Coney Island’s former glory was always seedy and proleish. The effort to transform it into Disneyland is ludicrous.

Mesut Özil is the Footballer of the Year.

A book of Mr Putin’s speeches will be published. Unfortunately, they will never be as influential as Mr Stalin’s book on linguistics.

Meanwhile, in merry old England: Mssrs Corbyn, McDonnell, and Milne should be aware that history’s great purgers have often found themselves purged in the end, Robespierre, Yagoda, and Yezhov among them.