Amateur Hour is Nearly Upon Us.

Every year in the UK six days after Christmas day we celebrate New Year's Eve which marks the end of one year and the start of the next. Of course the timing of the change from one year to the next is completely arbitrary and the celebration has no religious significance whatsoever. In fact it's just a celebration of a clock ticking over from 23:59 to 00:00. However almost from birth we've been taught that this is the greatest celebration of the year and we must have the most amazing night of our lives. As a result all the people who don't really drink or party during the other 364 days of the year try and cram a years worth of hedonism into about eight hours. Funnily enough this invariably goes wrong with lots of vomiting, accidents, accidental deaths, fights and normally a couple of murders.

In London the celebrations tend to centre around Trafalgar Square and the official event with a BBC sound system and a fireworks display on the river Thames close to the clock tower on the Houses of Parliament. This official event normally ends between 00:30 and 01:00 and that's when the problems start as around 500,000 people try to squeeze themselves as one onto London's public transport system or head to Trafalgar Square in order to carry on the celebration and generally drunkenly fall over and cut themselves on broken glass. This year there will be the added excitement of the Occupylsx protest which is still camped out in the churchyard of Saint Paul's Cathedral. They are promising to put on a free music concert between 18:00 and 01:00 featuring yet to be disclosed big name acts. Whether or not that actually happens the rumour will draw people to the area on the off chance. The prospect of tens of thousands of people who are both drunk and disgruntled at the failure of rumoured bands to turn up significantly raises the risk of public disorder and even possibly a small, highly localised riot.

Personally I don't think that significant disorder will actually materialise but the tension created by the risk coupled with today's (30/12/11) declassified government papers on the 1981 Liverpool riots should promote discussion about the role of the Crown in the summer riots. If you're still in any doubt about which side of this argument the Occupylsx protesters are on their main demand seems to be to force the City of London Corporation to give up it's ancient right to refuse entry to the Monarch.