Cheer up, it's not the end of the world

Cheering news. The world isn't going to end on January 1. The techno misery guts have wailing for ages that the Millennium bug will make planes fall from the skies, leave food in short supply and bring the banking system crashing about our heads.

But now the computer gurus who made such stark warnings are cooling their hysteria, and telling us everything is likely to be all right after all.

Among those originally most alarmed by the fact that computers would not recognise the year 2000 was a Canadian, Peter de Jager. He is now reported to believe that most companies have or are fixing their computer systems. Britain's chief bug-buster, Robin Guenier, also says: "People are no longer in denial about it. We're not heading for doomsday."

So the washing machine will still wash, the toaster will still toast, and if the hole in the wall refuses to part with money on January 1, the state of your overdraft will be to blame rather than the Millennium bug.

Mass pessimism has been good for business for some, including computer specialists who promoted millennial chaos and then cashed in on the resultant angst. Thousands of people are also said to have bought Millennium survival kits for £250, containing dehydrated foods, wind-up radios, fishing line and edible candles. But if survival after the year 2000 entails eating a candle, I think I'll just take my chances.

Besides, all this fuss over the collapse of modern life has always been hard to take.

I'm sure that if no one had done a thing, computers would have been curling up and dying all over the place. But the necessary work has mostly been carried out, and those who predicted total catastrophe all strike me as being like Private Fraser in Dad's Army, with his dismal recitation of: "We're doomed, I say. Doomed."

Some people are never happier than when predicting that we are about to fall off the cliff edge, and the microchip pessimists have certainly been having a miserable old ball with their intimations of disaster. But instead of Armageddon, we're likely to wake on January 1 with nothing more to worry than a monster hangover.

And while we're at it, I make the following prediction: life in the year 2000 will be exactly the same as it is now, with the same joy and heartache, the same pleasures and pains; for the turning of the digits on the world's mileometer will not change a thing. Funny how often the future turns out to be surprisingly like the past.

Have you noticed that when politicians raid popular culture, they nearly always land themselves in a muddle? The latest MP to fall with both feet into this accommodating trap is Iain Duncan Smith, the Shadow Social Security Secretary.

Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Mr Duncan Smith attacked last week's Budget with the observation that New Labour has "all the hallmarks of a Bart Simpson Government: they are set on creating dysfunctional families and a dysfunctional society".

Whatever you think of the Budget, this seems unfair on Bart Simpson. It also sounds like the sort of misfired allusion made by someone who has heard that The Simpsons is rather popular, but has never actually seen an episode.

Anyone who had watched Matt Groenig's wondrous cartoon more closely would recognise that The Simpsons function very well as a family, supporting each other and sticking together in quarrelsome unity in order to best face a hostile world.

Beneath the slobbishness, the bickering and Homer's sporadic attempts to throttle his son, The Simpsons are a true and caring family.

As Bart might say if he'd been brought up a British Tory: "Eat my undergarments."

18/03/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.