The End of Year Review Show.

Now Christmas day has gone even the Jews accept that the official year is coming to an end and the new one is about to begin. For many people this is a time to reflect on the year that has passed and look towards the year that is to come. I myself have recently tried to get into the spirit of things through the relatively new tradition of re-reading everything I've written over the past year and archiving it in my much tidier library at http://100badones.blogspot.co.uk/

Fortunately this year I was particularly organised so have already managed to archive the first quarter of 2014. Unfortunately this means I won't be going back over how following Irina Rodnina's carrying of the Olympic torch during the Sochi Winter Olympic opening ceremony and the start of the US overthrowing of Ukraine's government casual racism became a convenient way for nations to express their concern that US President Barack Obama isn't particularly good at his job. Given the fact the levels of racism quickly reached impressive heights it should hardly be a surprise that Obama's campaign strategy for November's US mid-term election of calling anyone who criticised him a racist failed so dramatically.

I will though get a chance to look back at both the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which cost 239 - mainly Chinese - lives and the suspicious crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine which cost 298 people their lives. Although the majority shareholder of Malaysia Airlines is the Malaysian government these aren't even the biggest controversies surrounding Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the moment. Despite his nation suffering some of the worst flooding in a generation Razak has been far more interested in celebrating the Christmas break by playing golf with US President Obama in Hawaii. I'm actually a bit surprised this story hasn't received more coverage because surely there is a way to diplomatically isolate Malaysia over the 537 deaths that falls between all out war and Obama inviting their Prime Minister to join him on a family vacation.

One story I won't be reviewing because I didn't get to cover it at the time is the end of "Mare Nostrum" - an Italian led but European Union (EU) support mission to rescue illegal immigrants who have got into trouble trying to cross the Mediterranean sea from Africa. It has been replaced by "Triton" which will only patrol 48km (30 miles) from the Italian coast and won't be supported by the UK thus making the Mediterranean's reputation as "The Graveyard of Europe" much worse. The EU will though continue to support policies that are not only intended to destroy many African nations such as Libya but also tear the EU itself to pieces.

I have though decided that I won't be archiving the World Cup because I didn't consider that work.

14:40 on 28/12/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 19:35 on 28/12/14 (UK date) to add;

Today I seriously overslept waking up at around 12:30. So not only did I not have time to have breakfast I didn't really have time to work out what my first instinct about all this was.

However the immediate suspicion falls on Indonesia where QZ8501 took off from. The assumption being that they were trying to express their anger that Razak had been so honoured by a US President who spent his early life in Indonesia. However the next suspicion falls on Malaysia which although certainly a private company Air Asia operates from. The assumption being that Malaysia was trying to spread the blame around by making it look like Indonesia were getting angry in order to reduce the fear that passengers of Malaysia Airlines their consent to be killed which is obviously putting pressure on the business model of the state owned flag carrier.

That said the whole thing still feels to me so utterly random that much like Phil Hughes' death it might actually have been just random dumb luck.

On a somewhat related note if you're looking for more information why December 31st is officially considered the last day of the year I suggest you read up on the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time-Keeping at Sea. After all it is something to do but with the conference lasting 8 years no-one's in a rush to revisit that particular treaty.

(Originally Posted on 28/12/14 - UK date).