The difficulty for astrology is that it has been seriously debased by the "12 sizes fits all" Sun sign daily forecasts in the newspapers.

Thanks for bringing these up. Most astrologers I've read (one thing you do when you start to look more deeply into this is find as many websites as you can and compare what everyone does) seem to consider these as just entertainment, another income source from a newspaper, etc. In other words, not a lot of them seem to take daily newspaper forecasts seriously either. There are too many influences each day, and it's really only by luck that that astrologer can hit on the influence that happens to get you that day, if any of them do.

There are a couple of daily forecasts I've seen that haven't been bad, but they were either tailored to my specific chart, or were an undivided list of daily influences (e.g., Mars trines Jupiter today; check your chart to see where that might affect you) that weren't really "predictions."

(Which is another image that's made astrology unbelievable in the eyes of many. Vedic aside, Western astrology doesn't predict. It gives you the influences and it's up to you to work with those. Unfortunately, so many people have bought into the prediction idea that when nothing comes to pass, they chalk it up to fraud.)