As we approach the Christmas break, I struggle to think of a year in which I have had as little awareness of how close we are to Christmas Day and its festivities as I have had this year. I don’t think that feeling is unique to me.

So why might that be? There have been significant levels of work against Christmas and year-end deadlines, but that’s nothing new in my line of work and it will be the same for many others. Shopping online as opposed to visiting shops with their Christmas decorations and loops of Christmas music perhaps makes things feel more remote, but that’s been with us for some time. So my guess is that the season of goodwill is fighting a losing battle with the volume of conflict that’s all around us and which forms the bedrock of our news reporting.

It's not just the dreadful human cost of the wars being waged in Gaza and Ukraine, difficult to comprehend though they are in human terms. Politics in the United Kingdom and around the world have become polarised, with little acknowledgement in many cases of the existence of middle ground. Domestically, we have seen our politics become polarised by referenda, where the binary nature of the question being asked and voted on encourages the taking of absolute positions which has resulted in many cases in a lingering hostility. We have seen those who oppose the government, for example those who exercise legal rights by challenging the government in courts, dismissed as disruptive lefties and dangerous exponents of the creed of woke. We have seen all immigration as a concept being hammered, notwithstanding that the vast majority of immigrants who come to the UK have work permits issued by the government and a number of those who don’t have genuine reasons to seek a safe haven. We have seen peaceful demonstrators who have a wide variety of reasons for marching vilified in blanket terms as participators in terror marches. We have seen the Conservative Party rip itself into more factions than it may be possible to identify. And the UK is not unique in these traits-just look at the recent political history of the USA and some of the election results in Europe.

A difficulty with such polarised positions is that they disregard nuance, destroy respect and often obliterate compassion. It becomes very easy to apply labels to those who you oppose or criticise and bypass any kind of thought process as to why others are in the position that they are in or why it may be unfair to punish the many for the sins of the few. Without that understanding, finding genuine solutions to situations becomes harder, if not at times impossible.  Shining examples from history of those, such as Nelson Mandela, who have overcome difficulty using compassion and understanding seem less likely to prevail in the world as it is now.

As Ebeneezer Scrooge was made to see, a small amount of compassion and understanding can go a long way. So let’s follow his lead, and if we do, maybe our political leaders will be forced to follow us.

And with that hope, I wish you all the best for a happy Christmas and for the New Year.