It’s funny that every year in the lead-up to Christmas, we all rush trying to get everything done to be ‘ready’ or indeed ‘set’ for Christmas. Once Santa has come and gone, we wait to see what the new year brings to us.

What it normally brings is a look back at the year that has passed and a look forward to what is ahead of us.

I would like to take this opportunity to stop and take a breath to look at where we are and hopefully where we are going in the next 12 months.

We are not in a bad place; we know where our next meal is coming from. This is a good place to be compared to the 830 million people who, according to the World Food Programme, are unsure where their next meal is coming from.

We thankfully are not the innocent victims of war. We look to Gaza where there have been over 22,000 deaths in the last few months or indeed in Ukraine where there have been almost 10,000 civilian deaths since the Russian invasion.

We are currently near full employment with an unemployment rate of 4.8%. This is far removed from the 15.8% it stood at in 2012 and the 17.3% in 1985.

The above is nothing more than a reality check of where we are. All is not perfect. Access to housing and healthcare is currently presenting many challenges for people. These are challenges for which there is no quick fix. Having said that, I think that we must live in hope that these can be fixed in the near future.

So, for 2024, we should start the year with an appreciation of what we have compared to what others do not have. Can we also follow Blindboy Boatclub’s suggestion that we treat each other with kindness and soundness, so that we may all have a happy new year. Without this kindness that I see so much of in Macra, there can indeed be no happy new year.