THERE’S only a few hours to go now before the worst year for decades finally ends. 2016 is 666 + 666 + 666 + 6 + 6 + 6, which means 2016 is the PIN number of the Beast.

The past 12 months brought a slew of unexpected celebrity deaths, carrying away those who had made a genuine contribution to humanity’s happiness and wellbeing. There’s still time for an another celebrity death, but those celebs who do make it alive and kicking into 2017 will be slightly disappointed at the realisation that they weren’t quite as talented or famous as they’d hoped they were.

Most disappointed of all are those columnists and pundits who this time last year wrote their predictions for 2016. In the wise words of Mark Twain, or possibly someone else, never make predictions, especially about the future. A year ago we all thought that Ed Balls would fade gracefully into obscurity, not sear our consciousness with his rendition of Gangnam Style. Some of us are still waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.

This time last year we comforted ourselves with the knowledge that the Remain campaign was a safe bet to win an EU referendum and Nigel Farage was destined to spend the rest of his life appearing on BBC Question Time complaining that he’d been robbed.

Instead, the UK is leaving the EU and Nigel Farage makes his frequent appearances on BBC Question Time being even more smug than he was before, something that no-one could have believed was humanly possible. Nigel has broken the smug barrier, and has disappeared so far up his own fundament that he’s come out the other side, and straight into the panel for an episode of BBC Question Time coming to you from a quiet and leafy racist corner of Little Englandshire. Which by some bizarre coincidence seems to be every single episode of the show.

No-one could have believed there were so many people in the country who believe every word of a Daily Mail editorial, but then no-one believed it was possible for a single individual to make so many appearances on BBC Question Time.

However, this is a programme which manages to find an overwhelmingly Unionist majority audience every time that it deigns to make an appearance in Scotland, so we shouldn’t be too surprised.

It’s a safe prediction for 2017 that Nigel will continue to be best pals with the producers of BBC Question Time, and that it will keep on making its broadcasts from an alternate universe where everyone treats the Daily Mail as gospel and no-one in Dundee has a Scottish accent. Also this time last year, the smart money was telling us Donald Trump had as much chance of becoming president of the USA as there was of Ruth Davidson passing by a tank without leaping on it for a photo op. He’d be doomed to spend the rest of his life spouting conspiracy theories to zoomers. Now he’ll be spouting conspiracy theories along with the zoomers in his cabinet.

Clearly, making predictions is a bit of a mug’s game, but we can be pretty certain that the Donald will fail in his determination to Make America Great Again. Although that won’t stop him claiming that he’s succeeded. Truth and Donald Trump are two concepts that usually only appear in the same sentence when there’s also a negative there too, like that one. The Donald will simply claim that “great” means something different to whatever everyone else thinks it means, and so claim he’s been vindicated.

This is pretty much the same strategy adopted by Theresa May, who says Brexit means Brexit, and that Brexit means Brexit means the crumbs she’ll be left with after the EU has eviscerated her negotiating position and the UK is cast out into the wilderness of an uncertain future. Then she can say that it’s a great victory and that whatever it is that she ends up with is what she’d been planning all along. We might be going down the Great British pan, but we’re being flushed away with red white and blue toilet duck. And because the Tories will have destroyed the economic prospects of everyone in the UK who isn’t a banker, no-one will want to come to live here and they’ll be able to claim that their anti-immigration measures are an outstanding success.

Another thing guaranteed to be a feature of 2017 is the British Government swearing that it’s going to listen to Scotland and take Scotland’s views into account, and then ignoring us completely and telling us to be happy with whatever it is that it is imposing on us. This isn’t so much a prediction as an immutable law of the British state. This goes hand-in-hand with another feature of 2017, which will be the Scottish Government seeking a means of protecting the benefits Scotland enjoys as a part of the EU, even though everyone and their granny knows that nothing will happen without the collaboration and consent of Westminster, and they’re not about to give it.

The surest prediction of all is that the political cracks will continue to widen between Scotland and the rest of the UK. And sooner or later, not in 2017 but certainly within the lifetimes of most of us, Scotland will be rejoining the family of independent states.