Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.

There is enough oil in the ground to deep-fry the lot of us, and no obvious means to prevail upon governments and industry to leave it in the ground.

Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?

It does not matter whether we burn fossil fuels with malice or with love. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, it is not concerned. It is a collection of gases.

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whether it serves any useful purpose. They regard it as a sacred duty to encourage the country’s most revolting spectacle: the annual feeding frenzy in which shoppers queue all night, then stampede into the shops, elbow, trample and sometimes fight to be the first to carry off some designer junk which will go into landfill before the sales next year. The madder the orgy, the greater the triumph of economic management.

So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed - it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

The institutions founded 'to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war' have failed. Since the end of WW2, some thirty million people have been killed in armed conflict. Most of them were civilians.