We have asked our candidates, members and friends for their hopes and predictions for 2022. Up first we have our Treasurer and local election candidate in Hatch Warren & Beggarwood in Basingstoke Spencer Cleary:
Prediction
I think there will be a Conservative leadership challenge in the latter part of this year. I am not certain by whom or when it will be (other than in the later part of this year), but with everything that is going on at the moment, there appears to be a new scandal every week, I cant see Boris lasting the year unscathed.
Hope
I am hoping and expecting all of the Covid restrictions to be removed by the end of February. The light is at the end of the tunnel and with so many people having caught Covid and being vaccinated the levels of protection are so high that it wont be long until the pandemic becomes endemic.
The second writer we have is Scott Neville our Nominating Officer
Prediction
I think that the high street will start to make a comeback, not in the way that we know it and it will really depends on how local councils support them. However, I think that we will see much smaller much more specialised shops return to the high street, possibly coupled with coffee shops, bakeries and cafes which make the high street a place to go to for something specific where you can grab a coffee and cake with friend at the same time. The massive department stores will be consigned to the history books and the high street will become much more agile place, fuelled by councils trying to get people to use public transport and the every increasing cost of car ownership. The high street will make a comeback, but it wont look like the 1990’s, possibly more like the 1950’s (with contact-less payments).
Hope
What do I hope will happen. Well I hope that we return start to return to an age of reason. Most people are intelligent enough to realise that no one person or small group can conceptualise all risk that exists in the world, the dictatorial policies over Covid we have seen have been massively damaging. I would like to see a return to a time where information is reported and people make their own decisions. Most of the key discoveries and inventions came from people using their own reason and we need to encourage that. The big parties are utterly clueless on this issue and Britain’s key to success is people working in sheds innovating because they enjoy it and they are free to use their own minds. This applies to things like Covid too, 99% of people will make sensible decisions given full access to information. Climate change and pollution can be addressed with the same answer, empower people with the freedom and the information to make the world better and they will…. it just might not be the exact world that those in power imagined.
That is the end to our part 1, more will be published as our members send them to us.
