Goodbye 2016 and Welcome to 2017...

In Blighty and the US 2016 was the year of the deplorables or populists or the self-described anti-establishment. Except they are not really all that popular and definitely not anti-establishment. The reactionary wing of the establishment have power in the US, but they will hopefully be constrained by a strong system of checks and balances.

In the UK we have voted to remove an important balance to a Westminster system stuck in the early 20th century, and to hand power to the reactionary appeaser wing of the establishment.

With a Prime Minister who, when not campaigning to remain part of our biggest export market in goods AND SERVICES, was considering "deprioritising illegal migrants in the schools admissions process, and carrying out immigration checks through schools" as THAT WOMAN the then Education Secretary wrote in a letter opposing the plans, whilst hundreds of unaccompanied children were left in a camp in Calais despite having the right to come to this country to be with relatives.

This is only one of many failures in 2016, there is also the Social Care/NHS crisis, the Child Abuse Inquiry fiasco, Southern Rail, the on-going EU migrant "crisis" in general and the UK's shameful Pontius Pilate stance.

But there was one big distraction - the pointless plebiscite, the result of which will mean we will be less well off than we would have been, economically and culturally and it will continue to be an unnecessary distraction for years to come.

With the fall of Dearest Dave and Curious George, I hoped that we might have a more competent government and we might still, but it is very relative.

We can only hope that, once Brexit gets going and if immigration begins to fall, "the people" come to realise that they were blaming the wrong targets all along and begin to blame the real culprit  - WESTMINSTER.