What is in Kelvin's Head?

Last year’s predictions – how did I do?

31/12/2019

The UK will begin leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. It will take 10 years to leave, 10 years for it to be evident to the whole country how stupid it was and 10 years to get back in, with none of our current special measures. (Hope this prediction doesn’t come to pass but fear it will).

Well, we didn’t begin leaving on 29 March 2019 but the clock is ticking. Failed prediction

The only thing to make EU-positive lefty-liberals to have pause for thought will be the EU Elections in May which will result in big gains for the so-called populist right.

Well, the populist right did well but not that well. It wasn’t the overwhelming success many predicted. And the liberal left collapsed rather than took notice. Failed prediction.

No progress towards same-sex marriage in the Church of England, despite much clearer calls for it to happen.

No progress but the emergence of the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England does offer some encouragement. Prediction fulfilled.

Significant concerns in many UK dioceses about the cost of bishops, and particularly their spouses, attending the Lambeth Conference in 2020. (Over £5000 each).

There is undoubtedly concern about this and there’s been some online comment about through the year it but not a major press scandal yet. (Any spouse going to this is complicit in homophobia and expensive homophobia at that). Prediction fulfilled.

Elizabeth Warren / Beto O’Rourke begin to emerge as the Democratic dream ticket.

Beto is out, Warren is still in. No dream ticket. Failed Prediction.

Stricter legislation in connection with drone operators.

New regulations announced. Prediction Fulfilled.

Steps towards legalisation of cannabis under serious consideration within SNP.

SNP did exactly as I predicted. Prediction Fulfilled.

No referendum on Independence.

Prediction Fulfilled

Cyber attacks merging with terrorist attacks.

Difficult to prove who is behind these things but they are increasingly being regarded together by the security services. New legislation adopted in USA to try to combat it. Am claiming this one as a win. Prediction fulfilled

One of Scotland’s daily newspapers ceases print publication.

Not yet. Not yet. Failed prediction.

2019 Predictions

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

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1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
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Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply