When it comes to bleak predictions I'm happy to be proved wrong

Blaise is happier now he's giving up trying to predict the futureBlaise is happier now he's giving up trying to predict the future
Blaise is happier now he's giving up trying to predict the future
Like most self opinionated journalists, the words ‘I am very sorry, I was wrong” are very hard for me to come by.

However, having dedicated myself to fighting for truth and justice for the best part of a quarter of a century it is incumbent upon me to hold up my hands and admit that all of my 2019 predictions have been proved to be wildly inaccurate thus far.

Making political forecasts in 21st Century Britain is as unwise asking Gemma Collins for ice skating tips but my claim that Theresa May’s political career would come to an end before the binmen took the Christmas tree away proved to be wildly off the mark.

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Then there was the assertion that Radio 2 would never again be played in the car at home time once Sara Cox took over the mike but I have been well and truly won over by her goofy word gymnastics and the fact that she isn’t Evan Davis over on Radio 4.

And we should draw a line under my unwavering pre-Yuletide belief that my team, the South Coast’s most successful ever club, Portsmouth, would be pretty much promoted by the end of January seems to have put the mockers on the team’s once seemingly unstoppable progress.

These are all comparatively minor blips when you compare it to my long held view that if I had a bit more extra cash in my pocket then life would seem that much rosier. It seems that this view, shared by almost everybody who has to put a tie or a skirt on to go to work, is now as outdated as my DVD library when you consider the latest data compiled by the killjoys who work at the Office for National Statistics.

We are now being told that despite the fact we have sky high number of people in work and rising levels of spending power, our national sense of well being has stalled. In case you had forgotten, our centrally funded number crunchers have been measuring our feelings ever since they were instructed to do so by David Cameron, a man who is in pole position for the title of Most Maligned Politician of the Decade, which is pretty impressive when you consider the competition that he is up against

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Our Dave, who last we heard was avoiding the brickbats thrown at him by the likes of Danny Dyer by writing his memoirs in an unspeakably posh shed, was keen that statistics were compiled on how happy people were and whether or not they thought life was worthwhile. This was introduced in 2010, two years after the financial crash that shook the world and just a matter of months after we had exited our most recent recession. On the face of it, it would make sense for any Government to focus on measurables other than financial success, given what happened to the global economy in 2008.

The fact that people don’t feel any happier, even though life is comfortable for so many of us, merely serves to confirm the adage that there is more to life than money.

As I am clearly a lousy pundit, it doesn’t make any sense for me to make any more predictions but, given the uncertainty that we face in the coming months, I cannot see us becoming happier bunnies this year.

There is every chance I will be wrong. Let’s hope so.

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