FROM the Big Bang, it has taken 13.8 billion years of chain reactions to reach Brexit. How long will it take the human race to run out of money, compassion, and time?

During my recent stay with elderly relatives, they told me of their time living/working in Saudi Arabia, and how Fridays were a day when the public could watch hands and heads being chopped off for various crimes. In Britain’s Dark Ages, it was thought that the harsher the punishment, the greater the deterrent.

Also, during my visit, I helped my relatives with chores they couldn't manage, eg, removed autumn leaves, etc, from their gutters. Come the Saturday, we were housebound due to storm Deirdre. A consequence of global warming? Did I clean the gutters in the nick of time?

Come Sunday, and better weather, I went shopping for them, where I saw the Daily Echo headline, ‘Teens held after more city fires’.

Why did the teens light the fires, and what will their punishment be? No doubt some people (in believing "an eye for an eye") would like to see them burnt at the stake! If so, shouldn’t ALL drivers who break speed limits also be burnt at the stake?

For doesn’t breaking speed limits amount to the unlawful burning of fossil fuel, ie, the unlawful (full-gas) burning, both of gas and of rubber, (much like the unlawful dumping of toxic waste) which in turn increase global temperatures and causes wildfires? And, aren’t they astronomically more destructive than fires lit by ‘wayward’ teens, perhaps born out of abuse, neglect and poor education? That is a chain reaction caused by government cuts!

Accordingly, isn’t it time for the so-called civilised world to consider what so-called progress has done to the world’s poor and disadvantaged, and what the human race's – or should I say rat race's – addiction to greed and speed will do for the abused and neglected teens of the future?

If people ‘blessed’ with high IQs believe in breaking speed limits, ie ‘pouring petrol on the fire’, what chance do people have if they’ve been ‘blessed’ with a low IQ, eg 70, which equates to borderline deficiency? A cat's chance in hell?

Allan Ramsay

Southampton