Introduction

This column has not had a good record when it comes to predicting the future, even into the next year. It has defied probability and its predictions were so overwhelmingly more wrong than right that Dr Beckles would diagnose the attempt at clairvoyance as being purely delusional. Sometimes it does not even get the year right. For example, if one was going to predict 2011 one should really have started on December 17, 2010 when a Tunisian vendor made the ultimate protest by burning himself …..