Published: Tuesday, 14th April, 2009 9:30am

Don't worry, be happy

by Captains Blog

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Apparently, two out of three of us are feeling anxious.I will manfully ignore the temptation at a cheap joke about Anxious being fed up with the sexual harassment and soldier on.Let’s be honest - is there any reason not to be looking ahead with at least some measure of nervousness?Let’s look at the last few years, shall we?Bird flu - we were all on the lookout for sparrows carrying packets of tissues and Lemsips so we could hit the World Health Organisation on our speed dial.And - SARS? Whatever happened to it? And what does it mean? I long for the balmy days of SARS, everything was so much simpler.The energy crisis - petrol prices were so high you needed a credit reference just to drive onto a forecourt. This hit the cost of food but not inflation because of the sneaky way that’s calculated. And has anyone noticed that prices have started to creep up over and above the rise in fuel tax? Gas and electricity companies also pushed up their prices and people began to wonder what furniture they could do without in order start bonfires in their living room.The Giant Hadron Collider - now, there was a worry. All those hadrons darting about, colliding. Maybe we should fit them with bumpers. It was going to be the end of the world as we know it but we still got another series of Big Brother. They’re going to have another bash at creating a mini black hole this autumn so perhaps we’ll be spared BB 2009 after all.Climate change - first using hair spray was destroying the ozone layer and we all switched to gel, wax, clay, mousse and strawberry jelly (that was after the pudding throwing incident of Christmas 2006, a story for which the world is not yet ready). Then there was El Nino. Now we’ve got wet summers, wetter winters - in other words, business as usual for Scotland - ice caps melting, bees vanishing and dolphins going into space and saying ‘So long, and thanks for the fish.’ No, sorry, that’s ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.The Credit Crunch - a financial industry which should have been closely controlled by government sends us spiralling into recession, depression and not feeling too chipper.The Recession - jobs lost, homes repossessed, companies battering employees into submission with tales of doom and gloom. Meanwhile, top bankers make out like bandits in pension payments and MPs struggle to make ends meet on an average of £319,000, including expenses and pension payments. Okay, that’s a figure recently released by a Bournemouth University tax expert called Richard Teather on behalf of the think-tank Adam Smith Institute and I’m sure that not every MP makes as much. But still, as I’ve said before, while the rest of us experience wage freezes, wage cuts and job losses I think it was very poor form for Westminster to vote itself a pay rise.Throw in the fact that Jack Bauer (SPOILER ALERT! Look away now if you don’t want to know what happens in ‘24’) has been infected by some biological unpleasantness caused by a very creepy Jon Voight and it’s no wonder we’re all a bit freaked out.