• Predictions 2023 – How did I do?

    1  Generative artificial intelligence will become significantly disruptive of many sectors this year. Education practices will change quickly as a result of this but education will be but one of many areas of life to be affected.

    Happening all around us (even to people who can’t see it happening around them) – prediction fulfilled.

    2 No progress for those seeking marriage equality in the Church of England. There will be a lot of talk about moving towards some form of official blessings for same-sex couples which would have the effect of thwarting those seeking actual equality, making it more difficult to achieve. Further division amongst pro-gay activists in the Church of England.

    Happening exactly as predicted. The recent developments following the LLF project make equality more even further away – prediction fulfilled.

    3  Indyref 2 will not happen on 19 October 2023 as Nicola Sturgeon had hoped, which is a shame for those seeking to separate Scotland from the rest of the UK as the autumn will be the high water mark for the Indepedence movement. It will be downhill into the next General Election after that.

    Happenning but not quite as I expected. Indryref didn’t happen but Indy polls are indeed riding high. However I didn’t see the mess the SNP would get itself into along the way. Prediction Fulfilled.

    4  Trump and Biden will both declare that they intend to run for the US presidency in 2024 and American politics will continue to be all about Donald Trump.

    Exactly as I said – prediction fulfilled.

    5  Covid recovery remains bumpy, particularly through supply-chain problems due to mismanagement of Covid in China.

    Pretty much as I said – we’ve largely forgotten the supply chain issues that continued from the end of last year into the new year and the spring. Prediction mostly fulfilled.

    6 No conclusive end to the war in Ukraine this year.

    Alas. Prediction fulfilled

    7 Governments in Westminster and Holyrood will announce some kind of “new deal” for the National Heath Service.

    Holyrood here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/programme-government-2023-24/pages/5/

    Westminster: Pay – here https://healthmedia.blog.gov.uk/2023/07/14/government-accepts-recommendations-from-nhs-pay-review-bodies/
    Westminster: Medicines here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-deal-to-boost-nations-health-and-save-nhs-14-billion

    Prediction fulfilled.

    8 – UK Government will not succeed in blocking Scottish Gender Recognition Reform.

    I remain surprised that the Scottish Governnent gave up on this. Prediction not fulfilled.

    9  Liam McArthur’s bill in the Scottish Parliamant to allow doctors to participate in the killing of terminally ill patients will fail to receive parliamentary approval but will receive more support than similar proposals have before.

    Bill hasn’t received approval but hasn’t gone to a vote either. Large levels of support in the media. Prediction partially fulfilled.

    10  Changes announced to the UK honours system, perhaps at the time of the Coronation, to remove references to empire. OBE becomes Order of British Excellence.

    Not happened yet. Prediction not fulfilled.

     

    Result – about 7 1/2 out of 10 this year I think. Not bad.

9 responses to “Street Music”

  1. Tim Avatar

    I encountered the Salvation Army at the bottom of the escalators in the Buchanan St Galleries last Saturday afternoon. It was sorely tempting to drop an orange down the tuba as I passed, but I refrained, sailing by on my way with thoughts of expressions of multi-{ethnic,cultural,religious} societies…

  2. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Jingle Bells is certainly a carol and, arguably, a hymn too.

  3. Jackie Avatar

    (corrected link from last comment – is it really that long ago that I last commented here?)

    I love bagpipes, but am at a loss to imagine Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. They’ll be doing Hallelujah next (everyone else seems to be).

  4. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    Good Father, you have come a long way from the Salvation Army. (I have rarely encountered them here in Mexico.)

    As far as “Scotland’s national instrument of war,” with the advent of laser-guided missiles and 500 pound bunker busters dropped from 10,000 meters, it is much more difficult to scare your enemy away with that squealing noise.

  5. Sumner Avatar
    Sumner

    In the US we encounter Salvation Army at the doors of many stores and malls, ringing a bell hoping for monetary donations. I have heard that they even now have credit card readers and can run the card right there! I think I’d prefer the band, but I’ve never encountered one.

  6. kelvin Avatar

    The bell thing is very much a North American thing. Bands are the the way to get the money in on this side of the Atlantic. They had an open bucket today (which I thought was not a legal way of collecting money) rather than a credit card reader.

  7. Zebadee Avatar
    Zebadee

    I had the misfortune to stand too close to the RAF Leuchars Pipe Band. The sound was far worse close up than the noise of the engines of their planes. Not only a weapon of war but also an instrument of torture. The Geneva Convention should ban such weapons.

  8. David |Dah • veed| Avatar
    David |Dah • veed|

    The Salvation Army (El Ejército de Salvación) Christmas Kettles started in San Francisco over 100 years ago when a local officer wanted to collect funds for Christmas Dinner for the poor. He remembered a kettle collecting money back in Liverpool England and decided to try this at the local ferry dock. He positioned himself to get folks both coming and going. Thus a tradition was born.

    Now you can go to the US Salvation Army website and get info about setting up an online Christmas Kettle on your blog to collect from your visitors directly to the SA.

    Mexico has very strict separation laws, more strict than the USA, and laws regulating religious institutions, so I have never seen a Christmas Kettle or a SA band in Mexico. I do know that they operate a shelter here in Monterrey.

  9. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    “It was, unmistakably, the skirl of a bagpipe…

    The senior officer halted his men and came riding back. ‘Captain Windham, I believe there is an ambush set for us down yonder.’

    ‘It does not sound like an ambush, egad!’ replied his colleague rather tartly, as the heathenish skirling grew louder.” (D. K. Broster, The Flight of the Heron [1925])

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Who would true valour sing?

    I had the opportunity this week to abide for a while and think by Bunyan’s grave in Bunhill Fields in London. I was on my way back from holiday (Budapest, Sophia, Istanbul, London) and had scarcely thought of work at St Mary’s for most of the time that I had been away. But finding myself…

  • Sermon – 19 August 2018 – The Hostile Environment and who is missing

      There were some bits missed out. Not by the reader but by the compiler of the lectionary. Whole verses. Whole themes. Whole characters. Whole murders. Missed out in the twinkling of an eye. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that the first reading was two verses from the second chapter of 1…

  • Praying for Dr Pritchard

    Every morning at Morning Prayer in St Mary’s we pray for those whose “year’s mind falls at this time”. That means remembering in our prayers those who have died, on the anniversary of their death. Many of our churches in Scotland do this and we have a list of remembrances that leads to a couple…

  • Pagliacci – Scottish Opera ****

    Paisley Opera House (aka a tent on Seedhill Playing Fields in Paisley) Scottish Opera’s summer show in Paisley is a completely immersive bundle of fun that manages to be innovative and hugely entertaining. It isn’t difficult to see where the idea of putting this show on in a big tent comes from. Pagliacci (The Clowns)…