I DON'T do New Year resolutions, as I know from experience they lead to disappointment and a miserable January. Anyway, it's the height of arrogance to attempt to predict anything – I once read that the best way to give God a laugh is to tell him your plans.
The last year has demonstrated, in the cruellest way imaginable, just how unpredictable this life can be. When Donald Rumsfeld was US defence secretary, he memorably said: "As we know there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know".
What is striking about the coronavirus pandemic is that it was a 'known known'. For decades, we knew an influenza pandemic wasn't just probable, but inevitable. Yet those in power made scant preparation, deciding to waste trillions on weapons of mass destruction rather than spending the few billion needed for pandemic preparedness.
As we begin another six-week lockdown it would be easy to become despondent; we can't afford to do that. We must keep our faces turned to the light and realise that there will be an end to Covid-19, hopefully before it ends us.
So, rather than New Year's resolutions, I have a small basket of hopes for 2021. Firstly, I hope that politicians, instead of using their hands to applaud our health workers, put them into their pockets and pay them a decent salary. For too long we've abused the good will of our nurses and others who accept unpaid overtime as the norm.
I hope the defeat of Donald Trump marks a shift in support for right-wing authoritarian nationalist populists and a return to a more liberal democracy in the US. The danger of fiddling with democracy can be seen in the dysfunction of our power-sharing Executive, where power is hoarded rather than shared.
And while the Arab Spring swept away Muammar al-Gadaffi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, another fifty dictatorships currently exist around the world. Most worrying is the fact two of the most powerful leaders in the world are on that list, namely Putin in Russia and Xi Jinping in China.
Closer to home, I hope our crowd on the hill finally see the benefit of cooperation over confrontation. Their handling of this pandemic has been shambolic and shameful. Both Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill have consistently put party before people and squandered opportunities to use the devolved administration to effectively deal with Covid.
Proof how dislocated both are from reality came when Michelle O'Neill stated she "never deviated from public health advice", followed by Arlene Foster blaming our present lockdown on "the failure of the public as a whole" to follow Covid restrictions. While both are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts.
I hope the unprecedented scientific co-operation which resulted in the record-breaking creation of Covid-19 vaccines opens up a more collegiate approach in science, leading to discoveries in other fields. Who knows, in 10 years, what seemed like the end of the world may be viewed as the beginning of an epoch that brought us cures for a multitude of intractable illnesses.
The pandemic has demonstrated humanity's inter-dependency; no longer can we demarcate the world into east/west or developed/undeveloped. Covid proves that, as a species, we are only as strong as our weakest link. Hopefully, the vast majority of humanity still languishing in extreme poverty and deprivation will begin to share in the abundance enjoyed by the minority.
Hopefully, the seismic shift in our shopping habits brought about by the pandemic won't consign our small business sector to the dustbin of history. It's up to us to make the effort to support local shops and, in so doing, save local jobs and our city and town centres. If we don't, we will impoverish our society and make Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, the world's first tax-avoiding trillionaire.
I hope Brexit won't be as disastrous as many are predicting. Having been placed in a middle state between the UK and the EU, we in NI face the uncertainty of not knowing if this will benefit or hinder our economic future.
Hopefully the vaccines will work and, before the end of 2021, we will have exited our present hell of successive lockdowns and restrictions. Hopefully, for what else can we do but hope?
