h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good evening!
Noswaith dda!
God kväll!
Buenas noches!
Bonsoir!

When December comes round each year, it's fun to look back on the past year. Was it a good year? What have you done? What have your learned? But it's also fun to look forward to the coming year. What can we expect from the up and coming year, 2014?

Here's your golden opportunity to show you are H2G2's answer to Nostradamus by giving us your predictions for 2014. They can be about anything. Maybe politics, maybe sport, maybe something about H2G2, maybe something about your own life. Sensible or silly, dire or daft.

Predict away!

I can't believe I didn't make any predictions for last year! There's a few pretty accurate ones in there though.

Right, in 2014:

1) The Queen will pass on and there will be much speculation whether Charles will become King or hand it straight to William.

2) Charles will become King.

3) Google will release a "robot" for the home. This will probably be something small, perhaps a robotic programming kit, but a robot none the less.

4) The IMF will twice admit that the UK isn't as daft about its recover as the IMF is.

5) I'll do a book signing, in a bookshop.

6) h2g2's visitor numbers will treble and they will take on their first full-time employee.

7) A motion detector device will be released for the PS4 to compete with the XBox.

8) An MP will get married on March 29th

Mu Beta will predict that The Groob will post a Predictions for 2015 thread in which he [Mu] will then predict the posting of a Predictions for 2016 thread.

And now that's out of the way...

1) Steven Moffat will announce that he is stepping down as showrunner on Doctor Who
2) BitCoin will suffer a huge crash as people realise that unwashed nerds wishing really hard isn't a solid foundation for a currency
3) David Moyes will be sacked as Manchester United manager

*cough* *ahem* *cough*

I will publish a book. It will be a good book and lots of people will like it.

Which is not in any way what I said last year. No.

(There were complications. Let us not discuss them.)

Also, I will shop-around a movie script which may or may not ever actually be produced. But I will be satisfied as long as I get a lot of money out of it.

The sun will set later and later until late June, after which it will set earlier and earlier. Temperatures will rise and fall accordingly, though with less predictability.

Very few of the National Enquirer's predictions will come true. A lot of things that they *should* have predicted will actually happen. The year that Elizabeth Taylor died was the first time in years that the Enquirer did *not* predict her death.

I predict that the Dow Jones Industrial Average will set new highs. I can't tell you on which days the new highs will be set.

I predict that some of the most touted summer blockbuster movies will fall flat on their faces.

2014 is a special year. No matter how you add it, it always adds up to 7. Seven is a mystic number, especially for people who believe that numbers can be mystic.

My seven predictions for 2014.

Someone will disseminate a totally spurious story that a large shopping centre (or center, or mall) has banned all decorations, music, nativity scenes, and any other reference to Christmas in response to complaints by local muslims.

Local muslims will complain bitterly that they are very dissappointed that the local shopping centre is threatening to not celebrate Christmas as the music and colourful decorations cheer them immensely at a bleak time of the year.

A charitable organisation will offer (on Facebook) a prize of a new Lamborghini to the first person to provide them with their name, address, and bank account details.

A bank you, (whoever you are) have never dealt with will send you a e-mail explaining that either (a) all your money has disappeared from your account and you need to click a link and log in before the bank can redress the error or (b) that you are being investigated by the FBI and they need you to pay them $1,000 dollars in administration fees to cover up your money laundering.

Someone you know will send you a picture via your facebook page of a dog with five legs and ask you to 'like' the picture, because if the picture is 'liked' by more than 10,000 people, all cancers will be cured, immediately.

A politician you don't know personally, will tell you that he can cure what is wrong in your life by making life even harder for other people you don't know who are a different social class to you. And you will believe him.

I will spend the year chuckling at the unbelievable stupidity of a large section of what is laughingly referred to as 'Homo Sapiens' (I have reported it to the Advertising Standards Authority but they don't seem to be interested).

I will get married

I predict a riot. <
I will also get married, sell my house, and buy another house, I will then decide that selling and buying a house is so expensive/much stress that I won't do so again, for at least another two decades
I shall lose another half a stone in weight and moan even more about tryign to find jeans that fit

My ten predictions for 2014.
Lets open the first window on my advent calendar.

1. In the light of the demise of Nelson Mandela the country will lurch in the direction of Uncle Bob's model. Jacob Zuma will panic at rising unrest,and land reform will go ahead at a rate which ensures agriculture fails, the big Western business' will pull out, and the only growth industry will be second hand tyre and petrol emporiums.

Brucie will jump before he is pushed from Strictly. Carol the gorgeous weather lady will turn down the opportunity to join the show but Charlie Dimmock won't.

Nice Nick will create more clear yellow water between himself and Nasty Dave whilst fluttering his eyebrows at Beaker. Or Ed as he is generally known.

Mortgage interest rates will rise increasing the number of repossessions.

I will change my car and never buy another Citroen. But equally, I won't learn my lesson and will buy the second car I look at because cars are boring and buying cars double boring.

There will be an agreement in principle with Merton Council, that AFC Wimbledon will build a stadium at Plough Lane. We will get drawn against a club from Bucks in one of the cup competitions again.

There will be a major natural disaster somewhere in the world, but it won't register very highly in the western world because the people who suffer and die will be foreigners with brown skins.

Another (probably middle-eastern, but possibly African) country will be thrown into a civil war / revolution after which another dictator will come to power failing to understand the meaning of democracy. Argentina anybody?

Yet another nation will launch a space mission / rocket / probe and we will say 'Who? Why? Really?'

There will be a major scandal involving someone we previously thought of as a nice guy (even if we thought they might be a bit odd). And we will all have a sense of deja vu.

Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull Racing will dominate F1 no matter how hard the poison dwarf tries to spoil their fun.

PP.

We haven't had a new Shakespeare play for a bit. His 'Cardenio' will be discovered in an unexpected place. Scholars will argue for decades.

I'd rather it was Love's Labors Won.

I can't tell you the title but I have written the first four acts. having problems with Act five though. It's a comedy so Princess Leia needs a wedding for an ending but she's still too close to her brother. Can I risk that or is a bit too early?

Someone discovered that Shakespeare gave testimony in a court case. Seriously! Anyone want to bet that that won'r get turned into a play of some sort?

It would be a cracker. A nasty Frenchman and his buxom wife. Will lodging upstairs, a marriage arranged and a promise broken. A young couple fleeing from the nasty father and being housed in what was probably a brothel. And Simon Foreman casting horoscopes.

Actually it's even better as a book: 'The Lodger' by Charles Nicholl.

Where there's a book, can a Hollywood movie be far behind?

I have always believed that Hollywood starts with a movie and then looks around for a book which is set in the same country as their script, and has no less than fifteen matching words, though not all necessarily spelled the same way.