Mine are about to become apparent.  Starting with ‘Speak up when you hear utter nonsense’.  Having lived for ages and survived all sorts of world threatening events, I now feel beholden to share a little of my accumulated wisdom.  In some countries, and you may not know this, older folk are seen as a valuable resource for their knowledge and not despised as Babyboomers who had it all. And FYI we are only one of the users of social care – over 40% of the cost is spent on younger people, so even that’s not our fault.

Let’s start with taxation.  I recently had a row with someone who thought all the ills of the world would be solved if we taxed billionaires more heavily. (No hint of student-level political thinking there then). How many are there in Britain?’ I enquired.  Answer was a totally random guess at 3000.  Real answer is 150 and remember that this is people with assets of a billion pounds, not annual income.  If they each paid tax of 1 billion a year (which wouldn’t happen as their actual income would never be that much) would we then live in a land of milk and honey?  No, sweetie, we wouldn’t.  It would JUST, JUST pay the annual running cost of the NHS.  This year.  Next year it will be more.

If everyone stops using fossil fuels will it result in world peace and clean air?  Sadly not because all the countries that make their living from flogging oil and coal – America, China, Russia, most of the Middle East and Australia, would take a fairly dim view of trying to make ends meet growing kale and avocados and probably start a war.  Geopolitics, people.  Pick up a history book.  The Kremlin has actually issued an edict, number 208 in case you missed it, stating that one of the major threats to the Russian economy is, drum roll, green energy. So they won’t be voting for it,

Electric cars, by the way, are run on electricity and that isn’t made by pollution-free unicorns. Electric vehicles are considerably heavier and more damaging to the roads and you might want to check out just what heavy metals are used to make their batteries.  Which have to be disposed of fairly frequently.

If you stop eating meat and fish and dairy products will you live forever?  And yet again the answer is no.  Because you won’t have put 2 seconds of thought into the implications.  There is a reason we have incisor teeth and long intestines; we need them to digest the foodstuffs we need to stay healthy.  You will end up suffering from horrible diseases caused by deficiencies of vitamins such as B12.   Have you even heard of vitamin K?  That’s the one that stops you bleeding to death during childbirth and is not largely found in plants.  Of course you can take supplements but it requires you to be aware that you need to.

Over the years I haven’t come to grief because of a nuclear attack by the then USSR, I haven’t died from not drinking 2 or 5 or 20 litres of water a day, I didn’t succumb to bird flu or the millennium bug in computers and I certainly have never taken 10,000 steps in 24 hours.  Made up nonsense for the most part.  The world, which mass panic says is going to come to an end through global warming has, in fact, survived no less than five ice ages and we are still in the tail end of the last one.  Did we ever have protesters trying to stop the world cooling down?

Far from being an Age of Enlightenment this is a time of extraordinary ignorance.  Nothing, nothing is as straightforward as you think.  Do some reading, do some research, ask some questions.  It suits some people to keep the world in a state of fear.  Trust me if you trust anyone.  There is no monster under your bed.

Now clean your teeth and go to sleep.