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Tuesday 10 January 2017

217. Does and Don’ts for a great 2017


Be more sparkly and gorgeous, attractive to the opposite sex, rich maybe even discover you have secret magic powers and can speak to kangaroos… with the BGOTR New Year super plan.

Yes – now the season of first world excess is a dull memory and Brits have a sickening hangover caused by 2016 – it’s time for the self-flagellation which is as much a part of January as an empty bank account and an extra inch round the midriff. So, like the shops that encouraged you to stuff your face, overspend, and stock up with crap in December, I too am now offering help to shed pounds, clear out and get shiny and new in mind and body. But my method does not involve expensive diet products, Yoga balls or an electric juicer.

Just follow this 5-step, painless, money saving, energizing programme.

1.    STOP buying shit you don’t need and didn’t even know you wanted until some swanky advertising agency turned that product into a glitzy, hysterical, two-minute sleight-of-hand fantasy on the telly.

2.    If you are not, yourself, a tax-avoiding, xenophobic knacker STOP buying The Daily Mail. And if you are not white, middle-class, male, privileged and/or living in London had you thought to STOP paying your BBC licence fee? Or even if you are just tired of ‘news’ content made up of Farage soundbites or stuff you read on the internet three days previously or comedy that sounds like it was made up in a private school common room on a wet Tuesday lunchtime.

3.    STOP blaming immigrants for everything that is wrong with the UK and START blaming the folk who actually wrecked the economy. If you can’t remember who that was Google 2008 and ‘banks’.

4.    Your kids don’t need to go to Disneyland or force down a MacDonald’s 'happy meal' to love you. Just STOP spending all your time with your face in your phone.

5.    If you are the Prime Minister Theresa May or the so-called leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn STOP attempting to lead by stumbling three steps behind every passing bandwagon. And take some It’s-not-1975 therapy – you are making the rest of us feel sick.

Plus – while I am in my helpful January mood - here are some helpful tips if you are not an individual but a country. I’ll call this the DON’T section.

1.    If you are lucky enough to live in a functioning democracy DON’T elect a tweeting sociopath (woops). Also – don’t complain about other countries interfering in your elections when you’ve spent the last 4 decades doing the same.

2.    If you are a large country in the southern hemisphere with strange creatures known for jumping and large birds known for running and putting their heads in sand DON’T treat migrants like convicts transported to Botany bay in the 1700s and 1800s.

3.    If you are Wales and a net gainer from the EU and your
government trashed your steel industry by failing to support France, Italy and Germany when they were trying to protect Europe against Chinese steel over-production – DO vote to remain in the EU (uh-oh – too late on that one as well...).

4.    If you are Saudi Arabia DON’T buy any more British arms to kill/torture civilians. DO spend that money instead on infrastructure, food, roads, schools, helping refugees in your region yada yada yada.

5.    If you are Britain DON’T sell any more arms to murderous regimes while taking the moral high ground re everyone else’s crap behaviour.


It’s really that simple… Happy 2017.
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