2015 into 2016 - Nothing Personal

'Russian Plane Shot Down By Turkey', said the headline in the Evening Standard, suggesting that the Christmas silly season had come early. But no, it was deadly serious – the beginning of World War III if you can believe the Daily Mail. But can you?

The Paris attacks soon followed, which, as commentators said 'changed everything'. Except they didn't: the terror alert in the UK stayed at 'severe' – it didn't go up to the next level, whatever that is ('Scream, scream for your lives!'?). That didn't stop Jeremy Vine, who even did a segment on his show discussing whether it was a good idea to 'nuke' IS (or whatever they were being called that week) – 'Can we even talk about that?', asked JV. It turned out that they could, and in all fairness some people did seem to think that 'nuking' IS was a good idea – after all, 'with all the technology nowadays', surely a 'controlled explosion' wasn't out of the question. Although someone else thought it might be 'a bit close to Israel'. Anyway, Vladimir Putin is actually considering this apparently, so it isn't a mad idea after all.

When he wasn't basing his programmes on dumb suggestions people had made on Twitter he was basing them on other BBC shows. He did a slot on the anti-IS rant Andrew Neil performed at the beginning of his TV show - a lot of people ringing in to say how 'refreshing' it was to hear Neil raving about 'jihadi losers', though it was surprising how many of those people let slip that they had cancelled holidays to Europe or even trips to London out of fear. It seemed that their bullishness did not extend far beyond their living rooms - and even then they needed someone else to do it for them.

MP's, it turned out, could be relied upon for that, if for nothing else, as they predictably voted to throw more bombs on the problem. David Cameron, tired of personifying faintly sinister blandness, seemed to fancy himself as a new Churchill, although the closest resemblance he managed was to that dog in the insurance ads. There used to be running dogs of capitalism didn't there? – now we just have a nodding one.

As we got further into Winter, JV succumbed to a bad throat, persisting in presenting his programme almost until the end. I wanted to ring in and tell him to go home – it sounded alarmingly like the ghost of Jimmy Young was haunting his old slot.

At New Year Germany was troubled by Syrian immigrants assaulting women and throwing firecrackers. 'It was like a war zone', someone commented. Perhaps this was a joke. I can't condone this kind of behaviour: sex attacks aside, civilized people don't throw fireworks. They might drop a bomb on you from a great height but it's nothing personal. They probably don't even know you're there.

In January JV interviewed a presenter from 'Gun Radio', I think it was. That's in Texas, it may not surprise you to know. Of course they were talking about gun control, of which this man was not really in favour. To a male American gun fanatic the suggestion that he might have his gun taken away from him is pretty much indistinguishable from a threat to come round his house and rip his penis off. With female gun fanatics it's even worse since they don't have a real penis to fall back on.

So it was no surprise that the argument didn't get very far and seemed to get stuck on the notion of 'good people' with guns and 'bad people' with guns. There was nothing about morally ambivalent people with guns. Eventually the American DJ's reasoned argument boiled down to a statement to the effect that they can't take people's guns away because if they did there would be 'civil war'. A war between people with guns and people without them? At least it would be over quickly.

I'm not even going to mention Donald Trump - it would be playing into his hands. Except, oh I have, haven't I? From the little I have seen of his campaign, he's more like someone auditioning for a sitcom than for the Presidency: he wants to be the new Archie Bunker. His endorsement by Sarah Palin (Beavis to his Butthead) seems to confirm this, as she hails him with the ultimate recommendation – that he 'isn't a politician' ('Can I have a hallelujah?') That's like recommending someone to rewire a house on the basis that they are not a qualified electrician. I can see the lights going out already.

Oh and I turned fifty. But so what?