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Maybe there is a reason to be cheerful at this time of year. We’ve been given a huge reason to celebrate this very week:

Planning an effective flood management strategy is as important as planning for terrorism or even preventing bird flu, an independent review by Sir Michael Pitt, who is the chairman of the South West Strategic Health Authority, has said.

“We’re all facing up to climate change and there are all sorts of implications for the country in terms of having to adapt to that change,” Sir Michael said.

Climate change and flooding are only as bad as terrorism and bird flu? Well, thank God for that. Maybe He exists after all. I mean, think of the rather small numbers of people who have been killed by terrorism or bird flu in the past few years.

If Sir Michael had likened the damage caused by climate change and flooding to the carnage wreaked by, say, cars, alcohol, botched invasions of Middle Eastern countries or those cancers that leave you screaming for death, I think we’d all have all been running round like Chicken Little this week.

But no, it’s all going to be all right. We can all relax this festive season and for many festive seasons to come. Hardly anybody is going to be killed by climate change. Except maybe quite a lot of brown people and most of those don’t celebrate Christmas anyway. Isn’t it always the way?

So, chin up. Happy Christmas!