And the winner is…….

oscar

 

 

 

It’s an annual occasion tailored out of extravagance, excessive emotion, self-congratulation and self-deception; strangely appropriate to the state of the nation itself, if its new President is a bellwether. Perhaps unsurprisingly the man himself is reputed to abhor the whole business, owing to Hollywood’s leftish leanings, or perhaps in reality because he is a luvvie himself but can never win the coveted statue. The winners will speak as if with authority – just like him and spare no tears for anyone, if it makes good copy.

The fourth and fifth estates

Whether Thomas Carlyle or Edmund Burke should have the credit for the original use of the expression , the fourth estate, it is now used Stateside to refer to the ‘regular’ meeja, alongside the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. The fifth estate, which began life in the ’60s, is the new meeja: special interests, social media and of course you and me – the bloggers.

carlyle

Carlyle

Isn’t it interesting that President Trump seems to ignore the (no doubt already blurred) boundaries between the fourth and fifth, to the extent that this happened yesterday at a press meeting, as reported by the Grauniad?

‘Outlets seeking to gain entry whose requests were denied included the Guardian, the New York Times, Politico, CNN, BuzzFeed, the BBC, the Daily Mail and others. Conservative publications such as Breitbart News, the One America News Network and the Washington Times were allowed into the meeting, as well as TV networks CBS, NBC, Fox and ABC. The Associated Press and Time were invited but boycotted the briefing.’

Does that infringe the First Amendment? Or does Trump’s idea of ‘fake news’ justify his actions?

The Caviar Bottler

The great abortion that is Holyrood is all abuzz. For the first time, the Scottish “Parliament” is preparing to exercise its semi-independent tax policy. Scottish Labour and the Limp Dims, predictably, couldn’t see an opportunity to put up tax rates they didn’t like. The fragrant Greens were chomping at the bit at the chance to impose a 60pc tax rate on those earning over £150,000 pa. The Scots Tories were quite sensibly arguing that making Scotland an even dearer place to live and do business was probably not the soundest approach to take. Continue reading “The Caviar Bottler”