Author Archives: Tim Lenton

Who cares about the public interest?

It will take more than three wise men and an infinite number of women bishops to decide the right action to take on the Leveson Report.

In one camp we have those who think we must install a statutory body to keep newspapers in order: failure to do so would be a cop-out. And in the other assortment of tents we have those who are concerned that any legal handcuffs could be misused, and that a free press is vital to a democratic society.

The former argue that any government likely to be elected in such a nice country as the UK would hardly shackle the press in any damaging way. They have clearly forgotten that the Germans, who are basically nice people like us, elected Hitler.

In other words, put temptation and enough fear in the hands of those keen to secure power, and they are likely to succumb to it. Why make it easy for them to shut down a main focus of criticism? Cameron probably wouldn’t do it, but I can think of a few other prominent politicians who might.

We are not quite at the time of year when three wise men might be available. Sadly, women bishops are also not to hand. But we do have Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye and panellist on Have I Got News for You, the TV news quiz that teeters between funny, puerile and self-righteous (the last two usually simultaneous).

Mr Hislop is a wise man where press freedom is concerned, although (or maybe because) he runs a satirical newspaper. He makes the rather vital point that all the misdemeanours, outrages and appalling behaviour that gave rise to the Leveson Inquiry are in fact already crimes, and so the perpetrators could have been arrested and charged, whether or not they happened to run or work for newspapers. The fact that they were not cannot be laid at the door of the Press.

There is absolutely no need for further laws, of which there are already far too many: after all, the freest country has the fewest laws. And we want to be free, don’t we?

In any case there is an important distinction to be made between scandal sheets and newspapers. The Code of Conduct for newspapers, adhered to fiercely by the local and regional newspapers praised by Leveson, relates borderline behaviour, like long lens photography and violation of privacy, to what is in the public interest, and that is a widely misunderstood term.

It certainly does not mean “what interests the public”. The public, sadly, does not like what it says it likes; if it did, the Sun would never have had the highest circulation figures. Like St Paul, the good that the public would they do not: but the evil which they would not, that they do. Or as Clive Barnes said in relation to television, “the most terrifying thing is what people do want”.

I think we all understand that. We are the public.

The public interest is defined by the Code of Conduct as “detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety; protecting public health and safety; or preventing the public from being misled”; and these are important matters, truly in the interests of us all. It cannot be right to  hamstring newspapers who are doing this kind of public service. Can it?

Of course it’s possible to be too idealistic about “good” local newspapers, who may not engage in phone hacking, but can skew readers’ views of key issues by taking positions that shut out views other than their own. There is no such thing as truly objective news, just as there is no such thing as a truly objective tweet or Facebook status.

You could go further and say it’s futile locking journalists away and handing out free klaxons to those with no code of conduct whatsoever. Either you want free speech, or you don’t.  It’s an interesting question.

Posted on December 6 2012 in Articles. Tagged , , .

Playing on Calvary

Look, I have found some pieces of wood:
now we can build a fort
or a temple
and make soldiers out of mud:

you and your soldiers
can try to destroy me, and I
can try to destroy you

That sounds like fun:
some of your soldiers can hide
in these strange holes in the hill

They are empty now, but look
as if they had something in them:
I wonder what it was

There is a large hole down here
that looks as if it might get in the way:
I will block it up with a big stone

Help me with the stone:
it will not stay where I put it:
it keeps rolling away

That is awkward:
it might make playing more difficult,
but I suppose we can pretend it is not there

Here are some more pieces of wood:
they have something on them, though –
something sticky

I will throw them away:
maybe we could go and play
somewhere else

Posted on November 5 2012 in Poetry. Tagged .

A hat with no rabbit

I am thinking of buying my wife an iPhone for her birthday.  Earlier I had been thinking about an iPad. You may think that either of these pieces of magic is an extravagant luxury, but someone has to stop the recession, and anyway, she’s worth it.

Magic? Close enough. Someone once said that any technology distinguishable from magic is not advanced enough, and Apple seem to be in the magic business.

It’s odd that eating forbidden fruit – often portrayed as an apple – was the temptation that Adam and Eve fell for, propelling us down the road to the mess we’re in now. Even odder, the tree involved was said to be the Tree of Knowledge. Maybe that’s Google, but Apple have the logo.

Either way, you can see what T S Eliot was getting at when he asked: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” He might have been talking about the Internet.

The precise location of the Tree of Life is probably not to be found in the garden of advanced technology. For all the magic technology produces – and if you think computers are magic, wait for replication technology – it lands you with a disproportionate amount of frustration.

The problem is not that it is insufficiently advanced, but that is too advanced in some areas, and inept in others.

The iPhone has a wealth of features, most of which I do not want. The same is true of video recorders and washing machines, and anything electronic.

But let’s stick to the iPhone. It’s absolutely wonderful, but much of the time it will be useless. Why? Well, leaving aside the possibility that the battery will run out, what is definitely going to happen is that you will soon find yourself somewhere where you can’t make or receive phone calls.

We are not talking Outer Hebrides here. We are talking large chunks of Norfolk, my home county, and practically anywhere I’ve been on holiday this year, which happens to be Aberdeenshire, Dorset, Devon, Catalonia and Normandy.

OK, that’s an obscene number of holidays for one year, but they all have one thing in common. The area I happened to be in was out of range.

That’s not magic. That’s a hat with no rabbit.

I know this is not Apple’s fault. The intricate technology they provide usually works very well, but if you can’t actually use it to do what it’s intended to do, is it worth the trouble?

Maybe that’s what the Tree of Knowledge is all about, in the end. Anger and frustration. Not delivering what it promises. The Tree of Life was the one to go for. Can we start again?

Posted on November 5 2012 in Articles. Tagged , , , , .

Lucky evening on the wrong track

It would be unrealistic to expect public transport to work flawlessly all the time, and maybe it’s unfair to snipe at it. It is after all burdened with inbuilt failings, such as  starting from somewhere you aren’t, and taking you to somewhere you don’t quite want to be. We accept that: if it’s for everyone, it’s going to be inconvenient for everyone too.

But surely it is realistic to expect those in charge of public transport to make every kind of effort to make it as convenient as possible. All right, railway lines need to be maintained, and maintenance has to be done some time. But…

I returned to Norwich from a holiday in Europe halfway through a Saturday evening. Of course, the rail and tube managers didn’t know that. I mean, that almost never happens, does it? At the same time a goodly number of Norwich City supporters were returning to Norwich from a Chelsea game: another of those unpredictable events. And lots of people were moving around London. Who would have thought?

I was lucky to start with. I bought an Underground ticket from the ticket office at St Pancras, and was told (instead of having to work it out by trial and error) that the normal route to Liverpool Street was closed. I had to go to Holborn and change on to the Central line. Fair enough; I lived in London for a few years, and I know how that works. What I hadn’t anticipated was that King’s Cross/St Pancras is a focal point on the Underground, and everybody had to do this. Everybody is an awful lot of people.

The platforms were full, the trains were packed, and the escalators weren’t working properly. By ruthless use of our luggage, we were able to get on a couple of trains, however, and eventually we reached Liverpool Street, where we looked eagerly for a sign telling us which train went to Norwich, because it was getting late.

There was nothing. Norwich had been wiped from the universe, as far as Liverpool Street was concerned. As a last resort, I endeavoured to interest a guy on the Information desk, and he told me to go to Platform 14, which turned out to be empty. Slightly concerned, I told a nearby station official that I wanted to get to Norwich. “You’ll be lucky,” he riposted in a merry way. I did not feel lucky.

However, he did direct us to a train for Southend, from which unlikely vehicle, he told us, we should alight at Billericay, mount a coach to Witham and from there slip into a train to Norwich. We followed his instructions and sat for a while on a nearly empty train, getting more and more uneasy. Then an assorted crew joined us, prominent among them a group of Canary supporters with hands full of Big Macs. I anticipated the worst. City had lost 4-1.

What a pessimistic Mr Grumpy I am. The supporters turned out to be good-humoured and chatty throughout the journey. If some of them had had full control of their bodily functions, they would have been perfect travelling companions. In the coach between charming Billericay and gentle Witham they kept up a witty banter with a young and rather posh girl who was trying to persuade them to come to her party. They had a much firmer grasp on reality than she did, and even the coach driver appreciated their jolly enlivenment of the journey.

The coaches, by the way, were excellent. They took us from where we were to where we had to be in comfort and style. What can I say?

At Witham a train was waiting for us, together with some rail officials humorously bearing the words “Customer Services” on their yellow jackets. I may be wrong, but they did not seem keen to be there.

You might expect that a train company that had been forced to inconvenience large numbers of its passengers would try to make up for it in some way. I would suggest making sure that the substitute trains were in good order and left at frequent intervals. Instead, we waited for half an hour while further passengers trickled in, and did not get going until even after the allocated departure time of 11.10pm (we had left Liverpool Street just after 9.30). The train itself felt even older than me, creaking and groaning in and out of every station as it shuffled its way towards Norwich.

But what I would definitely do if I was a train company (an unlikely event) would be to make sure there was a buffet car on board. Actually, what I would do is provide free food and drink, but a buffet car would have done. I began to see headlines like “City fans run amok on train”, but again my expectations were too low. Or maybe the fans were too tired.

We eventually alighted from the train in Norwich just after 12.30am. Again we were lucky: we live only a couple of hundred yards from the station. As we emerged we saw a long queue of despairing passengers, and no taxis in sight.

Posted on October 12 2012 in Articles. Tagged , .

Commentary on the obvious

The train from Barcelona has arrived:
if you look through the window, you can see its sleek
but obvious outlines

It stands there openly

We will be leaving soon:
we will be on our way, and later
after the scenery flies by,
we will arrive

and the weather will be different

They are building more flats by the railway,
and the buffet car has run out of milk:
it is not like English trains

It is a high-speed train, and it
moves quickly

What seems to be happening
is surely happening
and will probably happen again

If it does, we will tell you

In the tunnels it is dark:
outside, the sun casts shadows

And if something else is happening
that we cannot see
we do not speak about it

even if it seizes us by the throat
and shakes us till we scream

Is joy or terror passing by?
Is there an eagle in the mist
or a serpent in the falling rain?

No-one knows

Now we are nearly at Narbonne,
and most of us are asleep

It is normal:
it is what happens

Posted on October 9 2012 in Poetry

Somewhere else

A narrow Devon lane with hedges so high that they almost meet overhead leads from our rented cottage to the harbour, which consists of an ageing stone wall, a couple of rough ramps and a stream that flows under the road and between two low walls, out towards the sea.

An ancient house stands on one of the ramps, its gable end facing toward the waves, defiant. There is nothing smooth here, nothing nicely finished. Out in the bay, pieces of cliff are left to form grass-topped stacks, dangerous, unreachable.

The lane sweeps steeply down on both sides of the village, reflecting the rollercoaster cliffs that stretch east and west between Ilfracombe and Woolacombe. A combe is a wooded valley, but that sounds too pleasant, round and countrified for what you see hereabouts: deep cuts in the landscape, sharp and clinical.

Yes, there are trees, but they are dwarfed by the majesty of the cliffs. And on the beach the rocks again reflect that majesty: we follow the steep smugglers’ path from cove to cove at low tide, almost wanting to be caught by the sea, just to witness its power at first hand.

Sharp hands of slate reach up from the beach, with pools and tiny waterfalls created by this magical juxtaposition of rock and sand. My granddaughter climbs fearlessly up the jagged edges, her bare feet and fingers secure.

Later we watch the sea reclaim the beach, inch up and eventually smash against the harbour walls, as if to say: “You weren’t fooled, were you? All this is mine.”

This is my kind of beauty, and it reminds me again of the poet Rilke’s words, “For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror that we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us.”

The right reaction to beauty is surely just that: a sharp intake of breath, a kind of astonishment at its near-perfection and a fear-tinged wonder at what could be at the other side of it.

Top-class literature or drama can have the same effect, as can a song – a song like Leonard Cohen’s Alexandra Leaving or Dylan’s Visions of Johanna.

I  get the same feeling of awe, it has to be said, from the words of Jesus and from the idea of redemption and resurrection, the story that appears over and over again in the world’s literature and will not go away.

What does it all mean? Where did it all come from? Somewhere else, that’s for sure.

Posted on September 20 2012 in Articles

Ancient manuscripts prove to be prophetic

I cannot reveal how it happened, but some fragments of ancient manuscripts have come into my hands. It seems that these are portions of the New Testament that have somehow been omitted from the authorised versions. Since they recount incidents and conversations that appear in some ways to be prophetic, I feel it is my duty to release a few of them for public scrutiny. Here are the first – and, possibly, the last.

And Jesus took his disciples to one side and revealed to them things that must be. He outlined a worldwide organisation that would be composed of clergy and laity and would periodically split apart and re-form, and occasionally fight vigorously over key issues. In many countries the clergy would officiate at state functions and sit in parliaments. In others they would stand between God and man to ensure that no-one found their own way, which would be chaotic. One of the disciples said that this did not seem to be reflected in Jesus’ other teachings, but Jesus replied that the world moved in mysterious ways, and such things would come to pass. And the disciples went to a nearby valley and decided that fishing seemed like an attractive option, unless of course they could become clergy. “What you need,” said Simon Peter, “is one man in charge. Holding the keys, as it were.” But when Jesus asked him if he had said this, he denied it three times.

Jesus told the disciples that they needed to hold a formal meeting every two months for legal reasons. They would discuss whether the fabric needed attention and would decide whether faculties could be granted for pew removal. When the disciples asked what pews, fabric and faculties were, he said that all would be revealed in the fulness of time. Meanwhile, they needed to prepare a budget. Judas called Iscariot said he had this under control and could predict precisely what the income and outgoings would be each month. And because the disciples did not understand a word he said, they kept quiet, but murmured among themselves. Jesus said they might be asked to pay a parish share, but should first render unto Caesar that which was Caesar’s.

Then Jesus took his disciples apart in secret and allocated them roles. Unto one he gave the flower rota, while another decided which hymns should be sung each week. Another was designated to welcome visitors and another to set out and clean the place of worship. And unto two he gave gifts of music, if they should ever be needed. He handed out to each disciple a sheet of papyrus headed Liturgy, and told them to repeat it whenever they met. At this some disciples questioned him closely. They then said they were prepared to be martyred, given the opportunity.

Posted on September 6 2012 in Articles. Tagged , , .

Bluebell

A bluebell has flowered on my parents’ grave
cradled by a caressing sun
and guarded by squirrels

Now I know that you are still alive
I can rest easy:
even the naked torsos and shiny beer cans
of oblivious passers-by
no longer provoke dead anger in me

and the apparent absence of God
does not deceive me

Hidden beneath these shadowy rows of tottering tombstones
is pure gold
the essence of something unseen
in ordinary air

righteousness dancing
in the warmth of a friendly universe,
vital signs,
raw and unmistakeable

ready to break out
and expose the facade,
destroy the conspiracy,
make everything clear

 

Posted on September 5 2012 in Poetry

Olympics? Just tell me how you’re feeling

I watched open water swimming on television the other day. The next day I watched cross-country mountain biking.  I couldn’t tear myself away, which is odd when you consider that the one thing these two Olympic sports have in common is that there is almost nothing to look at for a very long time. And yet…and yet…if there was something to look at, I wanted to be there to see it.

Presumably I have a bad case of Olympic spirit, characterised by a compulsion to watch all kinds of bizarre sports in which I have no real interest. The BBC is not helping me. Every time I turn on the TV there is nothing much going on except tedious conversation, and whenever I turn it off, I find I have missed something that no-one who has seen it will ever forget.

Not wanting to be a total couch potato, I end up watching all the exciting bits after they happen, which means I am deprived of the emotional high that uncertainty adds to the mix. I have not screamed, cried, laughed with joy or torn my hair out. To be fair, I rarely do. I have however got a great deal of pleasure out of superb performances, medal or not.

I have to admit my Olympian compulsion did not extend to actually going to the Olympics. The whole alien paraphernalia of trying to obtain tickets was just too much for me, especially as you could, like friends of mine, end up watching something you would never watch under any other circumstances – in their case, two nights of boxing.

Bearing this in  mind, it seemed odd in the extreme for the BBC pundits to enthuse about the big crowds that certain sports were attracting. There may have been full houses for taekwondo, women’s football, tiddleywinks and Greco-Roman freestyle wrestling, but did anyone really want to see it, or did they just want to be part of the Olympic experience and couldn’t get tickets for anything else? If so, the legacy might be a bit thinner, or less certain, than anticipated.

Not that I want to put a damper on the Olympics. I really love watching most sports, even women’s football, though I find that as I age, I tend to prefer highlights. What is difficult to sit through is commentators rhapsodising about all and sundry, over and over again. The few who have something worthwhile to say, like Ian Thorpe and Michael Johnson, are of course wonderful, brilliant, the best I’ve ever seen and worth a medal every time. How do you feel about that, Ian? Could you just tell us what was going through your mind, Michael?

I don’t really blame people for asking sports people stupid questions. I blame the people who make them ask the questions. But maybe I have an allergy to excessive emotion.

I suspect, though, that the real problem is over-exposure. There is just too much to take in, and the desperation not to miss anything tends to take something away from the pleasure you get out of what you see. What I really wanted was, say, an hour’s programme around 10pm each night, showing you all the bits you really wanted to see – and when I say highlights (which I see I didn’t), I do not mean the last lap of a 1500-metre race. There does seem to be a complete failure to understand what you can shorten and what you can’t.

Oh, well. I expect it’s just me. I don’t even have a flag. And next week we’ll be back to Match of the Day. How is that not going to be an anti-climax of epic proportions?

Posted on August 10 2012 in Articles. Tagged .

What they really mean

The following list of phrases and their definitions might help you understand the mysterious languages of science and medicine. These special phrases are also applicable to anyone working on a PhD dissertation or academic paper anywhere. I received them from Casey Research.

  • “It has long been known” = I didn’t look up the original reference.
  • “A definite trend is evident” = These data are practically meaningless.
  • “While it has not been possible to provide definite answers to the questions” = An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.
  • “Three of the samples were chosen for detailed study” = The other results didn’t make any sense.
  • “Typical results are shown” = This is the prettiest graph.
  • “These results will be in a subsequent report” = I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.
  • “In my experience” = Once.
  • “In case after case” = Twice.
  • “In a series of cases” = Thrice.
  • “It is believed that” = I think.
  • “It is generally believed that” = A couple of others think so, too.
  • “Correct within an order of magnitude” = Wrong.
  • “According to statistical analysis” = Rumour has it.
  • “A statistically oriented projection of the significance of these findings” = A wild guess.
  • “A careful analysis of obtainable data” = Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over my coffee.
  • “It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs”= I don’t get it.
  • “After additional study by my colleagues”= They don’t get it either.
  • “Thanks are due to Joe Blotz for assistance with the experiment and to Cindy Adams for valuable discussions” = Mr. Blotz did the work and Ms. Adams explained to me what it meant.
  • “A highly significant area for exploratory study” = A totally useless topic selected by my committee.
  • “It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigation in this field” = I quit.
Posted on June 12 2012 in Articles