After mocking New Year’s resolutions as our way of saying goodbye to good, old 2014 in December, why not welcome 2015 by taking our crystal ball and seeing what will be the top five events/trends of the next 12 months:
1. Climate change: There will be three camps in 2015. The first one is those who fervently believe that the climate is changing because humans have stuffed the ozone layer. This lot despise the next group, who are called climate change deniers, who despise the first lot back. The deniers say the scientists have got it all wrong and there’s no such thing as climate change. The third group, that’s where most of us fit in, can see that the weather is changing, there’s a lot more extreme stuff, hot or cold, wet or dry, but we are not sure if this has been caused by human induced stupidity or it’s just part of natural climate change. Yes, I know, there were three camps last year too, and the year before, and 10 years before that. That’s the point. Some things just never change.
2. Our fearless prime minister, the Duke of Manly Warringah, Tony Abbott, will start wearing a Napoleon suit in June, and he will say that there is a reasonable explanation for this: the material for a Napoleon suit keeps the cold out when he’s watering the plants at The Lodge during Canberra’s freezing cold months. Honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised what Tony will do. And even he may be starting to realise that as Prime Minister he makes a damn fine Opposition Leader – or Napoleon Bonaparte imitator. Malcolm Turnbull, come on down!
3. In sport, the Greater Western Sydney (GWS) Giants will win the AFL flag this year, while the Asian football champions, Western Sydney (WS) Wanderers, will be wooden spooners in the A-League, kind of trading places. Someone should make a movie about it. Still in sport, we love the Twenty20 Big Bash, and look forward to team names that make sense to the point you actually remember if it’s the Sydney Scorchers or the Brisbane Hurricanes or whatever. But don’t hold your breath.
4. In the field of terrorism, Islamic State, which currently finances itself by the usual business practices of kidnapping and stealing other people’s oil fields, will be reduced to running chook raffles in 2015. Or not.
5. And finally, Australians will stop trying to lose weight via fad diets. Yes, it sounds like the impossible dream, but that’s 2015 for you, the year when dreams come true. They don’t call me Nostrakontos for nothing.
