A month to go, how did are my New Year predictions going

 At the start of the year, I always make a series of predictions. Around this time of the year, I have a quick look at how I have done so far. My comments from now are in Red italics

Politics.

London Council elections. I predict that although Labour and the Tories will take a bit of a beating, it will not be the domesday scenario that everyone seems to think is coming. I suspect that Barnet will swing back to the Tories. I suspect that a couple of East London councils may swing to Reform, but they will do far less well than expected. I expect the Lib Dems and the Greens to do very well, especially if they do not attack each other and come up with some sort of non aggression pact.

Well I was wrong about Barnet, but only just. It was a dead heat, with the Green Party supposedly holding the balance of power, except that the Tories and Labour did a deal that kept Labour in to shut the Greens out. If you are wondering, why, it may have something to do with the perception in Barnet that the Greens have become the party of Jew haters. 

I expect Keir Starmer to still be PM this time next year. Although he seems to be under a lot of pressure, as far as I am concerned most of it is media noise.

I certainly got this wrong, but it became clear that Starmer was not up to the top job 

I expect things in the States to become more difficult for Donald Trump. There are mid term elections in the USA and this will give us a chance to see how the ordinary people actually perceive Trumps performance. 

When I wrote this Trump had not attacked Iran and petrol prices had not gone through the roof. I was spot on though

Sport.

Once again, I expect that Arsenal will fall short. As Alex Ferguson once said, you win nothing at Xmas.

I couldn't have been more wrong, could I?

I expect Manchester United to have had at least two managers by this time next year.

This was the prediction that made me revisit this today. We will find out if I was right. Carrick was appointed on January 13th

I think Hadley FC will have a great second half of the season and make the play offs.

Sadly, Hadley were hit by injuries and the playoff dream disappeared

Music.

I expect this to be  classic year. I am much looking forward to The London International Ska Festival. I think this may be a big year of surprises. My own prediction is that we will start to see a return to guitar based pop and rock bands, which have been out of fashion for a very long time

It has been a brilliant year for me musically. We've not really seen the rise of guitar based pop bands but I think it will come.

Technology.

I expect this to be the year when we realise that AI is not the future, although it has an important role to play. I suspect we may see the first big crashes of AI tech stocks and corporate failures due to AI.

The US mid terms showed that I was correct about a backlash. It has been a year of big technology fails. AI has not got the blame though, yet.

The Weather.

I expect a cold February/March and a scorching July. I also expect that in February/March we'll have the climate deniers claiming there is no global warming and in July we'll have all manner of climate change advocates claiming that the end is nigh.

I was wrong about Feb & March. Both were warmer than average. I was bang on about July. 

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So there you go, I'd say about 6.5 out of 10 so far. As to my new years resolutions, the less said the better but...

The Gym 

My targets this year. I want to do over 3,000 KM in the Gym, with at least 2,500 on the exercise bike and 500 on the rowing machine. I did 2063 km on the bike this year, 450km on the rower and 36km on the treadmill. I think it is achieveable

I may do the 3000 km challenge. On the bike I've fallen behind. I've done 1,900KM so far. I will probably do 2,250. I have had to drop the rowing challenge as it is hurting my ankle. The problem with my ankle has been the spanner in the works.

Weight

I want to get my weight down to 14.5 stones. I am around 16.5 at the moment following Xmas excess. I was doing well until December. 

Rather annoyingly, I am at more or less exactly the same weight as I was at the start of the year. Part of this was down to losing the plot a bit Jan-August on the healthy eating. Ever since I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2012, I've been careful and I completely stopped, In August I had an incident that made me realise I had to get a grip. I have, but I am just undoing the damage. 

Music

I hope this will be a classic year for The False Dots, I can't say too much but we've been promised several 'big' gigs. If they come off, it will be the best year ever! We will be releasing a new single in March entitled "It's behind you" and an album of the same name in April/May/June.

Well the album became "We don't live in America" and I think it is amazing. The big gigs were the London International Ska Festival in April and the York Rise Street Party in September. We also played Camden Rocks on Sunday. I set a target of 12 gigs in the year, which we also hit.

Business

This is the year that I expect to see my music business finally emerge from the ravages of the pandemic and have a bigger turnover than 2019! If it doesn't then I might just retire. I am hopeful, pandemics, wars and recessions aside

Hmmm. It looks like we will miss the target, unless the next seven weeks are exceptional. Our turnover is well up on last year, but the habits of musicians has changed. We surpassed 2018 massively, but 2019 was a brilliant year. looking at the stats in some detail, I realise just how much damage the Pandemic has done us. If the pandemic hadn't hit and our turnover had stayed the same as 2019 (and we grew by 15% that year from 2018), I'd have been able to repay my mortgage with the profits. There have been no real profits since then. I am hopeful. We have had our best week ever, we've changed our business model. But it gets no easier. I am still tearing my hair out trying to work out ways to boost the turnover and connect with more customers. In short. We've grown our turnover by 8% this year I had hoped it would be 15%. Maybe that was a bridge too far!

So to sum up. After eleven months, the year sort of turned out more or less like I thought it would, with the odd surprise that I didn't see coming. On a personal level, I've met some of my goals and in hindsight, some of the goals I set were just far too ambitious. I am a year older and I guess that my biggest problem is that I am in a state of denial that I am 64. Long may that continue!

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