2012: A Review

As the most extreme of the New Year's Eve hangovers fade, there is stuff all over the place reflecting upon the year 2012. The year has seen many cultural highlights and lowlights emerging at various points as the year spiralled on, as year's tend to do, and has produced some many talking points.

Despite this, there is a surreal air to actually looking back. This is because 2012 was surprisingly quiet between January and June.

Obviously this is not an indicator that the world as a whole was dormant during the first half of the year. There were still big events and it is possible this view is only possible as the second half of the year was much more eventful. 2012 only looks quiet in comparison to 2011, which was a truly hysterical year that seemed to lurch from one major event to the next on a weekly basis.

Despite this, 2012 does look exceedingly backloaded - starting with the Queen's wet and wild Jubilee celebrations, the big events for which the year ultimately looks set to be remembered for took place in June and onwards.

A lot of the early big stories in the first few months of the year were carried over from 2011, and in the case of Eurozone, the previous few years. Certainly, the end of the year's almost whirlwind feeling hammered home the bizarre lopsided feeling to an extent that early year news stories such as the sinking of the Costa Concordia and the bizarre Kony 2012 campaign felt like they occurred in other years.

However March did provide one original farce and perhaps the ultimate case study of the "omnishambles" popularised by television's The Thick Of It. As the month was ending the news was full of nervy talk of a petrol tankers strike that ultimately never happened.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude promptly poked his head above the parapet and convinced many people to panic buy petrol and store it in jerry cans. This is not exactly a good idea given that the fumes are proven to be flammable, and not least an unpleasant thing to inhale, but that didn't stop people sitting in petrol stations panic buying stocks of fuel anyway.

Just as the, ahem, fire was about to die down, George Osborne promptly came into view. This came through the faintly shambolic Budget, which resulted in the surreal Pasty Tax scandal, where both sides of the House of Commons seemed to be trying to up each other in who loved pastry products more. Pasties were not the only thing the budget led to serious questions over, with the tax affairs for charities, static caravans and question about the whole thing would actually help the British economy.

Osborne had a terrible year all round, with the previous questions about his competence magnified even further. This was before he was caught trying to skip the first class fare on a Virgin Train in the same month the government had screwed up the award of said company's franchise, and a Winter statement that promptly left him even more politically poisonous.

As a whole politics continued as usual - the coalition drafted up controversial policies then immediately withdrew nearly all of them while Labour continued criticising them and being accused of being in hock to the unions.

Various ministers also fell on their swords after rough times, ranging from the unarguable - Andrew Rawnsley had nowhere to go after his botched NHS reforms - to the baffling - Jeremy Hunt was given his job instead despite failing as Culture Secretary. But none fell more loudly and controversially than Andrew Mitchell.

Just weeks after he was appointed Chief Whip, he was accused of calling the police manning the Downing Street gates "fucking plebs" after they reportedly refused to let him out of the main gates. This was, eventually, enough to force him to resign amid cries it was proof the Tories were an out of touch party of millionaires.

But while they did little to disprove the millionaire accusation, they were at least vindicated of saying Mitchell was innocent. Video tape released after his resignation revealed Mitchell went along with police instructions rather than swearing at them. As well as this, it was shown there were no real eyewitnesses, leaving the police embarassed.

When the Jubilee rolled around it was a mixed bag overall - the flotilla could have been impressive had the sky not attempted to drown it, while the concert was faintly underwhelming. It was nice to see the nation come together but it wasn't exactly the spectacle it could well have been.

Nevertheless this was a face the Royals could appreciate as opposed to the naked photography farce, with both Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge involved in naked photo scandals. These were taken differently, with The Sun trumpeting it as freedom of expression that they publish the Harry photo, and then promptly called the Duchess of Cambridge photos "violation of privacy".

Of course it is not quite that simple, with Prince Harry's photos being consensual and the Duchess' being taken without her permission with a long-zoom from a road about 2 miles away. Despite the difference, it is strange the Sun chose to mark this as the freedom of speech barometer.

Also surreal was the fact the Daily Express ranted it showed a lack of respect for the Royals despite, as Private Eye pointed out, the paper's properitor owns a porn channel that marked the previous year's Royal Wedding with a royal-theme romp.

The photo incident also proves a worrying precedent ahead of next autumn, when the Duchess is due to give birth to her first child. Paprazzi photographers and children are never a good combination but a Royal baby can only provide massive hysteria.

Seven years after it was awarded to London, the Olympics arrived and turned out to be quite a spectacular event. This dramatically subverted expectation, as so much of the coverage before the Games made out Britain was in line for an international humiliation.

The three months before the games had felt almost like the entire nation was being waterboarded, as the stereotype Britain has some of the heaviest rain in the world was visualised.

Other concerns were also high on the list. After all, the ticketing system seemed uninterested in coughing up tickets, or tickets applicants actually wanted, the already-dense London transport network looked to become impassible, the private security firm contracted had to be bailed out by the army after they only trained six people, each athlete seemed to be advertising branding amid draconian regulations and it seemed absurd that we were funding a gigantic sporting event while we were barely able to pay for anything. Hell, people were even hoping it could be given to Paris with a week to go.

But from the delightful Opening Ceremony, the games themselves provided many instances of sporting delight and a good job well done. Seemingly every effort was there for things to go wrong, and people were still trying to stoke up any small niggle. But Team GB were on fire, the crowds looked like they were enjoying themselves, the army missiles half of London had fitted weren't required and the whole country had the effect of a joyous uplift.

The games were addictive but grand viewing, made easier by the 24 Olympic channels run by the BBC. Many fresh-faced young athletes rose to prominence, the old guard put in another shift to gain further glory and highly-advertised favourites such as Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and Mo Farah took their place as national treasures.

The Olympics-related buzz was so strong, not even the underwhelming closing ceremony could dilute the invincible feeling many people felt about the nation.

The Paralympics piled on the goodwill, as the events almost came close to upstaging the Olympics themselves. The sports looked fresh and original and provided the unheralded disabled stars a platform to truly prove to the world being handicapped was not a barrier to being succesful.

This kept up the buzz and also provided some further moments, even if one of them was when George Osborne continued his farcical year by presenting medals at one of the events in the same month he had cut disability benefit. Perhaps not surprising in general context, he got 80,000 boos greeting him with a reception Sepp Blatter could only dream of.

Nevertheless it was a golden summer for sport that generated a lot of good will. But from the moment the Paralympics final ceremony bored us all with an hour of Coldplay, people were now wondering how long this would last.

Appropriately enough, it took less than 24 hours for the optimistic mood to sink as Britain's already overpriced railway network decided to increase their fares again. It also heralded more miserable weather - the games themselves were the one period of the entire summer where the rain held off, and almost as soon as the last bits of the Paralympics Closing Ceremony were cleared away the clouds promptly resumed soaking the nation.

Little wonder that 2012 has gone down as one of the wettest years in history - somewhat ironically as in March it was seriously looking that Southern England was about to be declaring a drought. This has almost gone down as a sort of raindance - flooding has struck almost every part of the UK at least once, with some unlucky areas (i.e. Devon/Cornwall) spending the last 2/3 months of the year underwater.

Sporting goodwill was also reduced as attention turned to football, a sport long since stereotyped as being a haven for rich arseholes. Sure enough, the sport played to type, as racism, violence, financial, diving and refereeing related incidents ensured football's talking points were as much about the negative as the actual action.

This was no mean feat given the top quality action. The previous season's Premier League ended in magnificent style as City somehow managed to win the division just as United were about to put the gloss on title number 20. Chelsea then trumped this as they beat Barcelona and Bayern Munich and lifted the UEFA Champions League to go with the FA Cup, even if deputy coach Roberto Di Matteo was promptly rewarded with the boot.

Away from football and British athletes kept up their success. Wiggins had earlier threatened to upstage the Olympics when he won the Tour de France the week before the Opening Ceremony, and Andy Murray went from being the nearly man of tennis to a success story. He won the US Open after a tense victory over Novak Djokovic, adding it to Wimbledon runner-up and Olympic gold and silver medals to cap a fine year. Not everyone was succesful though, with Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button unable to prevent Sebastien Vettel from winning his third successive Formula One title.

There seemed a cautious overall optimism, even despite the rain, as the nation reflected on a summer well done. But nothing could truly sink the nation's goodwill quite like what was about to follow.

October 29th 2012 was the first anniversary of the death of television entertainer Jimmy Savile, but while his death the year before was greeted with outpourings of grief and TV tributes, the first anniversary was not quite so keenly greeted.

Earlier that month, ITV aired "The Other Side Of Jimmy Savile", which blew the lid off almost 40 years worth of peadophile allegations. The initial ITV documentary was then followed up by a tidal wave of further stories that truly blew apart Savile's previous reputation.

Following in his wake other cult figures of the time and more recent stars were locked away as people begun to view celebrities with suspicion. But nowhere was the scrutiny more felt than at the BBC. Savile was the broadcaster's biggest name in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and people begun to speculate the corporation turned a blind eye to his antics.

There was also speculation that the BBC pulled a Newsnight investigation into the incidents so they could air a couple of fairly desperate air-time filling tribute shows around Christmas time that year. This led to Newsnight's editor and other key BBC figures resigning or being suspended in a truly uncomfortable interlude, and not just because they had dropped the ball.

It simply felt uncomfortable that the shocking core fact kids had been systemically abused was being overlooked so the BBC could get a kicking. It is arguable this felt par for the course - after feeling the Murdoch companies were unfairly kicking the state-funded Beeb, the print companies could feel they were getting mauled during the phone hacking scandal and felt they needed something to kick in return.

Not that the BBC and a truly rudderless Newsnight were about to offer a stunning example of leadership. Not content with broadcasting a discussions about a Panorama report about its own antics, Newsnight then came close to ultimate editorial suicide. In early November, it aired a ropey investigation that tried to implicate a senior 80s politican in a child sex scandal at a care home in Wales that had already been the subject of a major investigation in 2000.

Trial-by-Twitter promptly accused former Tory politican Lord McAlpine of child abuse. But unlike the previous year's superinjunction cases where trial-by-Twitter managed to be bang on the money, this was one of the biggest fiascos in recent legal history as McAlpine was revealed to have been wrongly identified by the original witness and he promptly begun trying to sue half of Twitter.

But the egg on face was stronger with the original source. The mother of all self-harm saw John Humphries rip Director General George Entwistle to shreds on morning radio, and later that evening, after just 54 days in charge, the BBC Director General resigned.

A report revealed mass failings into the corporation and mass court hearings look set to follow after one of the biggest scandals in British history.

Not that the BBC was alone as a media organisation that scandals threatened to destroy, and not the only organisation to be troubled by the initial scandal. After breaking the revelations, ITV presenter Phillip Schofield downloaded a list of alleged peadophiles and handed it to David Cameron on This Morning, in what is possibly one of the dumbest moves ever done by a presenter. As this list included McAlpine, he promptly wound up on the long list of lawsuits amid calls he should be removed.

Despite attacking the televised media with some relish, print media had a poor year. The initial scandal from 2011 that blew the lid on widespread phone hacking and shut down the News of the World resulted in the Leveson Report, which was published in November.

The report was not quite so keen on the print media's version of events, with the tabloid media accused of stalking celebrities. But David Cameron's swfit rejection of Leveson leaves an awkward position for all involved, not least given that in the year it was revealed that Cameron had been in a heavy exchange of texts with Rebekah Brooks and coalition partner Nick Clegg announced he wanted to force Leveson through anyway.

The Sun had a truly uncomfortable time of it in the latter half, as they were truly slammed by the findings of the Hillsborough report. Freedom of speech had been their argument when they printed naked photos of Prince Harry's antics in a Las Vegas hotel, and was also used back when they published "The Truth" about the stadium crush that killed 96 Liverpool FC supporters in April 1989.

"The Truth" swiftly turned out to be a load of bull and the paper has been under fire ever since, with the entire city of Liverpool boycotting the paper through general principle. Although they have apologised on a number of occasions - and in the case of then-editor Kelvin MacKenzie, redacted them - it was only now the true extent of the cover up the paper was complicit in was revealed.

The other major event of 2012 was biggest of big fish for foreign politics as the USA elected its new president. The canditates were there as Republican canditate Mitt Romney, seen by a lot of the US media as the best of a bad bunch, tried to take down incumbent Democrat Barack Obama.

Had the election been open to the rest of the world it would have been a non-starter. It seems only in America did the Republicans stand a chance with a canditate that spent the whole year insulting foreign nations and, famously, 47% of the entire US electorate.

Despite Obama not being on his usual form in the first Presidential debate, the incumbent was able to keep his job as the Republican Party begun to look like the mess literally noone thought it wasn't.

Obama also bucked the trend as one of few incumbents to keep their job. Starting in 2011 a number of Muslim dictators in North Africa and the Middle East were booted out and 2012 saw the election of their replacements. China also held it's changing of the guard as the ruling party made its every decade alterations, while Europe also saw widespread change. France, Spain, the Netherlands and, for the 900th time in the last year, Greece were among the nations to chop and change as they all battled with their respective financial crises.

Russia also had an election, and there was a real surprise as Vladimir Putin was unable to beat young up and coming star Vladimir Putin. Despite protestations from Pussy Riot, videos of people shredding votes and an investigation panel with Tiny Kox, there was never going to be any other winner.

Music's biggest story of the year came from the East as K-Pop had it's first hit to escape the Asian region. The kitsch of PSY's tune Gangnam Style and its swaggering dance moves soon saw it eat up views, plays and YouTube likes. It's margin as YouTube's most liked video ever is even more secure after 2nd place Justin Bieber had fake views and likes wiped.

While PSY became the year's breakout star, the stranglehold on pop music taken by DJs such as David Guetta and Calvin Harris was, for the most part, unbroken and their cut-and-paste music remained popular. That it is not saying all electronic music is like this because truly original stuff made electronically exists. But after a while, chart electronic stuff sounds the same to such an extent that songs like the dreadful Will.I.Am/Britney Spears collaboration Scream & Shout literally sound like the South Park parody that decried teen-wave pop as sounding like drum beats and fart noises.

Rock bands like The Killers and Muse, the dull banjo-pop of Mumford & Sons, the sprightly stylings of Jake Bugg and a number of poppier acts like Taylor Swift and One Direction all had number one album success in a blisteringly wild autumn, but the album charts were still dominated by 2011 acts like Adele and the others.

Film had a more succesful and original year. Unlike 2011, which was dominated by Harry Potter, The Inbetweeners, The King's Speech and a series of other forgettable blockbusters, a number of mega-flicks stormed the charts.

The highly anticipated Dark Knight Rises generated a ton of considerable excitement and was nevertheless a good film but was not quite the stone-cold classic everyone was expecting. To considerable surprise, it was beaten in the charts by the swaggering behemoth of Marvel's Avengers, which bought a bit more of the fun back to the comic book movie.

But neither film nor any of the other impressive films could top the delightful Skyfall, which became the UK's highest grossing film and the first ever to top £100million at box office. The Bond movie was the biggest success of 2012 and provided a darker but funnier Bond that surpassed all of Daniel Craig's previous outings as film's most famous spy.

Certainly it provided a more challenging and lovely exercise than the UK's other main baffling phenomenon, as fanfic-turned-slasher-novel 50 Shades of Grey became the best selling book of the year. The baffling success manifested itself further, as sexual bondage equipment referred in the book grew in sales and contributed to the flagging economy.

It also provided a more unedifying appearance as classic novella were re-written in that style. It all pointed to a slightly rephrasing of the classic phrase to "no conventional sex please, we're British", and even resulted further in a baby boom with people trying to re-enact their favourite moves and getting kids. Weirdly, it's not a lot different to re-enacting Star Wars scenes down the park.

With the year having come to an end there is a lot to look back on. But now the year has ended attention must look forward to 2013. Heaven knows what it might produce this time but certainly it promises to provide many more talking points and another hectic year.

Personally, I don't know what to expect - everything could improve, go downhill or, more than likely, remain on the same plateau it's always been. But every step of the way it should be an exciting and hectic ride for all involved.