What are your predictions for 2011?

seb

I saw Chris Mullin on the telly the other day about his very readable books. Interesting, but, on economic matters, raving.

Chris. As a well-wisher, I urge you to book an appointment now and get some sort of medication down your neck before it's too late.

PayDirt

Labour to win a general election and rain on us for 10 more years.

Reg511

There will be civil unrest and the military will be used on the streets of mainland UK

Victor Southern

The base interest rate will rise progressively towards a meaningful level.

Fuel prices will increase and we will be paying £1.50 a litre for diesel.

Vince Cable will resign his Ministry.

Gordon Brown will give up his seat having been given some international appointment.

The EU will impose more rules on the UK.

A batch of Labour ex-MPs will go to jail as also at least 4 other politicians.

Blackpool will reach the FA Cup Final.

England will win the ICC Trophy at cricket.

charles hercock

Carter Ruck and Simon Cowell will finally get their comeuppance.Vince will be shuffled and we will have David Laws back at business.Lightweight Ed will give up the struggle to his Shadow Chancellor. Bruce will get a K in the birthday honours.David Beckham will come to Everton and get a K.

Verityred

Ed Milliband is secretly photographed in a Labour bunker meeting wearing the party ceremonial garb of office (adult nappy, seated on rocking horse, blinfolded). Cameron hospitalised due to laughing so much.

Simon Heffer last seen dragging his bulk towards a tar pit, howling and gibbering at the dying of the light.

The Guardian newspaper finally sinks under the weight of it's own hypocricy and pomposity. The Telegraph loses all remaining credibility.

PayDirt

Clegg will meet the Chinese Premier’s wife at the Olympics building site, he says to her “Cameron reminds me of my old buddy Ceausescu”, she says to him “ah so Dracula”, the consequence was Dave sold the site complete with building firm and workers for a few jiao, the world thought “going forward…”

MaxSceptic

Virtually all 'expert' predictions will - unlike this one - be wrong.

Wishful thinking will prevail.

I will not win the lottery.

Bloody Bill Brock

Me at the age of 64 finally becoming totally sick of British politics. This is the third time in my life that "Tory Cuts" have followed a total financial bollox by Labour. However, the number of bloody idiots prepared to deny the appalling mess left behind by Brown is greater than ever.Longer term I think sense will prevail and the Tories will be returned to power. If not, we are cattle trucked.

Holly ......

The standard lefty rabble will continue to talk bollocks,the rest of us will do 300%
better than the lefties predicted....So on to 2012.
Happy New Year!!!!!!
PS.Don't forget some alternatives on your shopping bill do not include VAT.
I think jaffa cakes don't,but biscuits do.
Is that counted as tax evasion?

Cynic

Call Me Dave will continue to alienate his core support, UKIP will get its act together and more former Tories will find a new home more to their liking.

Dan Grover

MaxSceptic, I think if you Ctrl+F this page for the word "expert", yours (and now, I suppose, this) are the only ones that will show up. No one claimed they're experts.

Peter From Maidstone

There will be another successful Islamic terrorist atrocity in the UK. There will be the beginning of a popular and populist protest against Muslim immigrants. There will be marching in the streets. It might well get nasty. Someone attractive but unpleasant might well try to take advantage of the unrest. There may well be military in the streets. There will be more Islamic violence in response to public protests. Things will spiral.

strapworld

IN 2011
Vince Cable will resign as an MP and become a professional Ballroom Dancer with his partner Anne Widdecombe.

Ken Livingstone will not be elected Mayor of London. Boris Johnson will increase his vote.

David Cameron will agree to appear on Britains Got Talent Show.His rendition of 'My Way' earns him many plaudits from the
Tone Deaf Society.

Ed Milliband and his boy band 'THE BULLY BOYS' (featuring his union pals), will audition for the X Factor and find they haven't got it!

Simon Hughes will announce his forthcoming marriage to Peter Tapsell!

Fraser Nelson will write a a book on the scandal of immigration which will become an unlikely best seller, and also gets Mr Nelson the Booker Prize!

The Spectator, in an effort to gain greater readership starts a Page 3 'naked politician of the month' photoshoot. The first politician being Nicholas Soames which has to be a double page spread!

Jez

My redundancy end of next quarter.

Bob Roberts

The media will get hysterical about a couple of hundred student thugs continued rioting, because they expect the hard working less privileged majority to pay for their art history degrees.

The BBC will keep telling us how the end of the is nigh due to global warming, whilst most of us are stuck at home due to the snow.

London Underground staff will keep striking until we all find ways to work from home or travel by bus/car/train/water buffalo, and finally the ungrateful lot of them, and their commie leaders can sod off and find new jobs.

Despite predictions of the savage cuts impacting the poorest in society, the worse problems the bottom 10% will face will continue to be obesity, smoking, and heavy drinking.

I will finally move to Tunbridge Wells

Archbishop Cranmer

Jesus will not return, so the Coalition can't dump the Government upon His shoulder.

This prediction His Grace makes with a high degree of certainty, for there is no sign (yet) of the Tribulation or Rapture, even though the Antichrist is undoubtedly skulking around. There is a slight disclaimer on this prediction, for His Grace is not infallible. But it seems to him that 2011 is a fairly innocuous number which does not draw people to gather under the sky dressed in their Sunday best carrying their Bibles. The number 11 does not equal ‘atonement’ (that is 5), and 20 does not equal ‘completeness’ (that is 10). 2011 does not mean heaven (that is 17), and since Christ was executed on 1st April 33, the interval from that date to 2011 is exactly 1,978 years. If you multiply 1,978 by 365.2422 days (the average number of days in each solar year), you get 722,449 days. Add then an arbitrary 51 days we get the total days since Jesus' execution to 722,500. Now this means the Second Coming will not occur any time during 2011. Further, (5x10x17) x (5x10x17) = 722,500, which is (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven) squared. Unfortunately, the date of Jesus' execution by the Roman occupation army is not precisely known, though it was almost certainly between 29 to 33. If you take the cube root of the year of his death (cubed because he was a Trinity), and multiply it by the years his successor (Elizabeth II) has occupied the Throne of David (Stone of Destiny), you don’t get 2011.

Boudicca

My prediction: It's going to be a pretty sh!te year. But a challenge is also an opportunity - and I intend to make the best of my opportunities. So 2012 may well be better for me personally.

I hope it is for the country as well.

I hope Cameron will finally see the light re the EU and hold that Referendum (but I doubt it).

Vulture

People confuse predictions with their own wishes. I would like the following ten things to happen in 2011.

1) David Cameron becomes a Conservative.

2) The EU falls apart.

3) Islam really does become the religion of peace.

4) Fraser Nelson hires a witty, informed right-wing writer who reflects rather then repels the majority of Coffee Housers.

5) Fraser also writes an honest article about the transformation of Britain into Britainistan.

6)The Coalition collapses; Boris Johnson becomes PM and sweeps the board at the subsequent election after taking vows of chastity; the Labour party is replaced by UKIP as the main opposition.

7) Stephen Fry, Jonathan Dimbleby, Jamie Oliver and Julian Fellowes are banned from ever broadcasting again on account of their incurable smugness.

8) Simon Heffer and Polly Toynbee are caught sharing a hotel room : they claim they did it to cut down on unnecessary expense.

9) The BBC becomes impartial.

10) Trevor's Den stops posting on Coffee House.

In fact not one of these things will happen. Instead it will be a different year but we will go on being fed the same s**t.

TrevorsDen

Next year there will be more goverment spending than now and the amount of debt interest we pay will rise. The national debt will continue to rise.

labour will continue to denyn their responsibility and continue to refuse to accept the consequences.

Lots of commentators on this and other blogs will continue to live in a dreamland of their own prejudice and ignorance.

DavidDP

"Ken Livingstone will not be elected Mayor of London. Boris Johnson will increase his vote"

That's going to be hard in 2011 given the mayoral election is in 2012.....

Robert Eve

Sorry Mrs Atkins but Upstairs Downstairs was not half as good as Downton Abbey.

Edward McLaughlin

Conrad Black has it viewed tack-sharp, and with a nice little personal chuckle thrown in.

All I know with any certainty is that this time next year, there will be fewer of my kind in the UK and there will be many more people here who fully intend to harm my kind, just as soon as the opportunity presents itself. The year after will be the same.

And this will happen with the full backing of the government.

Nicodemus35

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will resign & start a Sharm-el-Sheikh-based "swimming with dolphins" tour company exclusively for Israelis

Percy

Big riot to coincide with the royal wedding.

Jez

TD will go on a diet.

Edward Sutherland

The coalition government's half-hearted attempt to reduce net immigration to the "tens of thousands" will be shown to have failed miserably.

EyesWideOpen

Nick Clegg will immediately break his New Years' Resolution to quit smoking, blaming 'unforeseen circumstances' and that ‘I didn’t know anyone was listening’. Later in 2011, during an unprecedented 2nd appearance on Desert Island Discs, he'll reveal his one guilty pleasure is pretending to be David Cameron while making love to his wife, with his top music pick 'Land of Hope & Glory' playing at full volume on the stereo to aid the amorous atmosphere. His book pick, meanwhile, will be ‘How To Win Friends And Influence People’.

Ed Miliband will try to keep his resolution to be more effective during PMQs, but by early June it will be revealed that the 'Assertiveness, Resilience, Style & Enunciation’ expert Labour entrusted with helping him was actually an undercover Daily Telegraph journalist, and pictures will emerge of Ed balancing on one foot, wearing only a grey pair of Y-fronts, chanting "I must, I must, I must improve my trust".

David Cameron will begin his resolution to be more honest by admitting that the whole 'Big Society' thing was just a bet between him and Osborne, and that as he'd kept up the charade for so long, Osborne's forfeit was to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with the legend 'I AM TALKING B.S.' during the next budget announcement, and in a nod to Ken Clarke he will also swig from a quarter bottle of Bells directly after announcing that all Scottish gin would now be duty free.

Cogito Ergosum

The education minister will announce that half our children are of below average ability, this being the fault of the previous government.

The foreign office will claim its job is especially difficult as most foreigners do not speak English.

The Bank of England will discontinue printing real (?) money on real paper since that is really expensive. Computerised money will also be eliminated owing to an unfortunate programming bug.

Dustbins will no longer be emptied because the ministry of defence will have requisitioned all the dustbin lids in the absence of other defences.

Wikileaks will announce that one of the Chinese governments is a bunch of opium addicts.

A new middle east war will break out over who shall control the secret distillery in Mecca.

In2minds

Interesting, several posters above mention violence on the streets of the UK and the prospect of someone taking advantage of this. I've no doubt the police still feeling bruised following the demise of Nulabour and their joint march towards a more authoritarian society will demand yet more powers to 'protect the public' should this occur. Conveniently ignoring the necessity for upholding civil liberties and the fact that it is the public on the streets angry about the failure of government and public servants. If it gets really bad look out for the EU offering 'help'.

Ms Proper - Manners Advisor to The Stars

Seb 10:40 a.m. Advising people you don't agree with on their "medication" (to use the American term you employ) is s-o-o-o 1990s.

Chris

> As a Welshwoman born-and-bred, who boasted an actual leek in her wedding bouquet, I look forward to learning how the Assembly will define Welshness

'Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief' seems a good place to start.

Osred

Absolutely no measure will be passed which will benefit me or my family. We will continue to increasingly fund the EU and overseas community while receving less and less in infrastructure and services.

Cameron will remodel his gob to that of a poodle rather than a chicken's arse.

His party will continue to run away from very small battles.

Milliband will take on Nick Park as an image consultant.

Diane Abbott will be crowned Queen of Hackernee and appoint Harperson as her Commissar for Freedom.

Magnolia

The Prime Minister will stand down and take up the post of Minister for Fluffy Animals.
Petrol will one day be a pound sterling a gallon, whoops sorry that one's left over from 1966.
The stocks will be re-instated in every town after popular demand in response to the Localism Bill.
The most intelligent children will be admitted to the grammar schools and Oxford University.
The government will remove the law that makes farmers cover their grain stores thus saving the common House Sparrow from extinction and returning the tweeting hedges and shrubs throughout the land.
The masses and the BBC will realise that being right wing is cute and sweet leading to chants of 'lovely Tory cuts'as we save ourselves from Labours debt pit of hell.
A secret decision will be carried out next Christmas day to recalculate everything in re-instated national currencies as the Euro is replaced and ceases to exist.
Recycled plastic will be used to build warm affordable houses that stay cool in summer.
Cows will fly and I will learn how to spell.
What kind of bubbly?

Osred

A clear drop in Speccy circulation figures.

Frances

Vince Cable defects to Labour. Cameron and Clegg push through the right to recall your MP legislation, in a bid to oust Cable. It backfires leaving the coalition in tatters.

A series of mass elections are disastrous as none of the 3 main parties are electable. The BNP take a small share of the seats, causing the terrorist threat level to rocket even higher. The London eye is destroyed in an attack visible over much of the city.

The perpetrators are caught despite the Pirate Party having introduced successful legislation against communication taps. Rumour spreads that GCHQ simply ignored the legislation leading to hoards of (confused) Somalian pirates attempting to sail up the severn to Cheltenham?? in a revenge attack. Both Severn bridges are damaged, repairs of which necessitate moving the toll booths. Mass civil unrest follows the news that it will no longer be free to escape from Wales, adding to prison overcrowding. In a bid to solve this the death penalty is snuck back (whilst Liberty are busy trying to stop the Greens from CCTV monitoring household recycling). But as killing murderers and rapists has an insufficient impact minor liberal parties win their battle to legalise and tax all drugs.

In late december the English crawl out from under an opium cloud to find themselves dressed in tartan, speaking welsh and living in half-finished houses outside Northern-Irish villages.

They are being bussed over the boarder to work cash in hand in Éire; boosting the Irish economy to such an extent the collapse of the Euro is prevented.

Verity

May Conrad Black's prediction be proved true!

Verity

Strapworld -Ne plus ultra! Laughter out loud woke my cat from his post-breakfast, pre-lunch nap.

Tiberius

Not a week will go by without someone on the Wall demanding Fraser do a piece entitled "Neathergate".

A young woman named Jose Thrush will win the X-Factor and have the Christmas No.1.

PayDirt

The global finance system will collapse following the spreading of a stuxnet-type virus which effectively shreds Sovereign debt. Who is responsible, no-one knows. Is it Iran’s revenge? Is it the USA who are the only ones able to stand alone, self-sufficient and with the necessary survival ideology? Is it Adrian Mole out of teenage angst? Is it the Irish at last weary of looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? Is it a Martian alien plot to destabilise the world and get humans to self-destruct so they don’t have to get their hands dirty? Is it God who has been looking at reruns of Sodam and Gomorrah too many times just lately? Is it a sudden change in the otherwise immutable laws of Physics? Or is it just a solar storm like the one in 1859.

Tiberius

... and following in her cousin Wagner's footsteps, a woman named Wahrheit will enter "Britain's Got Talent" doing an impression of a broken record.

Biggestaspidistra

Christopher Jefferies will be released uncharged and go on to be guest editor of the Today programme, a people's choice champion on Strictly and probably write a weekly column for the Times.

MaxSceptic

Dan Grover @ December 31st, 2010 12:03pm

I was referring to professional 'experts' (economists, political pundits, management consultants, etc.) i.e. people who get paid to spout off - not the public at large (who are generally better informed and have a better sense/intuition of what is actually happening in the real world).

Herbert Thornton

All the world's currencies collapse.

China and the USA immediately agree to continue to trade goods on the basis of barter; various other countries follow suit; Saudi Arabia, North Korea and France enter into a 3-way barter agreement - North Korea supplies Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons, France supplies North Korea with food and wine, and Saudi Arabia supplies France with oil. Disputes break out between the three when all the ships involved in the barter are hijacked by pirates, suspected of being Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Denmark and Sweden slaughter all their cattle and poultry and announce that the only meat allowed to be sold or eaten is pork; all Chinese in Britain promptly move to Denmark and Sweden where they are met by rapturous crowds; all Muslims in Denmark and Sweden promptly move to Britain where BBC film crews spend all their time filming a smiling David Cameron assuring them that British people welcome them even more than the Scandinavians welcome the Chinese. Wikileaks discloses that the BBC has suppressed footage of explosions in some of the arrivals' luggage.

Later, Wikileaks also discloses details of new legislation to be introduced by Cameron requiring the slaughter of all pigs and the prohibition of all imports of bacon.

Charles declares that St. Paul's ought to be turned into a Mosque.

Camilla becomes a nun and enters a French convent. Charles becomes a monk in a nearby monastery.

Yow Min Lye

Some crisis will develop somewhere in the world that will prompt someone in the Coalition to wish they hadn't got shot of HMS Ark Royal and her Harriers.

Frank Sutton

To appease the gods of climate change, a cold weather tythe will introduced, under which all taxes are increased by ten per cent during any period in which the temperature drops below freezing for more than 24 hours.
Its first application is at the end of October, and lasts the rest of the year.

The Police finally win the power actually to ban all journeys that are not absolutely essential in the event of snowfall. The country is therefore under curfew from mid-November.

Hibernation become fashionable

David Ossitt

The AV referenda will be won by the NO vote.

Nick Clegg will formally join the conservative party.

Regrettably; no one, who is found guilty of murder, will receive the death penalty.
.

strapworld

Verity, Thank you!

David DP, for goodness sake get a life. It was written in jest. Go out and buy some crackers!

Happy New Year!

Baron

my prediction for 2011? All predictions of all pundits will be wrong.

anyone cares to bet on it?

Baron

Edward McLaughlin @ 1.29:

that’s not a prediction, it’s a good guess

Verity @ 4.43:

that’s not a prediction either, it’s a wish

New Year as happy as you can make it to you both.

Nostrodaftus

I'll read Daniel Korski's predictions piece first and write hilarious comments inthat one just because I want to and for my own amusement and not for the sake of the jackanapes in the gallery or a measly bottle of Pol Roger(well Daniel is so bloody po faced I can't resist it). Despite this mal-location of my post a groundswell or popular opinion will mean that I will be still be awarded the prize and despite much protestation on my part I will be forced to accept said bottle of Pol Roger. I'll try and keep my acceptance speech short but I do have a lot of people to thank.

Alan Douglas

My prediction is that I will not read anything as funny as all of the above throughout the rest of 2011.

Well done all ! You have captured the zeitgeist in under 8 hours !

Alan Douglas

Edward McLaughlin

Baron

No, sorry. I've stated that all those things will happen this year, and I'm saying that before the year actually takes place. If that ain't a prediction then what is?

My 'guess' is that you're not happy with the fact that I predicted something you would rather were not mentioned.

Craig Strachan

Acually, I substantially agree with the predictions of Lord Black, who must surely be the greatest living ex-Canadian.

oldtimer

I was tempted to offer this prediction, by way of a limerick, for 2011:

Peter Hoskin of the Spectator
Who, as the rsult of a wager,
Consented to fart
The whole oboe part
Of Mozart`s Quartet in F Major.

...but it does not qualify because it is far too vulgar and it is shamelessly plagiarized.

Verity

Craig Strachan - Greater than Mark Steyn????

(Lord Black, though, is a clever and fine man who has been grotesquely wronged.)

Craig Strachan

Verity - I think Mark Steyn may still in fact be a Canadian, despite the US domicile. But were he to renounce his citizenship, I agree he'd give Conrad a run for his money in the greatest ex- stakes.

Augustus

WikiLeaks releases Clinton White House premium-rate telephone calls.

Stewart

The Daily Telegraph will negate falling sales figures and advertising revenue by publishing a long awaited for coffee table book entitled "Attractive Middle Class Girls from the pages of The Daily Telegraph". DT shares will soar on news of the A-level exam results day photograph special.

Fergus Pickering

England will beat Australia at Sydney
England will in the ICC Trophy
England will beat India in England
Andrew Strauss will be tipped for the Tory Leadership
Kevin Pietersen will be offered, but refuse, the Labour Leadership ('Why should I want to be associated with a bunch of losers')
Andy Flower will be raised to the peerage

TGF UKIP

In late 2011 Steve Hilton will be given a peerage and a Cabinet policy appointment of absolute precedence by a duly grateful Ed Miliband.

Incoming Labour Government immediately announce an absolute ban on all immigration including European, a reversal of all Cameron's attacks on the middle classes, an in/out EU referendum (new government to be neutral) and an end to all "climate change" nonsense and green taxes.

Labour start 2012 with a 25 point poll lead and celebrate this with an announcement by new Energy Secretary (former miners leader Ian Lavery) that one of UK's largest virgin coalfields under Oxon (fact btw) is to be developed with Witney chosen as focal point.

tomdaylight

The AV referendum will be won by the "no" camp... on 2nd preferences.

Ed Miliband will quit as Labour leader, but return to work the next morning in the hope that nobody noticed his resignation.

Several Lib Dem MPs will tell constituents off the record that they are secretly Lib Dems.

In advance of the elections Alex Salmond will commence plans to physically detach Scotland from Great Britain and have it moved to the Caribbean.

The Coalition will announce plans to scrap funding for an imminent scheme that offers free travel passes for 45-year-olds to visit the Moon, only to U-turn under pressure from the chattering classes and extend the scheme to Mars as well.

Tony Blair will set up an exploratory committee for the 2010 US Presidential election.

tomdaylight

Oops... 2012, that should be.

Neil Anderson

Some of these ring may true but the rest are spoofs surely? My favourite is the one where non-lawyers fix the laws that lawyers wrote and make them work better to 'stop the racket'. Fantastic stuff. Do one of the lefties as well. Am sure your staff could come up with some crackers for Neil Kinnock/Prescott/Broon...

Nicodemus35

That the Speccie will not publish the winner of the bottle of Pol Roger in its humorous predictions competition