Author Archives: Tim Lenton

I  have just been to see the film Allegiant. This, as many of you know, is the latest in the Divergent series. It follows Insurgent. Despite the fact that is sent in a dystopian Chicago, I have to say that I enjoyed it.

I am not much for dystopias generally. I live only a few hundred yards from Prince of Wales Road in Norwich, and that’s quite dystopian enough.

Despite my basic enjoyment, though, two things bothered me in the film. One was that the heroine’s hairstyle had taken a distinct turn for the worse since Insurgent; and perhaps more importantly, I was concerned by the technology. It didn’t bother me that flying machines appeared and disappeared at will and contained many advanced features. This sort of thing is bound to happen, although in the real world they will still have to give way to cyclists.

What worried me was that seat belt technology didn’t seem to have advanced at all: in fact, it seemed to have gone backwards. Clunk, click, every trip.

Hopefully this will have been cleaned up for the next film in the series, which I am reliably informed will be called Detergent. It will involve a walled city continuing a number of factions, some of them washed up and some not so much. The heroine will revert to her former hairstyle, and seat belts will be replaced by magic.

Who was it that said any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced? A very wise man, I hear you say, and indeed many novelists have taken it to heart. Detergent will have it as a central feature. I understand the film will sparkle, there will be dishes in prominent roles, and the baddies will come clean in the end. The city itself will have all the dirt removed.

I can’t wait.

Writing a poem every day for Lent has proved difficult – which should not be surprising mathematically, as the sum total is roughly the same as I wrote in the whole of last year.

But it’s not just the maths. Some would say that writing a poem is an inspirational thing, triggered by a spur-of-the-moment insight or observation. Can you really write poems to order, one a day, like taking pills?

Obviously you can, in the sense that poems are just words on a page. You write them, and there they are. The real question is: are they any good, or are you just filling a quota, reaching a target, ticking off data, like Ofsted?

In the poetry league table, am I outstanding, good, requiring improvement, inadequate or – the latest worry – coasting? Count my words and you won’t have much idea. But is there another way?

The question of quality is a serious one, because it is difficult to settle. Counting is much easier, and so politicians and journalists prefer it. If there is an easy way of doing something, most of us prefer it, even if it does not give such useful results. The fact that it gives some results, and they can be counted, is what matters.

If we set targets, we can see if they have been met. If we create a league table, someone will be at the top and bottom. If we set tests, we can easily work out whether someone has passed or failed.

But it’s all a cheap trick, really. You can no more measure the quality of education by counting data than you can measure the quality of poetry by counting words. Education is much too complicated for that. It requires inspiration and insight, every day.

And yes, that is possible. Teachers and head teachers do it all the time. They would do it even better if we could get rid of all that counting.

I want to start by making a confession. I quite often watch Bargain Hunt on BBC 1. This is largely because it’s shown at lunchtime, when I settle down for my 12.30 sandwich and mug of tea, but I can quite see how some of you would regard this as no excuse. Still, there it is.

As a result I have learned that nearly all those vases, paintings, tables and toys that are lying around are in fact worth very little at all. I have also learned that if presenter Tim Wonnacott (currently stepping down after many years) takes a dislike to something wooden, he will describe it as “shedwork” – in other words, it was made in a shed by someone insignificant.

This has always struck me as unnecessarily judgmental. Surely something is either well made or not: whether it was made in a shed is irrelevant.

Who made it is also irrelevant, really, though the right name will often add many pounds to an item. It’s rather like those art forgeries that are impossible to tell from the original. If you can’t tell them from the original, surely they’re just as good, just as beautiful and just as worth hanging on your wall?

Why do we care so much about status?

At the theatre not long ago I heard a customer drawl smugly to a friend: “Not bad, considering they’re amateurs.” But surely either it’s well done or it isn’t. You may think the customer is being considerate in not applying the same criteria to amateurs as to professionals. I think he’s being condescending.

Allied to all this is the tendency to make judgments about a statement of national or world importance on the basis of who said it. Of course it’s important to understand that all politicians have axes to grind (sometimes pretty silly ones), but surely something is either true or it isn’t? We should not refuse to consider something on the grounds that it was said by someone on the right – or the left.

The difficult thing about voting on whether or not to leave the European Union, for example, is to work out what is the truth and what is not. We can’t do that by watching who is voting which way.

If someone knocks together a policy in a shed, it may be a very beautiful policy, or it may be rubbish. But the shed has nothing to do with it. The truth is what counts.

Two things you could say about Paul Durrant: he gave it everything, and he cared

I worked with him for many years, and I didn’t always agree with him. As news editor of the biggest selling regional morning newspaper in England, he knew what he wanted, and when that didn’t quite match the story the reporter brought in, the reporter had to go back and try again.

In my innocence, I felt that the reporter, having done the interviews and seen for himself or herself, might have more insight than the office-bound news editor. But I was probably wrong. Certainly the reporters in question stand behind him, praising him for his guidance, and for making them the stars they are today.

He produced top quality news stories. He was a master of the intro, and he understood how to motivate his staff to go that bit further. He would not tolerate laziness, but he could forgive someone who tried and kept on trying, even if they made mistakes. He spotted star quality and insisted that it was not wasted.

Outside the office he was relaxed and friendly and knew how to encourage people – a vital quality. By no means perfect himself – who is? – he understood imperfections in others, but he knew about the importance of keeping up standards. It was no accident that the Eastern Daily Press was such a fine newspaper when he was in the news editor’s chair.

Underlying it all was a warm person who was unafraid to put himself on the line. As a result, he was a gigantic figure. And yes, that’s a metaphor.

We will miss him.

Paul “Duzza” Durrant, died 10 February 2016.

If 52 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. So says Anatole France, and I’m sure you agree. However, if 52 million people say it, there is a good chance that it will be on the front page of most newspapers.

Democracy is a fine thing – or if not a fine thing, the best thing we’ve got to run a country. Dictators might do it more efficiently, but they tend to lack perspective. The trains run on time, but people go missing.

Sadly, however, the democratic process always delivers a government that many people would prefer was not governing. That is the way it works. For democracy to succeed, those who lose out have to be willing to accept it.

This can be extremely frustrating, particularly when the issues are crucial. And this why many people resort to marching, striking, random action – or, more frequently, joining an online pressure group, like Avaaz.

These pressure groups gather thousands if not millions of signatures for petitions that aim to bypass the normal democratic system and “shame” politicians into giving them what they want.

If big business behaves like this, it is clearly a bad thing. But if people like you and I do it, surely that’s just having our say in a reasonable way?

No, it’s the same thing. Only the voices are different.

But surely we’re right, and they’re wrong?

We like to think we’re right, of course, and sometimes we are. The trouble with online pressure groups is the assumption that they are always backing the right horse.

But often petitions are created that attract huge numbers of votes when the organisers, let alone those who sign, have no expertise whatsoever in the subject at hand. Key phrases are enough to get people to sign, rather in the way that when a friend on Facebook asks you to “like” their page, most people barely hesitate, let alone look at it.

What are these phrases? “Climate change” is an obvious one (ignoring the fact that no-one says the climate isn’t changing); “genetically engineering of crops” is another; so are “a free NHS” and “lower speed limits”. There are many others.

This week some whales got beached and died in eastern England. Someone scrawled “Man’s fault” on one of them, and I can’t help thinking that he or she is typical of those who sign online petitions. A whale has died; so somehow it must be our fault, or the fault of some huge corporation somewhere, or genetically modified sea water.

We have a right to protest, and I am certainly not saying that everyone who signs online petitions does so irresponsibly. But while we have a right to protest, we also have a duty not to sign just anything that is put before us, simply because it sounds right; not to march before we understand (in detail) why; and not to strike against the public without checking to see if there is a more effective way of hurting whoever is actually in the wrong.

Democracy is a fine thing – but it needs a bit of thought. In general, crowds don’t do much thinking.