David Hughes enjoyed a long career as a secondary-school teacher and his pupils used to say of him that although he was not always right, by golly he was never wrong. He is certainly never one to follow fashions blindly or to accept without thinking the views of those around him. He is always prepared to listen carefully to the arguments of others. He likes a good debate. He is always asking questions. Here he expounds the common-sense ideas he has formed about humankind and the world of today and he attempts to explain why so many of the changes he has seen during his lifetime have not been for the better.