Spectator Competition: We go again

In Competition 3380 you were invited to send in your predictions for 2025 in verse form. The entries suggested that not everyone is enchanted at the prospect of what the year may have in store. But absurdity flourished too, as in Ralph Goldswain’s fantasy that Keir Starmer will enter Eurovision in a glittery suit, while Hamish Wilson offered a set of unlikely scenarios: ‘Putin bangs the drum for peace,/ Pearson joins the woke police.’ Hats off also to Jasmine Jones, Joseph Houlihan, Frank McDonald, Brians Murdoch and Allgar, Tracy Davidson and others. I wish you all a happy new year, and let it be one in which WW3 and Antipodean fleas etc don’t feature.

’Twill be the year that Paddington is knighted,

How well Sir Bear’s hard stares improve the land,

James Bond starts mindful yoga and Pilates,

To show he cares, is kind, can understand.

And Taylor Swift will run for public office,

Boot out D. Trump and make the White House shimmer,

Mammoths return to life (not those in power),

Ozempic will turn deep-fried doughnuts slimmer.

AI solves multitudes of famous mysteries,

While climate change sends all the Highlands warm,

Bikinis – tartan – rule as the new fashion,

Loch Ness becomes the latest Benidorm.

Elon will take a rocket bound for Venus,

Rebranding it as ZX-double-Y,

We welcome 2025, that milestone,

When even off-screen wonders multiply.

Janine Beacham

Interest rates rising and business stagnation;

Mandatory pronouns but no job creation;

A crash that results in a Footsy nosedive –

Recession is coming in 2-0-2-5.

Concreted greenbelt and Middle East truceless;

Rayner triumphant and Badenoch useless;

Putin and Donald will start to connive –

Disasters are coming in 2-0-2-5.

Donbas abandoned (since Lammy’s dim-witted);

Losing the Ashes while Sturgeon’s acquitted;

Goodness knows how we are going to survive

Everything coming in 2-0-2-5.

When the tax bites, when the bill’s large,

When they raid my purse –

I’ll simply remember that Starmer’s in charge,

And then I’ll just feel … much worse.