Andy D'Agorne

Heres one for police files, to save some work for the evidence gatherers! To my left is veteran peace campaigner and 'Honorary Freeman of York' Joyce Pickard

People have been protesting around the world today as another 10 Palestinians die while at prayer in a mosque and ground troops start moving into Gaza. Today in York some 200 people joined a protest on the streets, in Hull there were 300, in London some 5000 are protesting outside the Israeli embassy. Reports of Metropolitan police intimidation and unprovoked attack on demonstrators in a subway were carried tonight on BBC News 24, along with a massive riot police presence to contain the demonstrators well away from the Israeli embassy.

While the economy appears to still  be nose diving, and the Israelis are bombing the hell out of the Palestinians, there is some good news for 2009 - Obama will soon replace Bush and has already started the process of closing down Guantanamo Bay. If he can restart the peace process in the Middle East and extract his troops from Iraq he stands some chance of being a force for good. Another test will be whether he scraps the confrontational 'Missile defence' programme, responding to the Russian threat to target missiles on Europe if the US goes ahead with stationing rocket launchers in the Czech republic. This confrontation has remarkable echos of the Cuban missile crisis, only now the US is the aggressor not Russia.

On the economy, baling out the banks and car manufacturers may buy time, but all the signs are that we are heading for a massive depression- investing in the 'Green New Deal' would tackle climate change and help regenerate the economy. The recent cut in VAT is too indiscriminate, with much of any extra spending going on goods and services from overseas, doing very little to create sustainable local employment. Our new year's resolution should be to try to make sure as much of our spending as possible goes to local shops and service suppliers- that way the money stays in the local economy rather than the pockets of private equity firms or multinationals. See www.localworks.org for more about the 'leaky bucket' economy.