A happy new year to one and all.

I hope that you had a pleasant and peaceful Christmas and that the turkey was worth it’s ultimate sacrifice.

So, it’s a new year.

Time, then, for the annual list of resolutions. What’s it going to be this year? Will you give up smoking or drink less alcohol? Take more exercise or go on a diet?

Will this year’s list be the one to remember, or will it just be the same-old same-old, or in other words, a waste of time?

So let’s try another old favourite. The three wishes.

If you found an old lamp in the attic and gave it a rub, what would you ask the genie for?

Would the odds-on favourite for wish number one be to win the lottery?

No chance. A quick check on Google gives the chances of winning the jackpot with six correct numbers as one chance in 46 million.

Now try and put that into perspective.

In round figures, if the population of the Isle of Man is 85,000, it would take eleven Isle of Man’s to make a million. This would mean that for your number to come up, win the lottery you have one chance in 500 populations of the Isle of Man.

Don’t give up the day job.

In reverse order, these would by my three wishes.

Number three would be to have a TV channel without adverts or repeats.

Second would to be better at maths and my biggest wish would be to have the number 23 bus back.

This January, we don’t just have a new year, we start a new decade. And what a decade it promises to be.

The world-wide problem of climate change is not going to be solved easily and it most certainly is not just going to go away.

I think we have left things too late.

On the one hand, some scientists and environmentalists have carefully explained that decisions have to be made and lifestyles have to change. We have used and abused our planet to such an extent that unless we sit up and take notice of the facts immediately, it will be too late to reverse the process.

But other experts tell us that those prophets of doom are wrong, and as far as they are concerned, everyone should be allowed to have their share of the benefits and goodies that they deserve.

But who or what is right? Is it prophets or profits that we should take notice of?

At one time, not so long ago, it was the hole in the ozone layer that was getting the blame.

But then we began to learn the truth. Indisputable facts such as both of the polar ice caps melting with the rate of the melt accelerating and the coral reefs dying and dying quicker as time goes on.

Worldwide weather patterns are changing.

Tropical storms are getting worse and more frequent and, closer to home, farms and towns are being flooded by what would once have been classified as a one-in-a-hundred-years occurances. They now seem to occur every year.

Rain forests are being cleared to make grazing land for beef herds, oceans are being fished to extinction to produce feed for poultry and the fossil fuel reserves are being used to pollute the atmosphere by our bigger and faster cars and planes.

World wildlife is being hunted, destroyed or eaten to satisfy whatever greed we invent and genetically modified crops are seeing off the very insects that we rely on to pollinate them.

The final word on environmental suicide must go to the Australian Prime inister who, at the height of his country’s on-going disaster took his family on their annual holiday.

His vast country is rapidly burning to the ground but he has decided to allow the world famous Sydney new year firework display to go ahead as normal.

It has already been paid for.

That’s OK then.