You've already had your fill of novelty pies, Xmas party drama and mistletoe manhandling shame hangovers. We'll not add to the red, green and credit card scheme holiday buffet here. Instead, we're taking a Rat's Eye view back on a year of revelations that went by as hard and fast as the mouth burn from bootlegged tequila.If you want a rundown of music magazine hack takes on The Best Albums and Best Songs of 2012, feel free. But we respect your taste enough to let you make up your own mind, and why does it matter what year a record came out in anyway? The ugly disease of Neophilia is a big part of why everything sucks and we drown in disposable vapid novelties. To be really cool you need to live outside of time, but that does not mean we don't remember a few highlights, lowlights and blowflights of the Year limping away from us now.Much of the first half of the 012 was spent puffing up the orgy of atomic supermen, cynical yet profoundly ineffective marketing, and gargantuan spending on single use venues that was the Olympics. Alien anthropologists will puzzle over this strange, staged ritual self sacrifice of money, freedom and time. It's now passed on leaving less of a legacy than a discarded fag end in a cheap hotel lift, and those that brought it all upon us have flown away in a guff of self congratulation, leaving all us plebs to our encroaching misery.We also continued to indulge our addiction for Enquiries. This is where people get upset about something, and the Powers that Be get some retired judge to listen to slebs and whoever feels loud, who then delivers a forest massacring finger pointing Report which leads to precisely no change or action. In many cases, this is the right outcome. Doing nothing is better that Something Worse, which is often what the Learned recommend.No-one likes Red Top tabloid muckrats, who were caught tapping the phones of the rich and irrelevant. Everyone wants to see posh yet bog scumline common characters like Brooks and the Chipping Norton set laid low in a fragrant cell, making new best friends in the showers. But that is no reason to sacrifice 300 years of incomplete yet precious freedom of speech. There are plenty of ways to sue people, laws that need enforcing etc already without some monstrous USSR meets PC liberty chewing machine. The elite do not want us to smell what they are shoveling, and would adore muzzling the media into even more of a money mad trivia poodle than it already is.And the next big synthetic scandal shows why. A National Treasure was discovered to be treasuring sexual experiences considered premature in most world cultures, especially with the marginalised and defenceless. It was a secret as open as the fly of an inept flasher at the seafront, but no-one said anything because he was so precious and lovely and charitable and important. And then said even less when the tide turned against the press, gutter and Beeb alike, being a bit mean about precious slebbage.Meanwhile, the Nation chooses to sink into a Lost Decade of no economic growth, as the rich and idle alike sit on our overtaxed shoulders. Our internet speed, mobile and not, is now inferior compared to Rwanda, people get imprisoned for getting high while Special Brew is more available than Perrier, everything is broken and train tickets often cost more than a second hand car.All one can do is get warm, raise a glass, put on a record, shrug and remember an ancient Igbo proverb from Southeastern Nigeria. If only Cameroons and all the other political buffoons (as they sadly are just different shades of the same scatology) could feel this too:"One whose house in on fire does not hunt rats."But one that is wise does hunt in the Rat Racks and we have a lovely super special don't miss it Xmas Xstravaganza for you this Saturday! If you loved last week's New In you'll be happy as we're topping up that winning combo with more of the same. And more...!We've got Lester Bowie, Pat Metheney, Jack deJonette, Arthur Blythe re Jazz. 80s African vinyl, mainly Highlife and Congolese. Dylan, Purple, Sabbath, Zep, Doors...and that's before we even mention all the Indie, Alt and Hip-Hop.See you Sat.