I know four US presidents have been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy) and two more shot (Roosevelt and Reagan) but their security services surely overreacted a bit for Biden’s European tour to Rome and Glasgow this month. Five aircraft including a 747 (Airforce One), and a few Globemasters carrying helicopters and up to 85 vehicles, including two “Beasts” one as a decoy. The flights alone emitted about a thousand tonnes of CO2. Some irony there. I suppose that’s one way of showing who’s boss.

COP26 finished only a day late with the issue of the “Glasgow Climate Pact”. Was this a kiss from Glasgow to the planet, or a Glasgow Kiss from the last chance saloon? The communique has 97 clauses each starting with a key phrase eg; noting, or acknowledging, or appreciating or welcoming or urging. Precious few start with deciding, so reading this list of mainly non-binding platitudes and truisms it is difficult not to agree with the Swedish teenage scourge of world politicians, Greta Thunberg, that its all blah, blah, blah – especially as China’s president Xi and Russia’s president Putin didn’t even attend - they voted with their feet and stayed at home.