We are hearing too much nowadays about predictions of the end of the world on December 21, 2012 — well, we’ll get through the London Olympics alright. Hang in there, Boris.

The Mayan Prophesies have been around a long time. They can be traced back at least to the 6th century BC. This particular prediction is drawn from a combination of various Mesoamerican calendars which only go as far as … you’ve guessed it.

Now call me obtuse, but every calendar I’ve ever owned usually comes to an end on December 31 of the year it relates to. Do we all run to the hills immediately after Christmas?

And then there are the Mayans themselves. Although they were pretty snappy at maths and appeared to know very tricky things about very long numbers, they hadn’t invented the wheel and were totally deficient in technology.

They were also the most bloodthirsty race ever to inhabit the earth. On one occasion 80,000 people were ritually sacrificed by cutting out their living hearts and holding them up to the gods still beating. The ground ran with rivers of blood for days.

So why do the usual ninnies imagine these people would know what’s going to happen on December 21, 2012? For the same reason, I suspect, that the scaredy-cats among us imagine the world is going to boil over some time soon.

Even Sony corp has got in on the act. Promoting its film, 2012 (what an original title!), it has a website terrifying the life out of many folk of a febrile disposition, not least thousands of children, who are also prey to the rantings of the climate bogies.

This madhouse we call Planet Earth should be subjected to a strict control order from the Galactic Council.

On a related subject, it seems the world is not going to run out of oil and gas for many a long while yet. In the Daily Telegraph Business pages on Monday Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported on the rise of new oil shale technologies to produce previously unattainable natural gas.

“The world Gas Conference in Buenos Aires last week was one of those events that shatter assumptions. Advances in technology for extracting gas from shale and methane beds have quickened dramatically, altering the global balance of energy faster than almost anybody expected,” he writes.

I remember a Canadian friend telling me years ago about the huge oil shale resources in that country. They are, he said, greater than the oil reserves in the Middle East. “Take that, Omar,” was his rather politically incorrect conclusion. I’ve not heard much about them, and other fields like them, since.

“This is almost unknown to the public,” writes A E-P, “despite the efforts of Nick Grealy at ‘No Hot Air’ who has been arguing for some time that Britain’s shale reserves could replace declining North Sea output.”

It’s no use depending on the present government, but shouldn’t the Conservatives make this a top priority before committing billions of our money to foreign technology and energy supplies?

I’ll bet the Mayans didn’t dream of that.

We should, I think, be in optimistic mood this autumn. Many things are going right for the world now, despite Sony’s Planet X waiting in the wings to destroy us all two years hence.

The one dark blob on the horizon is the Met Office. After its “barbecue summer” PR disaster, it remains unusually silent about the coming autumn and winter. I’m subscribed to its bulletins and warnings service, so would surely have heard by now if the boffins had put their heads above their Exeter parapet.

Other sources are less reserved. It seems that October has been unusually cold and snowy around the world. Eastern Europe and the Balkans are already snow spattered. It presages a similar winter to last year when North America suffered unbelievably cold weather throughout the season. Here in Britain it was not that bad, but chilly enough.

Whatever happened to global warming? And why are governments spending trillions of our money on ways of making us colder still?

Definitely another case for the Galactic Council.

Gordon Brown and his swivel-eyed team of policy wonkers and PR duffers, continue to talk about “fairness”.

Fair play is a typically British concept, one we have exported all over the world and which once imbued us with great moral authority.

Not any more. The present broken thunderbox of a government has let it die in half a generation. Brown’s use of anti-terrorist legislation to bully little Iceland when its banks failed was a monstrous abuse of power and hardly “fair”. The Icelanders will never forgive us for the humiliation.

Now the grumpy dinosaur of Downing Street is employing a kind of reverse psychology to win back some voters. Fairness is what Labour is about, he thundered at his party conference.

Let’s take him at his word. Mr Brown, do you think an electorate that was promised a vote on a foreign constitution should be given one as a matter of honour … and fairness?

I thought not.

Annoyment of the Week

A Gordon Brown-free zone

As a reader of history it pains me to say this. Historians are becoming very annoying.

Have you noticed whenever they pop up in the media — which is frequent — they talk about ancient times in the present tense?

Turn on Melvyn Bragg on Radio 4 on Thursday mornings and you will hear: “King Alfred is burning the cakes”, while “the Vikings have landed in the East.” It’s enough to frighten old ladies half to death.

Now metaphysically it is just possible to insist we all live in an “Eternal Now” where Alfred is indeed burning the cakes as we speak. Even those giant pygmies of our time, the particle physicists might agree, and some do.

It just gets a tad confusing though when a billion buses all come along at once.

Time may be a human construct but it wasn’t invented for nothing. More to the point, time and space go together, so unless we all want to be compressed into an infinitesimally small dot, we’d better hang onto it until we think of something better.

An example of how badly things can go wrong is called for: a small boy is preparing for school when he hears Melvyn on the radio: “Winston Churchill is Prime Minister. The war is raging across the Channel.”

In school a teacher asks, “Who knows who the Prime Minister is?”

A small boy puts up his hand: “Winston Churchill, Miss.”

I rest my case.

Some people have asked me why I’m publishing my own book: The Eternal Quest for Immortality: Is it staring you in the face?, instead of approaching a trade publisher.

The reason is that I’ve been in publishing for a long time and, just as I’ve always financed my own businesses rather than used banks or venture capital, I enjoy the freedom and lack of fuss of being in charge of the process. It’s not control freakery, just the opposite — the sense of space and freedom when I get up in the morning.

The book is now finished and being prepared for press. Imagine the long wait for the final result at a conventional publishing house. Think how ghastly the cover may turn out to be, and all those book promos at GMTV, Waterstones in every part of the country, and the sheer grind of having to explain what the hell it’s all about over and over again.

I rest my case for the last time this week.

John Evans

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