• Review of Predictions for 2018

    On 1 January I made predictions for the coming year. Time to see how I got on.

    1 – General Election in the second half of the year.

    Well, no we didn’t and the government linger on. Not right

    2 – “…and as the polls close, our exit poll predicts that the Conservative Party is unlikely to be able to form a new government…”

    Well, the government did linger on of a fashion.  N/A

    3 – The next but one leader of the Conservative Party becomes Ruth Davidson MP.

    Too soon to tell. Not right yet.

    4 – The hipsters get bored of vinyl and discover cameras with actual, you know, film.

    In September, I happened upon three or four hipster types from Denmark in the cathedral grounds taking photographs for a fashion shoot in Belgium. They had stopped shooting for a moment…. to reload film canasters.  Right – but likely to become more common yet.

    5 – No date for a new referendum on Scottish Independence.

    No date for a new referendum and no great call for one either. Right.

    6 – No progress for LGBT affirming Anglicans in England.

    Sadly correct. Right

    7 – Progress for LGBT affirming Anglicans elsewhere, particularly Brazil.

    Stunning progress in Brazil – marriage agreed by huge majority on synod floor. (And who else saw that coming!) Right.

    8 – Increasing realisation that sexual abuse is part of church culture. #churchtoo #metoo.

    Yes – meetings happening all over the place trying to work out how to respond. Few coherent policies yet. Right.

    9 – FTSE lower at the end of 2018 than it is at the beginning. (7687)

    As I write this the FTSE is at 6728 – worst year in a decade. Right

    10 – The end of the beard.

    Those with style, manners and culture have seen the error of their ways and shaved. A few young and misguided types cling on. Completely and utterly right.

     

    Not a bad year, I think.

2 responses to “Wikileaks and the Guardian”

  1. richard Avatar
    richard

    I don’t think there is a clear answer to that but one might take a guess. The Guardian might argue that what they are reporting is “honest comment” from a known source. Admittedly that is based on a recent Supreme Court judgment about defamation but the judges acnowledged a need for the law to evolve to meet modern media communications. National security arguments are a safer legal bet; ie interdict. That would open up a delicious can of worms for media types. The bully boy tactics of indiscriminate pressure being placed on commercial entities without a consistent
    legal approach suggests a reluctance by authorities to enter a Kafka-esque nightmare. Enter the tactics of personal discreditation. Mr Putin made some interesting observations today about current democracy and double standards.

  2. Hermano David |Brother Dah•veed Avatar
    Hermano David |Brother Dah•veed

    To me, the original sin is the collusion between WikiLeaks and the disgruntled US soldier stationed in Afghanistan. What periodicals around the globe are now doing is perusing the published documents and bringing to light their contents, something any one of us with the time could certainly now do for ourselves.

    The pressure by governments to make WikiLeaks exposition more difficult is the question of did these businesses, internet data farms, domain name venders and financial institutions, look the other way and allow violations to their own policies and standards in support of WikiLeaks, another form of collusion? Were these policies and standards to which other clients are stringently held?

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