I take my special notebook down from the shelf, smooth it open at the right page and make the latest addition to the list.

“TransPennine Express, with a punctuality rate for its train arrivals of around only 47 per cent, is providing a therapy dog for stressed commuters”. I rule – with a ruler and everything – a firm black line under it. I have proved my thesis (at least to my own satisfaction and honestly, since I hit 50, that’s the only person’s satisfaction I’m remotely interested in).

What thesis, I hear you cry. This one: that we unwittingly at some point in recent history lived through the very last time the root cause of anything was tackled by anyone.

I think it occurred within living memory, but nobody – sweet, naïve, complacent fools that we were – noticed and the annals have failed to record what will appear as the years go on like an increasingly momentous event.

We thought this approach to problems was natural, innate, or so intimately linked to........

© iNews