Steve Palmer: Time has come for the meddling to stop and for wise old owls to be left to make their own decisions

Was life simpler before the invention of the internet when you didn't have access to answers to so many questions? Or have World Wide Web search engines made life easier by providing rapid advice and potential solutions? You can look at it in two ways, I suppose.

I went to my kitchen on Tuesday morning, made myself a nice cup of tea, then was carrying it back to my garden office when a fly flew into my beverage. In what I like to call the 'good old days', I would have fished the fly out with my right index finger, scraped it on to the nearest leaf, wished it well for the future, then proceeded to enjoy my brew. Simple times.

In the year 2026, though, I felt compelled to ask Mr Google whether I was safe to drink my tea, subjecting myself to all sorts of horror stories about the diseases the fly might be able to transmit, such as Salmonella and E. coli. In the 'good old days', E. Coli was merely an industrious middle-order batsman for the Indian cricket team, but in the 'bad new days' it is a potentially fatal bacteria.