Whilst I’m optimistic about the new year I have to admit it’s started slowly. Neither of us were out carousing last night. In fact, we both fell asleep not long after welcoming each other into 2025! There’s been torrential rain across the North-West and Yorkshire overnight, so any thoughts of long walks were dashed when we watched the rain bounding off the bedroom window. Instead, we’ve had a home-based day, recharging the batteries in the expectation of a much better year ahead.

That’s not to say 2024 was awful, it had real highs and lows. Dawn look back at it more fondly than I do as the Platt family had some great times together, including celebrating her father, John’s 90th birthday. For me, it was rather more mixed. I certainly covered some ground, although that’s been mostly in the UK. I’ve added 1000s of pictures to my archives, carried out some amazing commissions with some incredible site visits and written dozens of magazine articles. I’ve also hit my own personal milestone by turning 65, although I’m still trying to work out where the hell the years have gone. My Fitbit stats tell the tale. Since I first bought one in 2017 records show I’d walk anything between 4.5 to 5.5 million steps in a year. 2024 has been a new record. I’ve hit 6,051.989. Maybe it’s time to slow down a little, especially now I’ve aggravated an old knee injury I picked up during my cycling commute days in London back in the 1990s.

That’s not going to stop me travelling of course. There’s a lot of places I want to see in the next few years, with (hopefully) the focus switching outside of the UK. Watch this space.

2024 was also a weird year for politics. The highlight was seeing the Tories swept from power in the British general election, bringing 14 years of awfulness to a close. Sadly, they did their best to salt the earth before they were kicked out, leaving the incoming Labour administration with an awful financial landscape and some tough choices, which haven’t been made any easier by an almost universally hostile media. You’d be forgiven for thinking their first 6 months in power have been a disaster, because that’s the message the media have been keen to push, rather than reporting factually and accurately on what’s been going on. Despite all the froth and daily dross from Reform, who pretend they’re really the opposition (despite only having 6 MPs) Labour have over 4 years until the next general election to come good. That stability shouldn’t be underestimated after the dramas of the Tory years.

Mind you, it’s not just the mainstream media that’s guilty of hysteria. 2024 saw social media become more and more poisonous thanks to the likes of Elon Musk’s Twitter (I refuse to pander to him and call it X) and the algorithms of Facebook and others which are pushing contentious content or unreliable and inaccurate AI nonsense. The old axiom of ‘put shit in, get shit out’ has never been more true. Even Google is pushing this nonsense, making it harder and harder to separate fact from fiction, truth from lies. No wonder so many of us are limiting our exposure to social media or switching platforms from the likes of Twitter to Bluesky.

This disinformation helped in propelling Donald Trump back into the American presidency, in what was undoubtedly the biggest political disaster of 2024. On the bright side, the cracks in his administration, (which hasn’t yet come to power) are already showing, infighting between his MAGA cronies and the likes of Musk are already in full swing, which could make 2025 a record market for popcorn sales…

Another potential bright spot on the horizon is the continuing collapse of Putin’s Russia, thanks to their massive and continuing human and material losses in Ukraine and defeat in Syria (the fall of Assad being another bright spot in 2024). I’m loathe to rely on crystal balls but I’ll be watching what goes on in Ukraine with interest. The Ukrainians are rewriting the book on warfare, whilst Russia is rapidly running out of old Soviet era equipment and increasingly relying on Iran (another country that got a kicking in Syria) and North Korea. I have to admit, I never had North Korean troops fighting in Russia on my 2025 bingo card…

So, despite everything, including the increasingly obvious impacts of climate change. I remain cautiously optimistic about prospects for 2025. Plus, I become a state pensioner this year, which is something to look forward to – sort of! After all, it’s not as if I have any choice in the matter and can turn the clock back, so I might as well embrace it!

Hopefully, I can keep you entertained with blogs about politics, travel, life, the universe and everything throughout 2025. In the meantime I hope you all have a fabulous year! In the meantime, here’s a link to my Zenfolio website which has had a huge picture update today. Look out for many more soon. Here’s a sample.

I’ve a small favour to ask…
If you enjoy reading this or any of the other blogs I’ve written, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course – although if you did find something that tickled your fancy that would be fab! – but the revenue from them helps me to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site (which isn’t cheap and comes out of my own pocket). Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Or – you can now buy me a coffee! https://ko-fi.com/paulbigland68312