It’s August bank holiday – the end of the summer holidays and the beginning of autumn. Keats wrote, ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’, not ‘Season of soggy cereal crops’. You used to know where you were with the seasons. Not any more. Everything’s topsy-turvy, seasonally. We’ve had warm winters and soggy summers, early springs and late autumns. The birds and beasts don’t know if they’re coming or going. There are lots more bugs about, because there haven’t been the hard frosts to kill them off, while seabirds off the Scottish coast have failed to breed because the small prey they feed on have all swum north in the milder seas. We may not face the same sort of flooding as those unfortunate people in Cornwall did the other week, but the seas are rising, and our Suffolk coastline is retreating.

Anyone who says it’s nothing to do with global warming could be right, but if they’re not, and we could do something to put things right, we should. You can’t gloat while you’re afloat. The Government isn’t doing enough to change things, which is understandable. The electorate is unwilling to change so it’s a vote-loser, being environmentally friendly.

Will your grandchildren and great-grandchildren (if you have any) thank you for your complacency, or will they be too busy struggling in a world that’s too dry in some places, too wet in others, while insurance premiums have gone sky-high?

We usually save up new resolutions for New Year, but, as all good hippies used to recite in the sixties, this is the first day in the rest of your life. Our small planet needs you. It needs all of us to be more ingenious, more considerate, to conserve energy, and to think in terms of sustainability. Don’t blame the weather – blame our lifestyle, then let’s change it. This is a non-party-political broadcast, asking you to consider the future, whether the weather be fine, or not.