Five wishes for 2018

It’s the time of year again. The time for New Year’s Resolutions that last only a little longer than the next day’s hangover and the time to hope that maybe things will get better once the clock strikes midnight.

So here are five things that bugged me in 2017 that I hope are about to change over the next 12 months.

1) That it will be 2018 not 1958

This seems a vain hope given a prevailing political climate that is blowing us back to the glory days of ‘iconic blue passports’. The Home Office is even making an early bid to take us back to the land of warm beer and black and white telly.

Maybe Britain will wake up in 2018. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll learn the lessons that were sinking in back in 1958 and realise that the Empire has gone and we need to look closer to home.

2) That we’ll stop talking about bogus records

As I’m writing this Arsenal are kicking off in Arsene Wenger’s 811^th league game as manager, breaking Sir Alex Ferguson’s record as a manager. Or at least he is if leave out the other 200-odd First Division games in which Ferguson managed Manchester United.

Maybe 2018 will be the year that we stop assuming that Rupert Murdoch invented football along with the Premier League in 1992.

3) That we’ll realise news reports don’t need incidental music

This was one of the most irritating trends of 2017 with Channel 4 News the worst (but far from only) offender.

So maybe we’ll see the back of sad stories accompanied by tinkling piano in a minor key. Maybe we’ve watched the last report from Syria with Adele singing in the background. The serious point is that maybe we’ll realise that serious journalism can speak for itself.

4) That we’ll recognise the value of social housing

This was meant to happen in 2017 but the reality has yet to match the ministerial rhetoric, as I explained in my review of the year.

2018 will see a social housing green paper that will rightly have an emphasis on safety and tenants’ rights in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire. Will it also recognise social housing’s potential as an expanding tenure for the future rather than a steadily shrinking one from the past?

5) That I’ll pull my finger out

Not sure if this counts as one New Year’s resolution or two but I’m intending to post more on this blog (I say this every year) and get down to some serious work on my doctorate.

The last one will (obviously) definitely happen but is a little progress on the other four too much to ask?