Thoughts on politics and life from a liberal perspective

Wednesday 1 January 2014

How did I do on my 2013 predictions? (Spoiler alert: Badly)

  1. Bruce Forsyth will retire and hence will not be a main host on Strictly Come Dancing 2013 (although he may pop in to say hello). Sort of half a point here really. He had several episodes off and I can't imagine it's too long before he properly leaves.
  2. Despite rumours of a potential replacement, Ed Balls will still be Shadow Chancellor come the end of the year. Ding
  3. Chris Huhne will return to the cabinet. Very much un-ding.
  4. Someone with a blog on the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator who has never been a parliamentarian will be enobled. As far as I know this has not happened although I am happy to be corrected if I missed someone*.
  5. The government will announce a timetable for the abolition of 1p and 2p coins. Nope
  6. David Cameron will announce an in/out referendum on Europe to take place if the Conservatives win the next election. Ding
  7. The Universal Credit will be delayed and eventually abandoned (this bit may happen next year) due to too many technical problems. IDS will resign when this finally happens. I'm claiming this one. It is clear that the project has failed it's just taking a very long time to put it out of its misery and they're managing it in such a way as IDS can save face and not resign.
  8. We will manage to get a government minister on as a guest on the House of Comments Podcast. Didn't manage this although a couple of them were approached. Maybe this year.
  9. One of either Mark Pack or Stephen Tall from off of Lib Dem Voice will appear on BBC's Question Time. This sadly did not happen. It's surely only a matter of time though as they are both strong media performers. Although I would suggest in the run up to the Scottish independence referendum they should get Caron Lindsay on.
  10. For four years now I have predicted that Eddie Mair will become the main presenter of Question Time. But as Dimbleby_D still shows no signs of going anywhere any time soon I'm going to change this one. Mr Mair showed his mettle as a stand-in presenter on Newsnight during the Savile crisis so I now predict he will become a regular presenter on Newsnight when it is revamped this year. This did not happen but Paxman seems to me to be in the ante room now so Mair is probably in prime position to take over this year.
  11. All around my hat I will wear the green willow, and all around my hat for a twelve month and a day. As we are still less than a twelve month (and a day) since I made this prediction I cannot yet reveal whether I managed it.

So 3.5 (and that's being generous to myself) out of 10. I'll just have to hope I do better with my 2014 predictions which I will post soon.


*UPDATE: Turns out I was actually right. Olly Grender was enobled in 2013 and her New Statesman blog was on the aggregator. So I got 4.5 out of 10! Thanks to Stephen Tall and Ryan Cullen for spotting and confirming this respectively.

1 comment:

Lady Virginia Droit de Seigneur said...

Most of your predictions may happen in time but Huhne back in the cabinet!!

One of the highlights of the year is that two of politics most egregious lying spivs (Huhne and McShane) ended up in jail as a consequence of their behaviour.

Just need Briscoe locked up now and based on what I read today it looks quite likely.