A very happy new year to everyone, especially those who have no one to think of them or act for them. All of us have times when the going looks bleak, but I imagine most browsing the internet will not be among those desperate souls who get themselves disconnected from society. So God bless them particularly.
Indoors tonight, full of a very heavy cold, but we are all in together and will, in that rather meaningless way we all seem to have developed, "welcome" in the New Year. I hope, but do not expect, that 2012 might bring an uplift to the country, and the wider world in general. This though does look extremely unlikely, and I imagine there might be a grim few years ahead of us all, so the type of perspective I was hinting at above may well come in handy during these different times. I'll try and remember not too feel sorry for myself !
Some predictions for 2012:
Football:
* Man City to win the Premier League by ten points. Utd, Spurs and Liverpool to join them in the Champions League.
* Sunderland to improve slowly under Martin O'Neil, finishing 14th. Better times may lie ahead though and after just scraping to safety, we do much better in next season, ending the year in 8th place with 28points
* Blackburn, Bolton and Norwich go down.
* West Ham, Middlesborough and Cardiff get promoted to PL
* Celtic to win Scottish PL
Cricket:
* England go well in 2012, Beating Pakistan and West Indies, and drawing once more with SA at home.
* Durham finish third again in the CC. Again ,as in 2011, the lack of a genuine attack bowler costs us as we are unable to convert enough winning positions into points. Ben Stokes pushes himself into the England squad again.
Politics*.
* I'm a year out here, having predicted the Euro's demise this year, but 2012 will surely see it start to dis-assemble. The numbers have their own power and they are already too great to resist. It will be messy but there is no need to assume it will be a financial armageddon. It won't be. Once it has started to happen, it will become clear quickly enough, and to enough people, that the world has not stopped. Life will go on, and will eventually be the better for it.
* Labour oust Red Ed. His brother marches to the rescue, but the Labour Party splits itself into two warring sections, making life easier than it should be for the rabble that is running the country now.
My cold eventually gets better.
Happy New Year and God Bless.
