For me, the end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time of mixed feelings. I always take stock, looking back to see what I’ve accomplished in the year gone by, and on that score I have much to celebrate. The West London Free School opened in September, the culmination of two years’ work, and has proved to be a success. Children, parents and staff are happy and we’ve had over 1,000 applicants for our next 120 places. Much of 2012 will be taken up with laying the groundwork for our lower school and sixth form, both of which we hope to open in 2013.
But there’s also the inevitable sense of wistfulness. One of the oddities of having children is that they slow down the rate at which time appears to be passing minute by minute, with some experiences seeming to last for an eternity, such as waiting in Accident and Emergency after they’ve fallen off a climbing frame. But year to year, they contribute to the impression that time is speeding up. They don’t seem to grow up gradually, one small step at a time, but in leaps and bounds. One moment they’re pink little cherubs, toddling around in nappies. The next they’re hurtling across a football field with an insatiable appetite for life.
It’s hard to be optimistic about the year ahead. The Prime Minister has warned that 2012 will be the toughest year Britain has faced since the early 1980s, but I think that’s contingent on avoiding a disorderly break-up of the euro. Certainly, when the Chancellor announced in his Autumn Statement that he’d have to borrow £158 billion more than anticipated between now and 2015/16, that was on the assumption that Europe isn’t plunged into a depression. If the single currency collapses, we’ll have to reach back considerably further into our past to find a year as bleak as 2012 is likely to be.
Hard to imagine what industries will be protected — debt collection agencies? — but journalism won’t be among them. If all my income dries up, I’ll have about three months before my mortgage lender forecloses. Where will I go with my wife and children? I’ve always suffered from what Martin Amis calls ‘tramp dread’ — the fear that if you suffer a bout of unemployment you could end up as a tramp — but the anxiety is multiplied when you have a family to support. Will my new career as a dump truck driver be sufficiently lucrative to feed four young children? I imagine there’ll be plenty of competition for those Kentucky Fried Chicken bones.
A responsible father would have a contingency plan. A smallholding in the Outer Hebrides, for instance. Something capable of supporting a large family and in such a remote location that there’s little danger of being overrun by a marauding band of desperate men. Or a beach hut in Jamaica, where it’s impossible to starve, because of the plentiful supplies of breadfruit. But no. It’ll be the streets of west London for my family and me.
In reality, my income probably won’t fall that precipitously. More worrying is the prospect of becoming the victim of crime, particularly burglary. I was prepared for the worst during the rioting that broke out last summer, but the disorder petered out about a mile from my home in Acton. Next summer, I might not be so lucky.
It will be interesting to see whether the rule of law can withstand an economic downturn. The Japanese economy suffered more than ten years of stagnation, with the 1990s being dubbed a ‘lost decade’, but the country survived without any outbreak of civil disorder due to high levels of social capital. On the face of it, Britain seems unlikely to cope so well, but I’m hoping we’ll discover reserves of reliance that have remained untapped since the second world war. Whatever happens, I’m confident we’ll fare better than France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Perhaps I’m being unduly pessimistic. At the time of writing, there’s still an outside chance that Angela Merkel will relent and authorise the European Central Bank to start buying up the bonds of the bankrupt members of the eurozone. If that happens, a depression may yet be averted — or, at least, postponed until the next sovereign debt crisis. But it looks unlikely. In the case of Germany’s first woman Chancellor, no means no.
The one silver lining is that there’ll be plenty to write about in 2012. For scribblers like me, that’s always something to look forward to, even if we can’t be sure of being paid. Happy New Year.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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