It was said that in Jacobean times (as the Age of Shakespeare came to a close) the courtiers were 'spaniels to the King, and wolves to the people.' Four centuries later, has anything changed? The same self-serving scum are still fawning around the dining tables of our rulers, licking their feet for crumbs and easy pickings, and attempting to sway public opinion with their yips and yaps, their barks and bawls. History has shown that they do not matter. This mongrel pack flourished at the time of the infamous Emergency. Official, and worse, voluntary censorship was in force. Babus and bureaucrats, journalists and businessmen, film stars and media moguls crawled when they were given the signal to bend. The King and his court could do no wrong, then, as now. The scum did not count, because the people remained unswayed by their glib rhetoric. The masses voted as one to turn the tide, and save democracy from drowning in the ocean of sycophancy. This was despite the arithmetic,