26 1GM Friday March 6 2020 | the timesComment
Mysteries
of the man
cave include
11 speakers
I
return home from a short trip
and ask the husband what he’s
been doing. “Working on the man
cave,” he announces. To my eyes,
though, the room appears exactly
the same, right down to the worrying
“What takes place in the man cave
stays in the man cave” sign on the
door. The interior is all black Ikea
surfaces and screens. He points to
two speakers on the wall. Apparently
they are “new”, despite being vintage.
I count 11 speakers in total in the
room. Eleven! It seems a little bit
Wembley-esque for what was, before
we arrived, a moderately sized
bedroom. The husband looks pained
as he explains. Three speakers are for
the computer, four for the stereo
system (so vintage it may now be
“heritage”) and four for the TV so
large it is probably visible from space.
He now attempts to tell me moreLandowners and
farmers need to be
able to cull badgers
Clive Aslet
L
ast month I visited Elmley
nature reserve on the Kent
marshes and was amazed to
see so many lapwing, a
ground-nesting bird with a
handsome crest and a call that gives
it the alternative name of peewit.
The reason, I discovered, was that
this privately-operated reserve has
spent a fortune on fencing out
badgers, as well as foxes, who would
otherwise eat the eggs and chicks.
Result: more breeding lapwing,
redshank and avocet than anywhere
else in lowland Britain, as well as a
large number of hedgehogs.
Despite evidence that killing
badgers reduces the spread of bovine
TB among dairy cattle, the
government has announced that
culling of the creatures will now be
phased out. But the problem isn’t just
the vexed question of this dreadful
disease: there are, anyway, simply too
many badgers. The population has
exploded from a small base in the
1980s to half a million today.
It was necessary to protect badgers
by legislation when their numbers
fell to the tens of thousands in the
1970s and they were persecuted by
vile individuals who pitted them
against dogs. But protection brings
its own problems. Since the badger
has no predator in the British
countryside, it is the duty of humans
to keep a proper balance between it
and other species.
This is also the case with red deer
in Scotland, which prevent the
natural regeneration of trees in the
Highlands by eating any shoot that
appears above ground. Now even
some unlikely organisations,
including Ramblers Scotland and
RSPB Scotland, argue that the public
should be allowed to hunt them for
venison, as happens in Norway.
Kenneth Grahame sentimentalised
Badger in The Wind in the Willows;
Beatrix Potter’s Tommy Brock was
nearer the mark — a vicious animal
whose claws, in real life, are strong
enough to rip open curled
hedgehogs, which it then eats alive.
We all want to see reasonable
numbers of them in the countryside.
For their own sakes, as well as to
protect dairy herds, TB should be
eradicated, by culling if necessary.
Vaccines may prevent a badger from
catching the disease but will do
nothing to help those already
infected and suffering.
In recent years, the vogue for
rewilding has led to the belief that
the countryside can be left to look
after itself, and beauty and
biodiversity will result. They won’t.
There is nothing truly wild about
rural Britain and there has not been
for hundreds if not thousands of
years. Humans rule the roost. Not to
control a top predator like the badger
out of soppiness is to abdicate our
responsibility to Nature.Clive Aslet is a former editor of
Country LifeThe disease could be the shock we need to harness new technology and new ways of working
Virus can trigger a new industrial revolution
road, which often seems to be staffed
by one man and his digger, is a
national outrage, causing constant
delays and angst. Every time I go on
about it, everyone just looks glazed
and shrugs. But mention “glamour
transport issues” (yes, that is what I
call them) like Heathrow expansion
or HS2 and the opinions are as
endless as the roadworks.Moving words
T
he writers of health and safety
warning notices have surely
now lost the plot. The other day,
at Sheffield station, I emerged from a
(late) Northern train to be greeted by
this advice: “Due to forecasted high
winds please keep hold of personal
items and take care whilst moving.”
Hmm. Well “moving”, aka walking,
doesn’t really narrow it down, does
it? And you just try catching a train
without moving.Gutted
W
ord of the week, which
comes from reader Tim
Smith of Cheltenham, is
“gralloch”, as in “I feel completely
gralloched”. He explains that it’s the
direct Scottish parallel of the English
“gutted” and, indeed, it does also
mean to disembowel a deer. This is
exactly the kind of information that
we don’t get enough of these days.enable a very different form of
globalisation. Combine them and it is
possible, as the economist Richard
Baldwin says, to imagine hotel rooms
in London being cleaned by robots
controlled by cleaners in Poland, or
lawns in Texas mowed by robots
steered by gardeners in Mexico.
Yet for all the hype, the industrial
revolution driven by these
technologies still feels a long way off.
Many offices are not that different
from their 1950s ancestors; much
manufacturing revolves around
factories and supply chains which,
save for the fact that they are split
between different countries, Henry
Ford would feel at home in; 3D
printing has taken the hearing aid
sector by storm but is still an
irrelevance in most parts of the
manufacturing world.
But coronavirus is one of those
shocks that could force business to
take the leaps they were hitherto too
nervous to make. When supply
chains are down and households are
quarantined, suddenly the fourth
industrial revolution, or whatever
you want to call it, looks a lot more
attractive. When physical cash is
spreading the virus, using electronic
money seems far smarter. When
travelling and mingling is a risk,
working remotely could become the
norm rather than an aberration.
That this will all help to diminish
carbon emissions is an added bonus.
Of course, it’s quite possible life
returns to normal after coronavirus.
But one consequence of this disease
could be that it forces us to take a
long hard look at the way we run the
world, and change it.Ed Conway is economics editor
of Sky NewsMost downturns are Darwinian
moments for capitalism: out go old,
lumbering companies that failed to
move with the times; in come their
disruptive rivals in a blaze of
creative destruction. Hardship
focuses the mind, and companies
find more efficient ways of
running their businesses. The
economy that emerges should be
more productive than its
predecessor. Yet in this crisis the
opposite may be happening.
The most efficient, which is to say
the cheapest, way companies have
found of manufacturing products is
to use supply chains that straddle the
globe in search of cheap labour. If
something could be made for less on
the other side of the world, so be it.
Yet coronavirus, which threatens
to constrain the free movement of
people and goods, will deny
companies this cheapest avenue.
Companies will have to think long
and hard about whether
intercontinental supply chains make
sense. Already some companies are
shifting production back home and
opting for home-built components.
On the one hand that spells
enormous disruption and could
make all our lives more expensive.
Yet there is also a silver lining which
need not only appeal to Extinction
Rebellion. What if this is the nudge
we need to embrace a new model of
globalisation?
For the dirty secret about today’s
economy is that it is actually a
product of yesterday’s technologies:
the foundation of just-in-time supply
chains is software and internet
connectivity. The ultimate energy
source is fossil fuels, in ships and
planes. Today’s new technologies —
3D printing, AI, robotics — couldD
on’t take this the wrong
way but if you were a
young, hardline
environmentalist looking
for the ultimate weapon
against climate change, you could
hardly design anything better than
coronavirus.
Unlike most other such diseases, it
kills mostly the old who, let’s face it,
are more likely to be climate sceptics.
It spares the young. Most of all, it
stymies the forces that have been
generating greenhouse gases for
decades. Deadly enough to terrify;
containable enough that aggressive
quarantine measures can prevent it
from spreading. The rational
response for any country determined
to prevent loss of life is to follow
China’s lead and lock down their
economy to stem its spread.
And so airlines are cancelling
flights; companies are scrapping
travel. Factories in China and,
presumably soon in Europe, are
being mothballed. The chimneys
which once belched smog into the
skies of Beijing and Shenzhen are
smoking no more. Perhaps you saw
the satellite map produced by Nasa
showing that pollution across China,
usually visible in dense patches
blanketing the country, has almost
entirely gone.
Hardcore climate activists have
long railed against economic growth
and in the months ahead they may
have their wish granted as GDPgrowth from China to Europe and
the US is hammered by coronavirus.
Yet this would be no normal
economic slump. It’s not as if most
companies have become insolvent.
It’s not as if the plumbing of the
financial system is broken. Even if
the outbreak triggers a recession one
can expect the economy to bounce
back in the coming quarters. Along
the way some companies and
households will be unable to keep
things ticking over. What these
companies need isn’t necessarily
money but time: time to pay bills,
time for affected staff to recover and
for mothballed units to be restarted.
And since this is no normal
economic crisis it’s not clear that any
of the normal remedies like cuts in
interest rates or taxes will help. Far
better will be forensic measures to
ensure those businesses and
households temporarily unable topay their bills are given time to pay.
One bold idea would be to set up a
natural disasters insurance fund to
support those who lose their jobs or
their businesses as a result of this
and future crises. America’s Federal
Emergency Management Agency
has something called Disaster
Unemployment Assistance, which
could provide a blueprint. And while
the Bank of England can (and
probably will) cut interest rates, far
more important will be other
below-the-radar schemes such as
financial help for companies whose
supply chains are fracturing.Hardship focuses the
mind, and companies
become more efficient
about the speakers. The word
“woofer” is used, which I haven’t
heard in decades. But I just keep
returning to the fact of 11 speakers.
In my own study, there are zero.Viral shuff le
W
e went out to dinner the
other night, as our favourite
café, Because I Like It, in
Bakewell, is shutting down and the
owners Val and Nigel were
treating us to a farewell meal.
There were six of us in total and
when we met in the café we all
just stood there, a good way
from each other, shuffling our
feet and nodding our
heads repeatedly like
those dogs in the
rear windows
of cars.
Welcome to the
Coronavirus Foot
Shuffle greeting!
It’s all so very
uncomfortable.
One man
insisted
on
touching his elbow to
mine. No, no, no. I
reached my arms out in
a mime hug. But everyone
else just stood there looking awkward.
This reminds me of the way it usedto be when I arrived in Britain in- Then, no one hugged when
meeting. Cheek-kissing was viewed
as dangerously French. Even
handshakes were sometimes almost
painful experiences. It has taken
decades to break all that down, and
now we are back where
we started.
Smart but dumb
I
distrust anything
called “smart”, as in
“smart motorways”,
because you just know
they aren’t going to be
that clever really. So it
seems to be proving —
but then you don’t have
to be a genius to figure
out that having no
hard shoulder is going
to cause problems. I had
hoped, in the wake of
various terrible accidents,
that the entire smart
motorway experiment would
be disbanded. But it seems
not. The 27 miles of M1
smart motorway
roadworks near
Northampton, which I
have been driving
through for what
seems eternity, continue.
This stretch of smart-but-dumbAnn Treneman Notebook
btbh
tto
h
v
tEd Conway