Reader Predictions for 2013 and Cityunslicker's top 3ish

Malcolm Tucker - Royal baby saves government pushing worst ever economic figures off the front page. After that things begin green shooting.

Syria conflict rumbles on. No one cares. It doesn't escalate. Neither does Israel- Iran. Obama does barest minimum on gun control. What he does fails to pass the Supreme Court anyway and is forgotten.

 

Blue Eyes - The Euro survives!

The lights stay on!

 

Electro-Kevin - First gay marriage June 5th (my birthday)

 

Simon F -  4G auction doesn't raise anywhere near the Chancellors target of £3.5bn. I reckon not more than £2bn.

 

Demetrius - The West will go bust, the UK government will collapse, there will be a couple of nuclear wars and a small pandemic will begin. Also several volcanoes and nasty big earthquakes. Apart from that it will be a quiet year.

 

Graeme -  Tiny earth tremor felt in Manchester, so frakking of the Bowland Shale is halted. Cameron pulls out of the coalition.

 

The Syrian revolt will run along for another 6 months and then Turkey will invade.

 

 Anonymous (I thought you were in jail?) - Millions of Croatians flood UK for benefits feather-bed

House prices drop 10% in real terms
Huhne gets away with it

 Timbo614  -  A market tumble > 1000 points. 

People start to abandon pension Ponzi schemes in larger numbers despite govt. rules as inflation is let rip in an attempt to pay down the bank and govt. debt.

The weather in the UK gets even worse(wetter still with interspersed heatwaves) affecting farming and therefore food prices. More will need to be imported.

A final taxation increase on the poorer of us could trigger civil unrest as the real cuts/inflation start to be felt(probably later in the year maybe 2014).On a brighter note, Timbo's C@W predictions are 70% wrong :) 

 

John in Cheshire - The Chinese buy up most of London and move all the social dependents out so the new-comers can inflate the property prices and hedge their US debt holdings.

India bans all gold exports.
The heads of major banks in most Western countries are brought to justice and start to serve long prison terms. They are housed in prisons with glass viewing windows so the public can come to watch them, taunt them and, for an extra fee, pain them with cattle prods.

 

Jan - Middle East continues to squabble with little spats which don't really escalate. Perhaps Assad may go to be replaced by internal squabbling and jostling for power.

The Euro will survive by the skin of its teeth as will the coalition.

Fiscal cliff will come and go with an almighty fudge. Debts in all indebted countries will rise so that taxes raised fail to pay even the interest on the borrowings.

Dithering on fracking/nuclear/subsidies for renewables.

DtP - Interest rates go up (only a smidge) hitting 1 whole percent by this time next year.

A good year for the FTSE with a fair bit of consolidation hitting a vulgar high of about 6400 (too much eggnog maybe!)

 

 Anonymous (another one, habe you thought what the point of this is...?) said...

 The dreaded Triple Dip
 Big Green protests against fracking
The latest band to be selected to try and the Xmas number one instead of a Cowellista will be Napalm Death ( I can only hope so, I loved Napalam death when I was about 14)

Andrew - It will be a year where at the end of the year, in retrospect, nothing extraordinary happened.

 

Cityunslicker - 

 

The Coalition falls causing a September or November election

Kurdistan allies with Turkey thereby causing another major Middle East (civil) war, important this time as lots of oil involved...

Bahrain gives up its independence and merges with Saudi, so prventing the toops from looking like an invasion

Libya gives up on democracy before even trying and becomes a tirbal kingdom

Tomorrow  (or maybe the day after), with a hangover definitely predicted, I will review how we did on the year just gone collectively...