we are all susceptible. I don't do social media but I do search with Google and buy from Amazon and have a Tesco and Coop reward card, plus my bank know what I buy with my cards. I regularly get targeted with similar things to ones I have just bought. Amazon make their money on selling data not goods, so do Google and I suspect so do my bank and the supermarkets I use. George Orwell talked about double speak and ministry of truth in 1984. It seems to be happening.

Russia will never be a super power its economy is too small, but it can be a kingsize (or should that be tsar size?) pain in the arse, which it is currently. So it punches above its weight in terms of the impact it has on the world stage by clever tactics, misinformation, money laundering, sponsoring terrorism and bombing women and children - pretty much the same as most other powers. But while the west was busy in the Middle East, Russia upped the ante by improving on its cyber and disruptional abilities. For a dysfunctional state run by gangsters and psychopaths, it achieves quite a lot in terms of pissing off the rest of the world as they will with president for life, gangster and head psycho, Putin. Like North Korea, just because their leaders is crazy doesn't mean he's stupid. The recent atrocity by Russia on two of its people in Salisbury recently shows that it has got away with 'murder' as undoubtedly the victims will succumb from the effects of the nerve gas, sooner or later. The same is true of Kim il sung (or whatever his name is) when he had his half brother killed. Also their people are brainwashed with the propaganda that the west destroyed the Soviet Union, rather than greed, corruption and general stupidity, and is looking to do the same to Russia. This shows a complete ignorance of capitalism, which only destroys what it can no longer exploit for profit.This sort of brain washing is what brings us to Cambridge Analytica.

The problem with firms like Cambridge Analytica is that they have no scruples, their only function is to make money for their directors or clients, they are true mercenaries. Their activities have contributed to social upheaval in both Britain and America because their clients wanted it, the old story of divide and conquer. That these countries were ripe for it shows the negligence of previous administrations who seemed to permit the exploitation of everything by their rich friends increasing the financial divide, making the rich, richer and the poor, even poorer. Enabling real pay rates to fall at the bottom end of the scale and directors pay to rocket. Some CEOs now earn 2000 times what the shop floor worker takes home - how can that be fair, and such greed will have consequences borne of the resentment it engenders.

The consequences are Brexit and Trump, both are kami kaze acts by otherwise sensible voters. Life in the next decade or so will be very interesting but also very volatile. I hope we all survive it, which is probably less certain now than it was two years ago.