Attention Whores!

In the past thirty minutes the UK has welcomed in 2016 by moving from New Years Eve (NYE) to New Years Day. Thus this post represents the sh*ttest New Years celebration in history.

As I mentioned yesterday and seem to mention every year NYE is a completely secular celebration with absolutely no religious element to it whatsoever.

By 1917 we had established that the earth takes 8,766 hours (365.25 days) to orbit the sun - the solar year. Obviously to stop these orbits blurring into one we had to set a specific hour on a specific day when one year would end and a new one would begin. We also had to set a specific location on earth where this hour would occur so everybody moved onto the new year at the same time.

So after 8 years of international negotiation it was decided that the year would end in the middle of winter when no-one in the northern hemisphere was that busy and the international date line would be put in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where very few people lived.

Therefore technically wherever you are in the world 2016 began more then 12 hours ago and all we are celebrating is a clock ticking over from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 rather then any religious event. Saudi Arabia though does of course continue to dispute that the earth orbits around the sun.

As a result New Years Eve is an event that can be celebrated by all with little risk of offending anyone. Even the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK/North) made their celebrations available to the international pool this year. However they did pointedly celebrate an hour before the Republic of Korea (RoK/South).

Unfortunately in recent years the inclusiveness of the celebration has led to a degree of competition between nations to see who can put on the most spectacular celebration. A lot of the blame for this has to lay with the UK.

Although NYE is rarely time for accurate note taking I think it was in the mid-2000's that the UK took to putting on a large fireworks display on the River Thames in front of the London Eye Ferris wheel. The attraction here wasn't so much the fireworks themselves but the specially composed musical track that they were synchronised with.

For this the UK takes its inspiration from what is known as a "Numbers Station." This is an element of spy trade-craft that was extremely popular during the Cold War although its roots can be traced back further then that. Essentially covert operatives would be instructed to tune into a specific radio frequency at a specific time.

For five or so minute burst this otherwise unused frequency would broadcast seemingly random numbers, letters and words over short bursts of music and other sound effects. To everybody else this sounded like there was interference on the frequency.

However to those in possession of the right codebook the broadcast contained hidden messages. For example the "da, da, da, daaa" sequence in Beethoven's 5th symphony is Morse code for the letter "V."

While I didn't get my notebook out to give you an idea tonight's soundtrack featured a little burst of "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" in reference to the 2015 Rugby World Cup. There was also a song by a band called "Apollo 440" which was a reference to the most important astronaut in history - Tim Peake. There was also a song called "Rio" in reference to the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Amid bursts of various party staples that could be references or just mis-directs there was also a small portion of the INXS song "Need You Tonight." I took this as both a reference to the Sandra Bland suicide and attempt to manipulate me into writing this.

To slow it down there was also a bit of Cilla Black in reference to the death of Cilla Black and a little bit of One Direction in reference to the death of One Direction. Sorry "Hiatus."

Obviously with computer technology advancing the old long wave radio numbers stations have fallen out of favour somewhat. The problem with this was highlighted earlier on NYE's when the BBC's Internet presence - the third largest in the UK - went down in an apparent hacking.

Prompted by the frankly disturbing Error message that the BBC put up this caused a degree of panic. After all it's an open secret that BBC Radio 4 being taken off air for 4 minutes is a signal to the UK's nuclear armed submarines that the Cold War had suddenly got hot and they should fire at will.

The London firework display ended with a very ominous looking mushroom cloud of smoke.

A big adopter of the idea of the competitive NYE celebration has been the Arab Emirate of Dubai. Unfortunately much like a chav that's just won the lottery Dubai has a huge budget but very little style.

In 2014 - at great expense - Dubai set the official world record for the largest fireworks display detonating some 500,000 shells - 1,332 per second - in and around the Burj Khalifa which happens to hold the world record for being the world's tallest building.

This year Dubai was clearly still struggling to pay off 2014's display. So they pulled the old trick of setting fire to a building for the insurance money. The building in question was the "Address Downtown" hotel which sits a few 100 metres/yards from the Burj Khalifa.

Obviously this fire made the entire world focus on Dubai for a full two hours. People were particularly interested to see if they would go ahead with their fireworks planned for the Burj Khalifa. They did but with a five minute delay that eked out their moment in the spotlight that little bit longer.

I gather that delay was repeated - to the second - by Russia in their Moscow firework display.

Then of course there is the terror alert that has shut down railway stations in the Bavarian city of Munich in Germany.

Some of you may have noticed that this plot sounds remarkably similar to the most recent, Season 5 of the US TV show "Homeland" which is set in Germany.

However I should point out that Homeland does have a reputation for being a very well researched show. Also when I said yesterday that NYE represents a prime target for a mass casualty terror attack I was thinking specifically of the large crowds being bottle-necked into railway stations on their way home. Mind you the crowd safety steward always worries about pouring that many drunk people into small railway stations.

One thing that may indicate that this threat is simply spies mucking about is that the intelligence was provided by France. Following the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres France is still waiting for US President Obama to attend a NATO Summit to invoke Article 5. Needless to say NYE celebrations in Paris were distinctly sombre and low key this year amid troops on the streets and a continuing state of emergency.

The warning may have been France reminding Germany of that fact. Germany acting on the warning may have been Germany indicating that it views France's concerns as legitimate. Although if the threat proves to be an empty one it will have the effect of making France looking a little paranoid and irrational.

That said I immediately decided not to comment on the matter until at least 02:00GMT (03:00 local time). Even now that deadline is past I'm still a little hesitant to press the "Enter" key and tell Germans they can ignore the police's instructions.

02:02 on 1/1/16 (UK date).

Edited at around 12:25 on 1/1/16 (UK date) to add;

I did have a bit of a debate whether it would be better to write this last night whilst I'll was a little bit drunk or write it today when I was tired and a little hungover. I think I made the right choice even if I did manage to conspire to miss out the main bit of the London celebrations.

Perhaps in contrast with the excess of places like Dubai the London celebrations were partnered with UNICEF to highlight the suffering of children - particularly the refugee children from Syria and Iraq. The soundtrack began with dozens of children saying the phrase; "Welcome to London" in various languages.

The game of course was to identify each specific language used. If you could manage that the next challenge would be guess if the person was a native speaker of that language, whether they had any regional accent and whether they were actually using the correct phrase.

After all as I sort of pointed out in the post title the same phrase can mean different things depending on the emphasis you place on specific words.

Also stations in Germany have re-opened without a terror attack. However that doesn't mean that the warning was false. By publicly announcing that they were aware of the plot the security services may simply have forced the terrorists to abandon the attack.