Author Archives: Tim Lenton

A good friend of mine has erected a placard on her property advising whoever passes by to vote for the Liberal Democrats at the upcoming council elections. This, she tells me, is because the candidate is a nice chap. 

An excellent reason, I’m sure you’ll agree. In fact the recently revived School of Penguins, Chess and Road Surfacing at the University of East Anglia has recently published a far-reaching, in-depth research paper that comes to very much the same conclusion. 

The author, Professor Ian “Sam” Aufmerksam, who has recently returned from a sabbatical in the Antarctic, said yesterday that it was quite clearly a waste of time to examine the policy statements of various parties, as the Prime Minister had made clear in the most brilliant way that policies were flexible, contradictory and in many cases irrelevant. 

“This is happening almost everywhere,” Prof Aufmerksam told our reporter. “If we merely determined which of the candidates for a particular seat was a nice chap –or chapess, obviously – we could vote for them without their suddenly revealing themselves to be antisemitic, or globalist, or in favour of potholes and ridiculously slow speed limits.  

Prof Aufmerksam’s findings were welcomed by local hero Henry (Fred) “Shrimp” Houseago, who described himself as a “nice chap, always ready to help”. Despite being defeated in a poll at Corpusty East some time ago following a 90 per cent swing, Mr Houseago has resurfaced after attending a retreat run by the radical Rev Nick Repps-cum-Bastwick in the Autonomous Republic of Hingham. 

As already reported, Mr Houseago spent some years taking part in an experiment run by Professor V A R Scheinlich, an expert in wormholes and time-space distortion. As a result of this he was reassessing his age to “something more realistic”. He felt he was ready to take control.

Meanwhile Len “Kissme” Hardy of Hindolveston, a whole food chef and comet chaser described by Mr Houseago as a “thorn in the flesh” after his dalliance with “nice chap” Dorothea Goodchild, is considering standing for the European Union, whatever that is. A search of Norfolk has revealed no placards in his name, however, and it is unclear which party he represents. 

Asked what his attitude was to the war in the Middle East, he said: “Yes.”

Corey Ford, an American writer and humourist, is also described as an outdoorsman. So it’s a little surprising that the only quotation of his I know is this: “I’d go away if it wasn’t so far.”

It is, however, a remark that rings bells for me. I have just spent three weeks in Canada, staying with our son and his wife. It was relaxing, and I love Canada. I know it’s an extensive country, but I’ve seen quite a lot of it. This trip was to Ontario, which meant landing at Toronto. Unfortunate, but there you are. You have to land somewhere. 

Other people have since told me that they love Canada – and some of them have not even been there. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s so far away. All right, it’s not as far as Australia, but I have no intention of going there. That’s too, too far. 

How wonderful it would be if we could simply press a button and suddenly relocate three thousand miles away.  I know that’s not very adventurous of me, but I have other faults that are much worse. 

One of them is being easily distracted. I had intended writing about the differences between Canada and the United Kingdom. One difference, of course, is the spelling of the word humourist. Or is it? Canadian and American are not always the same thing: anyone suggesting that they are is likely to come under strong attack – from Canadians, anyway. 

Canada is certainly big – considerably bigger than the USA and far, far, far bigger than the United Kingdom. Interestingly (I think) the part where we were staying is also further south than quite a lot of the USA. Toronto itself is considerably further south than Minneapolis, Rapid City and Seattle, and much of Windsor is south of Detroit. Little did I think as I strolled on the shores of Lake Erie that I was way south of Bob Dylan’s birthplace. Well, you wouldn’t, would you?

If a Canadian were to look east, he or she might be surprised to find that Toronto, at latitude 43.6 North, is not only way south of London (51.5 N), but south of Paris and Milan. It is roughly on a par with the French Riviera. So why is it so cold?

Well, I’ve been in Toronto when it was 40C. In the summer it’s always pretty warm in southern Ontario, as it is in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Saskatchewan – and probably elsewhere, but those are the provinces I’ve visited.

Our holiday coincided with a very warm and dry spell (except for the thunderstorm which delayed our flight home for eight hours). The temperature was mostly in the high 20s. But it is cold in winter, because they don’t have the Atlantic. Well, they do, but it doesn’t perform the same function as it does for us, which is to keep us warmer than we should be in winter at such northern latitudes. Nothing to do with emissions, I’m glad to say. 

I suppose the biggest difference between Canada and the UK is the space. Except for the southern strip, especially in the neighbourhood of Toronto, where Highway 401 is like the M25 but much wider and busier, the countryside is pleasantly empty. The roads are bigger, there are few hedges, and you can see a long way. Even the rare hold-ups are quite relaxing. 

The downside, of course, is that everyone needs a car. Public transport is rather rudimentary, and even the corner shop – when there is one – is a long walk and probably not on a corner. Electric cars are worth having, because filling up with petrol in winter is not a pleasant experience.

But with the  space there is definitely a sense of freedom. Perhaps this is because you don’t have to keep your elbows in. As a result (maybe) people are generally considerate. I would definitely go back soon, if I could find that button.

PS As it turns out Canadians spell humourist like that too. I consulted an expert. But they also eat arigula and eggplant, whatever that is. And they have bears. Did I mention bears? They’re free.

One of the best pieces of advice given to me early in my “career” was to start what my editor at the time called a commonplace book. This was just a place to store any quotations that struck me as valuable for some reason – that reason varying from the profound to the funny, or even mysterious.

Obviously the idea was to make a note of who had originated the quote and in what context. This did not always work – as in this one, for instance. I don’t know where it came from, but it’s still memorable as far as I’m concerned:

“I would feel infinitely more comfortable in your presence if you would agree to treat gravity as a law, rather than one of a number of suggested options.”

This comes under the “funny” category, in case you were wondering. But at the same time, it always made me feel a little uneasy. How many things, especially in science, do we assume are settled?

And so I was intrigued to read the other day that gravity may not be a law or fundamental force after all, but possibly something that emerges from quantum electromagnetic interactions, potentially reshaping our view of spacetime itself. I’m sure you know what that means.

Science is a funny thing. We think it means establishing facts, but in fact it depends on doubt. The first thing a scientist should do when looking closely at a theory is try to prove it wrong. If this fails, he or she has something to work with. 

Unfortunately it seems to me that recently this truth has been forgotten. We collect data and come to conclusions, then forget that it is the data that (hopefully) are facts, and not the conclusions. Conclusions, or theories, are our attempts to knock the data into a shape that we understand. There is a huge capacity for error in there. 

People who are not scientists don’t really get this. They really want science to be the facts. Follow the science, they say. Well, that’s OK, as long as you realise that it might be leading you in the wrong direction. Test the science, or question the science, might be the more sensible option.

Unfortunately it seems to me that schools and universities look at things wrongly. They want consensus on a particular issue, but science is not democracy. They teach the consensus as if were the only option, and everything else as if it’s a conspiracy theory. 

Unfortunately, as I’ve said before – and here I delve into my commonplace collection again – the easiest and least stressful path to success is to adopt the status quo viewpoint without question. A guy called Fred Heffer wrote that five years ago.

So confusing consensus with certainty is a popular career move. It is also welcomed in the population at large, especially if you live in a democracy. And you don’t have to search far down the decades to find breakthrough theories that were resisted for years because those in charge preferred to deal with stuff they had been taught and had taught to others, whether it was right or not.

Science should be exciting, because it frequently does somersaults. But those in charge like straight lines. However, as R Buckminster Fuller pointed out, there are no straight lines in the universe. It’s a lot more interesting than that.

So maybe speed isn’t the main cause of accidents. Maybe theories of climate change are wrong. I’ll go further: they definitely are. I don’t know how, but I’d guess fundamentally. Really. That’s pretty obvious already. Take my word for it. One day everybody will say so.  

Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player in the world, turned up for a tournament in New York recently wearing jeans. Smart jeans (he’s a smart player), but jeans nevertheless. 

This offended the organisers, who had a dress code. Carlsen offered to pay a fine, but the organisers insisted he went back to his hotel and changed. Carlsen withdrew from the tournament. Checkmate. 

Who is at fault here? I should declare an interest in that I play chess and, more to the point, hate dress codes. I rarely wear a suit, almost never a tie, and have never trusted anyone who has a handkerchief in his (or her) breast pocket. 

This attitude has not served me well in life (except in telling me who not to trust). It has been stated that “the easiest and least stressful path to success is to adopt the status quo viewpoint without question”, and the status quo – apart from anything else – seems to be that looking smart means you can be promoted. 

This may be why so many idiots end up in charge of vital areas, where they see their role as preserving the status quo, particularly the system that has enabled them to reach the heights they are not really qualified to reach, and to get rewarded for failure. 

This is why the National Health Service is so hopeless, and why the scandal in the Post Office destroyed so many lives – though not the lives of the people “in charge” – the cover-up merchants who dress well and charge large fees. 

This sickness affects the whole of society, from the refusal to repair potholes to generally moronic management that can affect whole cities. Sadly, it affects the Church too – the very place that you would think ambition and status quo should have no role at all.

Thus, instead of focusing on preaching love and forgiveness, the Church is obsessed with looking good and making fatuous gestures, like promoting the idiocy of net zero, constructing columns of ineffective waffle on safeguarding, and earmarking money for meaningless slavery “reparations”.  

 I could go on, but I have to get dressed. I seem to have mislaid my jeans.

If you want to kill something, bring in management consultants. You may think this statement a little sweeping, but we live in a world where it seems almost routinely true. 

In fact the management class has taken over to such an extent that everything that makes life worth living, which expands our experience or promotes freedom, is at risk of being stamped out by people whose only real motivation is to promote their own wellbeing.

Amazingly, this is true even of the Church. 

Historian Peter Hennessy once said: “If management consultants had drafted the Sermon on the Mount, there would be no Christians anywhere.”

Happily, management was not consulted by Jesus at all, which is what makes the Kingdom of God so attractive. But the current leaders of the Church of England – with some notable exceptions – lean ever more towards solving problems by implementing management “solutions”, often combined with fashionable groupthink. 

Why does this happen? Well, managers as a whole – including lawyers, politicians, administrators and consultants – are grossly overpaid; so naturally they want to preserve the status quo. Therefore every solution they come up with aims to avoid disruption of any kind: in the words of Joseph Heller, they routinely “distort reality for the sake of neatness”. They want to smooth things over; keep things quiet. 

Which is why inquiries are largely a waste of time, unless they are conducted by an independent spirit who can not only see through the fog but withstand the pressure. Not many of those about.

Of course, the Church of England has never been perfect. Back in 1978 Canon John Collins was saying: “I can assure you, after nearly 50 years in its ministry, the Church of England is riddled with, if not obsessed by, questions of status and precedence.”

This is a very human trait – even the early disciples occasionally fell prey to it – but it is destructive, especially when those caught up in it have real power. And it has nothing in common with Christianity. Quite the opposite.

Of course the Church at a local level contains many people who actually believe, who are self-effacing and want to do good. So against all the odds, I am optimistic. After all, individuals make a difference in the real world. 

And then there’s Piers Brandon, who summed it up rather well: “Anything is possible in the C of E,” he said. “Even  Christianity.”