As we prepare to flip the calendar into another year of war, unpunished wrongdoing, public lying and monstrous taxation, can anyone tell me what is so good about optimism?

I was lucky enough to be born a pessimist, a view of the world which millions take decades to learn. And I am amazed by how totally most people misunderstand what we pessimists think. Above all, they fail to notice how cheerful we all are.

Last week we marked the centenary of AA Milne’s famous bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, so much more entertaining and witty than the infuriating, drippy Paddington and his wretched marmalade sandwiches.

Now, I am old enough and English enough to have much enjoyed the Pooh books as a child. Pooh bear is a great master of understatement, as was the superb illustrator of the original stories, EH Shepard, a real artist who won the Military Cross in the Great War. But I think they are probably beyond most modern children. I fear they only survive thanks to the horrible Disney version, which I cannot bear to watch.

But the greatest character in those books is the old grey donkey Eeyore, one of the most important figures in English literature.

The old grey donkey Eeyore (left) is one of the most important figures in English literature, writes Peter Hitchens. AA Milne's character is a thinker and a master of logic, with a very good grasp of the true nature of the universe

I am not joking about this. In a few short episodes, author AA Milne invented a personality so memorable that it will survive as long as there is anyone English left alive (I’m not sure about the other nations of our Kingdom, who laugh differently).

We all know him. Some of us (the lucky ones) are him. Some years ago, old friends of mine gave me my own personal Eeyore (with detachable tail) for Christmas, and I treasure him to this day. Eeyore is a thinker and a master of logic, with a very good grasp of the true nature of the universe. He never wastes a word. He is full of dry humour, if only you pay attention.

When he has shown, through pure reason, that his tail has been stolen, Eeyore concludes ‘Somebody must have taken it’, adding – after a long silence – ‘How Very Like Them’. Yet when his tail is found, he frisks happily about the forest, rejoicing, a detail people tend to forget, just as they forget the happy outcome of his seemingly dismal birthday, during which he receives an empty honey jar and the shreds of a burst balloon, and is wonderfully content with them.

To all you optimists, doomed as you are to disappointments piled one on top of the other, and who will seldom be pleasantly surprised, I say this. Please stop going on about how you are a ‘glass half-full person’, as if this was a good thing. It is obvious that a glass which contains 50 per cent air is on the way to being empty. This is because someone is drinking from it and will drink more until it is all gone. It is therefore half-empty.