In amongst all the poverty and despair and general horribleness endemic in today’s torrid world, the Hollywood elite in their ivory tower were rocked to the core last weekend when a competition for best movie went briefly and mildly astray and it was even suggested that Vladimir Putin, not content with supposedly rigging the US election also had firm views on cinema and in particular the hit musical La-La-Land. I guess that the KGB must have a lot of time on their hands these days if that’s the case. The film itself isn’t my cup of tea, but for a feared intelligence operation, hacking the Oscars is little more than a glorified form of posting anonymous comments on the Daily Mail’s website.

And talking of La-La-Land, Jeremy Corbyn has been dancing around the issue of whether last week’s bi election results are a sign for him to go. And the same is largely true in the UKIP camp following their loss in Stoke as well as comments made about the Hillsborough disaster. Of course Nigel Farage and Douglas Carswell, not content to sit back, have also been very keen to make sure that their disagreements are as visible and publicly embarrassing as possible. Still, there’s an old expression about “the tyranny of the status quo” and I imagine that nobody will resign, at least until the next inevitable bi-election happens and it’s all too late. On the other hand, there’s also that other old expression that “a week is a long time in politics” so perhaps this is the penultimate time I’ll be sketching Jeremy Corbyn which would be a shame. Oh yeah, and in America there’s been some more news about Jeff Sessions and Russia and yada-yada, it’s not really “news” now is it, so much as an ongoing damage limitation exercise…