David Blunkett, Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough
BEST: Enjoyable personal highs—spending a long, languorous weekend in Burgundy. The victory of Simon Danczuk, MP for Rochdale, despite the “bigotgate” affair.
WORST: Preventing the Tories from getting a majority was temporarily a high—until it emerged that the leader of the Lib Dems is a more enthusiastic right-winger than some of the Thatcher cabinet of the 1980s.
RESOLUTION: Be slightly nicer to Nick Clegg, on the grounds that none of us want him to become a victim on whom the electorate bestow sympathy.
Lionel Shriver, novelist
BEST: Seeing the back of Gordon Brown and discovering that we do not feel sorry for him after all.
WORST: The revelation that a proposal to lower the British housing benefit “cap” from £104,000 a year is controversial.
RESOLUTION: Stop saying “kind of” and “sort of.”
Nick Boles, Conservative MP for Grantham and Stamford
BEST: Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet at the National Theatre.
WORST: X-Factor contestant Wagner, possibly the only Brazilian in the world to lack all rhythm, musicality and charm.
RESOLUTION: Take Ed Miliband seriously.
James Caan, Dragons’ Den star and CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw
BEST: The coalition’s recognition of the importance of small and medium-sized businesses to future economic growth. The first fledgling plans to introduce entrepreneurial skills to the school curriculum.
RESOLUTION: Make a difference to some of the 20m people whose homes were washed away by the floods in Pakistan.
Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief, Nature
BEST: A substantial public-donation charity to fund research for mental health internationally will be formally launched in 2011, stimulated by the Wellcome Trust. (Transparency: I’ll be a trustee.)
WORST: John McCain backing away from his support for mitigating climate change. This betrayal of reason, and of everyone else’s long-term interests, symbolised a collective, calamitous political failure.
RESOLUTION: Note how many active people in their late seventies I have met during 2010 and change my mindset about my own potential.
Amanda Levete, leading architect
BEST: Boris bikes: ugly, but a very good illustration of how a small move can have huge impact.
WORST: Cutting sport in school at the same time as trying to treat and prevent childhood obesity—a mad idea.
BEST EVENT: Student protests—finally the younger generation has been politicised and engaged.
RESOLUTION: Do as I advise my clients the next time I design my own home. Trying to save money is a false economy. I regret every cost saving we made this time round.
Baroness Falkner, Lib Dem home affairs spokeswoman in the Lords
BEST: Voting for a historic coalition agreement in the late hours of 11th May. Very emotional and a sense of huge relief, but I’m very worried about what is to come.
WORST: Lib Dems MPs signing up to no-tuition fee pledges. I’ve written enough policy manifestos in my time to know what barking mad sounds like.
Ian Rankin, novelist
BEST: Twitter. Instant news, comment, gossip, and everyone from Stephen Fry (real) to Dr Johnson (not so much).
WORST: Well, we’ve endured crisis after crisis but surely nothing was as devastating for British morale as the sickly headliner show by Gorillaz at Glastonbury.
RESOLUTION: Write a novel.
Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland
BEST: Progress with Scotland’s green energy revolution to help fuel a sustained recovery. Being in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, where Scottish athletes brought home a haul of 26 medals.
WORST: The recently published Scotland bill, which does not go far enough in devolving more financial responsibilities to Holyrood.
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive, WPP
BEST: Recovery… or dead cat bounce… or rebound.
WORST: Procurement and euro contagion.
HOPES AND FEARS: Euro contagion spreading and the US deficit not being dealt with. Or England failing to win the Ashes.
Julie Burchill, writer
BEST: For me the man of the year is the ever-awesome Christopher Hitchens.
RESOLUTION: Reach a reading age of 12 in Hebrew—so far, it’s five.
Lionel Barber, editor, FT
BEST: Coalition government in Britain. It’s working; it’s driven nuttier Tory or Lib Dem policies off the table; and the hung parliament doomsters have been proven wrong.
WORST: BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A case study in mishandled crisis management and an environmental disaster in one of the most beautiful spots in the US.
RESOLUTION: Read more books on my iPad.
Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Conservative party
BEST MOMENT: To see David Cameron walk into 10 Downing Street. What made it even better was what followed: a phone call from the prime minister saying he wanted me to join the cabinet.
WORST MOMENT: Seeing the devastation wrought by the floods in Pakistan.
RESOLUTION: Get fit. It’s hard being a mum and a minister—but it’s easier if you’re physically in good shape.
Peter Bazalgette, creative director behind the British Big Brother
BEST: Maggie Smith as the Dowager in Downton Abbey, saying: “The weekend…what’s that?”
RESOLUTION: The rising levels of alcohol in wine destroy both flavour and one’s liver, so I am resolved not to drink wine standing up, and when seated drink half as much at twice the price. I’m going for quality over quantity. That’s the theory.
Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman Ogilvy Group UK
BEST: The new models of electronic cigarette—a device which perfectly mimics a cigarette in all but its deleterious effects.
PLEASANT SURPRISE: The spectacular success of live broadcasts to digital cinemas of performances from the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre.
BEST TELEVISION: Still Mad Men, I’m afraid. And the secret to why the cast looks so good? The actresses are expressly banned from working out.
BEST POLITICAL EVENT: Establishment of a unit to study behavioural sciences at the heart of government.
RESOLUTION: Spend more time reading and less time playing Angry Birds.
Sir Mark Walport, director, Wellcome Trust
BEST: The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is sequencing two human genomes every day, analysing DNA sequence at 1m base pairs every second. In early clinical trials a new drug for malignant melanoma, developed as a result of the human genome project, showed a dramatic response in patients with advanced metastatic disease. And H1N1 swine flu turned out not to be the major killer that some had feared.
WORST: If we drew the wrong conclusions from this, relaxed about the risks from flu and other potential viral threats and stopped using and developing new vaccines.
RESOLUTION: Try to maintain this year’s 20kg weight loss in the face of overwhelming occupational calorific pressures.
Sir John Rose, chief executive Rolls-Royce
BEST: Britain has some very successful businesses from aerospace through pharmaceuticals to services, and a few of the best educational establishments in the world. But we lack scale, breadth and consistency. In education we need to establish standards that reflect the global competition for skills. Second, we need to revitalise vocational training. The proposals for university technical colleges are a good start. Third, invest in world-class infrastructure and transport. Fourth, get corporate and personal taxes lower and simpler. Finally, start describing what we want to be as a country, in language that is compelling.
WORST: The economy is still fragile and the global financial system retains the capacity to surprise unpleasantly.
RESOLUTION: Take an extended holiday, with my family, without a mobile phone or a BlackBerry for the first time in ages.
Tessa Ross, controller Film4 and Channel 4 Drama
BEST: Getting film written into C4’s official remit, and our budget increased to £15m. It was great to be part of two fantastic feature film debuts from Chris Morris (Four Lions) and Richard Ayoade (Submarine).
WORST: The huge cuts to the arts that we face. It’s dangerous to assume that culture will take care of itself. Tough times can give culture momentum, but the artists of tomorrow need support today.
HOPES: Discover a new filmmaker who sees the world in a wonderful new way and to whom my team can make a difference.
Toby Young, writer and co-founder of the West London Free School
BEST: Katharine Birbalsingh, the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative party conference.
WORST: Fiona Millar, the journalist campaigning for non-selective admissions to secondary schools in England.
RESOLUTION: To open the West London Free School in 2011.
Clive James, writer
BEST: The quiet dignity of Aung San Suu Kyi. On the day of her release, when she wound flowers into her hair, it filled me with the resolution to come back next time as a spray of jasmine.
WORST: Among the world’s rich supply of horrors, nothing stood out for its sinister quietness like the tight-lipped determination of Comrade Duch, erstwhile commandant of Tuol Sleng torture centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to pursue his case for a lighter sentence. How his self-confessed personal supervision of the death agonies of thousands of innocent people could be exonerated he preferred to leave mysterious.
RESOLUTION: To write a play of my own. A dialogue between Suu Kyi and Duch might be rewarding.
Sir James Dyson, inventor and engineer
RESOLUTION: I’m doubling the number of engineers at Dyson’s R&D laboratories in Wiltshire to 700. I suppose that’s a new year’s resolution of sorts!
John Lloyd, contributing editor at the FT
BEST: Heartening for a Hilary supporter and an Obama sceptic to see the US president emerge as one with strong ideals and the will to pursue them.
WORST: The continued imprisonment by the Chinese leadership of Liu Xiabao, and its refusal to allow him to collect the Nobel Prize. China’s efforts to frighten other states away from the ceremony shows a regime determined to suppress free speech in an international arena now overawed by the success of its economy.
Mary Warnock, philosopher and independent crossbencher in the House of Lords
BEST: The outcome of the general Election. Though the coalition seemed weird at first and I have no especial love for Nick Clegg, I found myself welcoming a partial relief from the most horrible burden we political animals have to bear: party politics.
WORST: The coalition government’s recent tendency to behave like its predecessor. We have received Bills that have been hasty, ill-considered, and carrying serious constitutional entailments. Not far beneath the skin, I am still, as once I was, a headmistress. Grieving, as headmistresses do, I have to declare myself Disappointed.
RESOLUTION: I will finally admit that I am deaf, and never go to another party
Richard Sennett, sociologist
RESOLUTION: Quit the Lib Dems and rejoin the Labour Party. I left Labour because of the war in Iraq, but didn't think I had signed up for Thatcherism with a human face.
Anne McElvoy, journalist and broadcaster
BEST: The Coalition. Triumph of negotiation by Clegg and Cameron, bringing an overdue realignment in British politics. Also neat way of allowing two parties to sacrifice unpopular personnel and policies, on the grounds that there isn't room for them in the new Venn diagram.
WORST: The immigration cap. Unworkable, knee-jerk triumph of short-term positioning over practical politics. Shame on you Dave and co.
RESOLUTIONS: Truly believe that forehead wrinkles are a sign of intelligence. Complete accounts for 2008.
Peter Singer, philosopher
BEST: Australia's election of a Prime Minister who is (a) female, (b) living with a man to whom she is not married, and (c) an atheist. When the United States and Saudi Arabia both do the same, we will know that religious prejudice is really on the retreat.
WORST: The lack of international action required to reduce the damage we are already causing to our climate.
RESOLUTION: Keep thinking
Amanda Craig, novelist
BEST: The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. It showed that human ingenuity and determination can win through seemingly intractable natural obstacles.
WORST: From a British perspective it's the return to the early 1980s. I expect more riots, cuts, potholes, a hardening of the Right and a weakening of the Left; and we're once again becoming soppily nostalgic for the past as portrayed by Downton Abbey and the endless flow of middlebrow historical fiction.
RESOLUTION: Support my fellow-novelists by not buying those temptingly cheap second-hand books on Amazon, from which neither we nor publishers make any money.
Raymond Tallis, philosopher and writer
RESOLUTION: Stop finding ever more ingenious excuses for avoiding sustained thought. This is my annual resolution but by January 2nd it is invariably business as usual.
Andrew Brown, journalist and writer
WORST: David Cameron's continued employment of Andy Coulson. If he gets away with it, this shows that Murdoch and his servants are above the law.
BEST: The emergence of London Citizens, an organisation of community groups (85% religious) which managed to get all three party leaders to their hustings before the election. This was the nearest thing to a society emerging from the bottom up, despite the best efforts of government to invent it from the top down.
AN Wilson, biographer and novelist
BEST: From a bookish point of view, the best thing has been the centenary of Tolstoy’s death. This has not only been a good excuse to reread his astonishing work but also a reminder of how right his pacifist-anarchist views were. War and trade continue to fuck up the world just as they did in 1910 and no government seems to have heeded any of Tolstoy’s lessons.
WORST: The Lib Dem volte face over university tuition fees was truly ridiculous. But to see Saint Vince Cable and other Lib Dems trooping off to China with Cameron to secure “British jobs” from the murderous tyrants who govern that country was truly repellent.
RESOLUTION: For next year and every year for the rest of my life—don’t be conned into voting at elections.
Anthony Appiah, philosopher
BEST: Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize.
WORST: The Chinese government's response to Liu’s Nobel, which has ranged from the petty to the Stalinist—rounding up people who celebrated the award, calling others in for long questioning, confiscating papers and tapes and computers, arresting people who’ve circulated leaflets about the award, all to try to keep the news from their own people.
RESOLUTION (which, I fear, may do for some years to come): To keep working for the release of Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese political prisoners and for his cause—the democratisation of China.
Joseph O’Connor, novelist
WORST: 2010 was the year in which Ireland's Celtic Tiger went the way of the Loch Ness Monster—either it's dead or it never truly existed. Certain therapists tell us that grief comes in five distinct stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We Irish realised there's another stage that comes between four and five: not listening to the radio news.
ANOTHER WORST: More rain fell on the country than on the complete works of Frank McCourt, but this being Ireland, there were severe water shortages everywhere.
RESOLUTION: Emigrate
James Lovelock, environmentalist
WORST: 'Climategate.' The hackers uncovered a few Tweedledums and Tweedledees of global warming but we still do not know the answer to those vast looming questions: how will the climate change and what need we do to survive it?
RESOLUTION: Try to speak and write clearly.
John Carey, literary critic
BEST: The death of new Labour
WORST: The deaths of 112 (to date) British servicemen in Afghanistan and the maiming of many more
RESOLUTION: Swim twice a week rather than just once (I am afraid I made the same resolution last year).
Simon Blackburn, philosopher
BEST: Quite eclipsing the news of Aung San Suu Kyi's release, the top good news story of the year must be the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Surely a nation rejoices!
WORST: The worst news of the year may well be that the previous two sentences would apparently not strike most English people as ironic.
RESOLUTION: Turn directly to the Guardian crossword, and do not turn back.
Norman Lebrecht, novelist and commentator
BEST: The growing role of social media.
WORST: The Arts Council's refusal to face realities.
RESOLUTION: Do more, better.
Duncan Fallowell, writer
BEST: Scrapping the Stalinist towerblock development at Chelsea Barracks
WORST: Scrapping the western congestion zone in London
RESOLUTION: Hedonism
Nick Lane, science writer and biochemist
BEST: Simon Singh's victory for freedom of speech. May the government have the resolve to reform the dangerous and absurd libel laws.
WORST: Student fees. The debts accrued in the course of a degree will stifle the free pursuit of knowledge. The sheer joy of science will be eroded, and over decades, society and the economy with it.
RESOLUTION: I don't resolve, I just hope, and try.
Sam Leith, journalist
BEST: There was something distinctly wonderful in watching Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity take on the Tea Party with what on the Internet we call LOLs. The introduction of humour—with all its deflationary virtues—into politics, especially American politics, can only be a good.
WORST: Undoubtedly the unravelling of Lucas North, the handsome spy from Spooks. I know he’s an imaginary character, but what an utter rotter! And taking Sir Harry down with him was unforgivable. How I’ll miss that show.
RESOLUTION: Spend less time working and more time baking bread, reading comics and playing computer games. I want to do my bit to keep Britain in recession.
Mary Beard, classicist and broadcaster
BEST: From a British perspective the best news of the year was to find we have a justice minister, at last, who is prepared to say that we have too many people banged up in prison.
WORST: The fact that most people with hands on the relevant purse strings seem convinced that arts and humanities are a 'luxury'—nice if you can afford them, dispensible in a recession. Hello Dark Ages.
Peter Florence, founder of the Hay festival
BEST AND WORST: The British public's championing of Ann Widdecombe on Strictly is a glorious collision of both categories—remorseless and sarcastic cruelty to a strident politician unaware of their own humiliation and, simultaneously, a defiant refusal to buy into media manipulation and celebrity.
BEST: Neil MacGregor recalibrated history in the most awesome speech broadcasting achievement since Willy Rushton's last I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
WORST: The utter failure of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to make political capital from their substantial achievements in government. Where the fuck was Malcolm Tucker?
RESOLUTION: Gotta make some big changes in diet and exercise to be ready for London 2012 when the call comes....
Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham
BEST: My Ipad. Cameron announcing we would get out of Afghanistan, but not soon enough. Russian Duma apologising for Katyn massacres. Montreal. St Petersburg. Santander and Cantabria. Being off the whip. Seeing northern England covered in snow. Children of Albion (son, daughter included) rising like lions from slumber to reawaken the English radical tradition of protest.
WORST: Unending Euro crisis. Digging out of northern snow. The mainstreaming of antisemitism. BNP. Jobbik. Wilders. Most movies. Parliament’s loss of authority and subordination of elected representatives to judicial-civil service-media power holders. England’s football performance. My lousy tennis. Worries about my children. Russian Duma refusing to treat Sergei Magnitsky murder seriously. C10 bus.
Timothy Garton Ash, writer and journalist
WORST: Iran, North Korea, Islamists, banks, tabloids ... there is just so much competition. Yet what I have found most consistently and consequentially depressing in 2010 has been the polarised, hysterical
gridlock of US politics. Neither America nor the world can afford much more of it.
BEST: BBC foreign correspondents, who brilliantly keep alive a vital, endangered craft. Special mention. And, on a different note, Norwegians, who use their oil wealth so wisely, and refuse to be bullied when it comes to giving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Professor Chris Rapley CBE, director of science museum
WORST: The shrill and polarised nature of some media coverage of climate science this year. It did nothing to move the issue forward and much to exclude people from meaningful dialogue.
BEST: Opening Atmosphere: exploring climate science, a new climate science gallery at the Science Museum that aims to re-engage and deepen understanding so that you are able to make up your own mind!”
RESOLUTION: Be relaxed about not having one—and not worry about not keeping it!
Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
BEST: It was utterly humbling to have been re-elected by the people of Tooting. The spirit and camaraderie which enveloped the dedicated group of campaigners from across all sections of the community would have made Tooting’s very own Wolfe Smith very proud.
WORST: Obviously, there is no diminishing the disappointment of the overall result for Labour. My disappointment continues to be compounded by the form of my beloved Liverpool FC—a slumbering giant that is awaiting a return to the pinnacle of European football.
RESOLUTION: Ideally I’d commit to some worthy resolutions such as keeping fit, drinking less coffee and other wholesome things. But the world of politics makes this extremely difficult – avoiding chocolate, waist-line expanding dinners and surviving without a caffeine stimulus is all but impossible!
Ed Smith, former England cricketer and Times leader writer
RESOLUTION: My New Year's resolution is never to eat any food, ever again, even a sandwich that has been pre-prepared and then embalmed inside plastic shrink wrap. Such food is universally disgusting. The culture that surrounds it is worse.
Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
BEST: Announcing my candidacy for the Labour leadership on Radio 4’s Today program.
WORST: Labour losing the general election. One of the saddest sights of the year for me were the television of pictures of Gordon Brown walking down Downing Street and out of office clutching the hands of Sarah and the two boys.
Ian Blair, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
BEST: Seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time
Worst: The proposal to introduce directly elected Commissioners to provide a new form of political accountability for the police, an idea with neither intellectual merit nor historical insight.
RESOLUTION: Spend more time in India...
James Purnell, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde
WORST: Losing an election we could have won.
BEST: The BBC keeping a music station it could have closed—6Music
RESOLUTION: Substitute novels for newspapers.
Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow
BEST: My best personal moment of 2010, was winning back Bethnal Green and Bow from George Galloway’s Respect Party. We won because of three years of hard work by hundreds of people from so many different walks of life who came together in a progressive alliance to achieve this result. Even David Goodhart came out campaigning! Who would have thought...
WORST: Natural disasters such as the Pakistan floods and the Haiti earthquake. As someone born in Bangladesh, the impact of natural disasters is sadly all too familiar, but that does not alter the terrible damage we have seen this year.
Will Hutton, writer and columnist
BEST: Margaret Hodge winning Barking so emphatically against the BNP
WORST: G20 meeting in Seoul showing complete breakdown in international economic collaboration
RESOLUTION: Writing less and playing more
Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy at Warwick University and member of House of Lords
WORST: Every speech by George Osborne
BEST: A private view of the restoration work on the Raphael frescos in the Vatican.
RESOLUTION: Finish my new book, co-authored with my son Edward. And spend more time in warmer climes.
Will Straw, editor of Left Foot Forward
WORST: Bigot-gate. The incident indicated how the Prime Minister had lost touch with one the public's greatest concerns, immigration, and couldn’t even recognise his own core vote when staring him in the face.
Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society
BEST: Hearing the IMF—yes, that is the International Monetary Fund—praise Africa’s “sound economic policy” and commend its “nimble” management to avoid the fall-out from the West’s global financial scam.
WORST: The corrupt dictatorships in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda.
RESOLUTION: Have Lord Acton’s dictum about power translated into all 2000 African languages
BEST: Enjoyable personal highs—spending a long, languorous weekend in Burgundy. The victory of Simon Danczuk, MP for Rochdale, despite the “bigotgate” affair.
WORST: Preventing the Tories from getting a majority was temporarily a high—until it emerged that the leader of the Lib Dems is a more enthusiastic right-winger than some of the Thatcher cabinet of the 1980s.
RESOLUTION: Be slightly nicer to Nick Clegg, on the grounds that none of us want him to become a victim on whom the electorate bestow sympathy.
Lionel Shriver, novelist
BEST: Seeing the back of Gordon Brown and discovering that we do not feel sorry for him after all.
WORST: The revelation that a proposal to lower the British housing benefit “cap” from £104,000 a year is controversial.
RESOLUTION: Stop saying “kind of” and “sort of.”
Nick Boles, Conservative MP for Grantham and Stamford
BEST: Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet at the National Theatre.
WORST: X-Factor contestant Wagner, possibly the only Brazilian in the world to lack all rhythm, musicality and charm.
RESOLUTION: Take Ed Miliband seriously.
James Caan, Dragons’ Den star and CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw
BEST: The coalition’s recognition of the importance of small and medium-sized businesses to future economic growth. The first fledgling plans to introduce entrepreneurial skills to the school curriculum.
RESOLUTION: Make a difference to some of the 20m people whose homes were washed away by the floods in Pakistan.
Dr Philip Campbell, editor-in-chief, Nature
BEST: A substantial public-donation charity to fund research for mental health internationally will be formally launched in 2011, stimulated by the Wellcome Trust. (Transparency: I’ll be a trustee.)
WORST: John McCain backing away from his support for mitigating climate change. This betrayal of reason, and of everyone else’s long-term interests, symbolised a collective, calamitous political failure.
RESOLUTION: Note how many active people in their late seventies I have met during 2010 and change my mindset about my own potential.
Amanda Levete, leading architect
BEST: Boris bikes: ugly, but a very good illustration of how a small move can have huge impact.
WORST: Cutting sport in school at the same time as trying to treat and prevent childhood obesity—a mad idea.
BEST EVENT: Student protests—finally the younger generation has been politicised and engaged.
RESOLUTION: Do as I advise my clients the next time I design my own home. Trying to save money is a false economy. I regret every cost saving we made this time round.
Baroness Falkner, Lib Dem home affairs spokeswoman in the Lords
BEST: Voting for a historic coalition agreement in the late hours of 11th May. Very emotional and a sense of huge relief, but I’m very worried about what is to come.
WORST: Lib Dems MPs signing up to no-tuition fee pledges. I’ve written enough policy manifestos in my time to know what barking mad sounds like.
Ian Rankin, novelist
BEST: Twitter. Instant news, comment, gossip, and everyone from Stephen Fry (real) to Dr Johnson (not so much).
WORST: Well, we’ve endured crisis after crisis but surely nothing was as devastating for British morale as the sickly headliner show by Gorillaz at Glastonbury.
RESOLUTION: Write a novel.
Alex Salmond, first minister of Scotland
BEST: Progress with Scotland’s green energy revolution to help fuel a sustained recovery. Being in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games, where Scottish athletes brought home a haul of 26 medals.
WORST: The recently published Scotland bill, which does not go far enough in devolving more financial responsibilities to Holyrood.
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive, WPP
BEST: Recovery… or dead cat bounce… or rebound.
WORST: Procurement and euro contagion.
HOPES AND FEARS: Euro contagion spreading and the US deficit not being dealt with. Or England failing to win the Ashes.
Julie Burchill, writer
BEST: For me the man of the year is the ever-awesome Christopher Hitchens.
RESOLUTION: Reach a reading age of 12 in Hebrew—so far, it’s five.
Lionel Barber, editor, FT
BEST: Coalition government in Britain. It’s working; it’s driven nuttier Tory or Lib Dem policies off the table; and the hung parliament doomsters have been proven wrong.
WORST: BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. A case study in mishandled crisis management and an environmental disaster in one of the most beautiful spots in the US.
RESOLUTION: Read more books on my iPad.
Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Conservative party
BEST MOMENT: To see David Cameron walk into 10 Downing Street. What made it even better was what followed: a phone call from the prime minister saying he wanted me to join the cabinet.
WORST MOMENT: Seeing the devastation wrought by the floods in Pakistan.
RESOLUTION: Get fit. It’s hard being a mum and a minister—but it’s easier if you’re physically in good shape.
Peter Bazalgette, creative director behind the British Big Brother
BEST: Maggie Smith as the Dowager in Downton Abbey, saying: “The weekend…what’s that?”
RESOLUTION: The rising levels of alcohol in wine destroy both flavour and one’s liver, so I am resolved not to drink wine standing up, and when seated drink half as much at twice the price. I’m going for quality over quantity. That’s the theory.
Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman Ogilvy Group UK
BEST: The new models of electronic cigarette—a device which perfectly mimics a cigarette in all but its deleterious effects.
PLEASANT SURPRISE: The spectacular success of live broadcasts to digital cinemas of performances from the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre.
BEST TELEVISION: Still Mad Men, I’m afraid. And the secret to why the cast looks so good? The actresses are expressly banned from working out.
BEST POLITICAL EVENT: Establishment of a unit to study behavioural sciences at the heart of government.
RESOLUTION: Spend more time reading and less time playing Angry Birds.
Sir Mark Walport, director, Wellcome Trust
BEST: The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is sequencing two human genomes every day, analysing DNA sequence at 1m base pairs every second. In early clinical trials a new drug for malignant melanoma, developed as a result of the human genome project, showed a dramatic response in patients with advanced metastatic disease. And H1N1 swine flu turned out not to be the major killer that some had feared.
WORST: If we drew the wrong conclusions from this, relaxed about the risks from flu and other potential viral threats and stopped using and developing new vaccines.
RESOLUTION: Try to maintain this year’s 20kg weight loss in the face of overwhelming occupational calorific pressures.
Sir John Rose, chief executive Rolls-Royce
BEST: Britain has some very successful businesses from aerospace through pharmaceuticals to services, and a few of the best educational establishments in the world. But we lack scale, breadth and consistency. In education we need to establish standards that reflect the global competition for skills. Second, we need to revitalise vocational training. The proposals for university technical colleges are a good start. Third, invest in world-class infrastructure and transport. Fourth, get corporate and personal taxes lower and simpler. Finally, start describing what we want to be as a country, in language that is compelling.
WORST: The economy is still fragile and the global financial system retains the capacity to surprise unpleasantly.
RESOLUTION: Take an extended holiday, with my family, without a mobile phone or a BlackBerry for the first time in ages.
Tessa Ross, controller Film4 and Channel 4 Drama
BEST: Getting film written into C4’s official remit, and our budget increased to £15m. It was great to be part of two fantastic feature film debuts from Chris Morris (Four Lions) and Richard Ayoade (Submarine).
WORST: The huge cuts to the arts that we face. It’s dangerous to assume that culture will take care of itself. Tough times can give culture momentum, but the artists of tomorrow need support today.
HOPES: Discover a new filmmaker who sees the world in a wonderful new way and to whom my team can make a difference.
Toby Young, writer and co-founder of the West London Free School
BEST: Katharine Birbalsingh, the teacher who exposed the failings of the comprehensive school system at the Conservative party conference.
WORST: Fiona Millar, the journalist campaigning for non-selective admissions to secondary schools in England.
RESOLUTION: To open the West London Free School in 2011.
Clive James, writer
BEST: The quiet dignity of Aung San Suu Kyi. On the day of her release, when she wound flowers into her hair, it filled me with the resolution to come back next time as a spray of jasmine.
WORST: Among the world’s rich supply of horrors, nothing stood out for its sinister quietness like the tight-lipped determination of Comrade Duch, erstwhile commandant of Tuol Sleng torture centre in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to pursue his case for a lighter sentence. How his self-confessed personal supervision of the death agonies of thousands of innocent people could be exonerated he preferred to leave mysterious.
RESOLUTION: To write a play of my own. A dialogue between Suu Kyi and Duch might be rewarding.
Sir James Dyson, inventor and engineer
RESOLUTION: I’m doubling the number of engineers at Dyson’s R&D laboratories in Wiltshire to 700. I suppose that’s a new year’s resolution of sorts!
John Lloyd, contributing editor at the FT
BEST: Heartening for a Hilary supporter and an Obama sceptic to see the US president emerge as one with strong ideals and the will to pursue them.
WORST: The continued imprisonment by the Chinese leadership of Liu Xiabao, and its refusal to allow him to collect the Nobel Prize. China’s efforts to frighten other states away from the ceremony shows a regime determined to suppress free speech in an international arena now overawed by the success of its economy.
Mary Warnock, philosopher and independent crossbencher in the House of Lords
BEST: The outcome of the general Election. Though the coalition seemed weird at first and I have no especial love for Nick Clegg, I found myself welcoming a partial relief from the most horrible burden we political animals have to bear: party politics.
WORST: The coalition government’s recent tendency to behave like its predecessor. We have received Bills that have been hasty, ill-considered, and carrying serious constitutional entailments. Not far beneath the skin, I am still, as once I was, a headmistress. Grieving, as headmistresses do, I have to declare myself Disappointed.
RESOLUTION: I will finally admit that I am deaf, and never go to another party
Richard Sennett, sociologist
RESOLUTION: Quit the Lib Dems and rejoin the Labour Party. I left Labour because of the war in Iraq, but didn't think I had signed up for Thatcherism with a human face.
Anne McElvoy, journalist and broadcaster
BEST: The Coalition. Triumph of negotiation by Clegg and Cameron, bringing an overdue realignment in British politics. Also neat way of allowing two parties to sacrifice unpopular personnel and policies, on the grounds that there isn't room for them in the new Venn diagram.
WORST: The immigration cap. Unworkable, knee-jerk triumph of short-term positioning over practical politics. Shame on you Dave and co.
RESOLUTIONS: Truly believe that forehead wrinkles are a sign of intelligence. Complete accounts for 2008.
Peter Singer, philosopher
BEST: Australia's election of a Prime Minister who is (a) female, (b) living with a man to whom she is not married, and (c) an atheist. When the United States and Saudi Arabia both do the same, we will know that religious prejudice is really on the retreat.
WORST: The lack of international action required to reduce the damage we are already causing to our climate.
RESOLUTION: Keep thinking
Amanda Craig, novelist
BEST: The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. It showed that human ingenuity and determination can win through seemingly intractable natural obstacles.
WORST: From a British perspective it's the return to the early 1980s. I expect more riots, cuts, potholes, a hardening of the Right and a weakening of the Left; and we're once again becoming soppily nostalgic for the past as portrayed by Downton Abbey and the endless flow of middlebrow historical fiction.
RESOLUTION: Support my fellow-novelists by not buying those temptingly cheap second-hand books on Amazon, from which neither we nor publishers make any money.
Raymond Tallis, philosopher and writer
RESOLUTION: Stop finding ever more ingenious excuses for avoiding sustained thought. This is my annual resolution but by January 2nd it is invariably business as usual.
Andrew Brown, journalist and writer
WORST: David Cameron's continued employment of Andy Coulson. If he gets away with it, this shows that Murdoch and his servants are above the law.
BEST: The emergence of London Citizens, an organisation of community groups (85% religious) which managed to get all three party leaders to their hustings before the election. This was the nearest thing to a society emerging from the bottom up, despite the best efforts of government to invent it from the top down.
AN Wilson, biographer and novelist
BEST: From a bookish point of view, the best thing has been the centenary of Tolstoy’s death. This has not only been a good excuse to reread his astonishing work but also a reminder of how right his pacifist-anarchist views were. War and trade continue to fuck up the world just as they did in 1910 and no government seems to have heeded any of Tolstoy’s lessons.
WORST: The Lib Dem volte face over university tuition fees was truly ridiculous. But to see Saint Vince Cable and other Lib Dems trooping off to China with Cameron to secure “British jobs” from the murderous tyrants who govern that country was truly repellent.
RESOLUTION: For next year and every year for the rest of my life—don’t be conned into voting at elections.
Anthony Appiah, philosopher
BEST: Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize.
WORST: The Chinese government's response to Liu’s Nobel, which has ranged from the petty to the Stalinist—rounding up people who celebrated the award, calling others in for long questioning, confiscating papers and tapes and computers, arresting people who’ve circulated leaflets about the award, all to try to keep the news from their own people.
RESOLUTION (which, I fear, may do for some years to come): To keep working for the release of Liu Xiaobo and other Chinese political prisoners and for his cause—the democratisation of China.
Joseph O’Connor, novelist
WORST: 2010 was the year in which Ireland's Celtic Tiger went the way of the Loch Ness Monster—either it's dead or it never truly existed. Certain therapists tell us that grief comes in five distinct stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We Irish realised there's another stage that comes between four and five: not listening to the radio news.
ANOTHER WORST: More rain fell on the country than on the complete works of Frank McCourt, but this being Ireland, there were severe water shortages everywhere.
RESOLUTION: Emigrate
James Lovelock, environmentalist
WORST: 'Climategate.' The hackers uncovered a few Tweedledums and Tweedledees of global warming but we still do not know the answer to those vast looming questions: how will the climate change and what need we do to survive it?
RESOLUTION: Try to speak and write clearly.
John Carey, literary critic
BEST: The death of new Labour
WORST: The deaths of 112 (to date) British servicemen in Afghanistan and the maiming of many more
RESOLUTION: Swim twice a week rather than just once (I am afraid I made the same resolution last year).
Simon Blackburn, philosopher
BEST: Quite eclipsing the news of Aung San Suu Kyi's release, the top good news story of the year must be the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton. Surely a nation rejoices!
WORST: The worst news of the year may well be that the previous two sentences would apparently not strike most English people as ironic.
RESOLUTION: Turn directly to the Guardian crossword, and do not turn back.
Norman Lebrecht, novelist and commentator
BEST: The growing role of social media.
WORST: The Arts Council's refusal to face realities.
RESOLUTION: Do more, better.
Duncan Fallowell, writer
BEST: Scrapping the Stalinist towerblock development at Chelsea Barracks
WORST: Scrapping the western congestion zone in London
RESOLUTION: Hedonism
Nick Lane, science writer and biochemist
BEST: Simon Singh's victory for freedom of speech. May the government have the resolve to reform the dangerous and absurd libel laws.
WORST: Student fees. The debts accrued in the course of a degree will stifle the free pursuit of knowledge. The sheer joy of science will be eroded, and over decades, society and the economy with it.
RESOLUTION: I don't resolve, I just hope, and try.
Sam Leith, journalist
BEST: There was something distinctly wonderful in watching Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity take on the Tea Party with what on the Internet we call LOLs. The introduction of humour—with all its deflationary virtues—into politics, especially American politics, can only be a good.
WORST: Undoubtedly the unravelling of Lucas North, the handsome spy from Spooks. I know he’s an imaginary character, but what an utter rotter! And taking Sir Harry down with him was unforgivable. How I’ll miss that show.
RESOLUTION: Spend less time working and more time baking bread, reading comics and playing computer games. I want to do my bit to keep Britain in recession.
Mary Beard, classicist and broadcaster
BEST: From a British perspective the best news of the year was to find we have a justice minister, at last, who is prepared to say that we have too many people banged up in prison.
WORST: The fact that most people with hands on the relevant purse strings seem convinced that arts and humanities are a 'luxury'—nice if you can afford them, dispensible in a recession. Hello Dark Ages.
Peter Florence, founder of the Hay festival
BEST AND WORST: The British public's championing of Ann Widdecombe on Strictly is a glorious collision of both categories—remorseless and sarcastic cruelty to a strident politician unaware of their own humiliation and, simultaneously, a defiant refusal to buy into media manipulation and celebrity.
BEST: Neil MacGregor recalibrated history in the most awesome speech broadcasting achievement since Willy Rushton's last I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.
WORST: The utter failure of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama to make political capital from their substantial achievements in government. Where the fuck was Malcolm Tucker?
RESOLUTION: Gotta make some big changes in diet and exercise to be ready for London 2012 when the call comes....
Denis MacShane, MP for Rotherham
BEST: My Ipad. Cameron announcing we would get out of Afghanistan, but not soon enough. Russian Duma apologising for Katyn massacres. Montreal. St Petersburg. Santander and Cantabria. Being off the whip. Seeing northern England covered in snow. Children of Albion (son, daughter included) rising like lions from slumber to reawaken the English radical tradition of protest.
WORST: Unending Euro crisis. Digging out of northern snow. The mainstreaming of antisemitism. BNP. Jobbik. Wilders. Most movies. Parliament’s loss of authority and subordination of elected representatives to judicial-civil service-media power holders. England’s football performance. My lousy tennis. Worries about my children. Russian Duma refusing to treat Sergei Magnitsky murder seriously. C10 bus.
Timothy Garton Ash, writer and journalist
WORST: Iran, North Korea, Islamists, banks, tabloids ... there is just so much competition. Yet what I have found most consistently and consequentially depressing in 2010 has been the polarised, hysterical
gridlock of US politics. Neither America nor the world can afford much more of it.
BEST: BBC foreign correspondents, who brilliantly keep alive a vital, endangered craft. Special mention. And, on a different note, Norwegians, who use their oil wealth so wisely, and refuse to be bullied when it comes to giving the Nobel Peace Prize.
Professor Chris Rapley CBE, director of science museum
WORST: The shrill and polarised nature of some media coverage of climate science this year. It did nothing to move the issue forward and much to exclude people from meaningful dialogue.
BEST: Opening Atmosphere: exploring climate science, a new climate science gallery at the Science Museum that aims to re-engage and deepen understanding so that you are able to make up your own mind!”
RESOLUTION: Be relaxed about not having one—and not worry about not keeping it!
Sadiq Khan, Shadow Secretary of State for Justice
BEST: It was utterly humbling to have been re-elected by the people of Tooting. The spirit and camaraderie which enveloped the dedicated group of campaigners from across all sections of the community would have made Tooting’s very own Wolfe Smith very proud.
WORST: Obviously, there is no diminishing the disappointment of the overall result for Labour. My disappointment continues to be compounded by the form of my beloved Liverpool FC—a slumbering giant that is awaiting a return to the pinnacle of European football.
RESOLUTION: Ideally I’d commit to some worthy resolutions such as keeping fit, drinking less coffee and other wholesome things. But the world of politics makes this extremely difficult – avoiding chocolate, waist-line expanding dinners and surviving without a caffeine stimulus is all but impossible!
Ed Smith, former England cricketer and Times leader writer
RESOLUTION: My New Year's resolution is never to eat any food, ever again, even a sandwich that has been pre-prepared and then embalmed inside plastic shrink wrap. Such food is universally disgusting. The culture that surrounds it is worse.
Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
BEST: Announcing my candidacy for the Labour leadership on Radio 4’s Today program.
WORST: Labour losing the general election. One of the saddest sights of the year for me were the television of pictures of Gordon Brown walking down Downing Street and out of office clutching the hands of Sarah and the two boys.
Ian Blair, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
BEST: Seeing the Taj Mahal for the first time
Worst: The proposal to introduce directly elected Commissioners to provide a new form of political accountability for the police, an idea with neither intellectual merit nor historical insight.
RESOLUTION: Spend more time in India...
James Purnell, MP for Stalybridge and Hyde
WORST: Losing an election we could have won.
BEST: The BBC keeping a music station it could have closed—6Music
RESOLUTION: Substitute novels for newspapers.
Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow
BEST: My best personal moment of 2010, was winning back Bethnal Green and Bow from George Galloway’s Respect Party. We won because of three years of hard work by hundreds of people from so many different walks of life who came together in a progressive alliance to achieve this result. Even David Goodhart came out campaigning! Who would have thought...
WORST: Natural disasters such as the Pakistan floods and the Haiti earthquake. As someone born in Bangladesh, the impact of natural disasters is sadly all too familiar, but that does not alter the terrible damage we have seen this year.
Will Hutton, writer and columnist
BEST: Margaret Hodge winning Barking so emphatically against the BNP
WORST: G20 meeting in Seoul showing complete breakdown in international economic collaboration
RESOLUTION: Writing less and playing more
Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy at Warwick University and member of House of Lords
WORST: Every speech by George Osborne
BEST: A private view of the restoration work on the Raphael frescos in the Vatican.
RESOLUTION: Finish my new book, co-authored with my son Edward. And spend more time in warmer climes.
Will Straw, editor of Left Foot Forward
WORST: Bigot-gate. The incident indicated how the Prime Minister had lost touch with one the public's greatest concerns, immigration, and couldn’t even recognise his own core vote when staring him in the face.
Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society
BEST: Hearing the IMF—yes, that is the International Monetary Fund—praise Africa’s “sound economic policy” and commend its “nimble” management to avoid the fall-out from the West’s global financial scam.
WORST: The corrupt dictatorships in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda.
RESOLUTION: Have Lord Acton’s dictum about power translated into all 2000 African languages
