A statement from Fox said that the settlement “reflected its commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” which is interesting because it shows that the company can’t really have any idea what any of the words mean. Schadenfreude was, however, one term that all the other networks clearly understood. CNN’s Jake Tapper said that this part of the statement was “difficult to say with a straight face.” He made little attempt to do this.

The situation could have been worse as the sum was about half what Dominion was asking for. Both sides clearly felt that the lottery of a court case would be unwelcome with the stakes that high. The fact that Fox was prepared to get the chequebook out to that extent shows what a poor case it had; also, its reluctance to have its editorial decision-making process examined in court.

The problem, as the documents released when the case was lodged show, is there don’t seem to be any editorial decision-making, at least not for editorial reasons. Audience retention, advertising revenues, political dogma and malice all seem to test far higher. A depressingly large number of Americans still believe the 2020 result was a steal (although most seem to find it hard to produce any evidence from a credible source: PolitiFact reported in 2022 that when Republicans were asked on what their misgivings were based, “the majority” cited the utterances of Donald Trump). The majority, however, do not believe this: the released documents show that none of Fox’s staff really believed them either. What was important was to make this the story for their viewers.

This would seem to make Fox a less sinister but far sadder organisation than it might have appeared before: for here we have a case not of a media group controlling its viewers but something that looks very much like vice versa. Other litigation looms with another company, Smartmatic, claiming $2.7bn. With this precedent so painfully fresh in the mind, Fox’s lawyers can’t be viewing the next round with any enthusiasm. Nor can Rupert Murdoch.

He’s got form on this, of course. Back in the late 1980s, The Sun published a series of articles about Elton John which everyone knew were baseless and, more importantly, unverifiable. In a similar last-minute settlement just before the curtain went up on the courtroom drama, the two sides settled, The Sun paying Elton John £1m in damages.

Picking a fight with a pop star is one thing. Peddling a distorted version of a major political event of international interest is something quite different. Do we have media groups in the UK which do this as a matter of policy? Some say that the BBC is a hotbed of pinko liberals. Over the last year or so we’ve heard Tory politicians favouring phrases like “anti-growth coalition” and the “Guardian-reading, tofu-eating wokerati” but none of these vague terms of political knock-about is directed from, or against, a particular media group. One comparative newcomer, GB News, hasn’t, as some predicted, sunk without trace and has the ambition of being the country’s “number one news channel” by 2028. Most of our national papers have some kind of political bias. Brexit and Covid presented many opportunities for all media groups to get their version of the truth in our faces but they were largely dealing in allegations that were either general, hard to prove or may in some cases have been correct. Accusing a large corporation of being a conspirator in distorting the election results of the most powerful country in the world is a whole different thing.

• The only comparable case I can think of was years and years ago with the Sunday Sport. It ran a story claiming that a number 109 London Routemaster bus had been found at the South Pole with Elvis Presley at the wheel, or something like that. A journalist from another paper asked the owners how such an obvious piece of nonsense could qualify as news. “We’re not saying that this actually happened,” the MD replied, “merely that it was alleged.” Who alleged it? the journalist asked. “Well,’ the MD replied, “we did.” Fox News clearly learned this lesson all too well. What the Sunday Sport realised, though, is that if you are going to make up idiotic stories, better to aim them at a dead singer who can’t sue rather than an angry corporation which can.

• SNP politician Katie Forbes earlier this week said that the SNP “will be in trouble” unless it sorts its financial problems out. That’s a very interesting use of the future tense. Do we take it that she thinks it is not in trouble now? The Treasurer and the former CEO have recently both been arrested, while a leaked video from March 2021 in which the then Leader Nicola Sturgeon warned – no, instructed – the members of the SNP’s ruling body to “just be very careful about suggesting that there are problems with the party’s finances.”

As mentioned before, the SNP is the only elected party in Scotland that wants independence. As about half the country seems to favour this, the SNP will continue to get about half the votes there and therefore send about 50 MPs to Westminster to exercise a perhaps decisive and certainly disproportionate influence, despite the fact that the vast majority of us didn’t have the opportunity to vote for them. The mother of parliaments is also the home to the mother of all muddles.

• When I was a child in Earls Court there was a gas fire in my bedroom that had a backing made of a grey material called asbestos. This was, I was told, to help make it safe and warm. Asbestos was very good a being a fire retardant and insulator, just as Thalidomide – which my mother also took when pregnant with me, though with no ill-effects – was very good at dealing with morning sickness. We now know that their blessings were not un-mixed

Fortunately, I was never moved to pick holes in this grey material to see if I could set fire to it. Asbestos is, I understand, harmless if left alone: but once the fibres are broken off and become airborne then you’re in trouble, Few places are more likely to have materials kicked, scuffed, proceed and poked than schools: it was therefore shocking to read this article in The Conversation which suggests that in 2019 asbestos was present in over 80% of schools in England.

“In April 2022,” the article reports, “a UK Work & Pensions select committee report recommended the gradual removal of all asbestos from UK buildings over the next 40 years – with priority placed on the most hazardous types of asbestos, and also those buildings at particular risk, including schools. The UK government rejected this recommendation, pointing to the very low risk of exposure where in-situ management is effectively implemented. The Health and Safety Executive suggests that a “rush to remove asbestos” would pose a more significant risk in terms of asbestos exposure. However, our analysis suggests this does not take full account of the condition, and day-to-day use, of many UK schools.”

What the current situation is I’m not sure. It seems to be yet another example of something that – like fossil fuels, opioids and CFCs – seemed to promise an easy solution to our problems and yet produced far worse ones. Nature sure as hell has a way of showing us that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

• There are some interesting things to look out for in the night sky this weekend with Lyrids meteor showers peaking on Saturday and Venus shining brightly just below a thin crescent moon on Sunday. Thanks to Steve from the Newbury Astronomical Society for the heads-up (literally).

• Rishi Sunak has told us all that we must get better at mathematics and that we should all learn it until we are 18. A number of other countries do this so it clearly isn’t impossible. However, the ambition seems to have a problems.

• Firstly, the above-mentioned report says that “around a third of young people fail to pass GCSE maths.’ So, there’s your problem straight away. More early-years teachers are needed. Trying to get someone to learn something at eighteen is perhaps ten times harder than doing when they’re six.
• Secondly, where are these teachers going to magically appear from, particularly given that we’re apparently  an innumerate country?
• Thirdly – and I speak as one who has always found numbers difficult, particularly big ones – I don’t think that enough attention is paid to the concept of “about good enough”. This applies to most day-to-day maths problems. For example, there are about 56m people in England and about 9m people in London. The capital therefore has about 15% of the population. If you want the exact figure you can work it out on a calculator but this is roughly what the result should be and this is generally about good enough for most purposes. If the exact number comes out at 1.5% or 150% then you’ve made a mistake with the decimal point. First estimating roughly what the answer should be is the most useful skill you can be taught about maths. In most cases the exact number doesn’t matter – unless you’re an accountant, a tax collector or an engineer, in which case Mr Sunak’s strictures don’t apply to you anyway.
• Fourthly, there’s something called dyscalculia, which seems to mean that numbers look like gibberish. Why should these people tormented any further? If you’re dyslexic you are a recognised protected species.
• Fifthly, it seems that your predecessors in government, the brief Truss-Kwertang experiment, displayed a lack of grip of the workings of practical mathematics despite their having been elevated to offices of state where it might be assumed that numeracy was a necessary qualification. How many maths teachers might the money lost in last summer’s madness have paid for?
• Finally, and despite the last point, is not basic literacy equally important? People who can’t read or write properly at 16 are just as disadvantaged as those who can’t add or subtract. The time to deal with this is not then but when they start school. Pack the expertise and resources into the first five years of schooling.

I appreciate that this is a bit of a long-term plan, Rishi, and so not the quick-fix solution your initiative demands. However, the longer you leave the problem, the harder it is to solve it. Waiting until someone is 16 is surely already about ten (or perhaps nine, or eleven: something like that, anyway) years too late…