We predicted a bank holiday "may" be granted. Put "may" in a sentence and you are right whatever happens.

There is a kind of sentence people write when they know they will be marking their own work later. It does not look like cheating. It looks careful.

"May be granted." "As a stated priority." "Will keep expanding."

Each is a fair thing to write. Each also moves the finish line somewhere you can never quite fail to reach.

"May" is true whatever happens. "As a stated priority" does not ask for an event. It asks for a performance: the right person, saying the right words, in the right setting. "Keep expanding" has no number in it, so it never actually arrives.

None of that is dishonest. It is what happens when one person is doing two jobs at once: saying something worth saying, and staying safe later. The second job quietly edits the first. You cannot feel it happening, because every word on its own can be defended.

The proof it happened here is the score. Eleven marked, eleven right. People who mark their own work do not usually get results like that by being brilliant.

The easiest way to see it is to put two of our own predictions next to each other. Same writer. Same day.

On 24 June we wrote that the Metropolitan Police will have fixed facial recognition cameras running in the West End and Soho by December this year. A named force. A named technology. Named streets. A named month. If December comes and the cameras are not there, that prediction is dead, and no clever wording saves it.

The same writer, the same day, also wrote that police use of facial recognition will keep expanding across British forces before the new law arrives. How many forces? By when? The deadline hangs on a bill, and bills move. That one can float for years without ever being settled.

One of those is a prediction. The other is a feeling with a date-shaped hole in it.

They were written hours apart, which tells you this is not about one careless writer. It is about which sentence is easier to write when you know nobody is coming back to check.

The fix is practical rather than noble, and it works for anyone who keeps their own forecasts, at work or at home.

Say in advance what would prove you wrong. If you cannot name it, you have written an opinion. That is fine, but do not file it as a prediction.

Put a real date on it. A date that waits on somebody else's timetable is not a date.

Do not write down things that have already been announced. It costs nothing and it flatters the score.

And mark it on a different day from the one you wrote it. Better, get somebody else to mark it. Writing and marking pull in opposite directions, and you cannot feel the pull while it is working on you.

Our own list had none of these rules. It has them from today. What that does to the score is the interesting part, and you will see it either way.