Thoughtful stuff and I am sympathetic. Change in our society is up to us, we all have to take responsibility for what we do, and make it work, but I do agree the media narrative tends to focus obsessively on figureheads in the form of senior politicians, but also bigger businesses more than they should given we live in a society where many people get through the day without worrying about either.

However, government, when deployed well, can make everybody better off and is important. While there is a legitimate debate as to where boundaries of it should be – we need it to work, and in some areas it is our only option.

I say this as a prelude to the value of politicians. Good politicians can help make sure the direction of travel is in line with one broadly supported by the public – and challenge those who actually need to deliver it to follow through. That includes us the wider public sometimes – I am sure I am not the only one who has been personally inspired to make small changes as a result of being challenged to do so by a politician.

We also really need to hold those with power accountable, and politicians should in theory have the skills and incentives to be good at that, but in the UK, it is way lower than in other systems. I always found it quite remarkable that I would work on a policy area, where members of the team, would debate amougst themselves which options would really work or be worth the hassle. And then once announced – remarkably little challenge from outside, or indeed even tricky questions, MPs don’t generally want to annoy ministers, opposition MPs for the most part seem to find getting stuck into much detail boring, interested pressure groups generally want to be seen as constructive, while academics tend to quickly go back to their research.

But it is amazing how often the media narrative simply ignores most of the substance. I have seen basic mistakes be corrected in the hundreds of millions of pounds, with no comment whatsoever, with front page drama over lobbying over much smaller sums. I’ve often seen papers, that took months of careful work by civil servants and ministers to produce, setting detailed plans for change, with the evidence for the options discarded as well as chosen, committing huge sums of OUR money – and get almost zero mainstream media coverage, outside perhaps of a small story in inside pages of the FT, which I think should get a partial honourable exemption from your comments, as it covers business quite well as well, at least the bigger fish, although it takes time to catch up with real innovation.

The only way the world will change is when its citizens make those changes, but too many want an easy out, and they want politicians to pass legislation that will fix all our problems.

We both know that’s not going to happen any time soon.