The coming year may be as bright as we choose to make it

As Australia burns and the Prime Minister pretends nothing unusual is happening, I must borrow from James Connolly’s 1916 New Year’s message: “We should in this issue wish all our readers a ‘Happy New Year’. We do so wish them. But such a wish rings better when it is accompanied by a belief that the wish may be realised, and at the present moment the signs of a Happy New Year are none too plentiful. … A happy new year! Ah, well! Our readers are, we hope, rebels in heart, and hence may rebel even at our own picture of the future. If that is so let us remind them that opportunities are for those who seize them, and that the coming year may be as bright as we choose to make it.”