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I really wanted to write you a quirkily funny, fluffy-centred, cuddly little John Lewis blog for New Year, really I did. But.

Faster than the arrival of the Easter eggs on the supermarket shelves, New Year’s Eve brings with it that merry herald of a brave new hope for a fresh start, that beacon of innocent expectation: the arrival of the adverts telling you that if you don’t do the government’s work for it and file your own tax return online by the end of January, you’ll be fined. And I’m afraid it’s rather set me off…

How in the name of sweet Jesus Christ did we ever allow ourselves to arrive at this?

Thousands of people used to earn a living as taxmen and women. Yes, we hated them with a fierce passion for stealing our money, but nevertheless they had good jobs.

Then we allowed the government to get us to do its filthy dirty work for it – for free. Unpaid, we labour over our own books; unpaid, we – not the government, we – hand over vast fortunes to accountants to file returns for us. It is a miserable, thankless task. And if we get it wrong, we get treated like criminals and fined! Funnily enough, if Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs get it wrong they get away with a rap over the knuckles from MPs. But of course it saves the government money – and look at how it’s benefited us! Look how much cheaper our lives are! Look how well the government has done with the money it has saved!

I am right bang behind the principal of sharing a proportion of our wealth for the greater good of all. I – and you’ll laugh, how you’ll laugh – even believe that the more you have, the more you share. I – go on, treat yourselves to a big old chuckle – I believe a decent society looks after everybody.

But if you’re going to operate any sort of tax system – and so you should – then it should be done by professionals, in a culture that places the burden of responsibility on officialdom, not the victims of officialdom. The present system is like leading a prisoner to the torture chamber and handing over the cattle-prod with an instruction to deliver 20,000 volts to your own gonads.

But then, we live in a weird sort of time-slip land, don’t we? This country has become a Victorian throwback where, in the heart of Christmas, petty, vindictive, mean politicians tell sick people they’ll be asked where they come from before they get help. Do they draw inspiration from the Bible? Did Christ check Lazarus’s benefits status? Did the Good Samaritan ask for a passport before he crossed the road? That I should live in a country where people would turn away from helping a person in need because of where he or she calls home.

It is the year 2013, but in our strange Alice-in-blunderland we have something called the ‘New Year honours list’, wherein, if you adequately do the job for which you are handsomely paid, or if you hand over enough money to the right politicians, you can get a medal or be called ‘Sir’ or ‘Dame’ and we are expected to look up to you. Well I ain’t tugging my forelock, mateys. Not in a million trillion years. No matter how many real do-gooders are bunged condescendingly into the list to give it some sort of faded credence.

Sometimes, you really don’t need to look behind the blindingly obvious: if, for example, people who are influencing health or education policy for their own benefit are rewarded, that is not an honours system, that is corruption – as rank and stinking as the corruption in any third world state. But we live in our surreal consciousness where we collude in the corruption by showing deference to the corrupt.

Say you’re a doctor. You doctor people. You make them better. People think you’re great for doing so. You’re paid £60k a year to do so. Isn’t that enough? Do you want £80k? Do you want to be called ‘Sir’ or ‘Dame’? Do you want people to kneel before you?

Our blunderland is bereft of irony. We have listened to the Christmas message once more, watched the John Lewis ad, bought the Christmas scenes of jolly communities singing together, sung about peace and goodwill to all men.

And then the Daily Mail tells us the Bulgarians and Romanians are coming…

Peace and goodwill to all men? Silent night, holy night? O come all ye faithful? Oh no. If you’re – sharp intake of breath, disapproving frown, clutch property deeds tight to your oh-so-hilarious Marks and Sparks Christmas jumper – if you’re a foreigner you can fuck off.

No irony for you here, mate, this is England. Used to make irony, but then we privatised it, sold it off to the Chinese, and they outsourced the factory to  Nepal and sacked a few thousand ironysmiths and now we don’t have the irony any more, except for a few volunteer irony-purveyors like this blog, only people like me don’t get the apprenticeship see so it’s a bit on the heavy-handed side, not the elegant pretty irony we used to make when we had a manufacturing sector.

Thousands of homes without electricity over Christmas and thousands of people in the home counties complaining bitterly about the service from the power utilities, complaining bitterly about the lack of information, the phone queues, the waits, the expense of ringing, the time it’s taken to put things right…

Well, you fuckwits, what did you expect? Eh? Where were you when people like me were telling you what would happen if you let a vital public service be flogged off to the private sector? Which part of “electricity is a vital service and should be provided by accountable public groupings which place public service first, not by private firms which place profit above public service” didn’t you grasp, you dullards?

Nope, no irony. For example, we are told that if we don’t approve the £20kazillion high speed rail link, we face a future of long delays, replacement buses, poor service. Well, what would that be like, eh?

When the Daily Mail issued its New Year’s message of hate for all those vile Eastern Europeans, the online comments included, without irony, readers vowing they would now emigrate because Britain wasn’t Great any more.

Well, this new year I wish everybody the chance to live in a country that behaves with decency, compassion,  intelligence, offering equality of opportunity and care to all, prioritising those who share, not those who snuffle in the trough, giving respect to the people who put people, not profit, first. This is hopeless naïve idealism, of course. The people who understand the real world never ever stop telling me so – though perhaps this year a few of them may be a bit too busy complaining about their electricity to bother.

In the face of all the above, Brothers and Sisters, I do wish you a happy new year – but more in hope than expectation.