I AM not filled with optimism I look into the New Year. 2016 reminds me of my own mortality as I look back at all the people we lost.

They were a significant number of the people who have formed part of my life: Terry Wogan and Leonard Cohen to mention only two.

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I also see a growth of conflict and division in our world. Whatever you think about the victories of Brexit and Donald Trump, they have set people against each other at a very basic level.

The debates have prized prejudice and simple answers to complex questions in a way which is bad for the health of our democracy.

I have a lot of sympathy with the idea of a revolt against “elites”, but not when it isn’t based on real understanding of the way the world works. I like it even less when that debate doesn’t give any respect to people who have different ideas and opinions.

People may well have different ideas and priorities from mine: that doesn’t make them bad or corrupt.

There are some elements of this sort of easy prejudice in reactions to what is called “inter-generational conflict”, which is the idea that all older people are in some way part of a deliberate conspiracy against younger people.

It’s a silly idea which doesn’t have much basis in reality, but it’s gaining support.

A generation or two before today’s older people, there was a different approach.

The Workingmen’s Library and Reading Rooms up the road from where I live; trades unions and church group; political parties – all involved millions of men.

At a later stage the Townswomen’s Guilds and Women’s Institutes involved millions of women.

They learned the habits of political debate, looking for evidence and arguments, listening to people who disagreed and still were friends, respecting them and looking for the compromises that enabled them to agree on what needed to be done.

We have lost that experience of participation, respect and compromise. Politics happens on TV through childish and empty clashes on Question Time or the sound-bites that take the place of argument.

We will be the losers if our children and grand-children fail to learn about political participation and the idea of respect for opponents even when they are wrong!

Perhaps we should be passing on some of the lessons our grandparents taught us.