All of nationalism can be understood as a kind of collective narcissism.

I didn't much like being in Parliament physically. I found it a bit depressing. It's very dark and heavy. I like being out and about.

The most dynamic cities have always been immersed in the critical innovations of their time.

A tablet replacing an exercise book is not innovation, it's just a different way to make notes.

So is civil society prepared for the future? Probably not. Most organisations have to live hand to mouth, juggling short-term funding and perpetual minor crises. Even the bigger ones rarely get much time to stand back and look at the bigger picture. Many are on a treadmill chasing after contracts and new funding.

Science is, rightly, searching for drugs to arrest ageing or to slow the advance of dementia. But the evidence suggests that many of the most powerful factors determining how you age come from what you do, and what you do with others: whether you work, whether you play music, whether you have regular visitors.

The once-science-fiction notion of hyper-connectivity - where we are all constantly connected to social networks and other bubbling streams of digital data - has rapidly become a widespread reality.