Decades ago, in the Trinidad Express, I stole Miami Herald columnist Robert Steinback’s idea of making predictions for the coming year. Four years ago, I re-stole the idea from both Robert and myself for the NATION.
So, as I said I would, if God spared life (and editor, byline), I now consider last year’s prophecies and make new ones. I always begin this annual predictions column with one that will always be correct in Barbados:
• Rich Bajan children will go to university in Canada; poor ones will go to Bible class in Sargeant’s Village. Correct; and rich Bajan children graduate from college and avoid taxation; poor ones graduate from Bible class and begin tithing.
• Sony will produce a 4-D TV that gives off smells. Correct. The price of a 3-D TV in Bim certainly stinks.
• Freundel Stuart will hand Mara Thompson the Dempcratic Labour Party leadership. Could be correct but we’ll never know. There was much jockeying but not enough happened openly to be sure a horse was mounted.
• Jamaica will join the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) to try to avoid extraditing Dudus. Off only geographically, since Jamaica has apparently joined the Middle East theocracies, with Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller promising to “consult the Lord” before deciding anything.
• Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar will declare she will not besmirch Trinidad and Tobago with incompetent small-island CCJ judges. Almost correct, except she chose to besmirch Trinidad Court of Appeal judges by bedraping them with imitation silk.
• Muslims will require women to wear burkinis at Accra. Sadly true. Nothing enrages me more than Islam, at its “holiest” requiring women to vanish under portable tents.
• Homo-hating Christians will be amazed by Muslim intolerance. True enough. Just look at the hate that passed for debate over the proposal to remove legislation affecting homosexuals.
• Whales will start beaching themselves on the Four Seasons site. No whales yet. Only more developers so far.
And here are my predictions for this year:
• Visitor arrivals will slump. The tourism industry will weep and wail. The Government will raise the tax on hotels and VAT on restaurants.
• Manchester City will top the Premiership League; Chelsea will finish ahead of Spurs.
• The Republican Party will nominate a ventriloquist’s dummy for its presidential candidate.
• Barbados will repeal the law against buggery, leading to thousands of leering homosexuals hanging from lamp posts to pounce on tiny children.
• Alex Jordan will talk about this prediction on her radio show.
• Salt will think that I was referring to the buggery-repeal one.
• You will buy a sno-cone on a hot day.
• Bajan service will become indistinguishable from Bajan rebellion.
• These predictions will end more suddenly than
