Editorials

12 Lists of Christmas: Top Ten Mistakes of 2021

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10 December 2021

By Michaela Makusha

2021 wasn’t without its viral mistakes, gaffes and scandals. There are so many to choose from, but here are the top ten of the year.

10. The Suez Canal blockage

A ship called the Ever Given got itself stuck in the narrow space of the Suez Canal, disrupting the global supply chain for six days. A serious situation that made us all laugh. Why? We came out of a lockdown and just needed entertaining, no matter the situation.

9. GB News

Andrew Neil’s pet project came in with less of a bang than he hoped. The lighting was awful, its ratings are continually down. A joke of a network really. It’s less of a crusade and more a ranting group chat, broadcast on national TV.

Once respected journalists, such as Simon McCoy, were reading out letters from ‘Mike Hunt’ and ‘Mike Oxlong’, showing how serious their small viewership takes them.

Sure, they have ironed out their kinks and have better lighting, but Andrew Neil left, stating it gave him a breakdown and calling it a “UKIP tribute band”… so I guess things can only go up from there?

8. Boris Johnson and Peppa Pig

Another day on normal island. The Prime Minister gave a disastrous speech to the CBI, losing his place for about 20 seconds, and went on about how he visited Peppa Pig world, calling it “his type of place”. He also impersonated a car.

7. #Don’tGetSpiked

Durham University. Always having to apologise for something.

In their attempt to deal with the worrying rise in spiking, the well-being team tried to give good advice and reassure the student body, tweeting: “Drink spiking is something you can prevent from happening to you and your friends. #dontgetspiked.”

They took it down after outrage, but it is just peak Durham.

6. The man who joined his own search party

In a light-hearted gaffe in Turkey, a local man went missing after binge drinking.

Failing to get in contact with him, the man’s wife and friends formed search parties and began looking for him. By pure luck, the now-hungover man came across one of the groups and offered assistance. It would be nicer if all missing person stories had mistakes as fun as this.

5. Gorilla Glue girl – how not to do your hair!

In January, Tessica Brown was trending on Twitter after posting a TikTok of herself doing a hair tutorial. Unfortunately, instead of using hairspray, she used superglue. Not a mistake you want to make.

Luckily, a kind plastic surgeon reached out and give her free surgery to help fix her hair, so there was a happy ending.

4. Matt Hancock – and everything he did this year.

Somehow, Matt Hancock has managed to do everything wrong. From giving away millions in PPE contracts to his mate who owns a pub, and then being caught on surveillance camera with his mistress, finishing his disgraceful career.

Most politicians try to have just one scandalous mistake, but he took 2021 as a challenge to do multiple.

3. Nicki Minaj and those tweets

COVID scepticism and anti-vaxxers have been rightly met with ridicule, but none more than this one. Nicki Minaj excused herself for not getting a vaccine by tweeting that her cousin’s friend got a nasty, but false, side effect.

It then led to her beefing with Chris Witty, Laura Kuenssberg and the Prime Minister. Of all mistakes, this wasn’t a great one to make…

2. The Tory Party’s Sleaze Debacle

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A wild few weeks that the government won’t recover from. The entire party got together to defend the indefensible and exposed themselves to more scrutiny than they would have if they just accepted Owen Paterson’s suspension.

Now everybody’s second and third bribes – I mean jobs – are being exposed.

1. January 6th Capitol Attack

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Perhaps the biggest and most shocking of mistakes this year was the attempt to stop the counting of votes after the election when Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol. It reminded us of how fragile and precious our democracies are.

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