Wednesday, 31 December 2008

That Was the Year that Was 2008

Well I'm not posting this live, I'm future time stamping it to come up just before the end of the year. So what was 2008.

The Economy: A credit squeeze, became a crunch, became a full blown recession. Banks floudered in Ireland, Iceland, USA and then in Scotland both HBoS and the RBS hit trouble. The goverment bailed the UK banks out. The Americans did the same, then did it for car industry as well. Here the High Street will never be the same again with the closure of Woolworths and in what is almost a daily round of the latest chain to go into administration who know where we'll be buying our Christmas presents in a little under 12 months time.

Yes He Did: Of course the big political news globally was that America elected its first African American president in 3 weeks time the inauguration of Barack Obama will be a landmark event in a country still fighting segregationists, racism and outright hatred in the decade of my birth.

On the Subject of Presidents: As well as the American's electing a new President the Lib Dems also voted on their federal president. The media darling was Lembit Opik. If you believed the media and the hype from Team Opik he was the shoe-in. Of course we all know that take you eye of the ball and that skillful player will round you and head for the goal before you realise what is happening. And that is what happened to the Primary Coloured Campaign. A good and strong candidate was out there meeting the electorate rather than working out how next to get papped. So tomorrow after securing over 70% of the all party vote Ros Scott takes up the role that she was made for.

The Leader is Gone Long Live the Leader: A little over a year ago the UK wide Liberal Democrats Elected there new leader in Nick Clegg. These year saw the election of Tavish Scott in Scotland and Kirsty Williams in Wales succeeded Nicol Stephen and Mike German as the party leaders in those two countries.

Going for Gold: The GB & NI Olympic and Paralympic teams did better than even they might have hoped for 19 Gold, 13 Silver and 15 Bronze medals propelled the Olympic team into 4th in the medal table their goal for 2012. The Paralympians were second in their table with 42 Gold 29 Silver and 31 Bronze.

The Blogger is Back: To be perfectly honest I returned to blogging at the tale end of 2007. But 2008 saw the return really take off the comments in the sidebar indicate this blog has made a dramatic impact back to the Scottish Blogosphere. Indeed in the Total Politics lists for 2008 I was the 11th most popular Scottish Blog and 15th most popular Lib Dem blog, therefore as someone said in the year this has become the go to blog for Lib Dem takes on the Scottish Issues. And that dear reader is what I shall continue to do into 2009, whether there is a general election or not.

No comments:

Post a Comment