I guess this is how traditions are established: one is a one-off, two is a repeat, but more than three is a tradition. So, welcome to my fourth annual New Year post. I think it was at the start of 2008 that I first noted the financial turmoil, which makes it nice to see that as 2010 looms over us, the coming year might end in a rosier state than it starts.

Still, there is more to hope for next year than simply the alleviation of economic problems. Something that marked 2009 with a great big grimy smudge was the success had by the far-right, especially the British National Party in the North West and Yorkshire, where the good Lancastrians and Yorkshire-folk are now represented in the European Parliament by fascist MEPs. The problem though, is not that people are thinking horrible things about anyone who is a little bit different, but that they have little alternative but to think that. I firmly hold the opinion that the vast majority of the BNP’s voters are not nasty people, but simply forgotten people. Every major political party has neglected these constituents, and every major political party has been on the back foot in the debates on the far-right’s core issues.

I’m not just talking about immigration and racism, the BNP, with its new, clean image (laugh if you want, but not everyone is a liberal lefty with a built-in disgust of the BNP), champions a distortion of traditional values and morals that are just similar enough in image, though little else, to the traditional values that used to form part of British society in the ‘50s. Guess where the political mainstream is (and I include the green movement in this)? Nowhere is the answer; Mr Cameron might make some inconsequential moves to offer financial incentives to getting married, and Mr Brown and Lord Mandelson might talk about Britishness in a few speeches, but the debate on values, morality, and the question of what it means to be from Britain has been firmly grasped by the likes of Mr Griffin.

Morality has, of course, traditionally been the realm of the Church. I think the best way to describe my attitude to religion would be “actively agnostic”: I don’t currently believe in any particular god or religious structure, and I don’t think it is really possible to prove the existence of God, or even of gods, but I would never say for definite that these things cannot exist; I might one day be struck with a spiritual revelation, leading to a belief of the religious kind, so it would be foolish to keep a closed mind. The advantage of this convenient fudge is that I can do stuff that atheist can’t do, while not feeling guilty for being half-hearted as an apathetic agnostic might: in short, I can go to the Watchnight Service at St Giles Kirk on Christmas Eve, and pay attention to the sermon, without a Dawkinsian complex of any kind. In this particular sermon, the Minister took the time to praise Atheists and decry agnosticism: to paraphrase him, atheists present worthy opponents in debate, whereas agnostics are responsible for the downfall of society. I’m sure he didn’t mean to present such a sharp message, but I think it goes back to what I wrote about the far-right’s grasp on debates. For a debate to be had properly, all sides must be confident enough to make pronouncements on all ideas. Bad ideas must be exposed for what they are, and good ideas must be brought forth on sturdy legs.

In the Green Party, and indeed, in all major political parties, we need to grasp the debate and say what we think about Britishness, morality, and all the other issues which are held so tightly in the fists of fascists. We need to truly talk with all of the electorate, and we need to realise that the way that we can prevail in our political ambitions is through honest and fair discourse, not through aggressive confrontation with English Defence League, or by sneeringly mocking the BNP.

For all the apparent futility in the campaign to push Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name to the Christmas number one spot (sure, the profits from sales of the song went to the same musical multinational that McFabricated’s profits would have gone to, but did anyone notice that the Facebook group used to orchestrate it also managed to raise over £90,000 for Shelter?), it did raise my hopes for 2010, simply because it demonstrated a desire for a more honest and less fake way of doing things. If we can keep that spark of dissatisfaction with plastic society, then I’ll be a lot more confident that debate can be had.

Here’s to 2010, an honest, argumentative, real, and better year!

Click here for an archive of past new year posts.

“I’ll sing you one, Ho
Green grow the rushes, Ho
What is your one, Ho?
One is one and all alone
And evermore shall be (it) so”

But Tom,
You’re not alone
Though, in Leiden, you’re hardly seen
Dashing off to some conference green
With gay abandonment
Saving the environment
Cars and trains cross the land
So we can all understand
The dreadful warning
On the effects of global warming

But please, Tom, take a little hint,
As for earth you do your stint:
You see:
Hitchhike
Take a bike
Or, of course,
Like me,
Take a horse
But please, leave a carbonless footprint.

The city itself has a little bit of an ‘Oxford’ feeling to it, with the ancient university dominating things, and plenty of old-fashioned bicycles everywhere; the rest of Holland, at least what I’ve seen of it, seems to be rather Dutch, much as one would expect.

The experience of becoming an expat is an interesting one, quite difficult to prepare for. The wonders of the European Union have made things a little easier, what with my right to live, work, and study anywhere in the EU, and all; Dutch bureaucracy seems to be determined to hinder me though. Despite being here for over a month now, I’m not, officially speaking, a student of Universiteit Leiden yet, nor do I have the luxury of a bank account. I have faith that it will all work out though, so eventually I’ll be properly settled; hopefully I’ll still be here when that happens. Thankfully, I think the worst thing I was warned about before moving here has already happened: culture shock. It’s difficult to measure whether it has or hasn’t happened, but I certainly know that I had the feelings of novelty about the Netherlands for a few weeks, followed by an unexplained dislike of the place, and now I’m pleasantly indifferent to it, much as I am when I’m in the UK.

Anyhow, since I started writing this, the professor seems to have been able to draw four complicated economic graphs on the blackboard, and somehow chain them together with baffling dotted lines: am I allowed to fail this course?

London was fun, I did the obligatory touristy stuff: the British Museum; Kew, where I seemed to be the youngest visitor without a parent in tow; Trafalgar Square; Buckingham Palace; &c. The highlight was probably a tie between the tour of the Palace of Westminster and eating dinner in Greenwich Park, overlooking London as the sun set.

The true highlight of the holiday was waiting for me a few hundred miles away. The YHA hostel at Golant was my base for three nights as I pottered around Cornwall using the local bus services (I would not want to have to rely on those services). I was particularly taken by Fowey. It’s a bit like St Ives, but smaller and nicer—which is probably my code for ‘insanely middle-class’, as most of the children there seemed to have names along the lines of Isobella or Tristram, while the parents appeared to be competing in their skill of using received pronunciation. The other place I made sure to visit frequently was the Eden Project. I’ve been going there for several years, so it feels very familiar. It’s nice to see it develop and settle as a garden, but also to see the constant new stuff that appears.

So anyway, I’ve wittered on for quite a bit too long now. I think I have just about managed to write a text-book style holiday post. I’m sure it won’t be too long before I have more to write: I’m emigrating tomorrow!

Once I get back from that trip, I’ll be preparing to visit the UK’s number one tourist city: London. A couple of days sightseeing with the other hordes, and I’ll be ready for the Night Riviera to Cornwall to relax in a favourite hostel of mine near Fowey.

Anyway, aside from shifting the contents of my flat to Edinburgh (a feat that required three Edinburgh to Manchester round trips in a row), I’ve been trying to decide what to do with the limited amount of my summer holiday that I have left. Annoyingly, my EU Studies masters course at Universiteit Leiden starts in mid-August, so I’ll miss the Edinburgh festival, but I’ve planned a few days in Brussels to see friends, and about a week later I’ve booked a trip to London then Cornwall by sleeper train. It isn’t as exotic as the trip to Barcelona that I had to give up on due to limited time, but I can’t wait to see what UK sleeper trains are like. I somehow doubt that I’ll be woken in the middle of the night by a police officer with a gun, dismantling my cabin to search for drugs, as happened on one of the last sleeper services I used in Serbia; having never used the Caledonian Sleeper or Night Riviera before though, who knows what could happen?

I wonder how many people are pressing the “Check for Updates” button in iTunes only to be presented with this notice today. Engadget is reporting that the 3.0 software might be scheduled for release at 18h UK time. I can’t wait! Oh, and I’ll get my exam results later. But naturally my priority is copy-and-paste on my phone.

The new saddle finishes off a general overhaul of La Poderosa (named for the motorcycle in Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, with which it shares a similar rustic quality and ability to sort of do long journeys), meaning that I now have proper transport around Edinburgh once again. Apart from getting bicycle issues sorted, I’ve been recovering from the several month long marathon that has been essays, dissertation, exams, and election campaign. Finally it is all over and I can get on with pottering about, relaxing, and volunteering in Parliament. I am of course still on edge about the election as the results aren’t announced until tomorrow night. The polls looked reasonably good for us, with suggestions that we could get as many as eight MEPs. I can’t remember which poll said that, or how much it can be trusted though, so I don’t want to get too hopeful before it is announced.

I haven’t really got much of an idea what to do now though. Parliament is having a day off so there isn’t much to do in the office there, and I’ve done pretty much all I need to do before the time I’d normally have finished eating breakfast, with my only remaining commitment being the collection of A-boards from polling stations at 22h. I wonder how many other party activists are like this across the country.