Outrageous Predictions for 2016

At this time of the year I am inundated with press releases and marketing material, all predicting 'what will happen next', while assuring us that nobody has a crystal ball.

All these predictions are, of course, mere consensus. Nobody is saying anything too different from the next person and that, quite frankly, is boring. So here are my Outrageous Predictions for 2016. Feel free to add your own in the comments section.

1) Yellen will regret raising rates and try to lower them again.
2) Apple will create a TV screen.
3) World supplies of chocolate will melt away.
4) Nigella will show us how to make a cup of tea.
5) Mario Draghi will smile, perhaps, later on in the year.
6) Carney will rush to raise rates to copy the US, only to get blind-sided by Yellen changing her mind
7) Carney and Yellen will be found dead together in a hotel room in Brussels, hand in hand, oranges in their mouths.
8) The price of orange juice will tumble.
9) House prices will go up - again.
10) Photos will emerge of Cameron and Osborne with farmyard animals.
11) Osborne will be caught with an orange in his mouth, self-asphyxiating over his new tax plans to be announced in the 2016 Budget.
12) Farm payrolls will treble.
13) The government will ban Ofsted.
14) Mourinho will seek to take legal action against his Russian employers. He will later be found in Soho, with some strange depletion of Uranium in his bloodwork. And an orange in his mouth.
15) Trading Places will get a remake with Seth Rogan and Tatum Channing. Channing Tatum. Tanning Chatum? Whatever, that fit chap with the 8-pack and strong shoulders you just want to bite.
16) Something, something Kardashian.
17) Something, something Bieber.
18) Ant and Dec finally break up. Queen declares day of national mourning.
19) Katie Holmes says something nice, with which most people agree. Queen declares national holiday.
20) Dismayed by volatile orange juice prices and poor economic data, Americans turn to Trump and he gets voted in.
21) In direct response, Angela Merkel becomes voted in as president of Europe.
22) Aliens invade, but find property prices in the US and UK too high for them. They go to Canada and cause $10CAN worth of damage.
23) Aliens turn out to be Asgardians and the men all look like Thor. Earth women swoon. Everyone plays The Weather Girls for months while their ovaries throb painfully.

YES PLEASE

24) Aliens seek to migrate across Europe, depleting coffee supplies in cafes everywhere. Mama Merkel announces sweeping, bilateral changes to the Shengen Agreement and Lisbon Treaty. Aliens are shipped off to Syria, where they defeat Isis.
25) Aliens given green cards and free Starbucks for life in gratitude. NHS reports a massive baby boom.
26) Actuarial assumptions start to look better for people's pension arrangements as the demographic trend reverses.
27) All national rail operators agree to add extra carriages and freeze travel price increases for two years. Yeah, Right!
28) FOS carries on as before with no change, despite a mauling from the TSC.
29) Osborne gives Aliens the Isle of Wight in exchange for defeating FOS.
31) Aliens get fined £6m each for SYSC failures and banned for life from operating in any regulated military capacity.
31) Aliens mass-migrate from earth in disgust, taking Boris Johnson with them as one of their own kind.
32) Ant and Dec decide to give it one last chance. They release a cover of 'I got you, Babe'. Cher sues. Everyone is shocked because they thought she was dead.
33) Nobody tunes in to watch non-entities on TV. Real actors and people who have actually achieved something with their lives suddenly get offers of jobs.
34) Jeremy Corbyn turns up in the Commons in a Hermes suit and a tie. Daily Mail journalists simultaneously choke on their oranges.
35) FCA takes over regulation of journalism. All reporters must go to Canary Wharf to get their pencils sharpened. Failure to keep proper notes will be hit with a ban. (This one might actually come true)
36) Jeremy Corbyn buys a home in Hampshire and hires several man-servants to carry him into Westminster each day in a sedan chair. He starts identifying as Cleopatra and is awarded Time's Woman of the Year 2016.
37) Cameron is so dismayed he goes and molests some live farm animals, and is arrested. He is later found trussed up naked like a turkey somewhere near the Brandenburg Gate.
38) Merkel becomes president of the World.
39)  China discovers a seam of oil under its mountains and suddenly becomes the world's main producer - and user - of oil.
40) Russian Oil-y-garchs leave London. Football clubs are forced to close up.
41) North Korea launches a cat into space, which knocks out some major satellite systems. For three weeks, all anyone can use the internet for is to watch live streaming of a cat sleeping 18 hours a day in a spacesuit.
42) Cat seeks American citizenship upon repatriation. Trump refuses asylum and builds a dome around America.
43) Cat becomes big in Japan and gets its own reality TV show.
44) South Korea drops Big Macs across North Korea in a mass show of propaganda. Fuelled by fast food, the people overthrow their leader but have no idea what to do with themselves afterwards.
45) Bob Geldof launches a Concert Campaign to raise money to help North Korea build Subway franchises across the country.
46) Aliens return Boris Johnson to the UK, but thanks to too much probing, he can no longer cycle. Depressed, he sets up a Subway franchise in North Korea and gets fat.
47) Something, something Simon Cowell.

Nice to eat you, to eat you, Nice

48) Bruce Forsyth is unmasked as a 200-year-old vampire.
49) Tom Cruise leaves Scientology to join Boko Haram. He gets lost in the undergrowth and turns feral. Prince Harry is sent to track him down.
50) After a turbulent year, an Alien (looking like Thor) is elected as prime minister of the UK. 98% of the UK's female population turns out to vote him in. He's photographed with his wife, who looks like Sif. Men celebrate everywhere. Daily Heil journalists rise from their graves at the sniff of fresh scandal.

Mermaid in the Mail

Following on from the Mirror's piece at the end of November, the Daily Mail also called the Mermaid to interview me about my money saving tips for Christmas.

Mermaid at Harrods looking to see what I could buy for 90% off in the January Sales 

This piece is a bit longer - and went into a lot more detail about individual savings, so it is worth having a look at this one.

Of particular interest to me was the hilarious comments at the bottom of the article, including one 'Boring' - which I upvoted, and 'woman saves 50% on her Christmas shop? How is this news, DM?' - which I also upvoted. I love these guys. This is exactly how I would react to such a story too!

The comments are the best bit! Have a look at the Daily Mail article online here or use the URL below: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3344391/Blogger-reveals-pulled-1-000-luxury-Christmas-500-without-going-Poundland.html

Non Mea Culpa - it's all at your own risk

If you are sent cheques you bear all responsibility 

While scrying the internet on press day for stories that might whet the advisers' appetite, I came across consumer champion Tony Hetherington's latest investigation into Missing Cheques. More accurately, how one man cashed in his savings with Standard Life, and was sent a cheque from Capita to the tune of £928.

The cheque was paid into an account at Lloyds - but not by the intended recipient. He has never received his money after cashing in his savings. The upshot? According to Capita, it's all at the investor's own risk. They claimed to have sent the cheque to the correct address, so even if his mail was intercepted and the cheque was stolen, he will never see his money unless he tries to take the person who cashed his cheque to court.

It is all "at your own risk" if a cheque is sent to you.

Now I've heard the 'caveat emptor' phrase a million times and I have some sympathy for it. You must be able to bear some responsibility for what you buy. If you don't check the terms and conditions, if you don't get someone else to do this for you, if you don't understand what you are buying - then don't buy it! It is basic common sense.

You don't go into a clothes shop and tell the assistant that you like the bag in the window, then get given a mystery box all wrapped up and told to "sign here". You check the box to see what is in it before you pay for it. Or any sensible person would.

This reminds me of a story back from when my late Great Aunt Ivy was a young lady travelling to work in London back in the early 1920s. She bought herself a nightgown - a silk one - from a posh shop in the West End. The lady at the counter took the slip, turned around, wrapped it into a box and delivered it to Ivy without saying a word. When Ivy got home to try on her purchase, it was an old vest. No returns.

Always check in the box is a good simile for 'caveat emptor'.

But when it comes to other parties entrusted with the delivery of your money, what has happened to this man in the Mail's column is pretty shoddy behaviour. Did Lloyds not double-check the names and initials on the cheque? Why has Capita absolved all responsibility? Why has nobody examined the information to see whether Capita did, indeed, put the right address on the envelope?

To say that once you have sent a cheque to someone, it is their responsibility is ludicrous. There should be some duty of care involved - such as requring a signature on delivery of the cheque. This may not be a lot of money in the world of investment managers and consultants, whose salaries are enviable, but to a man whose entire savings with that provider didn't even amount to £1000, this makes a lot of difference.

Why couldn't the money be delivered by BACS?
Why couldn't it be paid directly into his account?
Why wasn't the cheque, if it had to be posted, tracked, marked for signature on receipt?

This smacks of being careless with other people's money and for the victim, this isn't a laughing matter. Although of course, someone was laughing - the person who took this fellow's cheque all the way to the bank.