MCE Employee Wellbeing News

Looking forward to a new year, we’ve compiled the three best and the three worst events of 2009.

The best…

1) Barack Obama is inaugurated as the 44th, and first African American, President of the United States.

2) Usain Bolt becomes world’s fastest man running 100m in 9.58 seconds.

3) Andrew Lloyd Webber beats the ‘nil points’ of Eurovision, gaining us 173 points.

And the worst …

1) Michael Jackson, American performer and recording artist (born 1958) dies after suffering a cardiac arrest.

2) Lethal H1N1 flu virus identified in Mexico, the epicentre of the ensuing global swine flu epidemic; Mexico closes all schools, cancels church services, shuts down restaurants.

3) Air France Flight 447, en route from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Paris, crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 on board.

MCHAP

On 29th December for the third year running, people in New York gathered in Time Square to shred mementos of bad experiences from 2009. The BBC reported that for items that could not be shredded the organisers, the Times Square Alliance, provided a sledgehammer and a large waste-container.

For many people 2009 will be a year that they will want to forget. Poor economy, large numbers of redundancies, uncertainties over financial futures all summed up by the fact that Rage Against The Machine were this year’s Christmas Number 1.

Perhaps if there is one thing to take from 2009, it’s that the crossover to 2010 can be a symbolic new beginning. 2009 was in many ways a wake up call and the first January of the new decade is providing the opportunity to set things straight that went awry last year.

The recession is now no longer a surprise and certainly the new year provides the chance to focus and to live with poorer economic times. A resurgence may come into our economy this year, but it may also not. However that does not stop people from getting on and moving onwards.

MCHAP