Welcome to the Future.

Here we are: 2010. The future. Twenty Ten. The 21st Century is well underway and we have already seen off its first decade. And what a decade it has been. Eventful doesn’t quite cut it really. Epochal is something more like it. How quickly it is all passing us by whilst we stand, mouths slightly open in wonderment and disbelief at the shock and awe of it all. We are racing towards the future my friends at an unprecedented rate of acceleration. An uncertain future. It's all happening. Just say it out loud and you’ll hear it for yourself… Twenty Ten…See, it actually sounds futuristic.

And so here we are, 6.7 billion souls, at the beginning of a new decade and fast approaching the precipice, I suspect. Already its starting to look like more of the same. More of this morbidly slow (but geologically fleeting) decent into the incendiary uncertainties of geo political flux and eco political impotence. Oh come on Powers That Be! Clap your hands together, pat each other on the back and lets look at what we’ve all achieved so far, as a species, under your government, under this system of global free market capitalism. Surely you can dress something up in pleasing dogma so the next generation can go back to sleep or go back to their iPhones, or whatever fad is doing the rounds these days.

Who said anything about turning over a new leaf! In the shameful shadow of Copenhagen we now walk collectively, dragging our heels and kicking our feet into a new decade of unavoidable collectivism (because there’s no room anymore for the vernacular of unilateralism, isolationism and traditional nationalism in this warming borderless world anymore). Oh what fun in the sun we are all going to have! Especially Africans... oh and Asians... the poor, in short.

The resonance of a narrowly avoided Christmas Day terrorist atrocity still rings shrill in all of our ears, a frightening reminder that for many millions and millions of the world’s desperate, disaffected, disengaged Muslims it isn’t the season to be jolly (and probably never will be). And so the news that greets us into 2010 is that there's another tinderbox waiting to spark on the Jihadist map by this latest incident over the skies of Detroit, yet another lose-lose scenario for the strategists in the Pentagon and the MoD; yes boys and girls please welcome to the class of 2010, Yemen; unstable, fractional, poor, hotbed of Al Qaeda recruitment, Yemen; with its training camps, weak government and civil war in the north Yemen is the perfect destination for any would be terrorist maniacs hell bent on global Jihad. Now Yemen, please sit at the back of the class and open your textbook to page two thousand and one and try not to upset or disturb Saudi Arabia too much… oh you already have. North Korea stop taunting Iran just because they haven't enriched their Uranium yet. It's unbecoming to gloat. Pesky rogue states, the lot of you!!!

And, closer to home, lets not forget the economic cock up of the self congratulating corporate classes with their spin-of-the-wheel financial speculating and speculative morality. Will this business as usual bonus culture ever die, even in the face of global economic melt down? You have to admire these guys capacity for barefaced nonchalence and steel willed indifference. But surely that's what the government are here for. Wrong! Nothing changes does it. More rhetoric and purposeful dogma from the Westminster Red and Blue yellow-bellies but still no one seems to actually mean what they say. And besides; there’s been a very convenient expenses scandal to give the media a new stiffy in the wake of all that financial doom and gloom and distract us from Goodwin and his rotten ilk, who’ve crept quietly away from the crime scene with bags of loot on their shoulders like suited city cowboys walking into the sunset of some idyllic fairway, winging about their handicap (no longer cap in hand). And if you think a one off bonus tax will satisfy this opinionist you’ve got another think coming.

One might be forgiven for thinking me morbid, pessimistic or a tad downbeat as I welcome the new decade with open arms. Those of you who like the gentle warm feeling of apathy and distraction into which evil slips its greasy little hand whilst your not looking, like you were some anthropomorphic glove of unfeasible stupidity, best either listen up or get off this platform right now. Oh how I mourn the emergence of the Big Brother Generation who themselves are already mourning the imminent loss of their weekly Saturday night wanker eviction on funky, modern, groundbreaking Channel 4 with funky, modern, groundbreaking Davina McCall. God, it's so depressing the thought of her interviewing some manic fame hungry wanker until even the hardiest of eyes start to bleed and the dimwitted lump of flesh is released into a jungle of jackal like tabloid paparazzi to become famous and washed up. Infact its quite amazing how so much of modern entertainment has become an almanac of mundanity, celebrated by Heat and its other monosyllabic offshoots one week and denegrated the next. How you marvel as these fearless hacks tirelessly chase and hound all of your favourite Z-grade celebrity's by camping outside their front gardens with their telescopic lenses. And now a completely new class of celebrity is emerging (for which i don't think there is even a letter left in the alphabet to prefix); it's the celebrity-humping, tabloid-straddling, public-kiss-and-tell TV heroes.

Perhaps this blog isn’t for all of you reality TV-enthusiasts out there but please stay and have a chat to me by all means, especially if your attention span will allow it. Despite my misanthropic tendencies I do occasionally slip up and show signs of outlandish optimism and even chirpiness – we all have our vices – and perhaps some of the settee savvy amongst you can teach me a thing or two about the fads and fashions of the Nero Generation (a reference to the American Cafe chain as well as the Roman Emperor; both are relevant here it would seem) who’s myopic attitude to this age of impending catastrophe and limitless information constantly seems to frustrate and confound me.

Any Flat Earthers amongst you should listen up too, from wherever you are upon this two dimensional plane of a planet and realise that, flat or round, this baby’s the only one we got and we need to stop these insidious self deluded arseholes from breaking it and setting in motion an irreversible chain of apocalyptic climactic events just so they can continue to build skyscrapers half a mile into the sky in the middle of the desert (as pretty and impressive as they may look with firework coming out of them from every angle). And just because the science isn’t complete and written into some kind of fictional marble tablet that’s no reason for us to not act upon it. Anyway, are we really feeling that confident that its all been some huge mistake. Sure, the denialists will tell us that there are uncertainties and they'd be right. Of course there are uncertainties. There always is in science and there always will be. Especially in an area as complex and chaotic as climate modelling (that fabled science collectively known by the media as ‘climate science’ is infact an amalgamation of several altogether disparate disciplines of science grouped together in an attempt to try and formulate some kind of unified picture of the entire planets weather by synthesising their various models and data into one overarching theory, whilst at the same time the political classes attempt to translate and extract this ever changing model into meaningful policy aims and emissions targets - if you want to know exactly how complex and challenging this task is then i recommend reading anything by James Lovelock). It should be remembered that there’s no single reason that’s weighty enough for anyone to doubt the validity of the current argument towards man made climate change and the huge majority of experts (not journalist or opinionists like me, but scientists… you know experts… remember them…this country used to have loads of them). Besides this is the very telling fact that most people who seem to doubt the science have either an excruciatingly obvious agenda or have no real understanding of the nature of the scientific method and the peer reviewed system that governs its discourse (in general, the Daily Mail readership and all that they represent in what I shall come to refer to as the Myopia of the Masses).

I’m not going to go on about climate change now as I will become enraged and overcome, hammering my fury into this keyboard via my slender digits like some possessed computer-bound maniac drunk on a sense of my own righteousness.

Which is of course all I have.

It is all any of us have when it comes down to it. When we are stripped bare and denied of everything we have by the vested interests of those who have squandered and wasted what was once abundant; all we have left are our minds and our opinions. Those opinions may often become warped by the collective white noise of this terrible bout of planetary flu called humankind (no particular emphasis on the kind as it turns out) but they are what pushes us forward towards either self destruction or self realisation. Regardless of whoever shouts loud enough and whoever holds the balance of power, we have one thing going for us here in this new decade of this new century of this new millennium. As a privileged portion of western society we have become empowered by technology and as a result our voices can be heard. The importance of this can never be understated.

Please feel free to here mine; an English Opinionist, barking his views into the maddening crowds, slathering and foaming slightly at the mouth but always barking and always trying his hardest to be heard above the din and chatter of the blogging, facebooking, tweeting masses.

Onwards then into the next decade, into the future, towards the inexorable end.

Twenty ten is here. So when do we get the jetpacks?