AH, so you've found your way here beyond the party-political wraparound concealing your real Echo. Good. Like what I say or not, I trust you are glad now to be (firmly) in the region of independent thought.

The wraparound, essentially just a bloated form of advertising – four full pages ganging up and overwhelming their host – has become a standard feature of newspapers in the last few years. Early ones wrapping The Daily Telegraph were printed on what, minus the ink, might well have been baking parchment. My wife and I discovered them useful to sit on when out walking.

No doubt some Echo readers will be unhappy at having the Tory and Labour general election guff presented under the proud and trustworthy masthead of their regional newspaper. Was there an element of unease, apology even, in editor Andy Richardson's column-length explanation? Well, no newspaper can afford to turn away four pages of perfectly legitimate advertising clearly labelled as such, in this instance three times on the front page.

To me the special significance these Echo Tory and Labour wraparounds is this. A generation ago neither party would have considered making anything like such a major, expensive pitch for North-East votes. The Tories knew they had no chance of making serious gains in the North-East, while Labour knew it could take massive majorities for granted. The wraparounds mirror a huge sea change.

AND if it's topsy-turvy you want, there's a very different, but equally striking, example in the cinema industry.

Back in the late 1950s and the 1960s cinemas were shutting by the score, unable to compete with the novelty of TV. Coupled with universal technicolour, cinema's main answer was bigger screens. Just about everybody went to see The Robe, a biblical epic, the first film in Cinemascope.

Today cinemas face the opposite challenge – people watching on a small screen. Ted Sarandos, a top man with the streaming service Netflix, reflected: "We are living among a generation who have seen every great movie ever made on a phone." Commendably he adds that he's "more thrilled that they are seeing these movies than concerned with the size of the screen".

On a rare visit my wife and I made to a modern cinema, the noise level was unendurable, and the length of the trailers and adverts scarcely less so. It's gratifying that the Netflix boss regards today's cinema-going experience as "deeply compromised" not only for those reasons but also "people texting and talking, people bringing their comfort dogs". (Well, he does live in Los Angeles.)

A KIND, or at least understanding, word for Donald Trump. Yes, he's the most weirdly unreal US president anyone can remember. But there's a danger of allowing his loose-cannon character to cloud judgements on his actions.

Trump has been vilified for withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Accord. But did you know that China and India are classed as developing nations, to which their 'developed' counterparts, including the US and Britain, have promised to pay $100bn a year from 2020 to expand green energy programmes? So far only one billion dollars has been offered, most of it from the US. Small wonder many people there feel sore.