Predictions for 2022

In many ways, it will be just like 2021.

Conspiracy theorists will react to every event on this template: A 95 year old woman can't just be ill! She must be dead!!! Also conspiracy theorists, when the Queen does finally leave us: She's still alive and has been moved to a secret location! Either that or she's "been assassinated." (LW)

Columnists will write about having a baby or bringing up children, and other people will snort and complain 'Does she think she's the first person to have a child?' Single people in their 20/30s will write articles about the problems in finding a partner, which are simultaneously completely new and related to new technology, and ALSO completely the same as for previous generations. (Moira Redmond)

They will also interview about 10 young people (if that), and write an article claiming that the young have invented “hook-ups” or “meaningful singledom” or “minimal living” or some such nonsense humans have been doing for decades. We did that in the 70s because there was a recession and wages were low and we couldn’t afford anything so we backpacked, hitchhiked, wore army surplus and bought household stuff from a charity shop, junk shop or barrow. We cooked from The Pauper’s Cookbook and recycled yoghourt pots. (Make sure you get the original edition of Jocasta Innes's classic, with its recipes for stuffed ox-heart.)

There'll be more of this kind of thing, and a family will try to live for a year without creating any waste: Today it’s cool, tomorrow it’s junk. We have to act against our throwaway culture. (Guardian headline, 2021. Vicars preached sermons about "our throwaway culture" – in the 70s. They were particularly upset about Kleenex and jet travel.)

The anti-Thanksgiving movement will gather momentum. (Colonialist, also you have to get together with bigoted anti-vax relatives.)

Social media disagreements will get more vicious, with more rape and death threats. The wrong people will have their accounts suspended.

Journalists will write the following articles:
It’s better to have a few good friends than many acquaintances – spin out with direct speech “I was sitting in a coffee shop with my friend Charlie and he said...” and peg to this year’s social media fad.

Why don’t we rehabilitate offenders instead of sending them to grim prisons?

Bullying at work is simply awful, but at last workers are refusing to put up with it any more.

Middle-class domestic abuse is a hidden problem but now we have brought it into the light it will soon be a thing of the past.

We communicate through body odour – we should stop masking our natural pong. (Some middle-clas people tried this in the 70s – they stank.)

Look at this animal in an embarrassing situation!

Maglevs and Zeppelins will solve our transport problems, that is if we don't "reverse Beeching": China unveils maglev train in July 2021.

For those fancying a trip from Belfast to Liverpool or Barcelona to the Balearic Islands but concerned about the carbon footprint of aeroplane travel, a small UK company is promising a surprising solution: commercial airships. Hybrid Air Vehicles, or HAV, which has developed a new environmentally friendly airship 84 years after the Hindenburg disaster, has today named a string of routes it hopes to serve from 2025. (Irish Times 2021-05-27)

Someone will announce a rescue plan for Cardross Seminary.

And, as in past years:

A clothes manufacturer will put out a plus-size range with new reasons and much fanfare. The plus-size will find it difficult to find clothes.

We'll ask: "How can we persuade people to get out of their cars and cycle or walk?" and "Can a woman hire a cleaner?"

We'll take "Twitter breaks" (sometimes with good reason).

Technology and social media will be blamed for everything from loneliness to potato blight.

Broadsheets and magazines seem to have given up on “Can a woman eat alone in a restaurant without being seated next to the toilet?” The answer is: "No, she can't."

Someone will get into trouble for saying publicly that Santa Claus isn't real.

More here, and links to past years.