Reasons to be...

Optimistic: youthful creativity; inventive uses of new technology; increased networking across national boundaries; a growing awareness of environmental issues that reaches beyond political parties…there must be more…

Pessimistic: the unwelcome assumption that we in the UK are ‘reluctant global citizens’ (what is actually meant is that we love to be global if it involves profit, travel and consumer benefit but we are still a bunch of racists); the idea that the execution of a political figure is a ‘milestone in democracy’ rather than a manifestation of barbaric interventionism.