As a truly remarkable year comes to a close, I am once again indulging in a bit of crystal ball gazing.

This year will be my third attempt to call the future (with a large pinch of salt), and hopefully I manage to continue a relatively solid run of extremely bold predictions. My forecast for 2016 was not quite as successful as the year before, but given the tremendous changes that we have witnessed across the world, I’m happy with several near misses.

Focus on the facts not the man.

“Hillary, you cannot be trusted – you’re fired…”
- Donald Trump  2016 

We need a Boogie Rock revival about as much as we do stagflation. And with Status Quo embarking on another ‘last tour’ to promote their latest release, Acoustic II, I’m not sure whether to be more concerned for our ears or our earnings…

It’s the final showdown of the desperate duo. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are probably the most despised American presidential candidates ever presented. Trump is Marmite and Clinton is distrusted by many Democrats, let alone her opponents and the undecided. Both are desperate for votes.

The birds sang and life went on during the summer of 1939; today’s post-referendum lull feels a bit like a phoney war too, albeit without the threat of bombs.

No room for complacency

We are now three months into a post-referendum world – not post-Brexit, as some people have slipped into thinking. 

Being a Chelsea fan the signing of Fernando Torres from Liverpool in 2011 for a then-record £50m fee is still a sore subject. All that money turned out to have been misspent, but there was nothing to be done other than battle on with the squad we had - the transfer window was shut for the rest of the season.

The thick end of a tax wedge

As tax bills go, €13bn plus interest is pretty hefty, even for the largest company in the world. Apple has found itself on the wrong side of EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager’s ruling about its decades-old tax agreement with Ireland.

Have you heard of Generation Z? Last weekend, I spent eight hours with them at Insomnia58, at Birmingham’s NEC. I was accompanying my teenage son and feeling out of my depth. Ever turned up to an event featuring celebrities you weren’t even aware of? It’s like finding a universe you didn’t even know existed. 

I was in Wales last week and decided to take my teenage son shopping in Cardiff. He’s half Welsh, yet recent football events have prompted him to acknowledge his Welshness, which basically meant me buying him the Wales shirt. Of course, he wanted Bale 11 printed on the back, but incredibly, we were told they’d run out of the letter L and that there were no Ls left in the country.