STEPHEN DOUGHTY
No arguments about the most significant event of 2011. We can’t say the Arab Spring: as China’s most celebrated Arsenal fan Chou En Lai said of the French revolution, about 180 years after the event, it’s too early to tell.
The most moving event of the year was the death of cricketer Basil D’Oliveira, a man who did as much as Nelson Mandela to bring down apartheid. His life is a reminder that it is still possible that one decent, honest, able individual can, without PR spinners, corporate sponsors, political friends, celebrity agents, lawyers or ideology, move mountains.

JANICE ATKINSON SMALL
The near collapse of the euro which is the beginning of the end of failed euro project.  When elected democracies are taken over by unelected Brussels commissioners with the blessing of other elected European leaders such as the Merkozy twins, chaos and instability ensues.
The massive debts of the Eurozone countries, fuelled by huge unsustained borrowing in the ‘boom’ years which cannot ever be repaid, inertia in the financial markets and European banks over-exposed to debt, has resulted in stagnation which Germany cannot and will not bail out.
With Germany expecting everyone else to pay into the pot via the IMF, not to stabilise countries which it is designed to do, but to prop up a failed currency, it is doomed.
This slowly unravelling mess will last into 2012 but will finally be laid to rest with the rebirth of democracy.



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