2025: Conflict and love

The world is an ever changing place. Partisan rhetoric is separating us more than ever thanks to the amplification of social media, with countries like America and Britain at times seeming on the brink of civil war. Everyone suddenly has a voice, and perhaps there are now just too many voices.

Actual wars have been blooming like toxic flowers across the world recently; and despite ever greater wealth and innovations in food production, poverty and famine never appear to abate while those of us in the west overindulge and waste resources with casual abandon.

Then just when we start despairing for humankind, we witness heart-lifting encounters like a complex cooperation between drivers and police to save tiny, terrified, escaped chihuahua Henry trapped on a busy San Diego highway. Or the three Scottish brothers: Jamie, Ewan and Lachlan MacLean who rowed, unassisted across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans to raise money for charities including Feedback Madagascar and Children First.

Thankfully there are more than enough pockets of human compassion and goodwill to maintain the world’s brightness and beauty. Indeed, on smaller scales, and in smaller communities, humans usually get along very well indeed. It is when our groups get bigger that personal relationships falter.

Despite it feeling like years since he burst onto the world darts scene, national favourite Luke “The Nuke” Littler finally won the world championship at the tender age of 17 and 347 days earlier this year. The Lionesses dug deep to penalty-shoot their way to victory in the UEFA Women’s Euros in July, rousing the nation to patriotic fervour. The British and Irish Lions also scored some serious national pride by winning the 2025 series against Australia in August.

Jane Goodall, Robert Redford, Ozzy Osbourne, Hulk Hogan, big George Foreman and Michael Madsen were among the many notables to leave us this year. Who knows what tiny geniuses, actors, pop stars, boxers and wrestlers have been born to take their places?

2025 for ECC

Lauren Bacall famously said: “Standing still is the fastest way of moving backwards in a rapidly changing world”. Standing still is never something we are in danger of doing here at European Consumer Claims.

Since 2016 we have been fighting for consumer rights in general and were best known for standing up to the timeshare industry on behalf of mis-sold members. We have achieved tens of millions of pounds worth of compensation awards for our clients, and are still forging ahead with this aspect of our business. This year alone we are on track to have released close to 300 people from unwanted timeshares, as well as won over 60 cases with almost a million pounds in timeshare compensation awarded by the end of December.

Now, we are getting to be perhaps even more famous for taking on the hitherto seemingly unchecked British holiday park industry. As many Brits own park lodges or static caravans (around 400,000 people) as own timeshares. However the latter has become more and more heavily regulated after decades of media outcry, while the parks have been mis-selling with reckless abandon during that same time period, at least according to our thousands of client testimonies.

Our work defending holiday park and lodge victims has been covered by multiple national and local media outlets and I feel confident in saying that ECC are now the leading voice in this field. The nature of consumer claims means that the legal process can often take over a year to conclude, so our first cases are just beginning to complete now. But the initial results are extremely positive with multiple early victories and settlements out-of-court.

The extra business has necessitated us upsizing our offices (again) and moving to these stunning new regional offices in the South of Spain.

2026: What’s next?

Multiple conflicts have been brought to a close by the current, US administration, including the bitter Israel/Hamas conflict which began with the shock paramotor attack on the Nova Music Festival in 2023. Israel and Palestine can at least begin to rebuild, although their journey is likely to be long and fraught with difficulties.

It keeps getting pushed back, but it looks like the second Artemis mission, is finally going to go ahead in April. A crew of four astronauts are scheduled to fly around our symbiotic satellite and return to earth. This will take the crew further away from earth than any human has ever been and is one step closer to landing humankind on the lunar surface again, following a 54 year intermission.

Biometric readers intended to speed up travel in and out of the UK are due to roll out, coinciding with Starmer’s Digital ID initiative and (rightly or wrongly) causing great concern among the voting public.

We have the Commonwealth Games to look forward to in Glasgow at the height of the Scottish summer, as well as the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham.

For those eager to enjoy our truly stunning British littoral landscapes, the 2795 mile King Charles III England Coastal Path around the outside of Mainland Britain is due to be completed and open to the public, following a ten year effort to join many smaller routes together.

Politics aside, Britain is looking like an upbeat and exciting place to be this coming year.

2026 for ECC

The innovation never stops at ECC. We continue the fight against rogue operators in the timeshare industry, and our expansion into America is set to ramp up this coming year as we partner with a new American law firm.

Our holiday park division is running efficiently and expertly handling the significant increase in enquiries our TV and radio campaigns are attracting.

We will look to take on illegally operating holiday parks in Europe and eventually in the USA. At European Consumer Claims we do not ever rest on our laurels, we are always looking ahead to the next step.

I’ll leave you as always with a favourite quote, this time from 13th century mystic, poet and Catholic friar, St Francis of Assisi:

“Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

Nobody thought we would win our legal battles for compensation from timeshare companies. Now we do it every day. Nobody had made serious progress against the bad actors of the holiday park industry. Now ECC is making it reality.

In 2026, may we all find the courage to make the impossible possible.

Have a great year.

Greg Wilson.