TOMORROW’S the day for promises to ourselves and those whose lives we touch during the year to come.

As I’ve mentioned before on this occasion, I’m a bit stuck for challenging resolutions. I gave up the fags ages ago, and cut down on the booze when I realised that hangovers start to last two or three days once you hit 40 or so.

It’s also been years since my idea of a balanced breakfast consisted of a packet of Wotsits, a packet of Skips and a Bounty Bar.

As if this were not pedestrian enough, I’ve never been into any other substances worthy of giving up, as I have an aversion to mixing with the sort of people who’ll nick your furniture – or become convinced the Martians have landed and barricade themselves in your downstairs bog after raiding your cupboards for a sliced loaf, a jar of Nutella and a catering-size bag of Bombay Mix.

(And then complain about the sliced loaf being white and unhealthy, in spite of them being willing to put stuff in their nose or mouth that’s crossed an ocean in somebody’s lower digestive tract.) Fortunately, there’s nothing to stop any of us from suggesting some useful resolutions for others, so here goes:

  •  Network Rail officials – simply stop saying anything to the effect that work on our infrastructure is being carefully timed to avoid causing major inconvenience to travellers.

    Maintain this policy of silence until you are able to offer us a single shred of evidence that you are capable of running a booze-up in a brewery or a debauch in a house of ill repute, let alone a railway system. You know you’re useless and the millions on whom you inflict misery know you’re useless.

    Enjoy your huge bonuses, by the way – because most of you will still be getting them.

  •  Transport officials in Whitehall – stop telling us chaos on public transport is unacceptable. We know it’s unacceptable, but we also know you find it perfectly acceptable because the bosses responsible for the chaos went to the same elite schools and universities as you and are members of the same London clubs.

    That’s why, in spite of pretending to be outraged, you reward the bosses with knighthoods and peerages rather than taking the system back into public ownership, firing the greedy buffoons and offering them no compensation bar a big box of Paxo and a pithy suggestion as to what they might do with it.

  •  Government health officials – instead of lecturing us about the dangers of consuming too much alcohol, sugar and salt, ask yourselves why we’re so fond of these substances.

    Could it be that we’re so worried about our finances, our homes, our futures and the futures of our children that a big drink, a big cake and a big packet of salt’n’vinegar or smoky bacon is a welcome distraction?

  •  Banks – your latest attempt to pretend you care involves patronising commercials suggesting that in the past we took on loans and mortgages that weren’t suitable for us. We already know that because it was your demonic organisations that foisted them on us. How about resolving simply to admit this and apologise?
  •  Anybody in the global media who thinks the release of embarrassing film studio emails is big news – remember that the only people who care about celebrity drivel are too stupid to find their way to a cinema. Try catering to the rest of us instead.
  •  The sort of online commenter who spells ‘disgusting’ as ‘discusting’ – please resolve to stop using the internet. While you’re at it, resolve not to vote or serve on a jury.
  •  The rest of us – try, as ever, to remember that the good people in any given situation generally outnumber the bad.

    A happy new year to all of you.

  •  I WAS interested to learn that New College continues to embrace technology by including smartphone apps in the teaching process.

    This is clearly a vital aspect of making young people fit for careers amid an information age whose complexity grows by the day.

    I was even more interested to discover in the same Adver story that GCHQ has its own app for young people considering a career in cyber security.

    I’ve had a look at it, and I must confess to being a wee bit bewildered as it’s purely concerned with making and breaking codes.

    There should at least be a section with questions specially chosen to identify suitable people.

    These might include: “Which is a better use of public money – inspecting everybody’s emails or bothering to identify potential terrorists and inspecting theirs instead?”

    Or: “Handing over information about innocent British people to CIA maniacs is morally dodgy. Discuss.”

  • CHRIS Davidson, right, was horrified when an ambulance arrived to take his wife to a hospital appointment on Christmas Eve – three months after her death.

    It was yet another triumph for Arriva Transport Solutions, the private firm contracted by hospital bosses.

    I’m bewildered by the affair – not because of the idiocy, as that is entirely in keeping with some previous incidents.

    No, what intrigues me is the question of just what outrage this organisation has to commit before somebody in authority will muster the decency to pull the plug.

  • JAMES Palfrey and Ronald De La Cruz were a couple of loan sharks who preyed on vulnerable people in Swindon.

    Their activities included lending money at an interest rate of 20 per cent per month, repossessing a television from a woman lent £1,000 who’d paid £3,700, and taking another victim’s car when she was too sick to work.

    Remarkably, they didn’t stroll free from Swindon Crown Court. Instead they were each sentenced to a whole 10 months, meaning they could well be free in less than five.

    The court heard that their loan book, founded on the misery of dozens of people, might have been worth £80,000.

    With the parasitism of loan-sharking continuing to blight our communities, I’m sure all those sharks who remain uncaught have been left quaking by the fate of Palfrey and De La Cruz.

    Quaking with laughter, that is.