Only a fool makes predictions, and I was foolish a lot in 2016. One of my more wince-inducing memories from the last benighted year took place on the Thursday evening at Glastonbury. There I was, chatting away with one of the most senior managers at the Guardian, who happened to be there with her son. “So you’re not worried about the referendum tonight?” she asked me.

“God, no!” I hooted, knocking back some more enamel-stripping wine bought from a nearby van. “Britain’s a sensible country, it surely – surely – won’t fall for the obvious lies peddled by those self-serving schuysters, Farage and Johnson. It’ll be 60:40 remain.”

“Well, you’ve made me feel much better, Hadley!” she said, grasping my shoulder like a lifeboat. If only she’d known I’d sprung a leak.

“I’d bet my job on it!” I said merrily, heading off into the night.

Well. Given that you are currently reading me, you can see that the management here are more measured with their P45s than I am with my pretensions to telepathy.

I learned two lessons from that experience. First, Mystic Meg of the Guardian I am not. And second, when all else fails, using Yiddish words is at least a fun distraction. But what needs to happen this year to help us all move on from that dumpster fire/“everything’s fine” cartoon/comedy Joe Biden photo caption (delete according to your favourite internet meme of 2016)? Let’s go old-school and list the hell outta this.

1. Honestly, I don’t understand why Twitter hasn’t deleted Trump’s account. He’s retweeted antisemitic memes, engaged in targeted harassment and generally behaved like – let’s just say it – a massive troll. There is every chance he’ll start world war three this year with a misspelled tweet (Xi Jinping, president of the People’s Republic of China: “Wait, is he trying to say that I’m an unprecedented leader?” First assistant to Xi Jinping: “Hard to tell, sir. It may be a compliment, but it may also be an insult.” Xi Jinping: “To the military!”) So, for the sake of world peace, it would be totally awesome if Trump no longer had access to a site that, as he told me when I interviewed him in 2012, has given him his own newspaper, where, “when someone attacks me, I can attack them right back”. The man will be president in a fortnight’s time, for God’s sake. I think he has a big enough platform. Please, someone, get him off this one.

2. Let’s sort out language, please. In the year when everything imploded, language itself went (and I apologise for being obvious) Orwellian. I first realised that “elite” had gone from meaning “privileged and powerful” to “people I just don’t like” when I saw Arron Banks – a man who looks increasingly like the evil svengali who emerges from the secret door behind the bookcase after James Bond has dispatched his bodyguards – referring to journalists as “the elite”. “But you own a diamond mine?” someone, not unreasonably, said. “What’s wrong with owning a diamond mine?” he merrily replied. “Someone has to.”

AA Gill’s fearless journalism was an inspiration – so why didn’t I tell him that? Read more

Do they? Well, I guess. Maybe. Someone also has to write the news, but those people are snooty snots; diamond mine-owners who fund political parties are courageous freedom fighters striving against the man. (The average salary of a British journalist: just under £24,000. The average salary of a diamond mine-owner: a gazillion pounds.)

Similarly, terms such as “mainstream media, or MSM” (translation: journalism I don’t like), “experts” (people who say things I don’t like) and “identity politics” (politics that don’t assume the primacy of straight white men) were redefined, while not-very-codified euphemisms such as “swarm” and “global order” continue to perpetuate racism and antisemitism. And the left let this happen, being too hesitant to call out prejudice, misogyny and total falsehood where they saw them. The left wasn’t able to match the right’s shamelessness and, in some corners, even bought their narrative.

And here we are now, two weeks away from the inauguration of a billionaire straight out of central casting for the villain in a Batman movie (there are a lot of cartoon villains around these days), because 25.5% of Americans found him less “elitist” than Hillary Clinton. Let’s end this, and insist upon accurate language. (Also, hurry up, Marty McFly, and get that almanac off the old man, so we can get out of this wrong timeline.)

3. For their sake and ours, it’s time to put the Kardashians in storage now. Basta.

While I may not be much cop at predictions, I can tell you this for free: unless all of the above is sorted, 2017 will not be an improvement on 2016. We’re in this together, people.