It was easy for a calm, rational person like myself, with extensive experience of European Union processes, to predict the euro would survive, although possibly without Greece. Got most of that one right.

As Bashar al-Assad unleashed Hell on the besieged city of Homs, the conventional wisdom recalled that that’s what his father did to Hama 30 years earlier to successfully end a rebellion.

Having covered enough dictators’ downfalls, however, I knew it was different this time, and that even if it took all year, Assad was gone. Now even Russia’s leaders seem to agree.

Sometimes prediction is hard. As this year winds down, entropy has taken hold. A great, shapeless miasma has come to define daily life in Britain and the part of the world I report on.