Author Archives: Tim Lenton

Until recently, fighting whatever attacked us was straightforward. When London, Coventry or anywhere else was being bombed, we could see what was happening, and we could take action. People banded together, hugged each other, commiserated and cared for their neighbours. Back when the Vikings raped and pillaged, we could see the threat. Even the plague was easy to see. More recently the results of violence have been visible, if not at first hand, on television or online. Before that it was clear in the bodies of the injured, or their failure to return.

Now we have something attacking us that we cannot see. We are specifically forbidden to band together and hug each other, and we are prevented from doing what seems instinctive. Even worse, we are about to be faced with a remedy that we cannot see either. Most of us have only the most superficial knowledge about vaccines.

Today a leaflet came through my door alleging that Covid-19 vaccines are not licensed, and so manufacturers have no liability if something should go wrong. The UK Medicines and Healthcare regulator apparently said as recently as October that a high volume of adverse reactions was expected, and Robert F Kennedy, who admittedly is an American, has said that the type of vaccine being used “represents a crime against humanity”.

None of these things is necessarily true. They may be true but with a wrong emphasis, or they may not tell the whole story. The problem is that the figures the Government and its scientists give us is misleading at best – ever since they decided that having a positive Covid test and then dying meant that you died of Covid – even if you had no symptoms and were knocked down by a car a month later.

There are influential people, well qualified and with no apparent axe to grind, who are extremely concerned about the way Covid-19 is being tackled. They are easy to find on the internet; so I see no reason to go into what they say here. Most of us will dismiss what they say as “conspiracy theories”, which is fine and sensible – unless of course there is a conspiracy.

When I worked at a journalism training school, we used to advise our recruits that they should “never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity”. This is a good test to apply to conspiracy theories – or to the way that a government or scientists behave when faced with something that could be described as a pandemic – but again, what if there really is a conspiracy?

When some people said the Nazis were systematically killing Jews, was this regarded as a conspiracy theory and dismissed by all right-thinking Germans? A large number of fashionably left-leaning liberal Englishmen and women thought the idea that Stalin could be killing people in labour camps was absurd. A lot of us were suspicious when we were told that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

So when does a conspiracy theory become a reasonable doubt?

Being reasonable people, we like to think that that politicians and scientists are reasonable too. We like to think they are making the best possible decisions for the best possible motives. But what if they aren’t?

If people in some kind of authority insist on something for long enough, they find it hard to admit they might be wrong. This is what is known as a universal truth. Tolstoy said: “Most men (and women), including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

Academics and experts know this very well. Fred Heffer wrote this week: “The easiest and least stressful path to success is to adopt the status quo viewpoint without question.” If there is a consensus on something, it is much easier to attack people who query it than let people think there might be something to talk about. But of course all science makes progress by challenging consensus.

It’s not easy, is it? We want to act in a way that helps others and helps ourselves. Getting vaccinated is clearly the “right thing to do” because it could save people’s lives. But people say that it’s not that serious: Covid-19 has a 99% recovery rate. This may not be true. It may be 97%. Or if you personally die from it, 0%. In your case.

After that, things become very clear.

You’re walking down this suburban street. Technically it’s a village: it has a village green and an old church. But it’s attached to a city ­– there’s no countryside in between; so I think it’s fair to say it’s a suburb. It has a good bus service.

Anyway, you’re walking past these suburban-type houses, and suddenly there’s a track off to the right. It goes between a couple of the houses, and there’s an old down-at-heel notice that says you can get to the river that way.

You give it a shot. You’ve been in lockdown, and you need the exercise. 

A hundred yards down, there’s an old brick bridge – a rail bridge – and beyond it, round the bend, a house on its own. It looks abandoned, but it’s not. Old wood of various kinds is stacked up on one side, and on the other side are several vehicles the worse for wear. The house has two doors and two numbers – 1 and 2. There is a dim light in one of the rooms.

Another couple of hundred yards beyond the house there is a second rail line, but this one has a gated crossing. You open the gates, check that no trains are coming, and walk over. There is no sign of a river. Not yet.

The track continues. On the right are marshes, and a couple of very muddy paths – neither of them passable without a small boat. This should be beautiful country, but instead it seems dirty, with skeleton trees in the middle distance looking dystopian rather than stunning, and ditches brimming with unhealthy-looking water. There is no sun: the sky is heavy.

Eventually a very narrow path leads down to the river. It simply stops when it gets there, giving a river frontage of only a foot or two. On one side is a dilapidated dwelling, scruffy fencing and a large sign reading Private. On the other is a boatyard, apparently closed for the off-season. A few tired boats are moored nearby. The river is quite wide, and empty.

You return to the rail crossing and find a young family apparently train-spotting. The smallest child opens the gate for you, and you thank him. On the other side of the track a cyclist is coming through. You return by a side path, past a cemetery and, as you near a neater civilisation, a local Scout headquarters. 

You have lived within three miles of this hidden, layered world for more than 35 years without knowing it is there. You return to the car and drive home.

I am now locked down, though I don’t feel any different. Yesterday I took the car for an MOT, not because I was panicking but because that was the day I booked it in, about a month ago. I went for a walk while it was being done. Later I bought some toilet rolls.

Again, I was not feeling particularly panicky, but I was in the shop – a local convenience store – to buy something completely different, and this pack of toilet rolls was on the floor, saying “Please buy me” – or words to that effect. So I did.

It was at that point that a couple who live three doors down happened to come in the shop, and the husband eyed me suspiciously. I felt a slight amount of panic then, but not much. On the way home, another neighbour crossed over and caught me with my casual package of toilet rolls. I acted nonchalant, and pretended they were not there. But of course they were. As far as I’m concerned, it means nothing.

Another neighbour has a cupboard full of toilet rolls. He volunteered the information when six of us were having a drink in the street to mark the last day we could be seen together. Apparently he has 37 toilet rolls, although he says he’s not worried because he could always step into the shower instead. I felt this was too much detail.

I had to cancel a visit to my friend in Hickling today, because of the lockdown, but I phoned her instead. We did not mention toilet rolls at all. I don’t know if she was avoiding the subject. She did not mention the American elections either. But then I tend to agree with Richard Holloway, who used to be a bishop, that you can prove nothing from something that is not mentioned.

The man who gets my groceries tells me the supermarket has sold out of salted potato sticks. I should have bought a box of them last week. Perhaps you can get them online.

I don’t get out much nowadays. I don’t even write letters to Private Eye, though I have been tempted. I don’t actually subscribe to Private Eye: our neighbour, a very kind man, lets me read his copy when he’s finished it, and in return I’ve taken to giving him our used copies of the Eastern Daily Press. Admittedly it is not so funny, but there’s more of it.

Anyway, reading anything is more fun than going out, because the world out there is becoming increasingly unrecognisable. Yes, there are people moving around as always, and for some reason there seems to be just as much traffic, but something is missing.

I conducted a number of studies on this, involving a variety of research groups at distinguished universities, and got a number of different results. This is not unusual, because no research group wants to be the same as other research groups, and whatever research group is most recent is inevitably right. Unless, of course, it isn’t.

This is the same basis that is used for creating Covid regulations. The result is that Covid regulations are universally ridiculous – or as some would have it, locally ridiculous. They are so ridiculous that only politicians could take them seriously – and of course the BBC. I am not going to explain why they are ridiculous, because if you don’t know, it is already too late.

My own research, undertaken entirely independently of universities, scientists, the NHS and Highways England, has uncovered something remarkable. The real threat to each and all of us is not a virus of any kind, but the removal of joy from daily life.

When was the last time you saw anyone smiling? Admittedly the lack of smileyness is partly because the imposition of masks prevents you from seeing whether someone is smiling or not, but is is also because they really aren’t. There is no longer any fun in popping into the city or going to a restaurant, or driving to the coast, because wherever you go there will be a lot of dreary people either carefully obeying the Covid regulations, or wishing they were in Benidorm.

What makes the human race human is our capacity for love. In most cases demonstrating love requires contact with other people, if only in the form of a handshake or a hand on the shoulder (thank you, Sergio Aguero). In extreme cases, it calls for a more thorough bodily contact, and it is no accident that more and more people are ending communications with the words “Hugs and Kisses” nowadays.

In the street, giving people a couple of metres space – apart from being impossible – gives the impression of avoiding them, or not wanting to risk contact. It is the kind of thing people used to do when they considered themselves superior to another race, or sex, or class.

One of the myriad “recent surveys” revealed the frightening suggestion that even when Covid goes away, 48% of those responding will continue to keep distance from people where possible. What sort of people have we become?

Separating people from their loved ones in care homes and elsewhere is not a solution: it is a move that should never be considered.

Covid is not the plague. It occasionally kills people, but so does the flu, and so do cancer and many, many other illnesses and accidents. Death statistics generally are no worse this October than they were last October. Covid may kill me: I am 75 and have been in hospital this year. But it probably won’t.

Whatever happens to me, the real measurement of death from this pandemic (if that’s the right word) can be found in the absence of love, the dearth of merriment, the artificial avoidance of physical signs of affection, and the care-worn eyes behind the pesky masks.

Although I have many doubts about the Government’s approach to Covid, since the outbreak started I have avoided travelling to my second home in Scotland.

This is partly because I don’t have a second home in Scotland, but there is a place in Aberdeenshire that does feel enough like home for me to want to go there. It’s called Ballater, and we have been there almost every year since about 1990.

We started going because our next-door neighbour in Norwich came from Aberdeenshire, and once we had got attuned to his accent – it took a couple of years – we found that he had a sister who owned a cottage in Ballater, and she might be willing to rent it out to us.

She was, and she became a close friend. She introduced us to several different Highland Games – no, that’s not a euphemism – and introduced us to her friends. She fishes for salmon, and she knows the top people along the River Dee – not just the ghillies, but the landowners. She is well connected.

The “wee house” we stayed in was a former school house, with plenty of ground and strategically placed. More recently it has been sold, and we have stayed at other cottages in the town.

During Storm Frank at the end of 2015 much of the town was flooded, when the Dee burst its banks to the south and west of its centre – the water inundating the golf course and hurtling into shops in the High Street and buildings elsewhere. It has taken some time to recover.

This was a major change to the town, of course. But other changes happened too. The station, which had been redesigned as a museum commemorating the visits of the Royal Family (Balmoral is just up the road), burnt down. Again it has risen from the ashes, and the Prince of Wales – or the Duke of Rothesay, as he is known in those parts – has opened a swish new restaurant to assist in the revival of the town. We’ve eaten there. It was superb.

Still we can’t help hankering over the Green Inn, which was in the early days probably our favourite restaurant in the world, but was sold and became an Indian. A very good Indian, it has to be said, but not the same thing.

We also miss the Glen Lui Hotel – or will, because it too was hit by fire earlier this year, and the last we heard it was due to be demolished. We stayed there on a couple of occasions, but always ate there when we were in Ballater, because the food and service were so good.

Storm Frank didn’t just flood the town; it demolished roads outside the town (the main A93 was washed away at one point between Ballater and Balmoral: it took only 19 days to replace it, partly because Norfolk County Council had nothing to do with it) and bridges  went down too. A beautiful footbridge at Cambus O’May on the way to Aboyne was badly damaged and has been hit again in recent days by another storm.

One of our favourite spots, the Linn of Quoich, had its road bridge completely destroyed, meaning that walking to the Linn became much more of a challenge.

We still love it all, of course, but we are becoming wary. Other restaurants and shops have changed hands, and when we arrive in Ballater nowadays the first thing we do is look round anxiously to see if our favourite places are still there. It’s the same everywhere, no doubt, but when it’s your second home, the changes hit you harder.