Hrkn to .. Thought for the Week

We're looking forward to a significant step forward towards inter-generational rebalancing as a result of Share Alliance's two-day conference in May: the first day focused on academic research and the second on policy options. Please let us know if you're interested by visiting this 'Save the Date' page. This will hopefully be a refreshing contrast to the mix of nostalgia and charisma which seems...

Trump's assault on Venezuela casts a major question mark over his claim to be a peacemaker — resorting to military action to deal with criminal activity is a poor substitute for international law and order. We urgently need to listen to Xi Jinping's call for global leadership — on a new basis of participation, not domination. Background music: 'World's Sunrise' by Jimena Contreras Image source: Wi...

There's not much love being shared between Russia and Ukraine this Christmas. Putin calls for respect, but respect for others doesn't come naturally for him. Meanwhile, it's time that Rutger Bregman should see evolution as the essential process of continuous creation driven by our conscious creator who is unconditional love. Background music: 'O Holy Night' by DJ Williams Share Radio webpage for l...

The first year of Trump's Mark 2 presidency has seen huge swings in critical areas for the future of humanity, including climate change, the risk of existential conflict and wealth polarisation. Where are the statesmen who can look ahead further than the next election, and at the interests of future generations? And is Rutger Bregman right to claim that a moral revolution can be delivered by natio...

Few would disagree with St. John's conclusion that the nature of our conscious creator — of God — is love. In the Christian faith, it's at the heart of the two great commandments and inspires the whole amazing journey against all odds. But the word is totally absent from the Nicene Creed, repeated each Sunday in Churches. Christmas is the time to celebrate love in all its many splendours, but part...

Labour MPs' celebration of the Chancellor's abolition of the 2-child welfare benefit cap in last week's Budget statement completely eclipsed the outstanding need for a comprehensive strategy to address the economic and familial stresses impacting children, adolescents and young adults: so much worse than a few decades ago. We focus on three specifics in this commentary: the continuing denial of Go...

Is it the cacophony of everyday noise or the fact that 'a week is a long time in politics' which is driving long-term thinkers out of the centre ground? You know that the emperor has no clothes today when young people make that challenge. However, the major long-term issues of climate change, intense wealth differentials and geopolitical tensions are global, not just national — and we don't even h...

Unemployment is not just an economic scourge — it also substantially undermines mental well-being, as Tom Paxton described so vividly in his 1964 song, 'A Job of Work'. Universal Basic Income offers a very inadequate substitute, as voters in Hamburg have shown. Automation is however, an indisposable part of modern life — again, Tom Paxton warned of this sixty years ago. As we commented three weeks...

Universal publicly-funded welfare, including health care and education, has proved a very expensive Marxist experiment in western democracies. Far from resolving the challenge of eliminating poverty and disadvantage, it has loaded a huge debt burden on public finances which Rachel Reeves needs to address in the forthcoming UK Budget. But there is no point in loading still more income and capital t...

This commentary takes stock of all things 'Share' as at Autumn 2025. The Share Foundation has made substantial progress: it's enabled over 100,000 young people to claim nearly £ ¼ billion of Child Trust Funds, and the relatively modest £200 central government grant for opening Junior ISAs for young people in care is enabling substantial local contributions to be raised, accompanied by significant...

General Data Protection Regulation was introduced in 2016, but it's already past its sell-by date. With 56% of UK web browsers choosing to accept all cookies, there's plenty of data available for harvesting by tech businesses, while that and creativity is throughly exploited by AI. Meanwhile, employment opportunities for young people are steadily reducing, while data protection restrictions are ci...

(Prince) Andrew is not alone in undergoing a seismic fall from grace which has been amplified by a prolonged absence of remorse and contrition: politicians, senior business people and church leaders have all walked this path. Personal failure is an endemic part of humanity, but we need to accept when things have gone wrong and search for reconcilation. Not easy, but the alternative is escalation r...

Politicians of all parties seem to think that we can both cut immigration and achieve significantly higher economic growth, notwithstanding the fact that there would be no population growth from which it would come: artificial growth from short-term policies such as public sector 'investment' stimulation is not the answer. After 75 years during which the world's human population has quadrupled, an...

Conscience has challenged humanity for millenia: so much so that its entry on Wikipedia includes 22,000 words. However securing that moral yardstick is not easy, whether you are guided by faith or not. Meanwhile, what was personal has become societal, while technology and what appear to be victimless crimes promote amorality. The Christian faith has struggled with understanding the fluid nature of...

We all benefit from a blend of guidance, reaction and experience in our journey through life, and most of all in those formative years of childhood and adolescence. However, as David Willetts wrote 15 years ago in 'The Pinch', the link between generations is getting ever more stretched. Experience should not have to bear the full weight of the absence of guidance and reaction as family structures...

There's a strange convergence of aggression which is drawing both international conflict and personal hatred into the mainstream; social media bears considerable responsibility for this convergence, and Donald Trump's combination of his calls for peace while posting aggressive messages on Truth Social really don't help. There's a very straightforward instruction in the gospel of St. Matthew, to lo...

Rather than seek global convergence, nation states are digging in deeper in all the three areas that conspire to drive them apart — conflict, threats and re-armament; climate change; and massive wealth differentials. The United Nations was designed to provide a route for resolving these differences, but it's not working. It's time to step forward and provide it with democratic legitimacy, so that...

Government inaction is rooted in Civil Service reticence. It's not a recent phenomenon; it inspired 'Yes Minister' forty years ago, much to Margaret Thacher's amusement. But when it frustrates a Labour Government's abiity to deliver a key policy of its predecessor such as Child Trust Funds, that's a different matter. At the start of Boris Johnson's premiership, Dominic Cummings sought to control H...

If buyers of government bonds fear potential default, they require significantly higher yields to offset that risk. For bonds already issued, that means much lower prices — and big losses for holders, especially if the bonds are long-dated. For new bonds being issued, governments have to pay a much higher interest rate, significantly increasing their current deficit and requiring still more taxati...

The rate at which scientific discoveries such as electricity, flight, radio communication and computing have been made has been accelerating since that great inventor and artist, Leonardo da Vinci. However others have also left in their wake a legacy of redundancies: some, like the canal network, bring unanticipated pleasure, but others, including hydrocarbons, are leaving a real mess to clear up....

The Gordian Knot is an ancient Greek legend of an immensely complex knot ‘so tightly entangled that it was impossible to see how it was fastened’. Whoever succeeded in releasing it was destined to rule all of Asia: that task was achieved by Alexander the Great. Today’s Gordian Knots — conflict, climate change and the polarisation of wealth — are all critical to the future of humanity, but they all...

It's a long and lonely road for over 100,000 young people in care throughout the UK. Local Authorities and foster carers do everything possible to help with their journey through adolescence, but disrupted education and insecurity often leads up to a cliff-edge entry to adulthood at 18. In a stable family setting, parents provide resources and life skills, and help build the attitudinal transforma...

Herd mentality among humans is amply demonstrated in family, sport and business, but collective self-interest becomes more threatening in politics and particularly in international relations. Developing an individual perspective on life is central to freedom, but it needs to be accompanied by a generosity of spirit in order to respect the right of 'each to their own' among others. Background music...

Our fast-moving world throws up continual challenges; genetic modification is among the latest, and we continually need to contend with the rights and wrongs of Artificial Intelligence. Setting limits is a key part of modern life: not everything that can be done, should be done. In respect of climate change, western democracies struggled hard to set limits in the first place; but they have found i...

Italy is not alone in experiencing a massive fall in its birth rate over recent years: so has the United Kingdom. Lowering the voting age to 16 is all very well, but it needs to be accompanied by a raft of co-ordinated policies to help young adults towards family formation and independent living. Rural villages, where house prices are so often well out of reach for young people, provide a clear li...