The Mirror Crack'd

The Corn Laws used to be taught in English schools - I assume they still are - but evidently not in the United States if Donald Trump's tariffs announcement yesterday is anything to go by. This was apparently due to be made on the first of the month but, obviously fearing it might be taken for an April Fool's hoax, was pushed back a day. After all, even Donald Trump wouldn't be so stupid as to let a bad joke spook the markets and wreck the US economy. Would he? So, heralding 2nd April as 'Liberation Day' (for some reason I had thought, in the US context, that was 4th July, but what would I know) Trump announced a raft of import duties for all the world's exporters to the US, ranging from 10-50%.  These tariffs are billed as 'reciprocal' but, in Trumpian newspeak, that appears to have a different definition to the one offered by Webster's dictionary. In most cases, 'unilateral' would seem a more accurate description for what Trump envisages. F...

Sir Keir Starmer held a meeting in Downing Street recently to discuss the Netflix series, Adolescence,  with it's co-writer, Jack Thorne. The four-part series, highlighting the effect of 'toxic masculinity' and misogyny targeted at young boys on social media, aired recently and has caused a sensation, sparking a national debate. This is not the first time, though, that television drama has stirred the nation's conscience or created a succès de scandale . In 1966, a BBC Wednesday Play, Cathy Come Home , highlighted the issue of homelessness. Last year an ITV mini-series, Mr Bates vs the Post Office, forced politicians to address, and redress, the issue of postmasters and -mistresses wrongly accused of embezzlement due to a Fujitsu computer error, covered up for decades. Of course, popular culture has long exerted a social impact and created moral and political debate. Think of Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist , Charles Kingsley's  The Water-Babies , or Thomas Hardy...