2026 - Happy New Year - My predictions and my new years resolutions

Firstly, I'd like to wish all my readers a happy, peaceful and fullfilling year. I think that I've never felt less positive going into a new year. As someone who is, by  nature, an optimist, it is hard to look at the state of the nation and the world and feel happy with how things are going. What troubles me most is the sheer dishonesty. We have politicians lying on an industrial scale, which is perhaps nothing new, but what is new is that no one seems to care anymore. Normally at this time of year, I make a few predictions for fun. I was very tempted to not bother, but why should I let the fact that the world is run by a bunch of chiselling spivs influence me. So here are my predictions

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.

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 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. 

Sport.

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

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

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

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

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 beig crashes of AI tech stocks and corporate failures due to AI.

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. 

My New Years resolutions.

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

Weight

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

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.

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