What better way to start the new year than with some predictions eh? Predictions are much easier than resolutions: there is no implied permanency of action or intent. One can just make a prediction, write it down, walk away and forget about it until a given time (if indeed, a time is specified), and then (if it turns out true) bask in a smug all-knowing glow, or (if it is false) marvel at the randomness and unpredictability of the chaotic world we live in.

I suppose the best way to make predictions is to abandon any personal notions of optimism or pessimism, and instead just follow the trajectory of events to a logical progression. But the world rarely works like that does it? Last year, I would have had no inkling that within days of the new year, the words ‘Horse Meat’ would come to dominate our screens, papers and radios – because there was no precedent. Similarly in 2012, unless I had been a keen follower of Russian fem-punk outfits I would have never been able to predict that I would get the childish joy of hearing BBC newsreaders saying the words “Pussy Riot” over and over again (which, I maintain to this day they take great pleasure from – next time you hear a report on ‘Pussy Riot’, listen to the aplomb and clarity by which the presenter pronounces the name).

I guess that last paragraph was to excuse myself for wild inaccuracies or glaring omissions should the following predictions be reviewed this time next year. I will now set out ten predictions, covering various aspects of our world, mostly based on the news headings you find on the BBC news website (which as we all know are the ancient categories of all life entrusted to the guardians of knowledge by the great sun God Ra himself).

To get us in the mood, the first five predictions are ‘quick fire’ and not at all serious:

1. George Osborne will pull such an evil face in a photograph that anyone who looks at it will be immediately turned into a Tory. (Note – replace George Osborne with ‘Iain Duncan Smith’ or ‘Michael Gove’ if you wish.)
2. Nick Clegg will call someone a bigot on camera and no one will care. This will cause Clegg to go on a rampage, running around the streets of Sheffield naked, pointing at people and shouting all manner of abuse. Still, no one will care.
3. The hysteria over the ‘influx’ of Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants will continue regardless of any actual facts or evidence. One newspaper will coin the term ‘Bromanian’ to further homogenise two whole nations of people into one nasty baddy who is coming over here to steal the jobs we don’t have from the people who don’t want them.
4. Google and Amazon will join forces and declare themselves the ‘winners’.
5. In a bid to outdo herself, a naked Miley Cyrus will inject heroin into her eyeballs live on stage while licking a rod of weapons grade plutonium.

Now onto the serious (or at least semi considered) predictions. As when playing Trivial Pursuit, let’s get the difficult category out of the way first:

 

Prediction 6: Sport – England won’t win the World Cup.

Ok, ok, so I’ve gone for a bit of a freebie here when it comes to sport. I’m  not really a ‘sport’ man (I’m definitely not a sportsman) but I do like a bit of football here and there, and I do enjoy the international tournaments (and not, I must say, because of England, though I do watch them for the few matches they play before being inevitably and anti-climatically eliminated).

Let’s face it, looking at the likes of Spain and hosts Brazil (who I guess in a little sub-prediction, will face each other in the final if that’s possible, or at the latest possible knock-out stage, the winner of that match going on to win the competition) – England aren’t going to win. I’m not going to give you detailed or technical reasons as to why (because I can’t), but I will tease that it might have something to do with Wayne Rooney’s hair graft causing a major upset in the Amazonian city of Manaus.

Other sport will happen too. I can guarantee that.

 

Prediction 7: Business – Sometime in late Autumn, America will look over the ‘fiscal cliff’.

Well, it’s almost tradition now isn’t it? I think it’s generally around October time that the American government propose and vote on the ‘debt ceiling’ and come to loggerheads about it. This year it got so bad that the White House gift shop had to close for a week or two, so as you can see, this is serious stuff. Similarly, back home, we will see the budget announcement in March as always, where slight variations of percentages will be announced, poured over and dissected by the press and the opposition (who will of course, offer up their own slightly different variations of the same percentages to appease our perceived desire for democratic choice).

It will be much of the same I reckon. The BOE ‘base rate’ will remain unchanged at 0.5% – but it will be increasingly hinted at that this might rise as the economy ‘recovers’ and unemployment ‘falls’. It is so very hard to talk about business and politics in this world without the use of inverted commas to represent the fact that nearly everything they talk about is ‘bullshit’. In fact, I predict that inverted commas are going to be so popular in 2014 that they will be privatised by the ‘government’.

 

Prediction 8: Politics – Early General Election.

This is a biggie. I’ve said it before somewhere last year, but in a nutshell, these things will happen:

1. Some issue will arise that divides the coalition on how to respond. At a guess, I reckon something to do with tax breaks or welfare proposed by the Tories.
2. All of a sudden, the Liberal Democrat membership will be up in arms about supporting this new policy – even though they’ve happily propped up the Conservatives for the last three years.
3. This will provoke a leadership challenge within the Lib Dems as Nick Clegg fails to convince his party that supporting the new tax/benefit measures is a good idea (he will stake his career on it – well, I suppose it’s best not to gamble with anything valuable).
4. A new leader will arise who has a track record of being an outspoken critic of the Tories, even though they too have spent the last three years propping them up (my money’s on Vince Cable).
5. This division will split the party, make the coalition untenable, and force a general election in which the Lib Dems will have the opportunity to rebrand themselves away from the Clegg/Tory era, and have at least a slim chance of not committing self-political genocide.

This may happen in early 2015, with the signs of it in late 2014. My reasoning for this is I just can’t believe that the Liberal Democrat membership, financial backers and ‘old guard’ are going to let Clegg take them into an election next year as one half of an unpopular coalition having broken so many promises. They must know what is coming to them in 2015 if they do: obliteration. Unfortunately, out of the two parties in power, we weren’t surprised when the Tories started acting like Tories because that’s what they are. The Lib Dems, however, have actually let people down. If you vote Tory and believe in their philosophy, you are getting what you asked for (more’s the pity for you). If you voted Liberal Democrat, you are not.

But fear not! If they simply follow the above plan, they can direct all the scorn and mistrust into Nick Clegg, boot him out and pretend to be a changed party. It’s either that or have Clegg, possibly one of the most unpopular politicians in history, try and convince us that we should trust him and that ‘he really means it this time’ when it comes to his pledges and abilities to temper the top down policies of the Tories. Nah. It will be a managed move. At the very least, Clegg will not be taking the Lib Dems into the next election, whether this happens in 2014 or 2015.

Oh and Labour will just watch it all unfold and get some column inches making jeering comments about the whole debacle while failing to realise that no one likes them either.

 

Prediction 9: Welfare – Something will happen to the Nationwide Building Society

Now remember these are predictions okay?! I don’t want to do a ‘Robert Peston’ and potentially cause the thing I’m providing discourse on (not that that’s very likely unless unbeknownst to me this blog is read by leading influential investors and hedge fund managers). But, they are the only sector of the financial industry left not to have been embroiled in some major scandal, and given the fake-inflation of house prices due to the dubious government loan policies – maybe they are next? After all, they are the UKs biggest Building Society and the general ‘go to’ company for mortgage and housing data. The second largest used to be Britannia, but they got merged into the nation’s only cooperative, and look what happened there… So, even though I have no cause, reason or evidence to suggest this, there may be an outside chance it will happen so I’m saying it anyway.

Prediction 10: Scotland referendum – Bye, bye Scotland.

It’s a damning indictment of Westminster that this referendum is even happening. It is happening for a reason. I can only imagine what it would mean to me if I was ‘attached’ to this government with an option of leaving it all together in these times. Maybe I am in the minority and the waffle about security, monetary union and EU membership will be enough to convince people that they aren’t good enough to ‘go it alone’, but I hope not: because change is a good thing. Not this fake, incremental creep of percentages this way or that, but real, tangible change is a rare opportunity and I hope that they grasp the thistle with both hands and show us all that there is more to life than the whims and needs of the City of London and demonstrate (in time, and no doubt with some difficulty) that alternatives do exist.

And there we go, my predictions for the new year. I’m sure I could have made a list of hundreds but I have neither the time, patience or attention span to do so. I will refer back to this list should anything happen, and I will review this in early 2015 when I make next year’s predictions (presuming of course that by that time I’m not an international best-selling author who has teams of people to write his blog and manage his social networks on his behalf – did I mention I’m releasing a book shortly called ‘The Dimension Scales’ featuring 14 short stories based around themes of malevolent and secret authorities, metamorphosis, survival and projections of contemporary fears into near-future realities?).

Have a great new year everyone.

Garry