Anybody who thought that 2009 was an ‘annus horribilis’ – as the British Queen once put it – would be surprised to know that 2010 will be even worse. At least that is what my crystal ball tells me, after having read and assessed various newspaper reports.
Desperate housewives will not just be paying greengrocers in kind… they will also be playing the same trick on butchers and handymen, not to mention the milkman.
Schoolgirls will keep pulling each other’s panties down –the only good news on this front being the chair makers’ pending decision to produce slimmer chair legs.
MEPA will carry on issuing controversial permits, increasing its meticulous pettiness with petty permits and its largesse with large permits. Its reform will go through the motions with nobody noticing whether anything had happened.
Environmentalists will keep on harping against anything that they don’t like, which is practically everything anybody tries to do in this fair land.
The President of the Republic will develop a serious case of split personality: torn between the pull of being a Non-Governmental Organisation or being the highest representative of the Maltese State.
Maltese patients will be sent for medical treatment in Italy, not knowing whether their destination is San Raffaele in Milan or the Clinica Santa Rita where they have the funny habit of stealing patients’ organs.
The award of every government tender will spark off accusations of wrongdoing and short-sighted governance, with the opposition doing its best to use these accusations to its best advantage, irrespective of whether there is a grain of truth in them or not.
Nationalist party MPs will keep squabbling between them and with their leader about anything under the sun… and on some underground topics as well. Meanwhile the Prime Minister will astound no one but himself by pronouncing a cabinet reshuffle that will not ruffle any feathers and leave everyone unhappy.
Joseph Muscat and his elves will carry on spouting inanities that are then faithfully reported on One News, and Alternattiva Demokratika will continue believing that it exists.
MaltaToday will be printing more horror stories and Saviour Balzan will do his best to out-Balzan himself. In-Nazzjon will keep looking at the bright side of things, however difficult that may be, and l-orizzont will keep looking at the dark side of things, that are somehow easier to find.
The Constitutional amendment banning abortion ‘for good’ will remain the priority of some, who remain understand that their concern is irrelevant to the majority of the population. Pregnant Maltese women, of course, will keep on having abortions in nearby Sicily, or anywhere in the European Union.
The Gay and Lesbian front will keep on hollering for ‘civil rights’ and many will oppose them decrying the evil of same sex marriages as being the natural consequence of abortion that is the natural consequence of divorce. Divorce, incidentally, is the natural consequence of marriages - failed marriages, of course.
People will continue to die while others will be born, some sired by unknown fathers – as has been happening since people started having babies.
By the way, life will go on as usual.
***
On the international front, suicide bombers will keep on killing people in those places where they normally do these things.
The Israeli-Palestine confrontation will keep on confounding those who try to resolve it.
Gaddaffi will remain his meandering self while Bin laden will stick to the caves in the Pakistani-Afghan border, while the deaths of US and British soldiers in Afghanistan will keep taking place.
Putin will keep on flexing his muscles and Obama will keep on mesmerising everyone with his sweet talk. Berlusconi will keep bedding young girls while Sarkozy will do his best to keep abreast with Carla Bruni. In the UK, the Conservatives will hope to lose the election so that they will not have to eat their words and back down on their proposals for Britain’s relations with the EU. But alas, they will probably win.
In the domain of international sport, the debate will mostly concern whether hermaphrodites should be classed as men or as women and perhaps whether the situation calls for the organisation of sporting events restricted to hermaphrodites. Meanwhile, new performance enhancing drugs will be concocted, followed by new tests to check on them.
All over the world, as long as politicians exist, there will be corrupt politicians. And as long as bankers exist, there will be corrupt bankers. Ditto for judges, policemen, businessmen, priests, accountants, doctors, lawyers, architects, journalists and dustmen.
By the way, life will go on as usual.
***
The biggest shock will be on the climate change front. The predictions made by those who predict such things will come about in a very different way than that they predicted. This year’s experience with the Arctic Sea will be matched and overtaken by other similar unexpected developments.
Just in case you are wondering, the increase in Arctic sea areas – as a consequence of melting ice due to global warming – has led to an unpredicted amount of plankton growth in the newly ice-free regions. The explosion in plankton populations is the result of the new open-water habitat and an extended ice-free growing season. Moreover, as they naturally remove carbon dioxide – a greenhouse gas – from the atmosphere, these tiny plants are helping to slow down the climate change phenomenon that, paradoxically, led to their multiplication!
The fact that Arctic Ocean surface waters usually have a limited supply of the nutrients that plankton require to survive had led some researchers to assume that new areas of open water would not promote additional plankton growth. The assumption proved to be completely wrong. So much for computer-based projections on the effects of climate change, all of which are based on assumptions that can easily turn out to be incorrect!
A number of species that will become extinct while a number of ‘new’ species we never knew about will be discovered.
More plants and animals will keep adapting to the changing environment. Polar bears will learn to hibernate less and lobsters will develop a more acid-resistant shell.
Meanwhile, there will be no binding international agreement on carbon emissions.
By the way, life will go on as usual.
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