As the news in Sydney grows bleaker with yet another vile knife attack in broad daylight, I’m finding I’m less in the mood to even follow the main international headlines as well.

It’s just upsetting and I am less inclined to absorb the news (or what passes for newsgathering) and subsequently perhaps have a talk about it with someone later in the day. It’s appalling when you see the latest insipid batch of useful woke-worriers screeching at a conservative pundit, ‘Fascist!’ and then turn to the camera and without any shame admit, ‘I don’t really know what a fascist is but it sort of sounds like the thing I should be calling him.’

Of course, I won’t hide the fact that I fear the geo-political outlook is not a rosy one. With the Iranian president disappearing into the fog of a helicopter accident, and the West still being asked to blindly accept the peculiar scenario of the Ukraine conflict as a totally unwarranted incursion by some kind of Hitlerian madman, let alone the turmoil ahead as the US populace goes to the federal elections in November, you get the feeling almost anything could happen anytime.

Oh well. I hear even Dickie Dawkins is calling himself a ‘cultural Christian’ now. Will wonders never cease?