THERE’S not much in this febrile and divided world that almost everyone agrees on, but last week saw the chattering universe fall over themselves to see who could best denounce the way Jacob Rees-Mogg's children were targeted in a protest by Class War activist Ian Bone. Horrendous. Horrifying. Reprehensible. These were the go-to terms to describe what Bone did when he ambushed Rees-Mogg, four of his young children and his nanny outside their home, saying to one of the kids, "Lots of people don’t like your daddy, did you know that?”

I agree. Bone stepped outside the bounds of right and decent behaviour. We need to protect the children of politicians and those in the public life ¬ just as we need to protect all children, not only from their parents being insulted, but from poverty, abuse, neglect and other harm. So, of course, targeting of children should be something that is considered off limits. And, the truth is, mostly it is. But the reaction to what Bone did also tells us a few things.

One is that nothing brings us together it's how we feel about children. It’s the glue that binds the twittersphere as one. So, of course, and ironically, Bone's ambush rather than highlight class inequality, brought different stripes and classes together. The points that Bone made about inequality, minimum wage and domestic servitude conditions might have been more listened to, if only he hadn't made them by telling them their dad was “a horrible person” – but, of course, they then wouldn’t have spread virally across the internet.

In fact, I doubt there were many things that Bone could have done that could have got greater sympathy and support for Jacob Rees-Mogg. It might be good, though, to keep in perspective the severity of what some have called “the abuse" inflicted on these children. Having some strange man come and tell you your daddy is not liked, while disturbing, is hardly up there among the worst things that can happen to a child. And, if you watch Rees-Mogg , he himself seemed relatively unbothered ¬ though some have said he was just showing the kids that this is “how you deal with bullies”.

But also, the Rees-Mogg incident has been just one element of a kind of wider panic we have seen in Westminster over what those involved in frontline politics are having to deal with. This panic, has come about partly because of the way in which social media has meant that more and more of people's lives are up for grabs.

The concern over what being a politician in the public eye can mean for those around you, also reared this week because of the media treatment of Carrie Symonds, the PR chief linked to Boris Johnson. In an open letter, a group of women involved in politics denounced the appallingly sexist way in which Carrie Symonds had been portrayed in newspaper articles as some kind of scarlet woman or party-girl floozy. Of course, what was done to Symonds by the media was, in historical terms, familiar – and all the more depressing for it. But it was also different, and very now, because of the way papers exploited social media images of her to paint this portrait of her.

These two stories coming in the same week seemed to fuel a kind of collective political anxiety, with MPs, upset by the Rees-Mogg incident, asking whether such attacks on family would discourage people further from entering public life, or calling for cross-party action. But, actually, it’s the Symonds one that worries me most. For, while the reaction to the Class War ambush was really proof that for the most part, and rightly, we don’t tolerate people making political points through targeting children and families, Carrie Symonds was just a reminder that sexism and innuendo is just business as normal in the media, and social media. Yes, some people wrote a letter, a few columnists called it out, but there was nothing like the same fuss. Sexism, after all, remains far from taboo.

ALL work and no play makes Mark a dull boy. That was my reaction to the news last week that Mark Wahlberg had divulged his daily schedule, and it was insane – rising at 2.30am and going to bed at 7.30 pm, a 3.40am workout and a 9.30am “cryo chamber recovery”. In fact, it was so ridiculous my first reaction was that it must be a joke. But, on the other hand, I thought, if it was true then it was another sign that something is seriously wrong with the world. How did we end up with a society in which even our idols, the people we think should be living the life, are just pumping their six-packs on the endless hamster wheel of self-discipline?

I suppose it would be untrue to say that the regime was all work. Wahlberg did seem to fit in half an hour of golf, which as one commentator said, must therefore have been crazy golf. He also spends an hour and a half eating a snack, which suggests to me that he may also have been sitting playing on Fortnite, or reading a few pages of Proust, at the same time. But even so, the regime speaks volumes about our ongoing and puritanical attitude toward work and working out. Bring on the fun regime – or, even better, let’s just chillax instead.