The 2017 Preview

[Mild applause]

Thank you, thank you. That was 2016. How will we ever forget? Do let the door hit you on the arse/ass on the way out, will you.

Phew. Still alive? Good. It's important to remember that January 1st to December 31st is only a year in the way that 1760 yards is a mile, it really doesn't matter where you place it, it's just a measurement of distance, if you look at time as a journey.

So... What can we expect from 2017 bearing in mind the odds for forecasting every single event in 2016 would have won you more money at the bookies than has ever existed or will exist until 2457. Had you been insane enough to have guessed just 200 of the celebrity deaths in a Yankee with Brexit, Donald Trump, Treeza May and Bruce Forsyth still being alive you could have bought earth and have the moon thrown in for good measure. You'd own everything, everyone, even wombats.

Applying a wee bit of logic, considerable amounts of drugs (mainly historical), and a kind of Salvador Dali procreates with Nigel Farage surrealism, here's 20 things that could happen in 2017:

1. 'Taking a Shitie' - The question on everyone's lips by the end of the summer will be 'What's your shit face like?' Take your picture while having a dump and then Instagram it. Crapper Snappers will be on the prowl and the name John-Henry will become the most popular name by December.

2. Staying on the anal theme; Kanye West's ego is lost down a rest room basin just outside Las Vegas. The 'rapper' blamed a taco he'd eaten earlier and would under no circumstances blame himself for eating it. President Trump has vowed to deploy many Mexicans to retrieve it from the shit mines of Iowa.

3. A photograph of Jamie Vardy will emerge at the end of May, shortly after Premier League Champions Leicester City are relegated, of the striker pissing on a photograph of the Arsenal team taken shortly after turning down the opportunity (in July) to play for a consistently average team rather than a bunch of one-season wonders. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, being French, just shrugged.

4. Kirk Douglas announces his wedding to Olivia de Havilland and the honeymoon will be two weeks at an S&M club in Deptford.

5. The government announces on the same day that ### ##### dies that due to a lack of money the NHS is being relabelled Virgin Health Service and it will only cost you £25 to see your GP.

6. A petition to have Jimmy Savile's remain dug up, desecrated and then thrown down a disused mine in Siberia is signed by over 10,000,000 people.

7. The Daily Express forecasts a ice age/heat wave this winter/summer with a likely apocalypse to follow if the immigrants and asylum seekers don't get you first.

8. Tim Peake is savagely attacked on Twitter and by media outlets for having a nice quiet two-week holiday with his family in the Algarve when he should have been appearing on television or radio at least once a week making a dick of himself.

9. Dolly Mixtures get a new name as not to offend people called Dolly or the odd sheep. The news is greeted by riots, social media outrage and the PM making a statement in the House. When the Daily Mail reports that the children's confectionery has been made with beef lard for the last 30 years the story dies overnight.

10. Rich people admit the 'trickle down effect' doesn't work because they only accrue money and never spend it. One multi-billionaire admitted to only eating $100 bills, sometimes with some egg mayonnaise.

11. Someone's arse explodes because of implants. Bits of gluteus maximus land in a woman's soy latte.

12. With a third of the world's best musicians dead, the other two-thirds refuse to leave their homes to record new music for fear of dying in some freak fan-related incident meaning for best part of the year nothing in the pop charts means anything to anyone over 30. New musical trends include DubChicken and Slime n Bass.

13. Slovenia elects a Toilet Duck as president.

14. The BBC offers to sell people the dates when Nigel Farage will not be appearing on their channels.

15. Donald Trump suggests that White American men should be allowed to have several wives and a small number of slaves to keep their plantations profitable and because most Americans are responsible people he disbands the police departments and allows the people of the USA to police themselves.

16. To be allowed to comment on or write letters to the Daily Mail you will first have to provide evidence that you are a vile scumbag - perhaps a photo of you beating a black dog or urinating in the doorway of a Polish deli or shitting on the face of a homeless person.

17. There will be more 'drama' in the USA as people begin to admit they only buy certain types of music because their 'homies' do and that 94.7% of Americans think most of the music they hear is shit. In the UK over 90% of people under the age of 18 go into a state of shock and delete all their dubstep mp3s.

18. After facing a third leadership election, Jeremy Corbyn wins both Strictly and I'm a Celebrity (his eating of an alligator penis pickled in Cameron jizz clinching it for him in the Bush Fucker Trial) and still the UK media think he's an old useless tool with a wonky handle. With Labour on 4% in the polls, Tom Watson makes a move to have Katie Hopkins elected as leader.

19. The Sun backs a campaign to make it legal to beat people of Eastern European origin if you think they stole someone's job.

20. The internet gets switched off.

Snapshot

In 2010... well, actually January 2011, I read a report that said of the 52 back page headlines on the Mail on Sunday, 51 of them were completely made up and just the one 'exclusive' was stolen from the Sunday Express from the previous week. The reaction from people was essentially 'who believes newspapers anyway?'

In December 2015, I almost had a row with two of my favourite people in the world because they didn't believe me when I told them the world in 2015 is a safer place than 1985 with less famine and more stability.

Yeah, I know, it sounds like one of the more stupid allegations I've made. How can the world possibly be safer and less hungry than 1985? I dunno how - I can have a guess - but I do know that the UN along with lots of its little umbrella UNs like WHO and UNICEF have actual evidence that supports that outrageous statement.

As much as it might anger people, there is considerably less famine in the world now than there has been since records began and in terms of safety, despite ISIS, the Taliban, Donald Trump et al, you have less chance of being killed by conflict, insurgency or terrorism in the world in 2015 than at any other point during the last 130 years. A easy point of reference for Brits who really don't believe this is to ask them how often the IRA has bombed mainland Britain in the last 15 years.

The irony is the world is a safer place now than it has been for a long time and yet if you were a visitor from another planet or even another time you would think the world is going to hell in a customised hand basket.

I was sitting drinking my first cup of coffee of the day, watching the news and the overriding impression I got was the world hurtling towards war, death and destruction and I realised at that moment that the media runs the world for the corporations and governments are gradually going to become unimportant because they won't be seen as doing anything, they'll just be seen as furthering the interests of the real rulers of the world and the media mouthpiece assigned with telling us how bad it is.

I can't quite work out why. You know, usually you can work out the long game, or the big picture; a government does this so that ultimately that will happen; except nowadays its more about what a government doesn't do so that ultimately something else will happen that will end up costing it more than originally believed. When you examine some of the cuts made in recent years and the simple fact that the private sector hasn't stepped in to fill the vacuum, you can see that either these cuts were made with a long term vision or they were just cruel and heartless and aimed at people who wouldn't vote for the current incumbents.

There seems to be a growing belief that 'man will out' - he will survive because that is what man does best; so you can take everything away from him and he'll find some way to continue. Margaret Thatcher had a lot of respect for the so-called 'black economy' because she saw it as a stepping stone for people to get onto the real economy. Our 'black economy' now appears to be trying to come up with fair ways of redistributing waste food - 2 million people have used a food bank since 2011, but if you read the media or listened to some politicians you'd think of these 2 million people, 1.99 million of them are chancers, scoundrels and probably Muslims. The media is subliminally turning you against people less well off than you; because these people are not strivers, they're obviously just trying to screw the system. The reason many feel this way is because it's what they'd do if they were faced with the same problems.

So, this morning, this week, this year so far has been full of debt, war, immigrants, anti-Muslim rhetoric, threat after threat, cut after cut, doom and gloom and very little optimism, yet the papers are more concerned with anything Jeremy Corbyn related as long as its negative. The media would rather spend all of its energy on besmirching Corbyn than simply analysing the mess the country is in. It would rather focus on Corbyn's 50% women shadow cabinet as pandering and "jobs for the girls to appear 'right on'" while congratulating Cameron for having a cabinet that is only a third women and the reason they do this is because Mr Twat in Seven Oaks will completely believe anything anti-Corbyn - whether it is true or not - but will steadfastly ignore anything about the government, unless it serves him.

Selective belief is not new, but once upon a time you had some balance; nowadays the press will spend 99% of its time on how unelectable Labour are - so as to compound the message even more - yet ignore the plight of the people systematically targeted by Tories, even if it is totally unjust and unfair. The media and their owners want us to abandon our caring nature and start treating the disabled and disenfranchised like it's their fault.

During the election campaign, Cameron said during a QT that if people had to die to sort the system out then so be it and barely anyone even mentioned it. You can find the clip in various places, Dave just sincerely tells the audience that hard choices sometimes have to be made. Or, in other words, some people are worth more than others; we now measure human worth by how much contribution a person makes and if they can't make any then they can die and no one important will care. If Jeremy Corbyn was to suggest something similar...

Turn on the TV today and you get floods, Trump, Muslims, ISIS, Immigration, Corbyn, tensions throughout Europe, the Chinese economy, children dying, calls for police to be armed with tazers and people suggesting that our streets are becoming lawless and yet there are cuts to the police so severe we have G4S running law and order in parts of the country (that alone should make even the most Conservative of voter worry a lot) and we also had a (Muslim) kid targeted by police for having a speech/spelling impediment... Oh and painting asylum seekers' doors an odd shade of red so bigots know where they live.

Martyn Lewis, former newsreader, was pilloried once for suggesting there should be more good news and that was way back in the 1990s. The TV, radio and papers are full of sensationalism, none more so than a harmless yet inflammatory repetition last night on Radio 5Live. It was FA Cup 3rd round replay night and West Brom were playing Bristol City and the Baggies' volatile and controversial striker Saido Berahino had been 'sensationally left out of the West Brom side', thus fuelling rumours he was to be transferred, probably to Spurs. It was hyperbole from the moment Berahino was left out of the side.

Then, John Hartson, a pundit and obviously not in the thralls of the BBC, made a very pertinent comment. "I don't know why there's all this speculation about Berahino, he's cup-tied. The manager said he was unwell, I think we need to accept this as the reason he's not playing." Two minutes later, despite being the man who spoke with Hartson, presenter Mark Pougatch repeated the sensational Berahino 'news' several times throughout the evening, neglecting to mention that by being cup-tied it meant that he couldn't play for anyone else in said cup and in reality there wasn't even a 'news' story there. It was a non-story turned into the most sensational news of the night because it suited the 'impartial' BBC to run the story that way.

It's the same as spending 100 hours picking Corbyn's reshuffle to bits, while lining up people to resign on air and then spending less than 10 seconds on issues that actually, you know, affect us. The press and the media is run by the people who really run the world and it isn't in their interests for us - the people - to have a fair, unbiased and just look at the world. The truth is obviously far harder to swallow than the bullshit.

Let's briefly touch on global warming - whether you believe in it or not, it is clear that most of the 'civilised' countries couldn't give a fig about it. Take our own government, MPs with vested interests in fossil fuels and fracking, who have cut subsidies on renewable energy to put more money into the extraction of carbon-based fuels that could have serious consequences years down the road. Why worry about the future when there's money to be made NOW? But, we don't get the media - or even satire - showing us the errors of repeated governments ways, because it isn't in 'their' interests. People who want renewable energy are somehow painted as eccentrics and buffoons in the press - why is that? It's as stupid as Americans thinking free health care will guarantee they go to hell.

We repeatedly get accusations that the BBC is left wing. I see it on a daily basis and wonder if its because I have a brain that allows me to realise when I'm being hoodwinked and then wonder how supposedly intelligent people can go onto supposedly intelligent newspaper comments sections and help perpetuate the myth. The reality is the BBC is so scared for its survival it won't be seen doing anything the Tories can possibly abolish or frown on - hence why the news department is made up of former young Conservative members and right wing sympathisers. Point this out and invariably the debate switches from the BBC to how left wing you are.

Suggest to people about reading other, less biased, news sources and you finally discover the greater problem - when people believe something specific they don't want that cosy belief system destroyed or mucked about with. People will not read, or if they do won't accept, a belief that doesn't suit them. It's about culture as well; we cannot accept others cultures, so they must be wrong; but are they wrong because of the colour of the skin or the region the skin comes from? Seriously dangerous Christian fundamentalists are pretty much overlooked or labelled differently by the media, but if someone is remotely foreign and does something wrong then if they have been born within 20,000 miles of a Muslim country then it's obviously Jihad driven.

How many people reading this are aware that Israel has been tattooing numbers onto Palestinian prisoners' arms - for ease of identification? The reason you weren't aware was because the news story never made it to the British or US media, or rather it made it they just chose to ignore it. So other sources released the details and there was a mini barrage of subliminal 'can you trust a news source that isn't known' messages sent out to suggest only reputable news sources should be trusted. Check the story on various hoax/fake/bullshit detector websites and you find that not only is it true, but there is a distinct suggestion that the story is being purposefully repressed...

When Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the USA there was outrage, but there wasn't as much as you would have maybe hoped for. Because the sad thing is I think there are more and more middle class people becoming more and more detached from reality by their viewing and reading habits alone, who probably agree with Trump. The neo-Liberal agenda is principally to make the average person so frightened of the world they become insular and look after their own first - that is a Tory ethos Thatcher was able to exploit and the current government is attempting to ratchet up even further while promoting whatever version of The Big Society is floating around.

When people were asked to comment about the 52 back cover exclusives from the Mail on Sunday the majority of people suggested the stories were in a newspaper and its been a long time since newspapers carried the weight they once did. This has been a recurring theme throughout my life - can you believe it if the newspaper said it? I'm not imagining it; people have always taken sensationalist newspaper stories with a pinch of salt and that was pretty much down to the now defunct News of the World; people haven't changed their opinions of the media. Daily newspapers sell to about 6 million people - as compared to a 70million population - the BBC or ITV news is seen by less than 3million people daily, but all the people who read the papers and watch the TV news will formulate their own opinions and then bang on about it as work the next day. How do you think Farage became so popular? It wasn't based on his politics, it was based on his beliefs being echoed by Fred on the shop floor reluctantly (at first) agreeing that his life has not improved and how its much easier to blame those bloody foreigners than it is anyone else.

That's how the people in charge do it. They worked out long ago the most common of denominators - the base things that rile humans so much - and use these as 21st century propaganda. You write your own headlines; you wear your own prejudices for all too see and the more of you who do it the less like National Socialism it looks. I'd guess there are probably more racists in the UK at the moment than at any point since the 1940s; tolerance towards others is at an all time low and you get the impression that common sense is struggling against a growing tidal wave of media-led ignorance and stupidity.

The world is a safer place now than 1985. We had at least three things that were far worse then than now - Africa's famine is now in isolated pockets not widespread. The capitalism of China and the end of the Soviet Union, therefore the Cold War, therefore the fear of imminent threat of mutually assured self destruction has gone. Yes, Russia is now a threat again, or is it? Really? Can you believe the press when it tells you Russia is the enemy? I only ask because last year a Finnish national newspaper asked why the Western Press was blaming Russia for the mistakes the Euro alliance is making in bombing raids on Syria. This wasn't reported over here because, well, it doesn't suit the agenda. The reason I believe it is because the Finns have zero love for the Russians, but have a reputation for being extremely good at impartial news reporting. Why should they, of all people, be seen questioning the West's reporting? Because it's wrong and potentially far more serious than rich idiots seem to suspect? Plus - look at it this way; in 1985 we were scared of the USSR and China; in 2015 we're frightened by a group of terrorists who control about as much land/territory as the size of Scotland, and North Korea. Do I need to explain this to you? No, didn't think so.

The UK and the US have been responsible for so much mess across the globe for the last 100 years and the majority of the mess has been made by their desire to either westernise, modernise or bring democracy and not once did the people responsible for this consider the cultures of other people; the beliefs of others, even the feelings. The West struggle to understand fundamentalist Islam because Christians have always had a snobbish tendency to sneer at other religions, rather than accept the cultural differences, they're always for changing people and even when they don't want to change them, they want to segregate or marginalise them to ensure we know they're different. The irony is Christian Fundamentalists, often as barking mad, are brushed aside, swept under the rug and all mention of religion is expunged by the right wing media. Isn't it obvious that only a Christian God is worthy of any respect now? Look how civilised Christians are compared to those fanatical Muslims! You can also find out how many terrorist attacks were carried out on a yearly basis on a variety of websites; pretty much all of them agree that less than 5% of all terrorist deaths in 2014 were carried out by Muslim fundamentalists. That's less than 5 people per 100 killed by a nutty Muslim. Would you care to guess how many 'terrorist deaths' were committed by Christians - people who believe in a jolly white haired man in robes sitting on a throne like a weird combination of Santa Claus and Abraham Lincoln? If this were a Fox Sports channel, the Muslims are simply out of 'our' league.

Is it any wonder why we're in a situation now where we don't trust anyone any more; we've sat and watched it all publicly erode away and now believe any old shite we're fed. We believe the media because the media has learned to press the right buttons; it's not about lying or obfuscating, it's about positioning. We live in a subtle world of denial and manipulation; the media controls us incredibly well; we're not even aware of it half the time. We find ourselves raging against something because the press has put it to us in a way to ensure maximum outrage, while carefully neglecting to tell you other things that actually warrant your time and effort raging against.

If you don't believe me, ask yourself this: there was almost twice as many people prepared to sign a petition to have Jeremy Clarkson reinstated to his position as there were people opposed to the Draconian cutting of tax credits. This was despite the simple fact that had Clarkson punched a colleague in the face anywhere else he wouldn't have had the luxury of having a trial by TV, he would have been sacked and no one would have given a hoot, because that's what should happen to people who punch work colleagues. Can you see how screwed up that is? Or how selfish it is? There were no newspaper articles about the obvious inherent selfishness of the people wanting their Top Gear to stay the same. If you needed an example of the 'I'm all right Jack' mentality that the Tories propagate, it's right there: more people concerned about an hour long programme that runs for six weeks a year than kids starving.

That's us, that is. That's a snap shot of the UK and the world today. Happy?

Number 80

Hi there, you probably know me from this blog, or as that guy with the big nose; perhaps you remember me from my comics days, or just pop in to see what the opinionated twat is sounding off about today. The thing is I'm not as popular as I once was (which is a shame as I think some of my blogs are the queen's tits) and despite this I still burble on, entertaining two dozen people and occasionally a dog (speaking of which, my dogs have 11 more followers than I do on Tumblr...).

This is part of my leg and three of the dogs who are more popular than me (I couldn't find an image of the Queen's tits anywhere...

But there is now a way for all of this to change. Oh yes, there is and don't look at me like I'm just some glory hunting has-been desperately clinging to my last shreds of dignity. There is a perfectly easy way of me getting back up to 50 or 60 people looking at my blog, maybe even more and it's as effective as a coalition government and as tried and tested as attempting to claw back a £40 billion deficit by sweeping up the pennies dropped by imbeciles and cretins (or the disabled as non-Tories call them).

Yes, I'm talking about the brand new, all bells no bullshit PROMOTE button on your Facebook interface module page thing.

Have the power of a GOD!

God©0000  appears here courtesy of Microsoft and the US of A

For just £2.02 or £5.05 or $6.45 (I've seen all three so far) you can make sure that the post that is going up will feature prominently on all your friends News Feeds, maybe even to the public as an entirety. How fucking fantastic is that? I'm sitting here desperately trying to will away a massive erection... My life could be changed forever and all for just a few quid. Fuck me, Mark Zuckerberg and his floated company are as brilliant as a double-jointed 18-year-old virgin supermodel with a complete working knowledge of the Kama Sutra and eyes for YOU alone!!!

NB: Generic 18 year-old virgin supermodel used, other models might apply

Or Facebook haven't made anywhere near as much money from selling all those shares as they hoped, so they're now doing that sweeping up of pennies, because if you have 1 billion users (praps not, but hey we all listen and believe hyperbole), then if just 1% of them gives $5 then, if they wanted to, they could wipe out a nation's national debt in one fell swoop. Plus there's going to be 1% of people who will actually believe that by paying Facebook £5.05 to promote some worthless piece of shit that only their friends would be interested in in the first place it's going to make them popular and have more friends and if they're promoting something like a blog then they'll have more followers and all that money won't matter because their egos will have been masturbated into an orgasmic brain splurge of Express Dairy proportions!

Image shown the non-orgasmic version ©2012

Fucking hell I'm going to spend my entire wages promoting my blog about how fucking ill I am at times and what a whiny old git I am. I mean everyones fucking life is a bed of roses, isn't it, so they're all going to want to read about my woes because they have none of their own and Facebook will be the facilitator in this small but truly insidiously devious way towards world domination and having that 18-year-old virgin supermodel sit on my face with her legs wrapped around an elephant's arm, blah blah blah...

Then, once that is all over and you've settled back down, removed the cushion from your lap, think about this. Shouldn't anything you or your friends post just appear in other friends news feeds (if they choose to have you in them), at roughly the time you posted it (otherwise why have a post time)? I'd suggest that a lot of people don't go into their message settings, therefore get an arbitrary news feed including what Facebook regard as 'Top Stories', which actually should give you a clue as to what the promote button really is. How many people think to change the news feed display from Top Stories to Most Recent? Therefore you'd be seeing what Facebook believe is the most important - possibly selected because of the use of certain words with advertising connotations - which, especially if Facebook get rid of the Most Recent option, means that we'll all be seeing what Facebook wants us to see rather than what we want our Social Network of friends to see and suddenly what is the point of this social media if it isn't going to do what you want it to.

Trust me, you'll understand the reference in no time.

Seriously, I know anyone who reads this who is also on Facebook probably doesn't give a shit one way or the other, but really, we all spend far more time on these things than we did before they were invented; social networks have increased our time on-line by 50% (check it out via Google if you don't believe me, some people think it's more than 50%) and we pretty much all spent too much time on the Internet or on computers in general before Facebook or MySpace was invented.

This isn't going change anything; it'll be lost like a grain of sand (see what I did there?) in sea of universes, although I'm sure there will be others who will be pointing this out to their own groups of friends; but it's like when people don't like a change that Facebook implements, 2 million people complaining is a bit like an antelope wandering into a pride of lions and debating whether or not eating him is morally right. I could now insert (oo-er) an image of a bunch of lions ripping a gazelle to shreds, but I'm a vegetarian and I also don't want to alienate potential readers with images of an undesirable nature.

Just remember, you might think you're getting a blow job, but the only thing being extracted will be your cash! Don't do it - you know it makes sense!

Next time: How to stop people from being useless and 10 alternative uses for pigs.