I AM served with a reminder that little has changed in the last year.

I am a year older, and a year balder. It takes me a little longer, and a little more soap, to wash my face, while the hair that once occupied the front of my head seems to have slipped either into my ears or up my nose.

I’m not yet at the stage where I need to strategically style my hair in order to cover the barren zones, but those days are approaching fast.

Anyway, I digress. I write this column on Black Friday, the big, all-American sales day where retailers have knocked down their prices for 24 hours only. It coincides with pay day for many who are paid monthly, and it’s the penultimate pay day before Christmas. So it’s bound to be busy in the shops anyway, without the need for cheap deals.

I looked back at what I wrote about Black Friday last year, just to make sure I’m not repeating myself. At the age of 32, it is a trap that I tend to fall into. That, and making noises when I sit down. Or noises when I stand up. Also, noises when I raise a cup of tea to my mouth. Hang on, I’ve definitely written about this before.

After much wrestling with our archives, I dug out the column penned this time last year, when Black Friday – still a relatively new thing in Britain – was marked by several violent skirmishes with individuals scrapping over 40-inch televisions.

I wrote: “I’m all for being savvy and digging out a bargain, but if you have to do so at the detriment to your fellow man, then this country is more broken than I thought.”

I thought it was quite apt and still rings true now, so there we are.

Mind you, this year’s was less of a riotous affair than 12 months previous. The only real story of note was a video posted online of someone lifting a three-tier steamer out of a young child’s hands.

Two questions: Why would you do that? And what is the attraction for a child to be wanting a three-tier steamer? When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play on my Commodore 64, not to cook carrots perfectly without losing any of their flavour.

The Northern Echo:

THE Autumn Statement was made this week, otherwise known as the mini-budget, or the spending review. It’s not the big budget, because there weren’t scores of people complaining on the telly about having 50p added to their pints of cider.

In any case, it was a good opportunity for the anti-austerity Labour opposition to flex its muscles and outline their opposition to the swathes of spending cuts in the United Kingdom. Anti-austerity was one of the buzzwords of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign, and I’d dare say many voted for him on the back of it.

A massive opportunity, then, for the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell. Who ruined the whole lot by quoting Mao Tse-tung, the Chinese dictator. Chairman Mao!

Quoting a communist dictator held responsible for the deaths of millions in China is not exactly advisable. And when Corbyn took the reins of the Labour party, he said that he wanted to do away with the circus element of the House of Commons. McDonnell’s stunt was every bit as cringeworthy as any of David Cameron’s badly-delivered jokes during PMQs.

This was hardly a Great Leap Forward for Labour. They’ve began their Long March into political obscurity.