Crystal ball gazing

Everyone else is at it so why not me. 

Here are my five predictions for 2009.

1) Arguments between local authorities and their local partners will break out across the England as they blame each other for the disappointing Comprehensive Area Assessment inspection reports they receive. There will be (as previously discussed) an increase in short-notice or no-notice inspections and inspectorates will be much more cautious about providing positive inspection reports.

2) There will be a general election in June and Labour will be returned to government with a reduced majority. The Prime Minister will want to go to the polls at a time of his choosing rather than waiting until 2010 and being forced to go regardless of the local conditions. To a certain extent the timing will depend on how far the country has slumped into despair but there are European elections in June. A General Election on the same day would enable people to make a protest vote on the MEPs rather than the MPs.

3) There will be an amusing range of rubbish and embarrassing forays onto YouTube from public bodies and sleepy regulated industries. Even the most ancient chief executive is likely to have noticed that Barrack Obama has made use of this Internet thing to get elected and will decree that they should commission cool corporate videos likewise. Sadly for them social media only works on its own terms.

4) Millions of pounds of public investment will be wasted as infrastructure schemes are rushed and poorly planned. The government is very keen to be a bit Keynesian by releasing public money into capital works across the country. Local councillors, health authority chiefs and even fire bosses will be dusting off those projects that every organisation has floating about in the back office obligingly. Sadly the bulk of the public sector has still not learned to plan projects properly or to listen to stakeholders and respond to their views before kicking off.

5) Facebook will rule the world. OK maybe not rule the world but it will integrate itself into a huge number of web sites and will become useful not just for social networking but for practical purposes as web designers (and corporate comms managers) realise the implications of Facebook connect. Twitter will continue to be huge in the blogosphere (and in the twitterverse of course) but it will remain a technology in search of a purpose.

Check back in a year's time to see how I did. Though frankly if I get any of it right you'll hear about it a great deal sooner than then.

Photo: is Glassy Water by Lee Jordan issued under CC-SA-2.0