Happy New Year: what does 2025 hold in store for Croydon. Mystic Mug has polished up our crystal ball
HAPPY NEW YEAR: Katherine Kerswell gets headhunted to run crisis-hit Premier League football club… Mayor Perry creates more money-spinning LTNs for the cash-strapped council… And yet more new plans for the Whitgift Centre.
We’ve polished up Inside Croydon’s crystal ball to come up with a few predictions of everything that will definitely maybe happen in 2025….
January
Mr President: Trump by name…
Having given up trying to buy Greenland or invading Canada, US President Donald Trump stops the Ukraine war by buying Russia. Using Elon Musk’s money.
In return for using his money, Musk however insists on being called “Mr President”.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin joins former British PM Rishi Sunak by retiring to California.
February
Another fines mess: Wellesley Road could be a money-spinning LTN
Desperate for extra cash before the latest council budget, and with Elon Musk not answering his calls, Croydon Mayor Jason Perry turns Wellesley Road into an LTN – low traffic network – in order to generate more fines and avoid the borough’s fourth bankruptcy.
He says, “Nobody noticed we’d closed the subway to the Whitgift Centre, so why not the road as well?”
But, with central Croydon looking more derelict than ever, too few people drive in to Croydon to raise enough money for the cash-strapped council.
Croydon Council issues a Section 114 notice, its fourth since 2020 and the second under Mayor Perry.
Tony Newman, the former council leader, speaks to the Murdoch-owned S*n and says, “See – I did nothing wrong.”
March
Match of the day: Katherine Kerswell might have better chance of success at relegation-threatened Man Utd
Croydon Council’s chief executive, Katherine Kerswell, abruptly resigns from running the south London borough to take charge of relegation-threatened Manchester United Football Club.
“The job prospects are better,” she is supposed to have said to one of the now 28-strong “corporate leadership team” of six-figure salaried council staff that inhabit the same floor at the council HQ, Fisher’s Folly.
Former Prime Minister Rishi Sumak is spotted visiting Fisher’s Folly, where he is interviewed for Kerswell’s old job. Strangely, Sunak insists on having his job interview conducted outside in pouring rain without wearing a raincoat.
With Thames Water having failed to sort out the drainage, Sunak also stands waist high in six-inch deep sewage that has leaked from the River Wandle.
The council’s appointments and disciplinary committee, the same committee that handed a £437,000 “golden handshake” to Kerswell’s predecessor, Jo “Negreedy” Negrini, meets in emergency, secret session. Reports suggest there was no agenda, and no minutes were taken.
Sunak spectacularly fails to win the job!
Lord Sugar applies, too, but a task set for him by the committee goes so badly that he says: “I’m fired!”
April
New offices: bankrupt Croydon is forced to merge with neighbouring council Sutton in a bid to save money
Mayor Perry increases Council Tax by 40% to try to stave off a fifth bankruptcy.
He proposes to close every public library in the borough and make every other road a low traffic zone to generate yet more fine income (with 5mph speed limits elsewhere).
He also proposes to close all the borough’s nursery schools, with their former four-year-olds being forced to work as chimney sweeps, all fees earned being paid into council coffers.
The Labour government steps in and insists on bankrupt Croydon being merged with neighbouring Sutton Council. Dates are set for local elections for the new super-borough council.
May
Newly merged Croydon and Sutton has elections for new councillors.
Reform wins the popular vote, but by splitting the Tory vote, neither they nor the Conservatives win any council seats at all.
The LibDems win 72 seats, the Greens quadruple their number of councillors and a LibDem-Green coalition takes control of both boroughs.
Mayor Perry barricades himself inside his office in Fisher’s Folly, insisting on being paid £82,000 per year until his four-year mayoral term ends in 2026.
The coalition lasts five minutes before an irrevocable split over the Beddington incinerator, which the Liberal Democrats keep open following urgent calls to operators Viridor.
June
New beginning: after decades of hot air from developers and politicians, a new use is found for the Whitgift Centre
Green Party councillors insist that the derelict Whitgift Centre in Croydon should be turned into a giant wind farm, to exploit massively disruptive wind speeds created by all the new residential tower blocks in the town centre.
The wind turbines closest to East Croydon Station have to be turned off, due to too much wind blowing down the George Street wind tunnel.
To solve this problem, empty floors in the now vacated Fisher’s Folly are converted into a massive battery, to store the excess energy.
To save lithium, silicon batteries are used – so Fisher’s Folly literally gets filled with sand.
July
President Musk visits bankrupt Croydon in order to buy Wellesley Road and turn it into a vast electric vehicle supercharger site for his new Russian TeslaSki company.
The Croydon-Sutton minority LibDem administration copies the Whitgift Foundation’s ownership of Whitgift Centre land by keeping the freehold of Wellesley Road and only selling Musk a 99-year lease with a $1billion a month rental fee. All to be paid in Bitcoin.
“What could possibly go wrong?” says an editorial in the now monthly-only Evening SubStandard.
August
LibDem Claire Bonham successfully gets the proposed Bakerloo line extension to Bromley diverted to Crystal Palace. She argues that as town centres are becoming derelict due to the move to internet shopping, it makes much more sense to terminate the Tube line in a park in Bromley.
Long walk: John Jefkins at the East Croydon start of the Vanguard Way, now extended all the way to Scotland
Chair of the Vanguard Way Association John Jefkins proposes that the footpath from East Croydon Station to the Channel coast at Seaford should be extended northwards, to Scotland.
Having managed to drive his EV from Land’s End to John O’Groats, Jefkins argues that the Vanguard Way could be extended to the same destination, and that 666 miles sounds better than 66 miles.
Such an extension would then allow the Vanguard Way Association to erect plaques at 1,000 points along the route to join his one outside East Croydon Station.
Gaz Davies then alters the annual Vanguard Way Marathon into an ultramarathon, starting in Lloyd Park but then heading to Scotland, too – adding in climbs through the Pennines and up Ben Nevis, instead of the challenges of North Downs slopes.
Steven Downes agrees to extend the Inside Croydon ramble to Scotland, doing it in 2,189 stages.
September
News from Old Trafford is that Katherine Kerswell leaves her job at Man Utd “by mutual consent”, after the club was relegated to the Championship and missed out on Champions League football.
The Manchester Evening News reports that the club’s short-lived CEO received a pay-off of around £440,000.
October
Likes to have his cake and eat it: Mayor Jason Perry
Despite public objections from the Rt Rev Dr Rosemarie Mallett, the Bishop of Croydon and the Falkland Islands (the bishop’s full title, from a merger that pre-dated the Sutton and Croydon council one), British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer sells the Falklands to China to pay-off that £20billion Tory debt.
WASPI women announce that they are suing the British government for £30billion.
The promised seven kiosks due for “meanwhile use” in the former Allders store are delayed.
Instead, just in time to capture the Christmas market, Westfield opens the country’s largest Anne Summers store.
Mayor Jason Perry is persuaded to emerge from his barricaded office in Fisher’s Folly with the offer of a large cake, and he performs the official ribbon-cutting opening ceremony.
The NHS recruits 80% of illegal migrants as staff. All NHS waiting lists are erased overnight.
November
Social media platform Bluesky changes it’s name to Twitter. The name change is all done legally, as President Musk had given up his rights to that name.
Nigel Farage issues a Unilateral Declaration of Independence for Clacton.
Trump declares that Greenland must be thawed out before he takes it over.
Putin claims he has bought Iceland. It turns out he has actually bought the retail chain.
December
The minority administration running Croydon-Sutton council makes so much money from selling surplus wind power and renting land to Musk that it buys Twitter.
Mayor Perry flees his barricaded office to join Putin and Sunak in California.
The three of them open a library in a California town called Old Coulsdon.
The 2025 Inside Croydon guided ramble, which started from East Croydon in August, finally reaches its destination at John O’Groats. Foot-sore website Editor Downes dismisses complaints about a much-reduced news service on the site for the last five months, claiming nothing much has been happening anyway…
- Massive thanks to John Jefkins and Tim Longhurst for their forward thinking for our 2025 predictions. Inside Croydon and Inside Sutton will be here to report the actual goings-ons throughout the coming year
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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By turns, hilarious and alarming as possibly so close to what may be the truth.
Thank you, I think, for these predictions!
At least one of these will happen!