IF you’re reading this in the pub, your living room or on the 503 bus then the world hasn’t ended.

However, if you’re reading this on an iPad while sat on a cloud then it probably has.

I would say reading the paper rather than iPad but I’m not sure you can get an Examiner in heaven – having spoken to our circulation manager it appears we don’t have a newsagent there.

Why would the world have ended?

Well, it appears the back end of 2012 is a time for lunatics everywhere to gather and spread their half-baked conspiracy theories on the web.

As well as being significant because it contains 12/12/12 it appears yesterday’s numerical consistency can be interpreted as some sort of harbinger of doom.

But it’s the big one next weekend – the real apocalypse.

Apparently next Friday is when we shuffle off this mortal coil, according to the Mayan Calendar.

Trust the world to end on a bloomin’ Friday. It can’t be a Monday morning can it?

No, we have to work all week and then when you think “I’ll put my feet up” it’s blammo and you’re knocked off your perch.

Why can’t the world end at about 6am on a Monday?

You could have a nice weekend and still be in bed when it all goes boom.

Anyway it’s December 21 when the Mayan ‘long-count’ calendar comes to an end.

It’s been ticking down for more than 5,000 years to next Friday.

Despite the fact that the Mayans couldn’t predict the winner of the 2.15pm at Haydock on a wet Wednesday in 1997 there are enough people in the world who believe that our Meso-American ancestors got it on the button.

In places less enlightened than Huddersfield (and, no, I don’t mean Burnley) there have been rushes on candles, petrol and canned foodstuffs.

What good a scented Glade number, a gallon of unleaded and a tin of spaghetti hoops will be when the balloon goes up I don’t know.

In the USA (where would we be without them?) a chap who sells underground survival shelters says his business is brisk in the run up to next Friday.

He even says: “I don’t have an opinion on the Mayan calendar but when astrophysicists come to me, buy my shelters and tell me to be prepared for solar flares, radiation, EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) I’m going underground on the 19th and coming out on the 23rd. It’s just in case anybody’s right.”

Definitely not hyping it up to flog more stuff then. Definitely not.

If you’re thinking about getting a flight to somewhere nice to take in the end of the world in style you may struggle.

It appears there are sites where you may survive the oncoming rapture.

Bugarach in the south of France and Sirince in Turkey are places where some believers think they may dodge doomsday.

I’ve actually been to Sirince and it was quite nice. Some people believe it’s the place that Mary, as in Mary and Joseph and Jesus, ascended to heaven.

I can’t comment on that but I’m sure you’ll be safe there next Friday.

But you’ll be equally safe in Birmingham, Bogota or Bradley.

Why am I so confident that I’ll still be here toiling away?

Two words: Y2K bug.