Britney! Barbenheimer! Bye-bye Braverman! A look back at the highs and (mainly) lows of 2023
JANUARY
The City groans, the suburbs weep and into the dangerous year we leap. The monarch is King Charles III. The Prime Minister is Rishi Sunak. A human turd is found in a sink at the Treasury. I’m just giving you the facts.
In national news, a walrus turns up in Scarborough forcing the council to cancel its fireworks. The international picture is: war in Ukraine and Ethiopia, tensions elsewhere, right-wing nutjobs with weird hair.
Prince Harry releases his memoir and pretty soon everyone has read it except for Harry. Among the revelations: frostbitten penis; losing virginity to randy pub lady; killing c 25 Afghans; taking ayahuasca.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is downloaded by 100m people and everyone gets tremendously excited. How was it for you, ChatGPT? ‘I don’t have feelings or consciousness, so I didn’t experience any emotions when or after I was launched to the public.’ If even ChatGPT feels ambivalence about the future, how are the rest of us supposed to feel?
FEBRUARY
The month opens with the biggest day of industrial action in over a decade. Teachers are on strike, children are everywhere, road and rail chaos. After the high dramas of 2022, a mood of ennui has
