In my opinion, it all started to unravel in 2016.
Donald Trump was voted president, David Bowie and Muhammad Ali died and we voted for Brexit. The world has not recovered.
So will things improve over the next 12 months?
No.
November sees an American election and Trump could be gone, but in the UK we will be seeing just how divided and isolated Brexit has left us as the Tories refuse to even mention the B word. One-nation conservatism my arse.
It’s going to be a big year for sport, with the Tokyo Olympics and the 2020 Euros, spread across 12 countries. The new cricket 100 format will flop resoundingly.
Sustainability will be the new buzzword and we might get as sick of it as the B word. World and business leaders in Glasgow will promise to support sustainable capitalism but will their shareholders let them (see baby boomers)?
The World Expo will take place in Dubai and Saudi Arabia will host the g20 summit. Welcome to the Gulf.
Mars will become the new Everest, with America, Europe, China and the UAE all sending probes up, with some spectacular failures. Private business will facilitate the race for space to become as polluted and junk-filled as the earth.
We want them to develop flying taxis and self-driving electric cars shaped like unicorns, but tech giants are going to face the indignities of taxation and increased scrutiny, particularly around the presidential election, which will provide a catalyst for further-deteriorating international relations between the US and pretty much everyone else.
2020 is the 250th anniversary of Beethoven, 200 years since the birth of Florence Nightingale, which will be a huge event, the WHO has even designated 2020 the Year of the Nurse. It is also 50 years since the Beatles split up and 75 since the founding of the UN.
Some diehards will go to the cinema to watch the 25th James Bond film, but everyone else will gorge on a proliferation of streaming channels, which they will come to regret in a few years’ time, when the Tories abolish the BBC and the surviving media content companies start charging more than the licence fee for a diet of rubbish films and reality TV.
Baby-boomers hit 65 and the world will have more people over the age of 30 than under for the first time. The young-old will probably be the last resistance to the aforementioned sustainable capitalism, as they try to protect their pensions invested in environmentally dodgy stocks and shares.
The question used to be, “What would the chairman’s wife think?”, now it is more likely to be “What would the chairman’s grandchildren think?”
His grandchildren would probably think that eating animals is wrong and there will be a rapid push towards vegan food on the high street (Gregg’s vegan sausage roll led the way) and plant-based monstrosities will be on sale everywhere.
The times are definitely a changin’ and below are some things we are going to miss, or miss a bit more, as they start to disappear from our lives in 2020:
Greenland
Scotland
Europe
The NHS
The BBC
C4
Tobacco
Meat
Holidays
Five day tests
The stars
David Bowie
