Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

2012: An Alternative Look

It’s flat-out discrimination against numbers, but I don’t much like the look of 2013. Everything that makes it awkward is pretty much down to ‘three’ – it ends in 3, has 3 different positive digits, and looks like a prime number but is actually divisible by 3. Quite clearly this upset us enough to drown our sorrows in another annual review. Let us dwell on glorious, nice-looking 2012.

 

January – Wikipedia launches a blackout in protest against US online piracy legislation. Student productivity collapses.

 

February – Snow falls. That’s worth mentioning. Anyone heard about Syria? No? Thought not.

 

March – The Archbishop of Canterbury says he is stepping down. The BBC director general says he is stepping down. Both have significant facial hair.

 

April – Basically, Trenton. He too has facial hair. Perhaps he will grow a better beard in jail.

 

May – Drought declared across the country, so God in His wisdom sends a flood instead, kicking off the wettest summer on record. “This is shit. At least I only had 40 days of rain,” says Noah. During these floods, Facebook floats. Ironically, America gets a proper, hardcore drought. “We’ll trade you all this extra water for some sunshine,” we say, “and as an extra we’ll throw in this short French chap who’s just lost his job and comes with a free supermodel.”

 

June – Where do you put an 86-year-old woman on a cold rainy day? Why of course: on the exposed deck of a boat surrounded by river traffic! British subjects get the day off work and rejoice with traditional street parties and lie-ins, while the University of Oxford celebrates its own time-honoured tradition of ignoring public holidays.

 

July – It’s just another humdrum day in South Korea as Park Jae-sang uploads a video to YouTube in which he dances like he’s riding a horse. Billions of people will watch it. Meanwhile the Olympics start and scientists watch the Higgs Boson for about one second.

 

August – Bradley Wiggins legitimises muttonchops. The Mayor of London dangles from a zip wire like a man-baby, but you know what, that’s okay.

 

September – Royal nakedness is news. Forget the advantageous public authority of ceremonial constitutional monarchy – we’re all just dirty voyeur plebs, as Andrew Mitchell would (maybe not) say. A lot of Arabs get very angry about a non-film.

 

October – The ‘Felix Baumgartner’ is added to budget airline emergency procedures. Lance Armstrong considers reputation management; Jimmy Savile doesn’t, because he’s dead and because no PR agency can save him now. Daniel Craig shows us novel ways of spending your holiday in Turkey. 

 

November – Everyone loses their jobs – the BBC director general (again), the Chelsea manager (again), Silvio Berlusconi (again). Reasons given – incompetence, sexual misdemeanours, and doing nothing. No prizes for guessing which is which. Just about the only person to keep their job was Obama. But even then you need $1bn and the most sophisticated social networking campaign ever to fend off a guy who straps dogs to car roofs.

 

December – Rupert Murdoch is sad because he used to be able to make a list and check twice to see if you’ve been naughty or nice, just by listening to your voicemail. Lord Leveson says this sort of behaviour just won’t cut it any more. Everyone thinks the world will end, so with nothing to lose, the Pope joins Twitter, joining the likes of rad hipsters like Kate and Will’s foetus and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (check out his Instagram). Turns out the Mayans were having a laugh on us.

 

2013 isn’t looking promising yet. By the time you’re reading this, the US has probably fallen off this nasty-sounding ‘fiscal cliff’, which is obviously very bad for everyone and may tear the global economy asunder. Then again, that’s the sort of thing that’ll make the world in 2013 exciting: misery and doom aplenty. Good luck to you all.

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles