Using a sophisticated news-prediction algorithm that is too complicated to explain here, Waterford Whispers News, Ireland’s most popular satirical website, gives its predictions for the year ahead.
- A general election will force politicians on to the streets to meet a whole bunch of awful poor people. Sick of 10 years of degradation facilitated by woeful leadership and spineless opposition, the defiant public will vote for more of the same, please.
- Conor McGregor will roundhouse a 57-year-old grandmother during a heated argument while coaching a team on Ireland's Fittest Family.
- Climate change will enter the "I tried to tell you, but you wouldn't listen, would you?" phase.
- In a plot twist no one saw coming, the housing and health crises will carry on undisturbed by political action.
- The country will be treated for referendum withdrawal syndrome.
- Houses will remain scarce, rents high and homelessness depressingly normalised – but, in better news, Dublin will get a rooftop ice bar that charges €22 for a gin cocktail.
- Ireland will remain the best little country in the world for multinationals to do business in and pay f**k-all taxes.
- Chocolate bars will shrink yet again and you'll just sit there and take it lying down.
- The year will be dominated by Great Gatsby costume parties and references to the Roaring Twenties, because, good God, we're awful creatures devoid of any real creativity or originality.
- In November Donald Trump will be entrusted by the voters of the United States to oversee its final four years of democracy.
Waterford Whispers News 2019 is published by Gill Books
Colm Williamson created Waterford Whispers News in 2009 as a hobby. WWN now has more than 644,000 Facebook, 205,000 Twitter and 60,000 Instagram followers, with four million page views a month. He still runs it from his home in Co Waterford
