2025: A Year of the Snake - For Better or Worse

Happy New Year! Everything's up in the air, so here's some thoughts to digest before the curtain's drawn and the stage heats up.

For our opening GeoMissive for 2025, we're taking a slightly different format and providing a batched summary and update to each of our 2024 posts, for your holiday reading and catch you up in readiness for your return to work.

Fun facts to kick things off - the last time it was a Year of the Snake, Australia's Prime Minister changed from Julia Gillard to Kevin Rudd to Tony Abbott (reducing the number of women heads of state at the time from 17 to 16), Barak Obama was into his second term as the leader of the free world, Shimon Perez was nearing the end of his time as Israel's Prime Minister, David Cameron was half way through leading the United Kingdom's first coalition government in 70 years. Edward Snowden was talking to journalists, Google showcased Google Glass, Pope Francis was elected, and the pro-Europe Maidan uprising started in Ukraine. Doesn't that sliver of trips down memory lane now feel like a very long time ago?

In our outlook, below, we've linked to sample relevant past …