2016: The Good, the Bad and the stuff in between that makes you feel really queasy

Many people are heralding 2016 as the worst year ever, a year that everyone would rather forget, and the year of too many dabs and bottle flips.

Seriously. Stop it.

I, on the other hand, have slightly mixed feelings about 2016. Although globally it has sometimes seemed like something straight out of one of Roland Emmerich's disaster films (thankfully with a lack of John Cusack), but personally it has been a fairly decent year if I'm perfectly honest. But no one cares about that, right? After all bad news makes good news and there has been A LOT of bad news this year which has, funnily enough, led to me googling the possibility of a one way ticket to Mars and go full Matt Damon just without the raffish charm. So what actually happened to 2016? Well we started off promisingly after the hottest Christmas on record and the outbreak of the Zika virus swiftly following which made people fear of a Plague Inc-esq global K.O. which never actually happened. Hey, at least we didn't have to live through the Plague or the Spanish Flu, be thankful for that, Millennials. But this does seem to be the year of hypochondriacs with people fearing for their lives over Zika, Yellow Fever, Ebola and the common cold. On a more serious note, though, an anti-biotic resistant strand of bacteria did emerge in China so that should be fun when we all start dying from the sniffles. Zika nearly even cancelled Rio 2016!

But it didn't. Rio 2016 went on to be a shining moment in 2016 and seemed to unite us for a brief period as we marvelled at Usain Bolt, Simone Biles, Andy Murray and the famous "That's long, for Dong" quote which had the nation in hysterics for brief minute before we remembered Russia. Russia and it's illustrious leader Vladdy Putin has certainly dominated the news this year. Firstly with a good proportion of Russian athletes being banned from Rio because they were stoned (ok maybe but not stoned but drugs were definitely involved) and then there was the whole palaver about the Russians hacking the US election.

UGH! THE US ELECTION! What a rubbish year and a half that was. If only the US had a simpler system like us Brits where leadership contests are much more subdued and campaigns for the title of PM only last a couple of months before election day where our newly elected leader steps into Downing Street THE NEXT DAY, unlike America where we now have a two month hiatus before Trump is inaugurated into the White House where Obama is currently sat twiddling his thumbs and cleaning up the mess Trump is already leaving behind. If you hadn't already guessed, I'm not a fan of Trump. The entire election was marred in controversy and scandal where Clinton had issues with some questionable emails and Trump had allegations of rape, had corruption trials, made fun of the disabled, called for a ban on Muslims, was offensive to Mexicans, called Climate Change a hoax, questioned the validity of the first African American president, was extremely sexist to many women, talked about dating his own daughter, called Obama the creator of ISIS, offended a war hero and also has REALLY bad hair. Have you seen it recently? It doesn't actually look natural. At all. Neither does he. In fact I'm just hoping that he isn't actually real and that it is all a bad dream. The election was exhausting this year and has proven the USA to be more divided than ever, with a rise in racist crimes, shootings in Orlando against the LGBT community and the election of a sexist, racist, greedy fool who is already messing up American foreign policy and is likely to make the next four years uneasy for the whole world. And this year of weird politics can be epitomised by the entire situation with Russia currently. Russia apparently hacked the Democratic Party to try and sway the election by releasing dodgy emails that damaged Clinton's credibility. Whether the election result was caused by this Russian involvement remains unclear, but what is terrifying is that a foreign power intervened with American politics and on top of this Trump hasn't criticised Putin's actions. So basically, Russia has won the Cold War. Just kidding that's extreme, but we could be about to enter an era of a cyber Cold War and there is no doubt in my mind that future historians will say that tensions between the USA and Russia defined the early 21st century.

Speaking of defining events, how rubbish was Brexit?! Speaking as a disgruntled Brit who wasn't allowed to vote and wished we had remained in the EU, I would like to say that Brexit was an appalling thing that shouldn't have been allowed to happen. Not only is British politics now marred in division, in-fighting and stagnant decision making, but we're stuck with Boris Johnson as our Foreign Secretary. Sad! (Hope you spotted my Donald Trump reference there).

So this year can be epitomised by shoddy politics and lots of illness, but what has been the icing on the proverbial poisoned, vile, horrid cake that is 2016? Harambe. Obviously. But on a more serious note we have lost some pretty important and influential people this last year. We have lost music legends such as Bowie and Prince and of course we have lost the legendary Muhammad Ali and Alan Rickman, a man who appeared throughout my childhood with legendary characters such as Hans Gruber, Severus Snape and Marvin the Paranoid Android. Not only this, but we seemed to have experienced more than our fair share of horrific death this year. The shootings in America have become more frequent and one particularly struck home with me: The Orlando Shootings, which highlighted a shocking amount of division in American society. But also we shared our condolences with Brussels, Nice, Istanbul and of course the atrocious lack of regard for human rights that is currently happening in Aleppo. More than ever we need to show our solidarity with all members of our global community against those who wish to disregard people's basic human rights.

But surely there must be something positive we can get out of 2016? Surprisingly enough, there is! And that is Pandas. Yes, finally, Panda numbers are growing and are not longer considered an endangered species! I mean...it's pretty rubbish that it was our fault that Pandas were going extinct in the first place, but still we've made a difference and righted a wrong, which I think is a promising prospect for the future.

So yes, 2016 was a fairly sub-par year, and yes, some parts of the future are looking pretty bleak. But I think we need to remember those small victories that we all experience every day. Having a laugh with friends, enjoying learning, going for winter walks in a massive coat, eating just a little bit too much chocolate are all things that make each day slightly happier. So in 2017 don't focus on how terrible 2016 was, focus on how you can make 2017 better by making sure you have an amazing time and do things that you will remember for the rest of your life.

Merry Christmas Everyone, try not to be too sad!

(At least Rogue One was good.)