Now, everyone has an opinion

Funny to think, there used to be a time when you weren’t force fed the opinions of EVERYONE YOU KNEW regarding the big issues of the day.

Quite specifically, that time was before the invention of social media. Opinions used to be the preserve of people like me with newspaper columns, even though we didn’t always have one.

No danger of that if you’re on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

It used to be, if you met friends in the pub or elsewhere, someone might dare venture a fleeting opinion on a topical matter – preferably a trivial one – before being silenced and told to stop being so serious.

Nowadays, it seems almost everyone I know is an authority on either geo-politics or the cuteness of the new John Lewis advert. Sometimes both, if you’re able to combine a pathological hatred of Donald Trump with a fondness for trampolining animals in one pithy sentence. The topics are obviously subject to change, depending on world events (like whoever’s released a TV advert that week).

The US president-elect remains the predominant obsession of pretty much all media. We seem to be enjoying a full breakdown of Trump’s sleeping patterns, mealtimes and preferred TV viewing. It’s like having to endure a permanent running commentary from a Big Brother-style TV show devoted entirely to Donald Trump.

Clinton herself has blamed the FBI and the whole email thing for her election loss.

She also seemed to spend a bit too much time gleefully introducing appearances by celebrity backers.

Trump’s simple chorus of ‘Build The Wall! Drain The Swamp!’ obviously captured the imagination of US voters more than Clinton’s rather lame catchphrase: “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Katy Perry!”