Something I keep hearing from older people (and have also found myself repeating) is the phrase:
“I wouldn’t like to be a youngster in these present times.”

How glad and relieved we all are that we don’t have to cope with the pressures, problems and challenges facing young people in the 2020’s. And as I reflect on the point of view of these cogitating codgers who are my contemporaries, I find myself asking:

How is it possible that we, as bright young things growing up with the world at our feet in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, emerging from the rigours of post-war austerity and, although rebelling against them, still imbued with the ethics and ideals that drove our parents and grandparents, could make such a cock-up of the world?

How could we get it so wrong?

Were our eyes fixed too firmly on material progress, so that we failed to…