Author Archives: Tim Lenton

Funny thing, progress. It should work: we learn from experience, improve things as we go along, and one morning we wake up and everything’s perfect – or at least, better than it was before.

Sadly, though, it seems to work backwards. All right – scientific advances mean that if you have a health problem, you have a better chance of getting it fixed than you did 50 years ago. But can you get an appointment more easily? No, that’s much, much harder than it was 50 years ago. I know: I was there.

Of course, if you are an administrator, especially in the NHS, things are much better: more jobs, more money, new things that have to be regulated. But those of us who are being administrated might not see it like that. Oh no we don’t.

Much of this backward progress had happened because there is a large body of people who, as Charlie Brown would say, like to function in an advisory capacity – or as I might say, a dictatorial capacity.

I read this morning of a motorist who was fined for driving “too close” to a cyclist – the evidence (and this is the critical bit) coming from the cyclist’s camera. I’m sure that gave a wide screen view taking in all the contributing factors. Or am I? We all seem to be far too keen to catch our fellow human beings out … as well as helmet cams, we have windscreen cams in cars and will no doubt have pedestrian cams soon. If we haven’t already.

The result, of course, is that those of us who don’t hate motorists hate cyclists, especially when councils plough up cities to put in unnecessary and often unused cycle paths.

We also have battalions of busybody speedcheckers who have nothing better to do than stand at the side of the road and try to catch motorists out. It doesn’t matter how well someone is driving: someone else has decided on a random speed limit based on dubious statistics, and they have gone just beyond it; so they are evil and must be stopped. Really?

But it’s not just health and the roads. Everywhere new rules and regulations are being introduced, often in the spurious name of health and safety but also to “avoid giving offence”. To be alive in Britain in 2022 is to tiptoe through the world, afraid of breaching one abysmal dogma after another. And there are plenty of people who love to set the system up and make sure it’s applied.

During the Covid outbreak, many of these compulsive “managers” were in their element, of course. So many more rules; so many more offenders. And now, as things return to “normal”, I am convinced that many would-be volunteers are dissuaded by the reams of paperwork that have to be filled in. A woman who lives not far from me recently appealed for volunteers to help with a meals on wheels scheme – only to be taken to task by a neighbour who warned that such volunteers might constitute a risk unless they were properly registered and filled in all the necessary forms.

I’m sure that successfully dissuaded anyone who might have been wanting to lend a hand. Well done, Madam.

The only progress we really seem to have made is in eliminating trust and giving way to fear on all fronts. If that is the case, I have to agree with Ogden Nash, who said that “progress might have been all right once, but it has gone on far too long”.

A close friend of mine blames all of society’s ills on cars and television. If neither of these had been invented, she says, we would be much better off – our horizons limited both physically and mentally to the benefit of communities and families.

No doubt she is much wiser than I am: I would just prefer it if speed cameras had not been invented. 

I would never say that, of course, because I would get a barrage of criticism from the usual suspects, who have been outnumbering me for some time. Still, as Anatole France said, if 52 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

I am in fact a right-wing, litter-throwing, woke-cancelling, dog-hating, anti-Brexit, climate-denying, cycle-wielding anarchist Liverpool supporter. I’m joking, of course. Only one or two of those tendencies is true, and it’s certainly not the Liverpool one.

The real trouble with our country nowadays is that we know too much about each other, and of course social media are to blame. I discovered today that my local community (in the broadest sense) harbours a nest of anti-Monarchist troublemakers who favour disrupting Jubilee street parties. I find this obnoxious (or do I?) but without social media I wouldn’t know who they were. 

Until I made use of Facebook – which despite objections from people who know what they’re talking about, I find useful for keeping in contact with ex-colleagues – I didn’t know how many people I liked and respected harboured political views that I found not only unexpected but preposterous. Happily I have a measure of self-restraint, and so they don’t know they hate me.

Twitter is another matter. It’s so easy to pop in the quick barbed comment, usually about road works, but so difficult to avoid annoying someone or other. In fact I think some people go on Twitter specifically to be annoyed.

In short, however much we disagree with each other, it’s best not to put it in writing – at least where someone might read it. A group of near neighbours of ours stand outside on a Friday night (weather permitting, and you know what they say about weather forecasters) and we have a drink. We get on very well, despite not having by any means the same political views. No-one gets annoyed, throws punches or walks out (or in). And you know why? Because we don’t write it down.

When I was young, pretty much everyone got on. For the same reason. Now we all hate each other. Or do we?

More than two years after narrowly avoiding lockdown in Bethlehem, after mysterious months of mask-wearing, social distancing and excessive ventilation, enduring myriad unintelligible and illogical restrictions, a spell in hospital with a gall-bladder infection and experiencing all the joys of a long low-fat diet – just when it felt safe to come in out of the cold, I caught Covid.

To be accurate, my wife and I both caught Covid, testing positive on the same day. She, being more resilient than I, was over it within a week; my version lingered for another three days. I still feel tired and have minor pains in my back.

Why should you be interested in this? Rumour has it that about seven people out of ten in England have had Covid in one form or another. And that’s the interesting thing – in one form or another. Because nearly everyone appears to be affected differently.

My wife and I both had the symptoms of a very bad head cold, with a few vague add-ons such as peculiar head pains and a certain amount of shivering. But neither of us had the “official” symptoms – high temperature, sore throat, loss of taste or smell. We just felt very ill, and so tested ourselves.

One friend said she felt “fantastic” while still testing positive. Others felt more or less OK. But of course many have been laid very low, with symptoms that go on and on and on, debilitating and more than distressing.

Naturally we know several people who have not caught it. Half a dozen of them have never been vaccinated. Others have had the full range of jabs. We have had three jabs and still caught it. We might ask what the jabs were for; you might answer that we would have been much more badly affected if we hadn’t had them, but that is conjecture. In fact, most of it is conjecture.

In view of all this, it must be right to return to normal life now, or we never will. Even civil servants might risk it.

It was that profound absurdist thinker Franz Kafka who put it most effectively: it is safer, he said, to be in chains than to be free. 

Most 21st century activists think the same way. And since safety appears to be the main preoccupation of us all, there is not much dispute that the chains will win. Even Tories are left-wingers nowadays. 

Coupled with belief that chains are the safest way of living is the illusion – or is it delusion? – that we can manufacture chains that are effective for every possible  situation. 

Take the “situation” in Ukraine. Evil is being perpetrated. Our concern is not primarily to battle it but to ascertain the safest way of reacting. This makes a certain kind of sense, doesn’t it?

But that’s just an extreme example. The health and safety industry is really in charge of everything we do. We have to wear helmets to ride bikes, seat belts to drive cars, obey speed limits of various kinds and follow numerous tortuous rules before forming any kind of group. Risk assessments, safeguarding, masks, speed cameras, speed humps, CCTV – you name it. 

The intrusion of government into what should be private and personal activities grows regularly, and many of us are all for it, citing “the greater good”. But of course all this is really chains. Is imprisonment of everyone the greatest good? 

No. Freedom Is vital if we to function in a human and loving way. Helen Keller said: “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

Why do we want to be so safe? What are we afraid of? Well, death, I suppose: the horrific possibility that things may end for us at any minute. Better life imprisonment than that. 

But of course Easter reminds us that this is rubbish: death is not the end. How could it be? It is the shaky secular society that we live in that generates fear, and the obsession with safety. If we stood back and looked backwards at our history, outwards at those we admire or inwards at the essence of life itself, we would realise that there are more important things than being safe. And more exciting prospects than extinction. 

Resurrection, anyone?

Yet another article has appeared in my local paper on the question of  20mph limits – this time by a motoring writer. I was too slow to respond to it – caught in a 20mph zone, you might say. I was also rather surprised to hear a former motoring correspondent having anything to say in favour of 20mph limits, but I expect he had a Damascus Road conversion. In reverse.

There is, as any competent driver knows, little to be said in favour of 20mph limits, their only saving grace being that they are rarely enforced, thus acting as advisory signs, which is fair enough. In fact there is an argument that all speed limits should be advisory, as travelling at any given speed – or above any given speed – should really not be an offence in itself. 

Speed does not kill or even injure: collisions do that. So the real issue is responsible and skilful driving, with punishable offences being dangerous driving, reckless driving and careless driving. But the kind of frightened society we live in does not care for that and uses dubious statistics to twist its judgements. When I was growing up, I was told that there were lies, damned lies and statistics, and this is still true. But now it masquerades as science, and we love it. We prefer it to visible policing, which used to be a real safety measure. But that was in the days when the police said openly that you didn’t learn to drive well until you’d broken the speed limit. Oh yes they did.

What worries me is that someone will institute a method of monitoring all car speeds from a distance, and we will abandon all reliance on driving skill, allowing drivers to be fined or banned for arbitrary reasons, irrespective of how well they are driving. 

What exactly is wrong with 20mph? The same thing that’s wrong with driving too slowly anywhere. It’s polluting; it uses more fuel than is necessary; it distracts the driver from paying attention to the road; it lulls you into a false sense of security or makes you impatient, depending on what sort of person you are; and if deprives you of momentum, which is vital for avoiding danger. It means you spend a lot of time braking, which is when you are in the least control of the car. 

Many, many speed limits are too slow. I have just returned from Derbyshire, which has a more or less ubiquitous and idiotic 50mph limit on the open road. I followed a driver for many miles who kept rigidly to this limit – except that when when he went uphill, he reduced his speed to as little as 30mph. He also wandered all over his side of the road. Going too slowly means you are not in control of the car: you assume the “authorities” must know the right speed, and you don’t need to think at all. That is when accidents happen.

Slow speeds are demanded by local pedestrians because they see drivers going quicker than they are, and they assume that therefore they are going too fast. No, that’s not very bright, but we don’t live in a very bright world. They also never seem to notice how it’s more difficult to cross a road as a pedestrian when all the traffic is going at the same speed, with no gaps.

It’s April 1; so this could be a gigantic April Fool joke, or a rant by a boy racer. Sadly it’s neither: it’s the reaction of an experienced OAP driver to another money-making scam. 

Unfortunately statistics show that 90% of readers will have been brainwashed into thinking all the above arguments are absurd. I made that figure up, of course, but it’s about right. 

Happily I shall not live long enough to see the 10mph  limit or the return of the red flag. I  hope.