I HOPE you’ve been stocking up on canned goods, because if yesterday’s front pages can be believed the end of the world is nigh.

PLASTIC BAGS CHAOS LOOMS, screamed the cover of the Daily Mail, surely the most hysterically British headline of all time, while the Daily Mirror risked causing mass panic with SUPERMARKET 5P-A-BAG CHAOS FEARS.

All this fuss around having to pay 5p for a carrier bag.

There’s something very British about causing a fuss about what is a fairly minor change.

Remember how the introduction of 24-hour licensing was going to lead to the breakdown of society?

I remember turning on the telly the evening the new licensing laws were introduced a decade or so ago and seeing one unfortunate reporter broadcasting live from some city centre or other and having to sheepishly admit that, no, nothing much was going on.

And how about the pub smoking ban?

For weeks and months beforehand smokers moaned they were being persecuted by being forced to go out into the fresh air to clog their lungs with tar, many citing the old “human rights” argument.

And then a week or so later it was as if this had always been the rules with only a few moaning their local didn’t smell quite as musty as it used to.

Five pence is not a lot of money by anyone’s standards, not to mention a lot of shops have been charging for bags for years and many people have been in the habit of bringing their own carriers with them when they go shopping anyway.

Who knows, this may even encourage a few more people to reuse carrier bags rather than chucking them in the cupboard and forgetting all about them like I always do.

It’s probably something to be thankful for that we live in a country in which paying 5p for carrier bags, our rugby team being a bit rubbish and a TV programme about baking dominate our front pages.

In other news, this is my final Fair Point – I’m off to sunny South Wales to report on political shenanigans at the Welsh Assembly.

Be excellent to one another.