The last one was really quite remarkable and, despite the grim end, my memories from it are predominantly happy ones (alas though, no longer overwhelmingly so). 2009 will have to do quite a lot to top it.

After intermittent negotiations between the SES team, the following list in our annual exercise in outright pretension has emerged. Note that negotiations were, in fact, still ongoing at the point of the post, so it may suddenly change. But it really needed to go up today:

Funniest Moment: Gordon Brown saving the world.
Saddest Moment: Too many.

Best Political Decision: Mandleson brought back into Cabinet.
Worst Political Decision: David Davis’ resignation.

The Stephen Fry Award for Unbounded Eloquence: William Hague on EU Treaty.
The Prescott Award for Gobbledegook: Sarah Palin.

Best Photograph: David Miliband and the banana.
Worst Photograph: David Miliband and the banana.

Worst Video: McCain’s “Celebrity” Ad.
Best Video: Paris Hilton’s response to McCain’s “Celebrity” Ad.

The Sarah Palin Memorial Award for Political Flops: Sarah Palin.

The Robin Cook Award for Most Principled Action: None this year.
The David Miliband Award for Political Spinelessness: The Israeli government, for timing its slaughters to provide election boosts.

Event of the Year: Obama’s victory across the pond.
Catastrophe of the Year: The recession.

Scribo Ergo Sum Person of the Year: Barack Obama.

We welcome suggestions for almost anything. Particularly best and worst albums of the year, as we just haven’t discussed them yet…

…to us, that is. We published our first blogpost on this day a year ago.

Not absolutely certain all the celebrations are in our honour, though. So; Merry Christmas! Expect any further posts from myself today to be the slightly incoherent results of an attempt to mull wine…

I don’t know quite what to make of it, but Clinton’s latest claim is certainly the most outlandish yet!

Being contrary is not a habit (honest ;)), but it is sometimes necessary.  Today is not St Patrick’s Day.  The Catholic Church moves the traditional 17th March date of the feast in years where it falls within Holy Week.  St Patrick’s Day was observed on 15th March instead.  I am reliably told by Wikipedia that this will not happen again until 2160.  So there.

I have nonetheless changed the Scribo Ergo Sum banner for the remaining hours of the feast, albeit on the wrong day.

Today is π Day.  In American notation, 14th March is rendered 3/14, so 1.59pm is π Minute.  I am not a mathematician - far from it.  But I know how important π is, so will give it due credence on it’s special day.

Birthdays celebrated today include Albert Einstein and Johann Strauss I.

Today is the glorious anniversary of the date that was R.E Vamp’s birth.  As little emphasis as we godless socialistic heathens place on such arbitrary boundraries, we nonetheless feel that if there are to be any such celebrations, this surely is a worthy one.

In short: Happy Birthday, R.E Vamp.

I took the liberty of changing the logo at the top of the website this morning to include some hearts, as Google and subsidiary YouTube did.  How romantic of me.

Personally, I dislike the principle of Valentine’s Day, just like I am wary of Christmas.  It seems artificial to create a day for “love”, just as picking one day to think of Jesus is peculiar.  And, like Christmas, Valentine’s is inherently consumerist.  Luckily there are many of us - and we even have our own word: Antivalentinism.

Now, where did I leave those humbug-flavoured chocolates and roses?

Apologies for my absence, I was with friends.

I am afraid that my thoughts for this year are somewhat skewed as a consequence of the first thing which I read this year being an organ named Lalkar {or LOLcommunism, as a friend I took to referring to it} which we purchased off of a man in red bib with a hammer-and-sickle logo for the princely sum of one pound.

This bi-monthly magazine seemed to take the approach that the best way to bring Communism to Britain was by “Marxism-Leninism” style revolutionary socialism, which they decided to demonstrate in their propaganda solely by acting as apologists for “Communist” leaders abroad.

These included Mugabe, Kim Jong-il and the Burmese military junta.

Throughout anyone observing and challenging the foul oppression that has happened within Zimbabwe, North Korea or Burma was depicted as foul bourgeoisie scum interested in regime change due to being imperialist ideologues interested in crushing the people being so carefully cared for by their deranged captor-dictators, who were apparently evaluated in their legitimacy entirely on the grounds of whether or not they claimed to be Communists.

Other than this apologism there were literally two articles on other matters, the first the form of beatification of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath that you would expect from such a “News”-paper and the second one that tried, unsuccessfully, to tie communism and an 1857 war in India together.

There were a grand total of no articles talking about the state of Britain, the goals and aims of the party, let alone the methods {besides their apparent wish to play things Korean style, which was something that I found actually surreal, and in an article mainly praising the “The Dear Leader”} and nothing whatsoever on how they would offer a better world than the one which exists.

There was even a section where they quoted Stalin.

As Communist out-put goes this is as close to the right-wing wet-dream of a publication as could possibly occur without them writing it.

You can find its website here and read its glory for yourself. I have not yet checked its archives but I imagine that they will be thoroughly entertaining, judging from its most recent edition.

Yesterday, Ali expressed a deeply pessimistic view of the New Year. Granted, there are many grounds for this grumpiness. Already in 2008, at least 30 Kenyans have burned to death in a church, a suicide bomber has targeted a funeral procession in Iraq, and the elections in Pakistan look like they’re about to be cancelled. An inauspicious start to the year.

But I’m not sure it’s grounds for ruling out optimism entirely. Yes, the prospects for the coming year are distinctly poor. But those prospects are hardly going to change if they’re just accepted as givens - which they aren’t. The vast majority of problems may well be insurmountable: I fear an economic slump is now almost unavoidable, unless there’s a sharp turn away from the current situation. This seems unlikely.

However, that’s not the point. Other probabilities may be easier to avert. Ali is worried that Brown will continue to destroy the future of both party and nation. Given his past record, that seems likely. But surely the answer to that is not to run around worrying, but to step up opposition and actually do something about Brown. It’s not as good as having a decent Prime Minister, but it might at least keep him busy enough to limit the damage.

Several of Ali’s worries can be treated in the same way. The rise of the SNP can be opposed with rational argument, for example. And some of his fears are unfounded. Far-right groups aren’t on the rise at the moment, they’re going down the pan faster than Brown. The BNP split not too long ago. That division shows no sign of healing in the near future, and with the largest far-right grouping in the UK steadily collapsing, there seems little fear of a fascist resurgence in 2008.

Of course, some are almost beyond control. The economy, the behaviour of foreign powers, and the Mayoral elections all look pretty much lost. But, where we can, we should at least try to do something. For entirely too long now, the left has been affected with the disease of negativity. Its focus is entirely on angry, often ranting attacks on anything that it declares a dislike for. It isn’t acting rationally, a lot of the time - it’s not even opposing conservatism and neoliberalism effectively. It doesn’t propose an alternative. It just points the finger and screams.

If the world is to change - if it’s to be returned to the hands of progressivism after its brutal mauling in the collective (yet so very un-socialised) jaws of the New and Old Rights, and of course the simple incompetents - then that needs to change. A real opposition, with a real alternative, needs to come about.

So, a New Year’s Resolution: Act.

Happy New Year. I hope.