Are you getting tired of hearing the whining, depressive voices of the new prophets of doom? Listening to technologists, scientists, politicians, pundits and economists, you would think we were passing through a Dark Age.

The threat from China and India is seen as dire and growing. Climate Change threatens our entire civilization. Terrorism stands ready to murder the lot of us in our beds.

We terrorize our own children in schools by telling them that flood, fire and famine are just around the corner — unless, of course, they recycle their sweet wrappers and stay at home in the holidays.

We warn of catastrophic job losses because of a rampant China and a burgeoning India … and maybe Brazil too.

Jihadist Islam is plotting to turn the world into a gigantic Caliphate in which men will wear turbans and women will all but disappear beneath miles of black cloth.

These are the bad times, indeed.

What tommyrot. We’re being manipulated by neurotic, self-serving attention-seekers demanding that we all become just like them.

The Good Times
In fact, these are The Good Times. In the north, we’re entering a balmy period of clement weather similar to the Medieval Warming Period, which lasted hundreds of years. Then, we Brits could grow wine in the northern fastnesses of Northumberland.

In the Little Ice Age that followed, the River Thames through London froze over every winter. They were the bad times.

Soon Scottish Chardonnay will be on every menu, and bourgenvillea will grow wild all along the English Riviera from Lands End to the White Cliffs of Dover. In a few centuries another cooling period will begin and the price of fur and coal will rise. Make no mistake, these are the good times.

China and India are interacting with rich Western lifestyles with the only comparative advantage they have : cheap labour. They send us cheap goods which keep inflation low and increase the standards of living of the poor. This has the effect of driving us to become innovation societies, with highly educated and high-waged populations.

The new Tiger economies will reach that stage soon enough and things will return to normal. But, for now, these are the good times.

As for terrorism, no-one ever took over the world from a cave in Pakistan. In fact, in the UK we suffered far more casualties from the Irish Troubles in the 1970s and 80s than we have from Islamic terrorism. Our grandparents went through two world wars when countless millions were slaughtered and mankind went collectively insane.

Then they had the Cold War to put up with, and possible instant annihilation or slow death by radiation poisoning.

So, here we are : great weather to come for a couple of centuries, comparative peace, and endless cheap goods and gadgets from the wonderful Chinese and Indians.

THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES.

Get used to it!