Naturally, it stands to reason that the first time I've been ill in years happens to be the same week the world decides to set itself on fire.

Or at least pretend to, but we'll get to that.

Maduro has been kidnapped. Iran teeters on the edge of an old-fashioned colour revolution with a new Shah waiting in the wings, there's talk of British troops on the ground in Ukraine and a US invasion of Greenland.

The New Year has dawned on a world bursting into chaos.

But is it genuine chaos? Or contrived chaos?

Regular readers know I would tend towards the latter. Fundamentally, I cannot reconcile the two worlds with which we are presented.

On the one hand, we have a set of nation-states wholly in concert on almost all the broader issues. They all work together to promote pandemics and climate catastrophes; they synchronise in passing near-identical legislation to tackle the same non-existent or heavily exaggerated problems.

They all have central banks "printing" fake money, they all have so-called "free-market" capitalism (in reality, a construct of state-protected monopolies that siphon public money into the private sector).

They all agree to pretend that Covid is a thing and the vaccines are safe and the climate is changing and the internet will be nothing but snuff films and child pornography if they don't put a digital surveillance chip in everyone's brain as soon as possible

Central bank digital currency, digital identity, genetically modified food…All of this is resolved supranational policy.

They tell the same lies to serve the same ends. They are all the same.

And yet, on the other hand, we're told they cannot work out a single territorial or political conflict or disagreement in anything but the most crude, base or violent ways.

Nowhere is the clash of apparent cooperation vs reported conflict more apparent than nuclear war – or rather the lack thereof. India and Pakistan went to war (briefly). Both reportedly have nukes, neither used them. The US is seizing Russian tankers in the Caribbean and the UK is considering putting British troops on the ground in Ukraine.