When I first wrote a satirical look back at the decade, which ran on this blog in December 2009 (on the old Blogger service, as I was helping a friend fight a six-month battle with Google to restore his blog), it was pretty easy to make up little fictions based on reality. This one, covering the decade just gone, was a different matter. No matter how you did it, often the reality would be stranger than the satire.
2010 The Australian establishment, especially large portions of its media, are shocked a woman could become prime minister. They spend her entire term telling the Australian public that this is morally wrong.
Americans decide that they needed less honesty from television, so Simon Cowell leaves the US version of Pop Idol, American Idol.
Donald Trump-hosted show The Apprentice gets its lowest ratings ever. He begins planning another show and brainstorms with his countrymen on Twitter.
Long-running shows Ashes to Ashesand Lost end with exactly the same conclusion. Frustrated at years of investment in the two shows, the Anglosphere is so turned off television that they would rather form silos on social media websites to make their owners rich. Two guys in San Francisco spot the opportunity and invent Instagram.
Jay Leno unquits The Tonight Show after discovering the $30 million per annum he made prior to leaving just couldnât sustain his car collecting hobby.
Kate loves Willy, so they get engaged.
2011 Itâs revealed that Arnold Schwarzenegger does films, politics, and the family maid.
Following the example of HH the Dalai Lama, Charlie Sheen decides to impart his wisdom to the masses, gaining an extra million Twitter followers as a result. Cheryl Cole starts on the US X Factor amid much buzz, then vanishes from the show. Only her dimples remain.
Proving Apple is either a cult or a religion, Steve Jobs shrines appear all over the world after his passing. How I Met Your Mother concludes as we find out River Song is Amy Pondâs daughter.
Kate loves Willy, so they get married.
Reality is stranger
Facebook launches Timeline, but it actually doesnât work on the 1st of each month as no one there has worked out there are time zones other than US Pacific. Still no one thinks theyâre stupid. Google gets busted over its advertising preferencesâ manager, which actually doesnât stop gathering your preferences after youâve opted out from having them gather your preferences. None of the other NAI members seem to have a problem with their opt-outs. As far as I can tell, Google has been lying about its opt-out for two years, affecting millions.
2012 President Obama finally figures out that same-sex marriage would not bring about disasterâthat could safely be left to Big Tech, as it enjoys monopolies. As a result, Facebook has its IPO.
Forget 2011âs Steve Jobs shrines, Jesus got a new look in Zaragoza, thanks to a repair job. Not everyone is enamoured with the updated Jesus, but it saves the town and numerous businesses.
Prince Harry parties and brings a new meaning to ‘Las Vegas strip’. Got to have something to mark his grandmotherâs 60th Jubilee. The Hunger Games makes stars of Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth, although people over a certain age thought it was The Unger Games, a remake of The Odd Couple.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect a kid.
In the real world Malala Yousafzai kicks ass and a bullet to the head doesnât stop her. If anything, it makes her stronger and grows her reputation.
E. L. James gathers up her Twilight fan fic and puts it all into a book, called 50 Shades of Grey. Remember, this is where Boris Johnson is mayor: the London Olympics use the Kazakh national anthem from Borat. High five! Google gets busted over bypassing the âDo not trackâ setting on Iphone Safari browsers by The Wall Street Journal. Despite trying to look innocent, it stops this the same day. Several US statesâ attorneys-general decide this was such a gross violation of privacy that they fine Google a few hoursâ earnings.
2013 Jennifer Lawrence brings publicity to her new film, Silver Linings Playbook, by falling at the Oscars.
Miley Cyrus mainstreams twerking, which showed how far society had already descended. Her Dadâs âAchy Breaky Heartâ release in 1992 wasnât considered a cultural high-point at the time: the apple does not fall far from the tree.
Edward Snowden exposes mass surveillance on US citizens and even US allies. There is mass panic over the collection of data and the private sector pushes back, ensuring encryption of usersâ private information ⊠actually, nothing happened, and the NSA continued with its data collection while the Obama administration charged Snowden with a crime and tried to extradite him from Russia, where he had more freedom of speech.
HM Queen Elizabeth II evens things up with Helen Mirren by winning a BAFTA for playing HM Queen Elizabeth II.
Kate loves Willy, so they have a kid.
In the real world RIP Nelson Mandela.
2014
Ellen Degeneres broke Twitter with a selfie, but since everyone knew why, no one recalls if the fail whale went up.
The world got a reminder not to upload private stuff to the cloudâas celebrities found out the hard way when their intimate pics were leaked. En masse, the world stopped uploading images to the cloud and to social media while they waited for Big Tech to fix things with their privacy ⊠actually, nothing happened, and people uploaded more photos, in the hope that hackers would find them and release them.
Scotland decides to stay part of the Unionâfor now. Of course they could trust London not to do something silly like leave the European Union.
Bill Cosby makes Mel Gibson look respectable.
Jay Leno decides heâs made enough for his car collecting hobby and leaves The Tonight Show, though he might still unquit. Watch your back, Jimmy.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
In the real world Youâve heard of the website You Park Like a C***? An American exchange student in Tübingen wanted to be featured on Youâre Stuck in a C***. RIP Robin Williams, one of the funniest actors on Earth.
2015 Volkswagen, trying to outdo its links to Nazism and allegations of labour relationsâ corruption, recalls tens of millions of diesel vehicles to see how far its brand would stretch. The US plans to fine VW way more than Ford or GM when they cheated on emissions, because, foreign.
Donald Trump hits on an idea for a new reality show where he runs for president. Casting begins.
Steve Harvey named the wrong winner at the Miss Universe pageant. At this point, being âHarveyedâ is a fairly innocent term.
Jon Snow is very much alive and continues fronting the news on Channel 4.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
2016 The Chicago Cubs win the World Series, as detailed in Greyâs Sports Almanac. In November, the unthinkable happens: Wellington has a massive rainstorm, followed by an earthquake that triggers a tsunami warning, followed by flooding and extreme fog that leave the city cut off from the rest of the country. Summer would be called off while citizens figured out what to do. The UFO invasion does not take place, though with local body elections, certain candidates were replaced by replicants.
Kate loves Willyâand Harry loves Meghan. Not a bad way to mark HM the Queenâs 90th birthday.
In the real world The UK votes to leave the European Union: Nigel Farage is overjoyed, but Boris Johnson and Michael Goveâs body language and facial expression reveal their dismay, and their words donât match. I discover first-hand that Facebook is forcing downloads on people with the guise of âanti-malwareâ, even though this claim is dubious, and Facebook admits data are transferred back to the mother ship. I spend two years finding a journalist with the guts to write about it. Potentially millions have already been affected stretching to the beginning of the decade.
RIP David Bowie.
2017 With the approval of the US audience, a massive, multi-channel series débuts, starring Donald J. Trump. It shows a dystopian America that elects a game show host its president, and warns us what can follow. This four-year experiment is expected to culminate in 2020 with an election special, which determines the seriesâ fate for a renewed batch of episodes.
Kendall Jenner can do anything. She can solve riots with cans of Pepsi. Forget flower power.
Kate loves Willy, so they expect another kid.
2018 Kanye West became Donald Trumpâs biggest fan and joins the cast of his experimental four-year show. He plays an unhinged character who believes slavery was a choice.
Harry loves Meg, and tie the knot. Meghanâs Dad, however, was too busy pursuing a career in modelling to attend.
Taylor Swift gets the voters out, and the public hasnât seen anything like this since David Hasselhoff brought down the Berlin Wall.
Kate loves Willy, so they have another kid.
2019 To keep the ratings up for his long-running show, Donald Trump gets jealous of Greta Thunberg, as she didnât have to fake her Time Person of the Year cover.
He heads to the UK for the D-Day commemorations, and bonds with HM the Queen, telling her, âMy Dad was German and my Mum was Scottish, too.â
The British attempt a remake of Donald Trumpâs show. They search for a man who is born in New York, cheated on his first two wives, has five kids, funny hair, used to espouse more liberal views, before trying to sell ethnonationalism as part of his schtick. They find him: Boris Johnson, best known for his earlier work on Little Britain USA. Within weeks heâs already cheated on his partner Carrie by giving everyone in the UK a weak pound.
Harry loves Meg, and this year, they didnât need Kate and Willy to provide the baby news.
The trouble with the graphic is that the only thing it got right was that two women were killed. Sweden wasnât having a referendum on whether to leave the EU, it was about whether it should adopt the euro. The closest British parallel would have been when then-PM John Major negotiated the Maastricht opt-out in 1991. It also claimed that the polls were for leaving; notwithstanding that that wasnât what the Swedes were voting for, the polls for and against adopting the euro were roughly neck in neck, though the wisdom was that the pro-euro camp would win. By the weekend, the result was that Sweden would keep the krona.
When I argued with some pro-Brexiters about this, they, like most pecksniffians, demanded I check my facts. I didnât have to: I have a memory that goes back further than one month, and unlike them, I know what went on in their own backyard because, in 2003, I kept my eyes open.
I should point out that I am not summarizing all Brexiters as dimwitted Britons who wanted Johnny Foreigner to go home. I count among my closest friends someone who voted leave, and for very substantial, well thought-out reasons. He felt that the European Union had become an unwieldy bureaucracy which benefited Britain little, and while I felt the benefits outweighed the detriments, I respect his opinion and his vote. At least it was considered, and at least it wasnât one that was based on the ramblings and rants of Farage, Johnson, Gove et al.
Appealing to nationalism, as the likes of Farage did, is a cheap trick in politics: it stirs a wave of nostalgia, and people might love chanting at how great their nation is, but it doesnât address the core issues that put them into the poo to begin with. Of course the UK has a great deal to be proud of; but like many countries (including ours) the globalist technocratic agenda are what have made things untenable for a growing part of the population. Itâs why real wages havenât risen yet certain corporations profit aplenty; itâs why we work more hours today than we ever did, despite futurists of a generation ago predicting all this leisure time that we would all have thanks to automation.
But is retreat the right thing to do? The remain camp believes that it wasnât: to influence Europe you must be in Europe. It wasnât that long ago that not being in Europe was fatal to British exportsâthe failure of the British motor industry, for instance, was in part due to its late recognition that the UK needed to be part of the EEC or, at least, produce vehicles there. Globalizationâs positives should be the free movement of people and of capital; and economic union to permit that greater freedom seems a sensible thing to pursue, not to run away from. The trick is how to make this work for everyday people, the growing number who are impacted by globalist forces; once there were few, now few escape them. It is, then, the role of government to either protect those who are most vulnerable, to champion (either through private enterprise or on its own accord) real innovation and industry that can create jobs, and to cut through the BS where both public and private enterprise simply reinvent the wheel from time to time, putting lipstick on the bulldog.
I am ambivalent about it because Iâve seen our own governments, National and Labour, be particularly weak when it comes to dealing with globalization, succumbing to foreign takeovers and allowing the little guy to be run over. The deals havenât been good for New Zealand in many respects, a small country that believes in its place in the first world but which can be deluded about this very fact. Our economy just isnât that solid to take it on the chin. Look at our banks, mostly foreign-owned and more unreliable than ever: remember how 40 years ago cheques would take 24 hours to clear? Yet now our computerized systems take three to five working days? Insiders tell me this is the consequence of less reliable Australian systems being foisted upon us; so much so that we have a wire transfer that has been taking weeks, and no one knows where the money has gone. Just how do you misplace tens of thousands of dollars? Why do we assume Australian bankers are smart enough to answer? And those who question such agenda donât get much truck in a media landscape also dominated by foreigners: Iâm looking at one newspaper publishing group at the least. The ways of the big countries are not always the bestâyet somehow the powers-that-be in this country have been hoodwinked by this consistently since 1984. I can’t understand it, and my initial reaction when there is such a lack of logic is to follow the money.
Brexit has made me refine my thinking: I might not like a system where New Zealandâs the little player that doesnât benefit from a level playing field, but at the same time I believe we need to find ways to influence the globalist game for the better. We love looking at Scandinavian countries because of their comparable size. They may have higher taxes but at the same time they donât seem to balk at innovation for the greater good; they believe in the freedom of movement of capital and of people, and, despite their general humility, they actually arenât afraid of creating global companies that take on the rest of the world. Look at Vattenfall or Statoil. We might not like Statoil for what it wants to do to our own environment, but we do have to ask what our equivalent is. We lost our lead in hybrid cars, which we held for most of the 1980s, but itâs an example of what we can do when government and private enterprise cooperate on something that is future-oriented. Whatâs the next big thing? Is it renewable energy tech that we can export? There are companies here already doing frictionless exports, and more need to be encouraged. Government shouldnât try to create groups of them or force mergers upon them; that can be left to the market. But there needs to be a vision or a direction that we take to create a new brand for our country where people naturally think: innovation for the greater good = New Zealand. And, maybe, to go with that, a fairer version of globalization can emerge, certainly one that is not coloured by the next quarterly result demanded by Wall Street.
Yes, there is some national fervour involved here, too, but applied correctly, it wonât be false flag-waving thatâs dependent on the past. Iâm all for being proud of your country when the victories are real and measurableâlike on the sporting field. There itâs real, and itâs often about the next game or the next season: itâs future-oriented, too. With Brexit, I canât see the vision; and the most visible foreigner among this, the Turkish-American politician, Boris Johnson, hasnât communicated one that I can discern.
And maybe this confusion is the opportunity we need for New Zealand.
After the UK abandoned the Commonwealth markets in favour of one right next door, our country found new export markets, so much so that the UK accounts for 3 per cent today. Even in 1973, when it was 40 per cent, it had been falling consistently for half a decade, if I recall correctly, and the notion that Britain would reach back out toward the Empah for trade is fanciful at best.
Being someone who has enjoyed looking at world history play out through maps, ever since I discovered a book on the subject as a third former at Rongotai College, it hasnât escaped my thoughts that this is a further retreat for the UK in terms of its global influence.
So whoâs on the rise? It might be us. The centre of the global economy has been shifting eastward in recent times and weâre well placed to take advantage of it. Weâre part of the Anglosphere so we bridge the past, where it was the dominant global culture, with those trading partners who might be on the horizon. But it has to be real. Weâre nimble enough, and I canât see why weâve been so fascinated with apeing the US and the UK for so long. Once again we need to set our own direction: we have a culture thatâs ready for it with a greater sense of identity than weâve ever had. I just wonder if we have a government, local or national, courageous enough to embark on this.
You’ve run for office, Jack. What is your favourite political speech? Something from MLK? JFK in Berlin?
No, it was a completely fictional one, from the minds of Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn:
Iâm a good European. I believe in Europe. I believe in the European ideal! Never again shall we repeat the bloodshed of two world wars. Europe is here to stay.
But this does not mean that we have to bow the knee to every directive from every bureaucratic Bonaparte in Brussels. We are a sovereign nation still and proud of it.
We have made enough concessions to the European commissar for agriculture. And when I say commissar, I use the word advisedly. We have swallowed the wine lake, we have swallowed the butter mountain, we have watched our French friends beating up British lorry drivers carrying good British lamb to the French public. We have bowed and scraped, doffed our caps, tugged our forelocks and turned the other cheek. But I say enough is enough!
The Europeans have gone too far. They are now threatening the British sausage. They want to standardize it, by which they mean theyâll force the British people to eat salami and bratwurst and other garlic-ridden greasy foods that are totally alien to the British way of life.
Do you want to eat salami for breakfast with your egg and bacon? I donât. And I wonât!
Theyâve turned our pints into litres and our yards into metres, we gave up the tanner and the threepenny bit, the two bob and the half-crown. But they cannot and will not destroy the British sausage! Not while Iâm here.
In the words of Martin Luther: ‘Here I stand, I can do no other.’
âParty Games’ is one of the most instructive Yes, Minister episodes ever. Thanks to this incident on Fox News for inspiring this post.
Mostly by focusing on growing creative clusters and taking a bigger slice of the cake. So it is not from technocratic ideas or the notion that we are liberating more of the economy, but by growing entrepreneurship. The city will take the most socially responsible, entrepreneurial start-ups and act as an agent to grow them (with an agreement that they remain in Wellington, of course) and create the capital flows to get them funded. I realize there is Grow Wellington already, but their ambit will be shifted.
So, itâs economic growth from the bottomâup.
Then (italics added for this post):
The clusters have naturally formed but they can get so much stronger. If the city is being them, then there is no reason Wellington cannot become internationally known for them. I think in this last week I have shown that borders mean very little to me, and anyone who wants to be mayor in the 2010s needs to have a similar mindset. We are not competing just for national resources, but global ones; and by being part of the global community, we might start bridging more communities and getting some greater global understanding. The nationâstate as it was understood in the 20th century is dying as a concept, and governments have only themselves to blame. Things are shifting to the individualâcommunity level, and you are right, real things happen when it is people acting at the coal face. Those who distance themselves will not be equipped for this century.
When Fiat was in the poo, I remember heading in to Italy and the cabs were a mixture of German and French cars, with a few Italian ones. Generally, it was a reïŹection of the state of the local motor industry: cab drivers are, perhaps subconsciously, patriotic and quite traditional. If they reject the local product, then that means trouble. (Look at New York: Toyota Siennas and Ford Escapes, which were originally engineered by Mazda, have an ever-increasing share of the market; compare that to when Checkers and Big Four brands dominated.)
During my ïŹrst visit to Sweden, most cabbies drove Volvo S80s, S90s and 960s. A few went for Saab 9-5s. Now, the home brands share space with Toyota Priuses and Mercedes-Benz B-Klasses. Again, itâs a reïŹection of the state of the Swedish car industry, with its American owners insisting Volvo and Saab sell large cars that did not conïŹict with their offerings from their sister Opel and Ford brands. The consequence is that as the world moved to small cars, Volvo and Saab had relatively little to offer. Even the patriotic cabbies had to buy foreign.
It seems Spyker realizes the folly of this policy as it takes over Saab and vows to make the company a leader in automotive environmental technology, but the compact 9-1 still does not figure in its business plan formally. Will Geely realize the same when it comes to Volvo?
Jennifer Lawrence brings publicity to her new film, Silver Linings Playbook, by falling at the Oscars.
Iâm a good European. I believe in Europe. I believe in the European ideal! Never again shall we repeat the bloodshed of two world wars. Europe is here to stay.
