There is history in Belfast's street names

Thomas Carnduff

The street names in a town can often tell us much about the history of the town and that is certainly true of Belfast,

The old medieval castle is long gone but we still have Castle Place and Castle Street to remind us of the castle and its location..

Meanwhile Bridge Street marks the point where a bridge crossed the Farset River, before the river was culverted to create High Street.

One of Belfast's notables, Thomas Carnduff, certainly recognised that when he wrote in the Belfast Telegraph (29 July 1939): 'The history of Belfast is not to be found in the printed book but in the street names.  Ann Street, Joy Street, May Street, Arthur Street.  Not mere visionary names, but borne by people whose lives were linked with the progress and life of the city itself.'

No, Donald Trump did not coin the term 'fake news'

I was surprised to hear a Sky News reporter state that Donald Trump 'coined' the term 'fake news'.  In fact that statement is itself 'fake news'.

Donald Trump may have popularised the term 'fake news' and he certainly used it more than anyone else I can think of but he didn't coin it.

The term 'fake news' was already in use in the 19th century.  Then it was used by newspapers and magazines to boast about the quality of their own journalism and attack that of a rival, which would then be described as publishing 'fake news'.

In 1895 the journal Electricity claimed that 'we never copy fake news' and the following year a writer at a newspaper in California attacked the publisher of another newspaper stating, 'It is his habit to indulge in fake news.  He will make up news when he fails to find it.'

Fake news seems to have been an issue at that time because the Toronto Daily Mail (13 June 1893) carried a report headed 'FAKE NEWS'.  It stated that the Connecticut legislature had introduced a bill providing for the punishment of people who sent 'fake news' to newspapers.

Some earlier newspaper reports used the term 'false news' but gradually 'fake news' became the preferred term and it was in widespread use long before Donald Trump was even born.

The 90% dominance of the Left in universities

Since the 1960s there has been a political imbalance in universities in the British Isles and North America.  It is an imbalance in which the left is predominant and an imbalance which has been increasing, decade after decade.

In 2017 the Adam Smith Institute published a report on British universities titled Lackademia: why do academics lean left?

There have also been reports on academics in American universities and colleges and in fact the imbalance on both sides of the Atlantic follows the same general pattern.  That is one reason why it is worth keeping an eye on the current position in America.  Another is that there is some interchange with academics crossing in both directions.

A recent investigation by a conservative website, The College Fix, used an interesting technique to assess the imbalance in universities across the USA.

They looked at data collected by the Federal Elections Commission from employees who named their employer as a university and so were able to compare universities and states.  The data included lecturers, faculty, professors, administrators, librarians and other employees.

Florida is a good example to look at because politically it is fairly balanced between Republicans and Democrats.  In the 2016 presidential race Donald Trump took 49% of the vote and Hilary Clinton took 48%.  In 2020 Trump increased his vote share to 51% with Joe Biden taking 48%.

So how did the seven largest universities in a politically balanced state fare in terms of donations to the two parties?

In the past two years nearly 89% of political donations from faculty members in the seven Florida universities were given to the Democrats with just 10.6% going to Republicans - roughly 90% and 10%.

In Ohio the percentage of political donations that went to the Democrats was even higher at 92% and in Pennsylvania it was 96%.

The long march of the Left through the corridors of academia continues unabated.