The Guardian reports (July 20th) that the Chinese government is busy creating an individual profiling system for each and every Chinese citizen, a “social score” which will indicate who is a “desirable employee”, reliable tenant, valuable customer, their eligibility for a loan, whether they are shirkers or a “waste of time”. And, of course, who is enthusiastic about the rule of Xi – and who is not. Those sending their children to Canada and other Western countries for education (and foreign citizenship?) should be fearful.

The creation of suitable algorithms has allowed power-crazed regimes to create such a system, which removes privacy, choice and the right to be an individual with views of one’s own. And it can only work in a compliant system where leaders and politicians say “yes” to the Great Leader about everything. Authoritarians are popping up all over the world as half news is broadcast and only the line dictated by the Leader is allowed to prevail.

If there is anything less Epicurean I haven’t heard of it. Brexit is driven by those with authoritarian instincts (so it is said); the Republican party has transformed itself, and is a “yes-crowd” for a president uninterested in the nation as a whole. All news that is not praise-full of the “smartest dealmaker in history” is “fake news”.

I hate to be constantly harping on the dangers ahead of us, but all who support constitutional government and the decent treatment of everyone regardless of race, has to do his or her bit to fight for liberty and democracy against craven cowards and timeservers interested only in power and continued easy income. You know who I mean!