With the death of Pope Francis, the world loses not only a church leader but also a moral compass
Western bombs on Syria are nothing but a distraction
For governments in crisis, paranoia and misinformation are great weapons to avert our attention away from their mistakes, writes ALAN SIMPSON

THE postman was late. My dog pooped in the street. Local schools face budget cuts. The Windrush generation have their citizenship rights threatened and terrorists are everywhere. And the link? It’s all the fault of the Russians.
Such is the state of meltdown in national politics that paranoia and misinformation form the principal “avoidance” weapons the Tories now have for deflecting attention from the mess they are in.
As Judgement Day approaches in the Brexit debacle, government deflections will become all the more bizarre.
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