The future is Lego

Summer hasn’t quite arrived yet which is just as well because the weather is obviously confused, writes John Dobson.

Officially summer will begin on 21st June. Whether or not we’ll recognise it is anybody’s guess. The weather forecasters aren’t giving much away. I think that if I was a weather forecaster I would stick to one prediction.

Every night in my bulletin I would tell people that wherever they happen to be the weather will be better somewhere else and worse somewhere different. No one would be any the wiser and no one would be happy but I would have been right.

Every day there are forecasts which we are supposed to rely on.

Property values will rise. Property values will fall. The markets will go up or the markets will go down although the underlying trends will show the opposite as the case may be. Employment will be up or employment will be down.

We can’t take any of these forecasts seriously. The best we can do is look out of our own windows at our own conditions and judge for ourselves.

If only there was a reliable indicator of what’s around the corner. As it happens there is. The lego index. Someone in America with a big brain and too much time to spare has been studying lego. In particular he has studied the 6,000 or so mini-figures that the company produces to live in its kits and models.

All of these mini-figures have faces. As the world has been going to pieces it seems that the expressions on the lego faces have been becoming more dour and angry.

Lego faces used to be happy but not any more. Just as significantly the nature of lego kits has been changing. There are fewer zoos and farmyards but more conflict and action based scenarios.

I have loved lego all my life. I’m 54 and I still enjoy it. From now on I am going to pay absolutely no heed to any forecasters or any forecasts.

When the lego mini-figures start smiling again I’ll know that everything is going to be just grand. I’ll predict that good times are ahead and I’ll be right.

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