THIS news just in: we’re all going to die. You look up from your Honey Nut Loops and opine sagely: “Aye, we ken that. So?”

So you might at least have the decency to panic a little. Look, when I say we’re all going to die, I don’t mean in the existential sense by which each of us pegs out individually in our own time.

That is something to look forward to, freeing us from this world of pain and bicycling, and taking us to a better realm with craft beer on tap and free fish and chips that you can eat all day without getting fat or farting.

No, I’m referring to a much greater threat to the human race as a whole, not just you with cereal milk running down your chin, nor yet me, standing here in an elegant smoking jacket daintily eating, with pinkie raised, a fried egg roll.

That threat is … the weather. Yes, that old thundering nuisance that can never make up its mind what it wants to do. Typically, as it’s the weather, reports are conflicting, with some suggesting that hotter summers are going to fuel violence and suicide, while others say many of us are going to perish in a new ice age.

Before I develop my thesis or rant further, let me first say that, despite discussing drastic alterations in the weather, I’ve no intention of addressing the question of global warming here. It’s far too controversial and, besides, I’m more interested in the effects than the causes of these phenomena.

All I will say is that, on the one hand, climate change deniers tend to be fruitloops but, on the other hand, I don’t trust grant-hungry scientists as far as I can throw them. That said, it strikes me that, if gases in the atmosphere have increased, causing temperatures to rise, that is scary.

But, apart from that, I’m far too busy to research this properly. So let’s get back to the subject in hand: death. Its greater likelihood in hotter summers is caused by changes in brain chemistry and increased testosterone levels, causing aggression.

According to the Countdown on Health and Climate Change report, involving 150 experts, extreme weather events can also cause stress and depression by damaging neurotransmitters – aye, thaim – which regulate emotion and similar nonsense.

This is grim news and I hope you’ll join me in praying that next summer will be full of the wind and rain that we Scots love so much and were born to endure.

However, don’t pray so hard that you help to usher in a mini Ice Age. Researchers studying the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – aye … the whit? – found that levels of water in the northern seas are at their lowest for 1,500 years, precipitating a decrease in the amount of heat transferred towards Europe and North America.

That’ll bring us bitterly cold winters, which is particularly bad news in Britain for the old and homeless, who are already badly persecuted. On the other hand, it would also bring cooler, wetter summers, making us less likely to go around battering other folk and ourselves to death.

It’s all very confusing, and made worse by reports this week of massive underwater earthquakes or volcanic eruptions beneath yonder Indian Ocean.

What have we ever done to the Earth to deserve this? Well, it’s stuck with us for the time being. Meanwhile, if you’re thinking of a Christmas present for your beloved, how about a hot water bottle and suncream set?

SOME idiot mentioned death earlier, and we continue that theme by noting more shock-horror reports this week about the costs of a funeral.

Bizarrely, funeral services are left to the capitalist sector to provide, so it’s hardly surprising that people are being fleeced.

The latest average cost has been put at £4,271, which doesn’t surprise me as I’ve had to bung a couple of dear relatives earthwards in recent years. Neither had made any kind of arrangements, though one did at least leave more than enough to cover the costs.

It is reprehensible in the extreme not to make financial arrangements for your own funeral and, accordingly, I haven’t done anything about mine. Who cares? My mates can pick up the tab, same as they’ve always done with my bail and court fines.

It just seems a bit rich, so to say, to expect folk to set aside four or five grand for some undesired future event, particularly given the great strides made recently with research into immortality.

I heard something on the radio recently which suggested the average cost of a wedding these days is 30 grand. You. Are. Having. A Laugh. How can it possibly cost that much to stagger down the aisle, say “Aye, a’right, ah suppose ah do”, furnish a few folk with sausage rolls, crack open a tin of Export, and spend the night in a Travelodge?

It’s only a mercy that, as far as I know, they haven’t yet found a way to charge us a small fortune for being born.

AT least old T-shirts never die, or at least mine don’t. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I’ve got one that’s 21-years-old, even if I only keep it for nostalgic reasons (the vomit down the front has, alas, withered away).

I wear T-shirts every day, and my youngest is three or four-years-old. Accordingly, it is with some horror that I read about “fast fashion” T-shirts costing two quid, which trendy folks are expected to bung binwards after wearing them just a few times.

Of course, these T-shirts are made in lovely foreign factories inspired by Robert Owen’s New Lanark model. Not.

I suppose you could recycle these garments, but something doesn’t seem right here. It’s the Throwaway Society which, following your correspondent’s example, should be replaced by the Slowaway Society, where garments are kept for years and organised from left to right according to age, with perhaps a divider delineating 20th and 21st centuries.