The question I ask is not a cynical one or a query motivated by a persecution complex, but one of honest, grave concern which lodges increasingly in my mind; is there a conspiracy throughout the media – led by the BBC – and the national written press plus the so often anarchic and self-indulgent social media, to spread excessive alarm and despondency amongst large swathes of the inhabitants of these noble islands of ours?

With incessant regularity, mass communications concerning warnings of financial calamities to come, of health issues, of the dangers of possible nuclear disasters, of threats to the environment – indeed catastrophes coming the way of everything from hedge funds to hedgehogs – generate apocalyptic headlines across television, newspaper and the internet or are ‘shouted from the rooftops’ via the radio. These distressing prophesies will be backed up by the, very often, ‘hand-wringing’ opinions of so called ‘experts’; listening to them is not a joy and assuredly to be avoided if one has a ‘dicky’ heart.

Often I am able to sidestep these doom-mongers, but not always. Having said this when my eyes or ears have been assaulted by dire news – though more often by opinion and forecasts of ‘trouble ahead’ – I seem to lack the will to turn the set off or throw the ‘paper into the bin.

Far too regularly I sit in an easy chair, sometimes crying out in bemused anguish, and attempt – always without success – to invoke a tolerance and patience which I do not possess, in the end, though, I give in to my true feelings and aim scathing, often merciless words of vituperation at the screen, radio or page, probably the most gentle and repeatable of which is ‘you cannot be serious’.A recent case in point involved a financial ‘guru’ by the name of Martin Lewis – to whom many apparently pay great heed. This gentleman popped up on my TV and what this ‘soothsayer’ predicted was so cataclysmic that it sent me into a stunned, disbelieving silence. Worse still, what he uttered seemed to be looked upon as holy writ by the presenter; it was as if Jesus had come back down to Earth and was preaching and forecasting Armageddon, with the forces of evil and darkness overcoming those of light.

Eventually I regained some control of my senses and unleashed an unremitting volley of abuse at the ‘money-saving expert’. For this fellow had just made a statement and prediction which was to me beyond absurdity – it defied all logic and reality.

He stated, with what surely was a self-important air of authority, that this coming winter the combined impact of the energy and fuel crises would bring to our islands tragedy and disaster on a level akin to that of Covid-19.

I still reel before the sheer illogicality – worse, scaremongering – of such an utterance. Granted the outlook for us in our homeland on the financial front (most of the world for that matter) is far from rosy. Insidious inflation means we, in Britain, will have to pay more for our food and probably a mind concentrating amount for that which keeps us warm; Ann and I rely mainly on gas to centrally heat our abode, so it is, to an extent, going to be a winter of piling on the clothes and blankets plus opting for the cheaper options in the supermarkets. Is it, though, going to be a period when in Britain almost 200,000 die with many thousands of others spending long periods in hospital, as was the carnage caused by the pandemic? The answer surely is a resounding – no.

Granted these are difficult times and as the daylight hours get shorter, they might well get more fraught. We have, though, lived through such before. During the 1940s and ‘50s, people’s diets were very spartan – not merely because of the price of food but also due to the fact there was relatively little of it to buy; one of the legacies bequeathed us by the Second World War. As to inflation on all fronts – including mortgages – it was assuredly in the late 1970s and early ‘80s a more serious issue than it is now.

Mind you, not in all directions do I dismiss those who forecast possible doom; the debilitating instability caused around the globe by the savage attack of Putin’s Russia on Ukraine is a deadly matter in every sense of the word. Worse is climate change; in this field the legion of scientists and meteorologists warning of the tragedy confronting the human race if we fail to change our ways is stark and, one fears, accurate.

Alarmingly it is probable that the ravages of the pandemic will be dwarfed by the scything down of much humanity in the not too distant future due to global warming. One probability though, is that the paying for central heating will be well down the list of people’s priorities at that point.