How well did my trends forecast for 2011 go?

Here are the forecasts that I posted at this time last year; some of them seem to have been right on the money.

I gazed deeply into the crystal ball and as the mists cleared here is what I saw: The Trends for 2011
Actually that a lot of old waffle but I do think we'll see a lot of this happen. I may not be a forecaster like Gerald Celente, but the markers for these trends are already in place.

1) An economy that fails to grow as quickly as forecast but still with inflation pushing up prices. The 1970s word Stagflation will become well known again.
I think this one was pretty much bang on.

2) The slow motion implosion of the Eurozone. The smaller countries overwhelmed with Bank debt will need further support for their still increasing debts. A two speed Eurozone may be imposed as the Germans tire of being the generous uncle who bails the smaller countries out. Debt will have to be restructured either willingly by changing the Euro rules or unwillingly by the collapse of the Euro.
Ongoing and pretty accurate but still with a few months to run.

3) Rising unemployment in the UK coupled with rising prices and stagnant wages will lead to more crime and more civil unrest. The rise in crime will lead to calls for "something to be done" and so more draconian police powers will be demanded and put in place.
I think with this one, we see and experience the crime now and are just starting to see the "something must be done stage".

4) Local taxes of all kinds will rise. Since the Council tax itself is fixed, car parking, planning and other usage based charges will rise by 20-50% as a ways of generating more income for the councils.
Again bang on the money with new charges and parking meters etc being pushed on us all the time.

5) Local based business with low or no overheads will survive and may even prosper in the confusion of the high street. Expect to see one or more mid-range high street brands collapse. Online sales of commodity items will close those stores with no special USP.
Ongoing even now as we spend for Christmas, many of the retailers will not see much past the second week of January.

6) Large scale volume manufacturing for many items will continue to move east. Either to Eastern Europe or to China where labour costs (even after recent Chinese wage inflation) are still much lower than in Northern Europe. Watch for more of European manufacturing to be done in North Africa as well. Special trade deals will make it easy import products from this region without duties.
So the move to North Africa did not happen (yet) because they had wars and uprisings to get out of the way. Watch this space. Just possibly though some companies are beginning to see that China manufacture is not the only answer.

7) Some politicians and media people will start to ask if the Internet needs more regulation. There will be calls for a blogging licence and additional regulation to close down 'alternative' news sources.
Bloggers have been arrested, WikiLeaks has been attacked this will continue as long as citizen journalism does the job of holding people to account that used to be done by the mainstream press. I expect much more trouble in this area in 2012.

8) Government budgets will attempt to pull more cash from the individual through new taxes, not raising allowances and charging for services that used to be free. This may be dressed up in the language of sustainability/green taxes or environmental protection. The money will actually be used to fund the Government deficit, bank debts and to cover part of the fallout of the Eurozone implosion.
Again I was bang on the money with this one. Check your wallet and see if you have more or less net income this year compared to last.

9) More people will attempt to follow the 'Good Life' by taking up smallholdings and raising their own animals. Many will revert back to an urban life because of the increasingly complex rules and regulations surrounding farming and animal keeping.
Not a trend that has really got going yet. We have seen more people taking up allotments and doing more cooking at home but not yet the large scale adoption of the 'Tom & Barbara' approach.

10) GM foods will be presented as the way to deal with the increased food prices. Some will resist this but crops will be planted and local organic production will be blighted by cross contamination of land and produce.
Now we have GM moths being released into the wild and further 'trial' of new GM crops. This is still a troubling area and as these crops hybridise with non-GN varients there will be law suits a plenty from the big AgriChemical companies.

12) Broadcast TV will become increasingly fractured and of poorer quality as more channels are created. The increase in channels will decrease the advertising revenue available per channel and so expect to see more re-runs of old shows and imports of low grade shows from around the English speaking world.
Broadcast TV may seem bad (and it often is) but having seen what they have in the USA during a visit earlier this year there is still room for standards to fall (unfortunately). It's an ongoing train wreck and even the BBC has started to realise that its licence fee is not a sacred right.

13) One from left field; there will be calls for SSRI anti-depressants to come off prescription, so that they can be used more widely. This will be in response to a huge increase in those diagnosed with some form of depression as a consequence of other major changes outlined above.


As far as I'm aware there has been no move in this direction although the numbers of SSRI anti-depressants prescribed each year is truly frightening.


So now I'll work on my trends for 2012. Let's see just what the next 12 months may bring us.