 2011. Edison confidently predicted that alchemy – "the secret of transmuting metals" – would have been cracked by 2011. "In the magical days to come," he speculated of 2011, "there is no reason why our great liners should not be of solid gold from stem to stern." Well, you can't win 'em all. Edison does seem to have foreseen an approximation of the electronic reader, though, declaring that books will be printed on nickel pages "so light to hold that the reader can enjoy a small library in a single volume".
However, Prediction of the Year of the Year would surely go to Harold Camping – the evangelical broadcaster who in 2011 contrived to fail to predict the end of the world not once, but twice. All that remains is to wish a merry Reviewtide to Harold, given he is likely to have been one of its stars, and to wonder idly whether the end of the world would really be so bad if it meant not having to suffer this media season ever again.
Comments
30 December 2011 5:13PM
Tories and bankers to fill pockets with cash
30 December 2011 5:16PM
Britain fails to win any gold at the Olympics.
Fox hunting to become legal.
Somebody from the world of media will die in a helicopter crash.
30 December 2011 5:17PM
And yet the Guardian and the Observer still think that he walks on water and can do no wrong. I wonder what it would take to get Alan Rusbridger to withdraw his support for the fraud Clegg? Obviously lying to the electorate has not changed Rusbridger's view, nor signing pledges which even a month before, he knew he would not keep, nor collaborating, eg in the privatisation of the NHS, with the most ideologically driven right wing government that we have had the misfortune to see in this country for several generations.
Just asking.
30 December 2011 5:17PM
Why should next year be any different from the one that is about to become history?
The reality for many will be simply just more hardship... and what it means for the extremely wealthy - well I couldn't give a damn.
... also, looking at the photo' chosen to illustrate this article certainly confirms my view that we will continue to have the lives of celebrities foisted on us by the parts of the media that are determined to distract us from said reality.
So, much the same as before then.
The idea that one new year brings anything different or meaningful to the majority of people is - humbug. Bah!
30 December 2011 5:18PM
who'd have thunk kim kardishians marriage would last longer than sinead o' connor's!! we are truly lost in this business we call show...
i predict cheryl cole will be crowned president of zimbabwe after his timely death at the gift of 'iceland prawn balls' as a new year gift from stacey solomon.
cheers marina. a joy to read you in 2011.
30 December 2011 5:18PM
More frothing at the mouth articles about how good the EU is as austerity causes misery in Europe.
30 December 2011 5:19PM
My prediction - more banker bailouts.
And more of the money of the poor moving into the pockets of the rich because our political process has totally sold out ordinary people.
30 December 2011 5:19PM
unease in the labour party as ED Miliband fails to connect with the voters,
and a leadership challenge sometime towards the end of 2012
30 December 2011 5:20PM
Almost right, except it's not just the Tories.
Anyone stupid enough to vote for any of the three major parties is a moronic sheep who deserves to be sheared.
30 December 2011 5:23PM
England will (again) not become European champion.
Natural disasters will remain unpredictable.
The rest of the new will have the same themes as in 2011, with a few deadlines for a few presidents of nuclear powers.
30 December 2011 5:29PM
Nick Clegg to have a nervous breakdown, and end up quietly sectioned.
30 December 2011 5:30PM
... now that's just wishful thinking.
30 December 2011 5:31PM
Martin Amis to tell everyone he's a genius. Marina Hyde to believe him.
30 December 2011 5:33PM
Look on the bright side, it keeps you in a job.
30 December 2011 5:34PM
in 2012 the guardian will try to ease Jody Mcintyre back on as a columnist ,
just a reminder what he said during the riots.
30 December 2011 5:39PM
I don't want to know. More of the same I expect. :-(
30 December 2011 5:43PM
That sounds a suspiciously detailed prediction!
30 December 2011 5:44PM
I can confidently predict that I will be bored of hearing about the 2012 Olympics and the US presidential election roughly 2 minutes into 2012.
30 December 2011 5:46PM
2012?
Economy- Shit
Jobs- Shit
Politicians- Shit
There, done.
30 December 2011 5:53PM
Don't think you'll be alone on that either. I wonder if we'll look back on 2011 as a 'pretty good year' based on what we've got to look forward to in the next 12 months.
30 December 2011 6:01PM
A clash between Thatcher's Funeral and the Jubilee Celebrations sends the Daily Mail staff into such a frenzy that three quarters of them have to be detained under the Mental Health Act.
Similar journalistic meltdowns occur at the Guardian when Jeremy Clarkson receives a panda coat from the Chinese government for punching the Dalai Lama on behalf of Israel.
Cameron's popularity goes through the ceiling as he tours the world with Prince Phillip telling a different head of state each day to fuck off.
30 December 2011 6:02PM
My prediction for 2012 is that they will be alot more whingeing coming from the leftwing about bankers and tories and the top 1%. :)
30 December 2011 6:04PM
Guardian to go under
30 December 2011 6:05PM
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30 December 2011 6:06PM
2012 -year of Royal baby announcements?
Be nice to see some good things happen in North Korea -optimism abounds!
30 December 2011 6:07PM
Yes, that comment struck me as slightly ominous! In my mind's ear I read it in the voice of one of those voice-modulater thingies which mask the identity of the speaker over the phone...
30 December 2011 6:08PM
It will not be at all nauseating to witness Dave, Boris and Seb waving their mini Union Jack flags in the VIP seats at all the major Olympic events whilst the UK crumbles around them.
30 December 2011 6:15PM
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30 December 2011 6:17PM
My prediction for 2012 is that they will be alot more whingeing coming from the leftwing about bankers and tories and the top 1%. :)
I know, terrible how the great unwashed always target innocent minorities, isn't it?
30 December 2011 6:24PM
fair point, although they're the ones who can do anything about it at the moment so they are the lightning rod, let's face it the lib dems are just a pathetic voiceless neccessity for the tories
i would vote green, but I can't risk the tories getting in again, so it will be labour all the way
30 December 2011 6:29PM
I predict a riot.
30 December 2011 6:29PM
The internet will continue to wise people up, while they keep trying to dumb us down. Expect fireworks.
30 December 2011 6:31PM
Just like last time
30 December 2011 6:32PM
Delicious.
Btw, has anybody in Guardian Towers thought to break through the 'Clegg bubble' which surrounds the Graun's editors and powers that be to inform them of this (cough) little fact?
30 December 2011 6:37PM
(Pedant's Corner.)
The goal of alchemy has indeed been cracked. Edison deserves applause for his correct guess, in 1911, before nuclear physics had got off the ground. Was was known, at that time, is that thorium decays spontaneously to radium. Nowadays, nuclear transmutation of elements is commonplace. Gold has been synthesized from mercury by bombardment with gamma rays and from platinum by bombardment with protons. At present, the most important application of transmutation of elements is the use of nuclear fission in power stations.
30 December 2011 6:37PM
I think they see him as a a challenge,don't be surprised if they rename their headquarters Clegg Towers.
30 December 2011 6:42PM
Yup, bankers and Tories will constinue to line their pockets, as will the union representatives paid for by the State to do no work; as will the union leaders by increasing their own wages, but not those of their members; as will Gordon Brown by taking his Parliamentary salary and not turning up; as will Saint Tony with his ever-.growing fee for speaking engagements; as will many other MPs on all sides, as they believe they have been elected just to put their sticky fingers in the jam jar; and Balls will consinue to deny that he and Gord were mostly to blame for the banking crisis in the U.K.
In other words, nothing will change.
Oh, and Guardian readers will continue to get red in the face about Jeremy Clarckson's inanities.
30 December 2011 6:43PM
Yeah - because voting for the smaller parties or not voting at all really gets us somewhere new, ermmm mmmm wait a minute............
30 December 2011 6:43PM
A sheading of second homes as they become economicly unviable.
New Drug wars as new synthetic highs are peddled to the distraught.
30 December 2011 6:44PM
Don't give them ideas Zap!
30 December 2011 6:47PM
Thanks for your work this year, Marina. Your piece on Murdoch in July one of the best things on the paper in 2011.
30 December 2011 6:49PM
no one cares anymore - this is pointless - moderate me - i dare you
30 December 2011 6:57PM
what a surprise well that makes a change,
better luck then the last half dozen times, think it will make a difference ?
30 December 2011 6:58PM
Absolutely dreadful isn't it Harry?
So tell me, why do you read the Guardian?
30 December 2011 6:58PM
the stone roses to rule the world!!
happy new year peeps
30 December 2011 6:59PM
We get him, he doesn't really get our goat but we're just a bit tired of him that's all. Like a loud narcissistic child that just won't shut up or go away.
30 December 2011 7:02PM
positive unrealistic prediction
bankers to realise their million pound bonuses which they consider spare cash would be best spent as donation to poor people who are starving to death all over the planet right now...
a new era of philanthropy...?
we could even give out medals as a reward
30 December 2011 7:02PM
" But I'd settle on a press release from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, headlined "Top 10 Antisemitic Slurs of 2011". On first glance I assumed the document to be a parody, "
.
Is No 1 ,,,, " I don't think Israel ought to expand the settlements " ??
30 December 2011 7:04PM
don't say much for the paper does it , oh dear lets hope they get a better circulation in 2012
30 December 2011 7:05PM
How do you arrive at that conclusion? No, I am not that type. Actually, I have a vague childhood memory of a photograph in the Guardian newspaper. The photo showed a man in a white coat holding a thin sheet of metal with a pair of tongs. The metal apparently contained some gold, which had been transmuted from platinum (in some way which I do not recall, but presumably by irradiation with protons).