I have come to expect that in any area that can be described as even remotely political, my views are at variance with just about all my friends, and are certainly not represented by anyone standing in my constituency for any form of office, be it MP, mayor, police commissioner, binman or traffic warden.

This means that not only I am effectively disenfranchised, but I cannot talk to my friends either.

So clearly I cannot venture any kind of opinion on whether we should stay staunchly in the European Union or come out of it as quickly as possible. I will however make one or two observations.

Most young to medium-young people seem in favour of staying in. This may be because they have never experienced life outside the EU, or indeed known that such a thing was possible. However, young people are the future, and if they want to stay in, perhaps we should let them. It won’t be long before it won’t matter to me one way or the other. In fact that day is fast approaching.

Most people of my generation want to leave. That may be something of a generalisation, but if it’s true, I suspect it’s because they resent the dishonest way we were dragged into it. Or maybe they remember the halcyon days when we made our own laws and could laugh at all the stupid things we did, instead of grimly blaming them on foreigners.

It has been suggested that we should judge the merits of our journey by looking at our fellow travellers. How can we think of leaving when Batty Boris and Michael Gove are also of that opinion? That sort of makes sense until you realise that David Cameron and George Osborne are of the opposite opinion.

(I myself am astonished at how many loud and abusive Cameron-haters have in recent weeks seem to have fallen in love with him. Will it last? You tell me.)

The idea that older may be wiser has long gone by the board – at least in our up-to-the-minute culture. It is of course wrong to say that those with more experience, expertise and knowledge are necessarily wiser, but they may not all have Alzheimer’s either. I know I haven’t. At least, I don’t think so.

So which way should you vote? Are you frightened of migrants or terrified by trade deficits? Do you think the NHS is sinking fast, or is the sky on fire? I suppose you could make a balanced decision, and vote to come out a little way and then edge back. Independence Day or Divergent? It’s tail-on-the-donkey time.

I say this at the risk of upsetting all my friends.

I made my first visit of the season to Carrow Road last night, and saw Norwich City beat Watford 4-2. It was an exciting occasion: my neighbour’s 13-year-old son, Freddie, was one of the mascots, and there was much merriment all round. Which is odd, because the night ended with Norwich being relegated to the Championship, thanks to Sunderland’s win against Everton.

It was not a particularly merry evening for me. First, I forgot how to swipe my wife’s season ticket, then I entered the ground through the wrong lounge and couldn’t find my seat (although I’d sat in it many times before) and finally I was barred from the lounge at half time because I’d left my ticket with someone who was already in there.

I didn’t mind too much about that, because they don’t serve black tea. I mean, really.

I did mind the constant sit-stand yo-yoing up and down because people arrived late, left early for half-time, came back late and then left early at the end. It’s not as though the football was boring – on this occasion, anyway. But Norwich, I’m told, are a yo-yo club, and I suppose this includes the spectators. Since I’m not a regular spectator, I can’t really expect anyone to take note of my muttering.

(In case you’re mystified, a yo-yo club is one that is relegated one year and promoted the next. We hope.)

But why the merriment? Don’t football fans really care? Is their club a joke?

I find it strangely reassuring. I know Bill Shankly said football was “not a matter of life and death: it’s more important than that”, but of course it really isn’t, is it? And the Championship can be more fun than the Premiership, unless you’re Leicester. And let’s face it, most of us aren’t. We’re not even Richard III.

Strangely, what brought about the merriment was acceptance of the inevitable. Norwich were going down. No-one suggested otherwise, though it was not settled mathematically. A week earlier, when there was realistic hope, there was no merriment –­ just tension, and a touch of despair.

Last night we’d got beyond all that. We were going to have a good season in the Championship and not endure a long series of 1-0 losses to off-colour super-teams. At least that’s what we hope. And it’s a merry thought. The win against Watford was a kind of promise of things to come.

When I left Wembley after the euphoric play-off final last year, a Middlesbrough fan approached a group of us and said: “You’re going to lose all your matches next year, and we’re going to win the league.” How we laughed, not because we held him in scorn, but because we knew that he was probably right.

He almost was. As Norwich go down, they pass Middlesbrough on the way up. What goes around, comes around. You’ve got to be merry, haven’t you?

Unless you believe in a particularly strict version of determinism in which referees are gods, you have to admit that football is a pretty random sport.

Any match that ends with a one-goal difference could certainly have gone either way, with bad bounces, poor decisions and a breath of wind being among the tiny factors that could swing it. That being the case, league tables – like school league tables – are relatively meaningless.

Unfortunately they do decide promotion, delegation and trophies, but a moment’s reflection will tell you that it’s all luck, and there’s no use making a fuss about it.

Take Norwich City. They are likely to be relegated, but most of their losses have been by single-goal margins, and even some of the ones that weren’t could have been victories.

In the first game of the season they lost 3-1. But they had a perfectly good goal – actually an excellent one, according to the opposing manager – disallowed, a penalty turned down, and the third goal by the opposition came in the final minute when they were desperately trying to retrieve the situation. So clearly, they could have won 2-1.

In the recent game against relegation rivals Sunderland they had, if I remember rightly, 14 corners against nil. The first Sunderland goal was a contentious penalty, the second came after an unpenalised  foul on the Norwich centre back, and Norwich had an obvious penalty (possibly two) not given. So that could easily have been a draw, or a win if they hadn’t missed an open goal. But the records will tell you they lost 0-3.

This is not a desperate attempt to demonstrate that Norwich City deserve to stay in the Premiership and pick up all the gold at the end of the rainbow. Who could make such a judgement? Only someone who took into account all the little knocks and accidents, the unlucky injuries and appalling decisions that make football such a fascinating – or, looked at another way, pointless – game.

I don’t want to have a go at referees. Well, that’s not strictly true: I do want to have a go at referees, because some of their decisions are unbelievable. Why is manhandling  the opponent in the penalty area not penalised, or only penalised sometimes?  Why does Vardy get a penalty when he runs in front of the centre back and falls over?

But of course refereeing is difficult. I’ve  done it only a few times, and I found it very, very difficult. And this is not an attack on referees; it’s an attack on the idea that the right team wins. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t – usually when Liverpool is involved.

So why watch at all? Well, some of it is beautiful. A lot of it isn’t, which is why I prefer highlights. But as a consistent and accurate measure of the excellence of competing teams? Give us a break. Only a pundit would think that.

More and more, day after day, I feel less in sync with life in 21st century Britain. Or should I say England? Or maybe the UK?  I never used to worry about that sort of thing.

Maybe it’s the European Union, but then I never felt very happy there. I thought we were conned into going in, I never liked the bureaucracy and feel the justice system is weighted against the innocent. Its so-called democracy is a pale reflection of ours and I’m surprised that so many people think its Parliament has the same function and powers as the British Parliament.

But then, I’m constantly amazed at what some people think, just as they would be amazed at what I think – if I told them.

Most of the time, though, I’m just puzzled. Take recycling. All of our recycling goes into one bin – apart from the food waste. So the cardboard, paper, cans, bottles and many different kinds of plastic have to be separated  by someone else, which must be easier than it sounds. Presumably.

And I’m still not sure what kind of plastic can be recycled. All of it, or just some? What about greasy paper? Or plastic smelling of fish? Is there a risk of cross-contamination? A news story this week suggested that householders in some areas might have their bins taken away if they don’t wash out their baked bean cans; so expect to see lots of baked bean cans littering our motorways. Or have I missed something?

Paint, of course, can’t be recycled or thrown away, unless – as I have recently been informed – you put cat litter in the cans and dry the paint out. Then you can throw them away, but not recycle them. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Did I mention smart phones? No, I don’t want to recycle them. I just want to know why my iPhone works better on 4G than it does on Wifi when I’m at home.

Regular readers (yes, I mean you – both of you) will not be surprised to hear that I am also puzzled by speed limits, which are so often inappropriate. For instance, our local highways authority has recently placed 30mph limits on several of the major roads heading north outside the city while they cut down some trees in preparation for building a distributor road.

These limits may be necessary to protect workers if the trees are particularly close to the highway, but the limits remain all night and over the weekends, when nothing is happening. Many drivers with an “It’s the law” mentality jam on their brakes and proceed at funereal pace all night, while others with a more practical outlook ignore it. I would say that was a recipe for disaster, but of course it isn’t: it’s an accident waiting to happen.

Now I understand from the Alliance of British Drivers that the Government is set to scrap the statutory requirement for signing speed limits altogether. This, it suggests, “can only result in multiple signing standards, the creation of real danger, genuine confusion and the criminalisation of swathes of the motoring public”.

This sounds like malice on the part of the Government, but I was always taught never to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity, and I expect this falls into just such a category.

As does so much else. I heard the other day that it takes five hours to fill in a form to get a disabled person a stairlift. Of course it does. Why wouldn’t it?

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.

There may not have been much about the Lord’s Prayer in cinemas over the Christmas period, but at least there was Star Wars.

And if you happen to live in my neck of the woods, there was a bonus: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the local theatre.

One of these productions is of course almost explicitly Christian, though it is hard to know how many of our secularised children actually realise it. Perhaps more than we think: children are pretty sharp, and tend to find out things.

Of course there is not a great deal about lions and witches in the Bible. One strains to think of even a single reference to wardrobes. But the story that C S Lewis wrote is the same story of Christianity in different words: the power of light over darkness; self-sacrifice; forgiveness; love; even resurrection.

But what about Star Wars? Not quite the same clear reflection there, perhaps, but it arouses in us very similar reactions. In the SW universe there is good and evil, and the evil appears overwhelming, just as it does in Narnia.

There is also something hidden that makes all the difference. In Lewis’ story it is the reappearance of Aslan at a critical moment. In Star Wars, the title says it: The Force Awakens. The moment that sends a shiver up the spine is the moment when this is revealed, and the Force makes its choice (I would like to be more explicit, but you may not have seen it yet).

There are those who would identify the Force with the power of the Holy Spirit. You could also argue that it is the light entering the world, and the darkness being unable to overcome it. Take your choice. Either or both.

What is undeniable is that people leave both productions uplifted, having seen light overcome darkness. There’s no real reason people should want to see light defeat darkness unless we are created that way – and stories like this dig it out of us.