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NEWSTRADAMUS 2021

Hey, you lot and happy new 2022, the year of the owl. Not because if you say 20-20-twoo-oooo you sound like one, but because owls are early indicator species and if their numbers decline it’s a sign that the environment is collapsing. It is of course also the year that the dystopian thriller Soylent Green is set, starring Charlton Heston and is about climate change meaning all there is to eat are small green squares that it turns out, are made of the remains of dead people. Still I’m fairly certain that is a pretty far fetched scenario for us in Britain, but only because the government would probably give the contract for the factory to one of their pals for about £400bn and then they’d fail to ever make it and no one would ask where the money went but oh, now there’s not enough cash in the treasury to pay for bear prevention services and its your own fault everyone you know has been eaten by a pack of rabid grizzlies. Sorry, yes, I am optimistic about the year ahead and I hope you are too. If not, then I’m sure this slightly later than usual, as will be explained, bonus episode of predictions from ParPolBro’s very own chairvoyant NEWSTRADAMUS!

NEWSTRADAMUS PSYCHIC MUSIC

Welcome aboard the big wheel of time once again and please have your tickets ready. Oh I’m sorry, you can only access the lower rungs of the present time so please excuse me as I, Newstradamus return to your hum drum current lives as I ride to the lofty heights of the future to let you know that it is indeed in your hands. But only so much as you’ll get an update on your stupid ancient phone alerting you seconds before it all collapses. I must apologise for I usually I bring you such glimpses of what lies ahead or indeed who continues to lie, before the new year arrives. But alas, as I traverse the timelines in order to not soothsay but agitateshout, I managed to catch myself the Covid. Yes, that’s right, I had a nasty bout of the ElmoP variant, for in 2036 they have now had so many variants they are having to name them after the Sesame Street alphabet. It has some rather odd symptoms including making your voice sound like a monster, everything tastes of cookies and you can only refer to yourself in third person. Plus, you constantly feel like someone has their arm inside you and you gain an abnormal level of fur. Very unpleasant but you know considered MILD. So, I have finally shaved and can now taste a variety of other biscuits and thusly it is time to enlighten you on just what 2022 holds, and that’s right, it’s a large bottle of turpentine and a ready supply of painkillers. Of course you say, anyone can be a doommonger and predict that things will indeed get worse, and that is true. However, I am a professional and class myself as a Doom Merchandise Outlet. I also know for a fact things will get worse because I’ve been there, seen it, bough the poorly made in an exploitative sweatshop t-shirt then sold the t-shirt on eBay for a hefty profit because I am one of those myself. While historians in the future often refer to 2021 and ‘that fucking year’ you’ll be pleased to know that the year ahead of you and so far behind for me has many more adjectives in the historical archives. Sadly though they are all swears and 86 are synonyms for plague. So let us delve into what the year will bring and sadly no, you won’t be able to return any of it without a valid receipt.

Absolutely no one learns to live with Covid despite Covid fully moving in and managing to successfully apply for a British citizenship from the Home Office, due to Priti Patel giving it VIP status alongside Ghillaine Maxwell. She states that it was important as both work hard to act in the British government’s best interests of making children’s lives much worse. Despite the government’s best efforts to do absolutely nothing about it, the Omicron variant spreads to every single person by March, before doing a victory lap round again and then a reunion tour. Before long it is decided that it is the norm to just have Covid and people are teased for not showing signs of a fever, temperature, cough or headaches. The government launches a campaign against the woke brigade, so called because they aren’t constantly tired by all the Covid and forms an election strategy that divides the country by the haves and have nots, of Covid that is. The newspapers criticise the uninfected for wilfully refusing to integrate with British viral cultures and insist that if you really love the country, you must go out and cough in your face whilst also shouting classic racist jibes. National daily statistics list everyone who was selfish enough to die from something other than covid and there is weekly booing on the doorstep along with chants such as ‘Go-vid Covid, no sars? up your arse’ which was penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber as a present to the Queen just before she dies for the 7^th time and is brought back to life again using animatronics, a fireplace blower and a hamster wheel. Superhero films in the UK have to have all masks digitally removed in order to be viable for screening and social closening takes place in all venues and shops so that you can only enter if engaged in an almost human centipede style conga. The Masked Singer is classed as heresy.

The government brings in a policy to remove all beds from all hospitals and that way they can’t run out of them. The backlog of hospital appointments is also cleared by a decision to just ‘lose it’ and start again, while testing for Covid completely stops and people not turning up to work is just blamed on ‘a big monster probably’. Schools close and reopen every 3 days, with children rotating on mass to wherever the last teacher is standing. The 3 days are purely in place for travel arrangements as taking time off sick just means pupils are listed as having left school and are then forced into filling staff vacancies at various jobs. The hospitality industry completely collapses during the 5^th lockdown but Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries comes to its rescue by insisting she can just do all the shows instead and all TV channels, cinemas and theatres show a 24/7 live stream of her walking around her home being confused as to what things such as cutlery actually do, readings of her new books from the crayon notes drawn on the walls and high drama as she is constantly told to fuck off by her daughters.

The full impact of Brexit is felt as all imports of fruits and vegetables from the EU completely halts early in the year. The Prime Minister announces a new campaign to Root for Britain encouraging everyone to show the face of true global Britain, which is that of Mr Potato Head. Supermarkets fill their shelves with only spuds but each being given the colour or logo or other items you might need. Orange taters are carrots, green are cabbages, pink are fabric softener and confusingly brown potatoes are chocolate or dog food, leading to potato potatoes to be identified by a spray of silver paint which causes mass poisoning and a nationwide recalling of potatoes.

The Conservative Party hold a vote of no confidence in Boris Johnson after what they called a final strike when in an address to the nation, he loses his notes and starts regaling them with the time he discovered by rotating his stomach in an anti-clockwise direction it played the theme tune to Minder. The party votes for his removal but he sits down and no one has the strength to carry him out so Johnson ends up staying where he is, holding bacchanalian parties from what he calls his throne and spending millions of tax payers money to make his flat look like a different scene from the Confessions sex comedy films of the 70s. During this time he is estimated to father another 642 babies. Leaving Johnson to drink himself to death, Liz Truss is voted by the Conservatives to be the face of the party, mainly because she’s good at selfies. Truss uses this opportunity to use what funding is left to pay for banquets insisting the country won’t be safe until she’s eaten the face of at least one every single endangered species on the planet. Cheese manufacturers are given new powers making them even higher than bus drivers who are employed to save people from police. The Home Office line the coast with large wheels of Double Gloucester and homes are insulated with a paste made from Somerset Brie. What dregs are left of Universal Credit are replaced with hand-outs of snack cheese portions and all NHS advice is to treat things with cheese first before contacting a doctor. These plans literally fall apart come the summer when all of it melts and Britain is overrun by rats. Prince Andrew is appointed Chief Pied Piper and surprises no one when he just leads all the country’s children into a mountain and is never seen again.

The government decide the best way to tackle climate change is for the planet to learn to live with CO2 emissions and announces a proud doubling of all pollution across the land. A combination of fracking, new coal mines and Boris Johnson choosing to fly the Prime Minister’s plane in circles for weeks on end just so he doesn’t have to share the ground with poor people, cause torrential rain and earthquakes which result in strange landmass formations and several parts of the country to find themselves on hills that weren’t there the day before. Michael Gove announces that this is what they meant all along by levelling up. Energy prices rise so much that suppliers start demanding if people want heating they have to hand over their firstborns as payment. After receiving several hundred children from Boris Johnson alone, the companies all go bankrupt trying to afford childcare and prices return to normal again.

The Labour Party capitalise on their high results in the polls by following their tactic of appealing to Conservative voters by rebranding their party colour to blue and make their main pledge to ‘level up the country’. Understanding that what the country really likes is nostalgia for better times, they hire Peter Kay to write Keir Starmer’s conference speeches and the party look set to reclaim all the of the red wall and more after he says ‘garlic bread’ in 300 different ways in a row during a press conference. Sadly the party become completely bankrupt in the summer, prompting them to do a kickstarter where in returns for donations, people can dictate future policies. This results in them being known as Labour McLabface, Keir Starmer having to change his name to Keith and a full on campaign about resurrecting Harambe. They blame all of this on Jeremy Corbyn.

The Lib Dems win another by-election, with the next one being in Lewes after Conservative MP Maria Caulfield is convinced by a child that it’s safe to some wax fruit and has to resign for health reasons after four weeks of solidly shitting candles. However, after their win the Lib Dems get their candidate to ‘shatter the Conservative’s illusions’ by smashing a large glass plane with the Conservative slogan on it. Sadly the glass sprays into the eyes of all the people holding it causing instant blindness and brain haemorrhaging and the candidate is forced to resign causing another by-election. Ed Davey later quits as leader, not because of that incident but because some teenage boys pull his trousers down on a high street and he can’t live it down.

After an intruder broke into Windsor Castle with a crossbow, Priti Patel reviews the laws on that weapon and has them banned. Within a week pictures come out of her and other Conservative MPs shooting apples off each others arses with crossbows at a party they shouldn’t be having and she is forced to u-turn.

It is announced that HS2 will cost another £56bn to complete but will also go to absolutely nowhere and will in-fact not be a train but a house that Grant Shapps will live in and make train noises from. Dominic Raab announces a war on identity fraud after spotting his own reflection in a mirror and spending 4 days trying to have it arrested before worrying he was the fraud and handing himself into police, who then took him home only for it to happen all over again. Sajid Javid announces the building of a further 200 hospitals but they all turn out to just be extensions to his own home from which he’ll wear a doctors hat and occasionally take his own children’s temperatures.

In the US the Democrats suffer huge losses in the mid-terms in the House of Representatives but the Republicans won’t win them either. Instead due to an error in the voting systems, they are all won by gophers who in their first term cause mixed reaction from both sides as they ban gun use. But also destroy all farm land and gardens. It is only after a year that everyone realises they are entirely in it for their own reward and therefore continues to vote for them until the first gopher president, Goldy, succeeds Joe Biden in 2024.

Mark Zuckerberg announces he is leaving his physical form to exist entirely in the virtual world of Meta, and absolutely no one notices any difference from him whatsoever. Jeff Bezos moves all of Amazon’s warehouses into Earth’s orbit but is criticised when its discovered it was only so he could continue to avoid giving his workers toilet breaks as they can just go in their space suits during shifts. Hollywood announce that all of the films in 2023 will be reboots of the ones made in 2022 but with even less words and an increasingly younger cast, of which 8 will be Spider-Man films, 4 will be Batmans, 3 Ghostbusters and one is a 7 hour version of Dune Part 1 but with only shots of sand.

And that is all I can tell you for now, as well, I wouldn’t want to spoil it all because then that’d leave nothing for the British government to do. I shall simply say wearing a hat won’t help with the flying sharks so best just to walk around with someone taller than you and with a fish like face as bait. Oh and my top financial tips this year are to invest in frozen peas, the 9 times table, shoe boxes, the French word for irregular and to definitely put all your money into Furbys. Not because they’ll be worth anything but because it’ll be safer there than the banks during the financial collapse in October. But you have got some time until then. Look after yourselves, and each other and the planet and also that cheese that’s been at the back of your fridge since 2020 as it’ll prove the key to curing most known illnesses but not until around May. See you at the end of 2022 which will be just after financial crash in October in order to save money. MWAH!

ADMIN

Er…thanks I think Newstradamus. Will all that come true? We will just have to wait and see. I hope you are having as good a good new year as possible so far, despite it seeming almost entirely like this time last year but with even less precautions, care or clue as to what’s going on. Sorry, this was a bit late but as you heard, old Newstra was ill and so was I for all of last week with a lurgy that had all the symptoms of Omicron, sore throat, shivers, headaches but none of the positive tests. Trust me to get some cheap knock off version. It was probably Nomicron or Omicrod or something. All better now though and catching up on all the Christmas eating I didn’t do last week with food that has now mostly gone off. If that doesn’t boost my immune system, nothing will.

Thanks for all your donations to the ko-fi.com/parpolbro and patreon.com/parpolbro sites over the hols. Big shouts to Philip, Christine, Jason, Merry Christmas, Richard, Conal and Dave. Much appreciated indeed. And this is all gonna come back proper on January 18^th. Why not next week? Well, I have to wait for some news to happen right? I mean barely anything’s gone on since the last one of these so I’ve gotta give peeps a chance as Lennon said. Also it’ll hopefully give me time to actually have a guest. So spread the word and the word is this here podcast and I shall be all in your podcast apps once again in two weeks time when absolutely everyone ever will have Covid.

Happy New Variants everyone!

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