Doomsday

Well, here we are again at that time of the year when we are all invited to predict the future, get it spectacularly wrong and then discover that nobody really cares after all. Like the time when I predicted a 60/40 Remain/Leave vote when the referendum was announced. It seems futurology is a game for the experts which mere mangénues should ne’er feign to follow. Seriously, nobody knows the future, so it would be most unwise to forecast events which have yet to transpire. So, here goes.

I have been bequeathed just one vision for 2018. In my deep and tranquil sleep – the happy slumber of the righteous Brexiteer, so ignorant am I of the mental harm I have done to half my fellow countrymen – the only recurrent dream is the open-mouthed face of the proto-Remainer. Like Munch’s famous painting this face looks out imploringly at me and mouths its silent scream. Silent because, having started out shrill, it has risen in pitch to become almost inaudible to the human ear. Almost.

If Twitter had sound it would be a never-ending screech of angst, of impotent rage, of despair, of loss... and it would mostly be coming from one direction. It can’t be coincidence that the apparently disparate clumps of those who espouse the most minor of rights – all flavours of them -  believe that they will only be free to pursue those entitlements within the bounds of a supranational administration. Such an administration that will ignore the settled wishes of the majority and happily impose on them the duty to tolerate and bend to those they find intolerable, by force of law

So, throughout 2018 and beyond, the imaginary fight of those who sport the #FBPE hashtag will play out. Every business closure, every dip in the value of the pound, every price rise will be blamed on Brexit and the uneducated racists who voted for it. And every high profile figure who vows – without any obvious power to do so – to reverse the decision will be cheered as a conquering hero. The battlefield will echo to their cheers and groans, their apparent triumphs and their disappointments. But the noise will be coming, mostly, from one side.

What the Remain camp appears not to have realised is that nobody is fighting back. Leave won and they have left the field. Like Japanese soldiers on Pacific islands, Remainers are continuing to fight the war long after it is ended. And while they keep up the struggle inside their own heads, Brexiteers are busily getting on, negotiating the peace. The day after Brexit, when we all wake up and discover that nothing has changed, that no damage has been done, Remainers will have only two options.

It's bright, it's Brexit

Those who are mentally strong enough will be able to shrug, sniff the air, realise their fears were unfounded and begin to rebuild the bridges they burned during the Article 50 period. They will be welcomed back into the fold. But the rest will behave like doomsday cultists, seeing the absence of Armageddon as evidence that their prayers have been answered; and they will strengthen their faith as a result. We will need to be charitable to them and treat their EU delusion as the mental illness it is. We will need to be better than them.

Old Battsby's Almaniac - Part Two

So December drags wearily on and in an effort to appease our captives we pretend to identify with them and suffer the indignities of ritual seasonal abuse: Charades, Monopoly, Pictionary… anything to keep grandma and granddad from recounting war stories from the nineteen-seventies, when it wasn’t racism unless you were Bernard Matthews, or something. The turkey is a mere skeleton now and as the last of the chocolates are devoured for breakfast it is time, once more, to look to the year ahead… 

June

Labourism is declared an actual mental illness, falling under the definition of self-harm. If further proof were needed the few remaining Labour MPs, in a bizarre act of self-loathing, manage to force through legislation to make voting for white candidates a criminal offence under the Equalities Act. On the 15^th June in a service to celebrate the impact of the Magna Carta, a replica of the great charter is re-signed… then ceremoniously ripped in two. And on the 18^th a bunch of French students are prevented from entering Waterloo Station at sunset in memory of the battle where the forces of Eurovision were defeated by Ray Davies

July

The Lion the Witch and Ramadan is declared. Nobody can verify this because it is decided on a whim anyway but in a freak twist all of Britain is involuntarily converted to Aslan. The cardboard cut-out of Ed Miliband which was stolen around Christmas time turns out to have been run in the general election as a dazed Beaker emerges from his bunker, having been kidnapped and held captive by his own party during the campaign. Even side by side at the press conference it is impossible to tell the difference.

August

The big summer blockbuster is The Fast and The Furious 37, an entire movie in CGI including all the actors, whose names nobody knows. The audience are comprised entirely of gamers who can’t tell the difference, but at least it keeps them off the streets while their bedrooms are disinfected. The traditional dance of denial is enacted over the latest schools exam performances; for the first time the results are declared a draw.

September

The Queen becomes the longest serving monarch in a thousand years. In an address to the nation she shocks everybody by raising a single finger and declaring “Fuck you, Victoria!” then resigns saying “Fuck it, and fuck you all!” but not before her last defiant act of dissolving parliament and the monarchy forever and letting anarchy hold sway. In an imitation of her dear old Queen Mother - gawd bless 'er - she swigs gin and smiles beatifically on as Prince Philip symbolically punches an Arab.

October

Kim Kardashian has surgery to install an inflatable arse in a desperate bid to stay in the increasingly competitive limelight of celebrity-for-no-known-reason. The procedure fails and she enters self-imposed exile. The Daily Mail goes into a meltdown of denial as its online sidebar of shame shrinks to a quarter of its normal volume. Out of respect for a world arse icon, not even Beyoncé attempts to take her place.

November

Weather is declared the new black as records are set on practically every day of the month. Weather forecasters become rock stars as Tomasz Schafernaker fronts his band The Weather Girls. Gays and grandmas routinely brave the storms to throw sodden undergarments at them performing on flooded stages until, as quickly as it began, the sun comes out and pisses on everybody’s chips.

It's all in the balls, dear!

December

Christmas is cancelled everywhere and instead a month of jihad is declared with the nativity being played by Joseph in a suicide vest and Mary in a burka, burning Israeli flags and chanting death to the baby Jesus. On December 25^th England is finally declared a caliphate and officially becomes a part of the Middle East as the ISS flag flies over the smouldering ruins of Buckingham Palace.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Coming up...

No news is good news? Who says that? There’s always news, good and bad, but at this time of the year good or bad, it’s pretty unedifying stuff. Articles about who got what or who should have got what, or who would have got what if it was up to ‘me’ for Christmas. Some pretty unimaginative ‘alternate’ Christmas party/food/travel ideas, too late for anybody to do anything about. A million diet articles, all contradictory, yet all saying the same thing: ‘we don’t know any better than you do’. And Christmas fashion, for fuck’s sake. At Christmas the way you look is entirely in the hands of the ridiculous clothes others buy you… for a joke.

Then there are the royals. For crying out loud, aren’t they allowed just one day off? The Queen’s speech is leaked and dissected before it’s even broadcast. The new parents are nagged and nagged and nagged to parade their shiny plump prince for public consumption and in today’s Daily Mail they even manage to resurrect the ghost of the decade-dead Queen Mum – Gawd bless ‘er! All we need is another palace intruder story and we’ll be made up.

Also we await the reviews of the year and the predictions for what is to come. Well don’t bother because I have it all here. Are you ready? Some famous people will confess to dalliances with other famous people, much to their famous associates’ astonishment. Other less famous but fabulously wealthy persons will end up in trouble for variously buying favour/honours/influence and bringing our political/judicial/honours system into pretend disrepute. Others will call for public inquiries and the break-up of our political/judicial/honours systems. Oh and there will be an election, after which a coalition government will deliver more of the same.

There will be some sort of disease epidemic which everybody will quickly claim to have contracted and shortly thereafter there will be a ‘man’ version in a continuation of the old saw that men are incapable of bearing illness with dignity. The feminists will seize on this with glee as yet further evidence that they have not one amusing bone in their body… including, quite probably, the humerus. In other words humans will show no obvious signs of evolution, no matter how many books are published claiming otherwise; the battle of the sexes will rumble on for a good few millennia yet.

Other wars will wax and wane and the planetary total of refugees will continue to rise and one way or another they will all try to come to Europe which, by then, will have started its own little ‘warlets’ preparatory to the next ‘war to end all wars’ which, in all probability will be fought mostly by drones controlled from angry teenagers’ bedrooms. And on top of that even the weather will – by all accounts – begin dropping ordnance on us. Not content with merely forecasting the weather the climate industry, ever desperate for bigger headlines, will preface every expectation of a bit of rain or snow with the term ‘weather bomb’.

The British 'weather bomb' - same old shit

So don’t bother with the news, there is no such thing. Nothing is new under the sun, as they say. But if you do go in for perusing the headlines and especially if you are inclined to be taken in by what they say, then I have one very British piece of advice for you. Prepare for disappointment.