Absolutely accurate predictions for 2012

2012-01-10 07:10

So, what's this year going to hold in store for us? Well some things are pretty much as certain as the fact that December 31, 2012 will be followed immediately by January 1, 2013.

For instance, it is almost guaranteed that when the priced of petrol is reduced it will only be reduced by a heck of a lot less than it went up by the last time it was increased.
Newsreaders on TV will continue to look gloomy when they say “The price of petrol will increase by 60 cents next Wednesday" and then a month later they will look all cheerful and with big smiles on their faces say; "Good news for motorists is that the price of petrol will come down by two cents on Wednesday."

Nobody anywhere seems to have bothered to look at what the price of petrol was a few years when the crude oil price and Rand /Dollar exchange rates were exactly the same as they are today and ask the question why the petrol price is now a lot higher.

The other thing that is absolutely certain is that every time you come out of supermarket you will find that the price of food and basic household goods has gone up by a lot more than the official inflation statistics. Why do we keep believing these fairy tales?

At Easter and next Christmas another couple of thousand South Africans will die on the roads and traffic authorities will waste a lot of air appealing for motorists "to drive safely."  When are they going to realise that no-one is listening to them?

They'll rant and rave, talk about "zero tolerance" and then carry on greedily collecting money from traffic fines as though there were no tomorrow. When will they realise that  as long as municipalities rely so much  on revenue from traffic fines, road deaths will continue to reach their usual high levels because the cops are all out collecting money instead of stopping drivers from doing absolutely idiotic things on the roads.

France and Germany will continue to tap dance around  each other trying to find a solution to all the Eurozone countries that keep having to be bailed out while at the same time trying to fend off those vicious Brits who keep telling them the single currency Euro was never really sustainable. Meanwhile all that petty bickering will have a knock-on effect on countries like South Africa that rely on the Eurozone for trade.

When will politicians... oh, what the heck - it's actually pointless going down that road.

Having pulled all of its troops out of Iraq, the United States will start looking around for with someone else to fight so that they can keep their multi-billion dollar defence industry going. When will some really good investigative journalist start having a look at how much the first world economy depends on arms manufacture? Just so that we can sleep peacefully at night knowing that wars are not bad things but really good for keeping unemployment and poverty at bay.

Just like our taxi drivers who will continue to be allowed to get away with absolute murder on our roads because they contribute so much to the South African economy in terms of getting people to work on time even if they are often quite dead when they clock in. Not to mention contributing massively to the sales of motor spares, tyres, fuel, hospitals, mental asylums and undertakers.

I wonder when some really good investigative journalist will work out just how many industries in this country depend on taxi drivers behaving like Formula 1 drivers on tik and no brakes?

Towards the end of the year various ANC factions will slug it out quite violently as they promote their choice of leader, in spite of those very leaders asking them all to be cool and calm about the process.  Polokwane will seem like a nursery school outing by comparison.

When will some really good investigate journo look at just how many millions of South Africans still believe that democracy is the right to beat the shit out of anyone who doesn’t agree with you?

It is absolutely guaranteed that the vast majority of South African soccer, rugby and cricket fans will scream like banshees for coaches to be fired when we lose and say absolutely nothing about coaches when we win?

It is also pretty much guaranteed that floodwaters will wash away informal housing that was put up in the past 12 months in place of informal houses that were washed away by floodwaters last year, because they were built on the banks of little streams that the new residents refused to believe would get bigger than  a trickle.

South Africa's farmers will complain bitterly about the drought/floods - whichever comes first.

And finally, there is no question at all about the prediction that in 2012 the rich will get rich her and the poor poorer. 

The sale of Bentleys that increased by 31 per cent last year will continue to soar at about the same rate as poverty related child deaths.
    

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