That was the decade that was

Happy new year everybody… and goodbye not just to the old year – but also to an entire decade.  There was much talk about how the noughties will be remembered – and surprise surprise – gadgets, gizmos and celebrities seemed to be high on the list.

Call me a crusty old cynic – but I doubt that will be the case in a few years’ time.  I mean, let’s be honest – alleged celebrities and their supposedly glamorous lives have always had a certain fascination – they just get more coverage now which enables even complete nonentities to become famous for being famous.

And what important technological breakthroughs have there been in the past decade?  Granted mobile phones have become smaller and can do lots of things that you don’t really need… but are our lives really enriched by ipods, iphones and facebook?  I think not.  I cannot think of a single important technological breakthrough from the last ten years.

I suspect the historians of the future will look back at this decade as an era of monumental hypocrisy and deceit.  After all we pride ourselves on our democracy and freedom in this country – yet we willingly and gladly went to war on two countries.

Weirdly, it was also the decade in which green became a big issue.  At the beginning of the decade green was just a name for some foreign loonies.  But now even some outwardly sane people think that if we change light bulbs and drive a Toyota Prius, the world will somehow become a better place. 

Even the discovery that data that inconveniently suggested that climate and weather was somewhat cyclical and varied and some parts of Antarctica were actually getting colder was being suppressed didn’t stop people wanting to save the world, even though the world has been merrily doing its own thing for a few billion years now.

So in an era when we can’t drive a car in 2 inches of snow and schools close if there is a frost, we are supposed to be excited if terrible films can be seen in 3D – and that idiots jabbering annoyingly on mobile phones might be able to do it a bit more often.  Yes indeed – progress is a wonderful thing.