Here in the media, meanwhile, much of what used to be called journalism has morphed into angertainment, which is to say a bunch of shouting over who's to blame for this future of less.

Is International Women's Day today little more than an excuse for 'femvertising' as brands co-opt messages of equality and empowerment as means by which to flog us stuff?

And our march is regulated, said Mailey. There is a gradual release to accommodate it to the receptivity of mankind.

By then too Mozart's opera, from Da Ponte's libretto, had made Figaro a stock character in the European imaginary and set the whole Continent whistling Mozartian airs and chuckling at Figaresque humour.