IN a year of political shocks it may come as no surprise that Oxford Dictionaries has decided that 'post-truth' (an adjective relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals) is their 2016 international word of the year.

The BBC reports Oxford Dictionaries' spokesman Casper Grathwohl as saying that post-truth could become “one of the defining words of our time”.

He commented: “Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth as a concept has been finding its linguistic footing for some time.”

BRITAIN is a nation of animal lovers. So much so, says the Daily Mirror, that the electricity used to keep pets entertained is enough to light 56,000 homes for a full year.

Philip Sellwood, chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust, said: “We do understand Brits love their pets so we're not about to start asking people to switch things off.

COUNCILS across the land are under pressure to cut costs and it now seems that spending a penny in a public loo may become more difficult.

For a story in the Daily Express reveals that in the past three years, 13.5 per cent of public toilets have been cut by local authorities trying to save cash.