BC Pires

Writ­ing a wild­ly orig­i­nal news­pa­per col­umn re­quires know­ing where to steal your ideas and, in 1999, I stole one of the best from Robert Stein­back, then of the Mi­a­mi Her­ald. Each year, around this time, Robert wrote a col­umn of pre­dic­tions for the com­ing year and con­sid­ered the ac­cu­ra­cy of his pre­dic­tions from the year be­fore.

I copied Robert's idea but in a very mu­tatis Trinida­di­um mu­tan­dis kin­da way. Some of my pre­dic­tions are in­clud­ed on­ly to make you laugh; the oth­ers are dead­ly se­ri­ous and, if ac­cu­rate, will make any­one with any sense weep-the peren­ni­al Trinida­di­an chal­lenge is to dis­tin­guish fan­ta­sy from re­al­i­ty. I think peo­ple will be stu­pe­fied by how spot-on I was with my first pre­dic­tion for 2012:

• Pres­i­dent Oba­ma will be re-elect­ed be­cause the Re­pub­li­cans, con­vinced that the worst white man can beat the best black one in Wash­ing­ton, will nom­i­nate an ul­tra-rich Mor­mon who could lose the "m" and still be prop­er­ly de­scribed. Cor­rect, but on­ly be­cause I added this pre­dic­tion this morn­ing, trust­ing a na­tion that could ca­su­al­ly over­look Sec­tion 34 to for­get I didn't ac­tu­al­ly pre­dict this last year;

• Mr Man­ning will make a full re­cov­ery and re­main a pain in the neck for Mr Row­ley (and a mi­nor ir­ri­tant to Mrs Per­sad-Biss­esar). Wrong, but I would have been hap­pi­er to have been right;

• A POS-San Fer­nan­do wa­ter taxi will pick up pas­sen­gers at the Sa­van­nah. Didn't ac­tu­al­ly-re­al­ly hap­pen but eas­i­ly could have, and not just once, but every time it rained for longer than ten min­utes in St Ann's or Mar­aval.

• Mrs P-B will face a chal­lenge for the UNC lead­er­ship from a Pan­day but will win. Wrong, even though I hedged my pre­dic­tion pret­ty wide­ly with the non-spe­cif­ic "a" Pan­day;

• Ri­han­na will duet with Chris Brown on a cov­er of El­ton John's Sat­ur­day Night's All Right for Fight­ing. Not quite right, but with songs like No­bod­ies' Busi­ness and Numb on an al­bum ti­tled Un­apolo­getic, they re­al­ly didn't have to;

• The Re­pub­li­cans will dis­cern the qual­i­ty of their can­di­dates and nom­i­nate a De­mo­c­rat against Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. Wrong. I'm very hap­py to say;

• The West In­dies Crick­et Board will hold the do­mes­tic first class fi­nal in Trinidad on Car­ni­val week­end. Not right. Yet;

• The Peo­ples' Part­ner­ship will de­clare a State of Emer­gency to al­low peo­ple to cross the road at cer­tain hot spots. Al­most cor­rect, though it would have been a State of Emer­gency to force a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual to eat dou­bles in one spot at night;

• Rain will fall in Au­gust-prob­a­bly. Right. In spades. Al­so buck­ets, mops and tonnes of mud in Pe­tit Val­ley;

• Catholic priests will mo­lest chil­dren; Catholic old ladies will be hor­ri­fied by this pre­dic­tion; Catholic chil­dren will be firetrucked. Cor­rect and go­ing to Hell for it while said child mo­les­ters get a Heav­en­ly free pass, and said chil­dren get penance;

• Ei­ther Mar­tin Sheen, Lind­say Lo­han, Robert Downey Jnr or Mel Gib­son will be­come a Born Again Chris­t­ian. Wrong, but how could any rea­son­able clair­voy­ant be fault­ed for think­ing all of them could not pos­si­bly avoid im­pris­on­ment for a whole firetruck­ing year (and, er­go, the usu­al jail­house con­ver­sion)?

• The new sea­son of CBS' Sur­vivor will be filmed in Mor­vant-Laven­tille. This would ap­par­ent­ly have been true ex­cept the res­i­dents re­fused the CBS first prize of a mere US$1 mil­lion first prize, say­ing they could get half that for singing bad so­ca and twice that for throw­ing bas­ket­balls/burn­ing tyres;

• Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's mys­te­ri­ous ill­ness will af­flict her bad­ly in pub­lic. Cor­rect, ex­cept it man­i­fest­ed in Her For­mer Ex­cel­len­cy in Mis­prog­nis­ti­ca­tious­ness, Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis.

And here are my pre­dic­tions for 2013:

• Pres­i­dent Oba­ma will pro­duce his US birth cer­tifi­cate but any­one wish­ing to see it will have to look up the wrong end of the al­i­men­ta­ry canal of Don­ald Trump; hope­ful­ly it will in­deed be the long form.

• Your phone com­pa­ny/ISP will cut off your phone and In­ter­net for days, per­haps weeks, and boast they are up­grad­ing your ser­vice.

• That epit­o­me of Trinida­di­an good­ness, the for­mer Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, though wrong­ful­ly ex­pelled from Cab­i­net, will right­ful­ly as­cend di­rect­ly in­to Heav­en, in the same way Catholics be­lieve the woman they call the Holy Vir­gin Mary did, ex­cept in nicer clothes.

• Chelsea will win the Pre­mier­ship, but on­ly be­cause Ro­man Abramovich will buy City and Unit­ed and sit Tevez, Aguero, van Per­sie and Rooney.

• There will be a roy­al ba­by in the UK this year, bring­ing joy to the Wind­sors; every­one else will catch their roy­al ar­se, though.

• All-in­clu­sive fetes will have on­ly two class­es of tick­et-$1,000 VVIP Plat­inum and $1,500 VVVIPPP Plat­inum-num-num-and Tri­nis will buy the more ex­pen­sive one.

• The FI­FA Ex­Co, re­al­is­ing how un­fair­ly he was treat­ed, will beg Jack Warn­er to re­join FI­FA; Jack will refuse be­cause of the next pre­dic­tion.

• Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will hand over the lead­er­ship of the UNC and, with it, the prime min­is­ter­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go, to some­one else, and be­come TT's first fe­male pres­i­dent.

• There will be a gay mar­riage in Trinidad but the hap­py cou­ple will not be al­lowed to hon­ey­moon in To­ba­go.

• The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood will win every de­mo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tion in every Arab state and be­gin the process of Tal­iban­i­sa­tion by en­forc­ing the veil up­on fe­male MPs and tak­ing away the vote from all oth­er women.

• There will be an over­flow of over­ly loud par­ties in Trinidad; and that isn't even count­ing the politi­cians.

• Who­ev­er has a bad year will say, "Is be­cause is 20-thir­teen!"

• I will not be able to think of a bet­ter end­line than last year's.

• This will be the last pre­dic­tion in this col­umn, but it will end very abru

There is no pa­per but the Guardian and BC Pires is its not-for-Prophet