2020 Vision: the ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ ‘New Abnormal’ Year in Review. Part 2

Part 1 of the review (Jan-June) can be read here:

July

4th: In sport, it’s the strangest Epsom Derby of all time. For a start, the Classic horse race is run in July, not June, and there’s no crowd because of the Coronavirus restrictions. The result is also a shock as 25-1 outsider Serpentine leads from start to finish with the placed horses returned at 50-1 and 66-1. Did anyone have the Tricast?
10th: With a growing clamour from ‘experts’ for face masks to be made mandatory, Masked Identity is an appropriate winner of the 7f handicap at Newmarket, at odds of 9-1.
24th: The UK government, following on from Scotland, makes face masks mandatory in shops (subject to exemptions). A number of ‘celebrities’ promote the ‘FFS just mask up’ message, while those who merely ask to see the scientific evidence that masks are effective are labelled ‘cranks‘ and ‘far-right anti-maskers’. The number of new Coronavirus ‘cases’, so defined, the day masks became mandatory was just 724, by 28th December, and after five months of mask-wearing, it was 41,385. So perhaps the ‘anti-maskers’ had a point after all?

4th: A huge explosion at the docks in Beirut, Lebanon kills at least 200 and leaves around 5000 people injured. It later transpires that the blast- which was heard as far away as Cyprus- was caused by the explosion of around 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate which was stored at the port.
9th: Official results give Belarus’s President Lukashenko 80% of the vote in the country’s presidential elections. This provokes large scale anti-government protests in Minsk. European leaders who have locked down their own populations for much of 2020 get on their high horses to condemn Lukashenko, the ‘dictator’ who unlike them, didn’t impose a Coronavirus lockdown. Who said that when Kissinger won the Nobel peace prize, satire died?
21st: UK government debt surpasses £2 trillion for the first time. Reports that the UK government is considering approaching Zimbabwe for an emergency loan are not confirmed.

9th: The UK government announces its £100bn ‘Operation Moonshot’ scheme, which aims to make access to travel, theatre, sports and other events dependent on endless ‘Covid tests’. Critics say it would be cheaper to send Boris Johnson to the Moon. The government also introduces a ’Rule of Six’ restricting gatherings to no more than six people. At least that has no impact on the Lib Dem Party conference.
11th: Wales’ ultra-gloomy First Minister Mark Drakeford warns of a ‘gathering storm ‘ of Coronavirus cases, even though cases in the country, so defined, are still only 20 per 100,000.

4th: Sottsass, as tipped up in my Sputnik Intelligent Punter’s Guide, wins the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Europe’s richest horse race, held ‘behind closed doors’ at Longchamp, Paris.
6th: At the ’socially-distanced’ ’virtual’ Conservative Party conference Boris Johnson announces the UK’s version of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’. The Prime Minister specifically rules out a return to normal, not even with a vaccine. “After all we have been through, it isn’t enough just to go back to normal. We have lost too much. History teaches us that things of this magnitude – wars, famines, plagues, events that affect the vast bulk of humanity, as this virus has – they do not just come and go. They can be a trigger for economic and social change.” Meanwhile, Establishment gatekeepers carry on telling us that ‘The Great Reset‘ is just a conspiracy theory.

17th: In New Zealand, Jacinda Adern’s Labour Party wins a landslide victory in the country’s postponed general election.
22nd: Maureen Eames, an 83-year-old straight-talking great-granny from Barnsley, Yorkshire becomes an overnight celebrity in Britain for saying what millions think, (but are afraid to say) about the never-ending Coronavirus lockdown charade. ‘I think it’s all ridiculous, we should never have been in lockdown’ she says. It’s a real ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moment. Maureen Eames and Britain's 'Emperor New Clothes' COVID-19 Moment - Sputnik International
It’s the 19th folk tale from Denmark which helps us to explain what has been going on- before our very eyes- in Britain in 2020. In Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes, a pair of weavers, who are actually swindlers, promise the Emperor they will make him a new set of clothes that will be invisible to those unfit for their positions, or unusually stupid.
28th: There’s re-election for Tanzanian President John Magufuli in his country’s general elections. In May, Magufuli, a trained chemist, had questioned the accuracy of Covid-19 test kits after they returned positive results on samples taken from a goat and a pawpaw fruit.

3rd: Democrat Joe Biden is the odds-on favourite to win the US Presidential election, but there is a late swing to Trump and as the early results come in it seems as if the incumbent President will be re-elected after all. Then the counting stops, and when it resumes, its Biden who’s in pole position. The Democrat is declared the winner by Establishment media and Wikipedia but Trump, deserted by Fox News, fights on in the courts, alleging voter fraud and electoral malpractice. At the end of the year, the only thing we know for sure is that an American male in his 70s will be in the White House at the end of January.
Britain and other European countries enter another national lockdown. But did the first one ever really end?
25th: It’s announced, in the government’s spending review, that Britain faces its worst recession in 300 years, with the economy expected to shrink by 11.3% this year. Well, you can‘t keep locking down your economy and expect anything else, can you?

7th: While Trump v Biden continues in America, in Britain the focus is on Trump v Robertson in the UK Snooker Championship final. In a late-night epic Judd Trump (no relation to Donald), loses 9-10 to Australian Neil Robertson. Unlike Donald, he decides not to challenge the result in the law courts.
19th: Having said that cancelling Christmas would be ‘inhuman’ UK Prime Minister and U-turner extraordinaire Boris Johnson announces that his plans to lift Coronavirus restrictions for Christmas week will be scrapped. But even this impression of Ebenezer Scrooge on steroids isn’t enough for the lockdown hardliners who call for the whole country to be put in Tier 4. When Health Secretary Matt Hancock increases the areas in Tier 4 on 23rd December, the hardliners start talking about the need for a Tier 5. And so it goes on…

Happy New Year everyone. As John Lennon might say, let's hope it’s a good one, without any tiers….

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