The London Olympics, the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, a new series of Lewis... 2012 seems to be the most-eagerly anticipated year for decades. So The Insider has got out his crystal ball, and made a few predictions about how the year will unfold...

The austerity drive will continue, with an increasingly desperate Government urging people to volunteer their time to help save public services. With money running out, the Royal Jubilee celebrations are downgraded to the “QVC Diamonique Jubilee”. Plans for a flotilla of ships to sail down the Thames are scaled down – literally – to a 1:48 version at Legoland Windsor.

The 2012 bed-blocking figures will reveal there are now more Oxfordshire pensioners living full-time in hospital wards than living at home. And to save the NHS, the Prime Minister will announce the time has come for Big Society hospitals. A game group of Headington pensioners will carry out the first volunteer-run open heart surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital. The redundant surgeons fill their time volunteering at Big Society libraries.

Internationally, the Eurozone crisis will deepen. Greece will offer to sell off the rest of the Parthenon to the British Museum to pay off its debts. Nick Clegg urges Britain to join the Euro. The Euro collapses. In Chipping Norton, there are riots as the continued recession means that not a single West Oxfordshire aristocrat can stage a middle-of-the-road pop music and organic food festival.

The 2012 cultural scene gets off to a bang when Culture Minister and Wantage MP Ed Vaizey stuns the critics by copying Lady Gaga and wearing a suit created from meat at London Fashion Week. In keeping with the coalition’s austerity drive, he boasts that only offal and mutton have been used. And Oxfordshire’s morris dancers wreak their revenge at the Olympics, having been snubbed from inclusion in the opening ceremony. Kitted out in balaclavas and bells, the Continuity Morris Ring hijack the 100m final with a flashmob hanky attack on Usain Bolt.

The year also brings huge political change in Oxfordshire. In scenes reminiscent of North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, hordes of council workers shake with uncontrollable grief as departing Dear Leader Keith Mitchell leaves the top job at County Hall. But the departure is short-lived, as Conservative councillors vote to make him honorary leader of the council for all eternity. A disappointed Ian Hudspeth emigrates to North Korea to fulfil his political ambitions.

Labour Party leader Ed Miliband turns up to campaign in the city council elections. Nobody notices. Conservatives stun Oxford by winning their first town hall seat for years, and David Cameron hails the “Big Society” efforts of party members staffing the polling stations and counting the votes.

In December, the world is stunned to find out the Ancient Mayans were right all along, and the planet is consumed by a series of cataclysmic natural disasters on December 21. Not even a hastily-erected wind turbine in Horspath can save the planet. The Insider files one last witty insight, before perishing in the burning rubble of County Hall.