THERE must be something worth anticipating in the year about to start. At least that's what I told myself when I sat down to write this, my last effort of 2008. I can seldom, if ever, remember starting a new year with as little promise as this one. Yet it's been one of life's lessons that anything from a missed opportunity to a total disaster, and everything in between, can result in previously unconsidered alternatives coming in from the cold.
For example, I well remember a Hogmanay in the 60s when things looked just about as bleak as I could then imagine. I'd just come out of hospital following an operation to remove a growth on my tibia.
It was discovered that I had osteomylitis and
my days of playing netball and hockey and just about every other game that involved contact with a hard playing surface were pronounced over . . . so teaching PE was no longer an option. But seen from this perspective, that new year released the time for me to develop my interest in politics, to take up dress-making and to help my husband manage and expand his family's public house.
The net result of having absorbed the disappointment of packing in the sports I loved and redirecting my energies was that about three years later, I was ready, willing and able, given the skills and knowledge I'd acquired after being crocked, to become the candidate in a by-election that played an important part in the long march towards self-government.
That's how I'm going into 2009: everything looks disastrous, but bring it on. So what if some of the politicians we're hoping will sort out the UK economy seem to be acting out the parts played by Charlton Heston and Findlay Currie in the epic Hollywood biblical blockbusters currently replaying on nostalgia movie channels.
The Prime Minister, according to the Minister for Business Lord Mandelson is a veritable Moses. Presumably, Mandy, friend to millionaires and bosom buddy to multi-millionaires, is promoting the idea of Gordon Brown leading his people to a land flowing with milk and honey, to justify the lean years that we're just now beginning to experience.
The man who's right behind the Prime Minister might well share my attitude to forced, or unexpected change. Certainly, he gives no hint of regret that he had to leave the EU gravy train before he'd planned. Rather, he's thrown himself into his unexpected return to the Cabinet with gusto, establishing a very high place for himself in the pecking order.
It's his department, not the Treasury, that held sway, for example, in the question of whether to pursue for damages the Scots businessmen who challenged the takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB.
There were no public splits or wobbles, but behind the Westminster lines, there were differences of opinion amongst Brown's battalions on how best to deal with the banks.
Little did we know that the Prime Minister, previously known as "Ditherer", was installing a phone box big enough to twirl in, before flying off from Downing Street to save the world.
We had thought he would take an extra-close interest in what was happening in the banking world, particularly our part of it, given the jobs at risk.
But no, Gordon thought another part was made for him in the drama currently playing in the countries that still think of themselves as the world's richest. He eschews the long white beard and flowing robes Peter Mandelson's visualises for him.
To see him and the country through the terrible times to come, he's adopted the stiff collars, bowler hat, spats and mannered speech pattern of Churchill, as he faces down the enemy of his own creation . . . economic meltdown. I wonder who he'd like to be next, and if he'll do Rory Bremner out of a job?
For his presentation, the PM deserves a good score, but for economic content he scores a big fat nothing. In his "Fight them in the shopping malls" speech, he introduced the concept of balancing a family's budget because of the opportunity for collective character-building produced by such an exercise. "Winston" Brown says that the poverty about to be experienced by millions of people who believed him when he told them he loved Prudence more than anything else in the world, will expand our national strength of character even more.
But just as Big Broon didn't mention how much he was borrowing when his speeches were all about prudence making Britain great again, so he's not now talking about expanding the economy . . . only our strength of character.
Gordon Brown kidded us . . . because we wanted to believe the rules of capitalism had been bent to suit all of us, all of the time.
The year 2009 is about rescuing, recycling and redirecting economic realism, including a customised, independent Scottish economic strategy.
The full article contains 822 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
