HAPPY NEW YEAR, one and all. Robina and I started it with a lovely break in Dieppe. A foot passenger ferry hop from nearby Newhaven, so close, so familiar to fellow port town dwellers and yet so different, right down to its long-serving communist mayor. Can we have one please? 

As you can see in the picture, my local Southwick Co-op news section made me feel very much at home when we got back. It’s always a great idea to cover up the endless screeds of decomposing maggot-ridden journalistic garbage vomited by the abjectly servile toadies of four unelected billionaire right-wing press owners with our glorious organ. But this time it wasn’t me, I promise.

And it did give me an excuse — nay, a reason — to make this week’s column, the first of the year, into a celebration of, well, this column. I’ve done two a month for at least 12 years now. And I’m proud and happy to be here.

Unlike my previous freelance work for the Guardian, Independent, NME, Sounds and Melody Maker — to name a few — the Star is a paper which, for the first time in my life, literally lets me write what I want, which is what I always wanted. My views are eclectic. I follow no tramlines, and that’s me. 

And unlike most of the other daily newspapers, it’s owned not by one of the aforementioned Tory billionaires but by a co-operative of its readers and supporters, which is how all newspapers should be, by law. You can join us if you like. That is freedom of the press: not the freedom of the rich to tell everyone else what to think. Thank you for having me, comrades.

So the year stretches before us. I am optimistic by nature, and I’m going to be so now. 

I’d like the Tories dumped unceremoniously on their contemptible arses both nationally and here in Adur, West Sussex, where we are hoping to propel my inspirational socialist councillor wife and her sterling colleagues into majority Labour control for the first time in history, joining our comrades down the coast in Worthing to make real change in our communities. And then I’d like a Labour government which provides a real alternative to disaster capitalism and starts to heal the damage of the last 14 years. 

I’d like the world to find the guts to enforce an equitable peace in Gaza and Ukraine and move definitively towards a two state solution in Israel/Palestine. 

I’d like a trip to Dublin in May to see the Seagulls play Liverpool in the Europa Cup Final, and for us to finish in the top six again so we qualify for it again win or lose.  

And I’d like our wonderful grassroots music venues to stop having to close due to lack of support. While we were away I got the sad news that another one, The Art House Southampton, shuts on March 16. Poignantly, because of my long history gigging there and supporting them, Bik and the collective have chosen my gig that night as their last. 

Mark Davyd and the Music Venue Trust have done sterling work highlighting the plight of so many places threatened with closure, campaigning for a levy to be imposed on the big corporate venues so that the small spaces, not just the home of the counterculture but the places where the next generation of “stars” learn their trade, can survive. Hats off. 

As always, it's costs that are the issue: higher overheads, lower incomes. They need government and industry support, but we performers can do our bit too. I do all my grassroots DIY gigs for a door split, no guarantee, and I urge all of you who can afford it to do the same: better a lower pay packet than a lost venue. 

We’ll salute the Art House on March 16 — and who knows where my next gig in Southampton will be? Thanks for everything, Bik & Co. The lifeblood of our scene.

Stay warm folks.