The Times - UK (2020-08-01)

26 1GM Saturday August 1 2020 | the times

Comment

Why hire a patsy to communicate with the Red Wall in Latin when the PM is primus inter pares at the common touch?

I, Boris, can spoke, or even speak, for myself

of fourth-form common-room

bunfight? What if they engaged

seriously with the questions and

allowed it to be seen that they had no

answers? It is for this reason, above

all, that I put myself forward as the

only feasible candidate for the job of

speaking for me. Which is to say, him.

Indeed, I do wonder if this story of

the search for a spokesman is true?

Or is it, like so much on the BBC,

not? And if that is the case, should

we not take a long hard look at the

licence fee? I was, as it happens, only

visiting the BBC website today in the

hope of closing it down. But when I

hit the little cog thingy in the top

right-hand corner — that Rishi, who

is good with this sort of thing, says is

how you do it — there was not an

option to “defund BBC and spend

money on free restaurant vouchers

for all”. I asked Rishi how to call up a

different page where there was, and

he said that he hoped I was not

confusing him with the tech chappy,

just because he was young, Asian

and smartly dressed. And I said, of

course not, you’re the business

secretary.

It is thusly and for these reasons

that I say to you today: I am the only

person you should consider for the

role of spokesperson for myself. You

say in your advert that “essential

skills” will include “excellent risk

management and crisis

communication skills” and I think I

have proven my ability to take quite

enormous risks without giving so

much as a second thought to the

consequences and then, when it all

goes wrong, shout “Don’t panic!” and

nearly die, better than anyone else

alive.

in the way that I, as a father of six, or

possibly nine, can? What if they were

not obese, and thus unable to make

the obesity crisis relatable? What if

he had a neat parting and, as a

result, alienated the sofa-bound

northern scroungers who voted, in

2019, predominantly for

unkemptness?

And will he, or she, or it, be versed

in the four great Ps of Aristotelian

peroration, to wit: periphrasis,

procrastination, prevarication and

preposterousness? How else, then, to

get the message — which is that

there is no message at all apart from

the expression of the absence of a

message — across?

And what if this spokesperson were

boring? Or told, God forbid,

the truth? Where would we — or,

more to the point, he — be then?

What if they didn’t make jokes all the

time and turn everything into a sort

If things go wrong, Boris Johnson can

shout ‘Don’t panic’ better than anyone

To whom it may, er, as it were,

concern,

I

am writing to confirm my

interest in, nay, frothing ambition

to secure, the job of spokesperson

for the prime minister. Although

I will, upon uptake of that

esteemed position, ask to be referred

to as, “spokesman”, seeing as that is,

demonstrably, what I am, or, rather,

will be, in the event of a positive

outcome, and I am not afraid to say

so. Or to say anything else, for that

matter, which is as it should be in the

case of a spokesman. Or woman. Or,

indeed, I grant you, person.

The availability of this position

came to my notice — although I

gather it was originally advertised on

the Conservative Linkedin weblog

thingummy — during a perusal of

the BBC website, when my flabber

was, I think it is fair to say,

thoroughly gasted by the headline,

“Boris Johnson seeks spokesperson

to front White House-style

briefings.”

And I thought, “Do I?” Which is to

say, “Does he?” Or, rather, as one is

so often implored to put it these

days, “do they?”.

For it was the first that I had heard

of it. What on earth, after all, or

anywhere else, would Boris Johnson

want with a spokesperson, when I

am, which is to say, he is, and, above

all, they are themself — or is it

themselves? — a person pre-eminent

in the art of spoking? By which I

mean to say, speaking.

Speaking is what Boris Johnson is

best at. There are those — I am not,

I hasten to add, among them — who

would say speaking is the only thing

he is good at. So why would he,

primus inter pares as he is, want to

employ someone else — some

secundus, tertius, septigentensimus

or, indeed, millensimus — to speak

for him?

No. To farm out the daily prime

ministerial interface with the

gentlemen of the press to a hired

patsy, in the American gubernatorial

tradition, would be to take, in my

opinion, an incalculable risk. How, I

ask you, could one be certain that

the person hired would have the

appropriate wit, levity and humour

to speak for the prime minister?

Would they have adequate command

of the Latin that is the only language

some people — and I include myself

among them –—understand? Would

they, when push came to shove, and

then on to heave, scrummage and

eye-gouge, have the prime minister’s

widely celebrated common touch?

Whither, under such circumstances,

the “red wall”? Ubi murus rubrus?

For what if this new person were

not able to communicate with the

indigent single parents of great

squawking broods on council estates

The message is there’s

no message but for the

absence of a message

Giles

Coren

Matthew Oates Nature Notebook

Enigmatic

butterfly’s

extinction

rebellion

A

t last some goodish news:

the gorgeous, elusive and

supposedly extinct large

tortoiseshell butterfly is

once again breeding here.

Always an enigma, prone to spells of

local abundance and regional

extinction, this bright tawny cousin

of our familiar peacock has bred on

the Isle of Portland, Dorset. In early

June, a brilliant piece of fieldwork by

a young biologist from Oxford

University located a batch of 175 of

the gregarious larvae on elms by the

ruined church at

Church Ope Cove,

Portland (the one with

the “pirate’s graveyard”).

From late June,

pristine

butterflies have

been seen

close by,

stimulating a

big butterfly “twitch”.

and nature. Meanwhile, our glorious

unkempt verges have offered up a

passion of wildflowers, with the

yellow lady’s bedstraw having an

especially prolific year.

The new seekers

T

his year of furlough and school

breakdown is creating a new

generation of nature lovers, of

all ages. People are turning to nature

and finding it welcoming and

enthralling. It has been a delight to

see children out with pots and

butterfly nets, gently catching,

identifying, releasing and relishing.

Don’t underestimate these seekers.

They are the product of our sunniest

spring on record. But, after a gale-

damaged July, this August is pivotal

to their development. May the sun

shine on them, enabling them to

retain the fondest memories of this

summer. The writers among them

are likely to produce some extremely

powerful and cathartic accounts.

To those starting that journey, the

message is simple: we are all

beginners, always — nature is so vast

and dynamic that its pilgrims never

stop learning.

Matthew Oates’s latest book is His

Imperial Majesty, a natural history of

the purple emperor

running the cutter bar as close to the

ground as possible, insect and small

mammal populations are massacred,

and waste plastic shredded, to

migrate into water courses and

oceans. The impact of this scalping

on kestrel and owl populations is

significant, as road verges provide

major hunting grounds for them.

This makes a mockery of the nest

boxes dutifully erected on some

farms: we’re encouraging nesting,

while eliminating feeding grounds.

Less damaging technology is

required, along the lines of the old-

fashioned reciprocal cutter bar. Until

then, some genuine austerity would

help, or at least cutting less

extensively, less frequently, higher

and later. There’s an obvious win-win

here for cash-strapped authorities

Verge cutting deprives kestrels of prey

To rewind a bit, this tree-feeding

butterfly, below, had been deemed

extinct here since the early 1950s,

with subsequent sightings being

attributed to fantasy or captive-bred

specimens. Yet exiguous populations

existed in Houghton Forest, West

Sussex, and in the East Hampshire

Hangers during the late-1970s and

early-80s, and in 1983 a larva was

found at Cubert in north Cornwall

by an entomologist working for the

National Trust’s biological survey

team. So, was it ever extinct?

Part of the difficulty is that this

butterfly seems capable of subsisting

at very low population level, in

treetops, and we don’t know how to

look for it, especially in early spring,

when it emerges from hibernation,

pairs up and breeds. Another issue is

that 30 years ago some skilled

butterfly breeders cracked how to

overwinter large tortoiseshells in

captivity, resulting in small-scale

releases.

But the large tortoiseshell is

almost certainly a short-haul

migrant, capable of straying across

from the continent. In

2007 a small but

significant

influx arrived

along the

south coast: 37

were recorded

that year in Hampshire

and the Isle of Wight, and

seven in Sussex. The butterfly

established a presence on the Isle of

Wight, persisting into 2013.

There are a number of recent

records from Dorset, particularly

from Portland, mainly of early spring

adults that had probably hibernated

there. Some were recorded this

March. Their progeny are busy

quaffing nectar from Portland’s

buddleia bushes, prior to hibernating.

This is a tale of hope, which nature

readily provides. It also demonstrates

that extinction can be hard to prove.

My guess is we’ve underestimated

the large tortoiseshell all along and

that it is returning or resurging.

Spare us the cutter

O

ne welcome change this

summer has been the

rationalisation of the hideous

road verge cutting that flourished,

incongruously, during the era of

austerity. This summer, in many

districts, junctions and key sight lines

apart, verges have been allowed to

flower and die back for the first time

in decades. Luckily, the dry spring

prevented excessive growth. We

relearnt that tall roadside plants, such

as false oat-grass and cow parsley,

grow, flower and naturally die down.

A major problem is our obsession

with the flail-cutter, an orc of a

machine that smashes all in its way

to smithereens. Because flail

h” operators show professional pride in

t

@matthewoates76

The salary is, you say, in the

region of £100,000. Pin money! But

you need not concern yourself with

that. I plan to turn all this into a

lucrative speaking tour as and

when the time comes, as it surely

must. And soon.

Your advert says, furthermore,

that the spokesperson will “have the

chance to influence and shape public

opinion”, which is, as it happens,

already very much me-shaped, and

that she or he will be“an experienced

and confident media operator”

which, again, perfectly describes,

above all other humans, me, myself

and ego. Indeed, in many ways, one

is tempted to observe that we already

have a jolly good spokesman for the

prime minister — me –—and that

what we need now is a prime

minister. But that is for him to say,

not me. Or, indeed, you.

In conclusion, then, I implore you

to consider my application and reject

all others. I apologise for exceeding

the 500-word limit placed on

covering letters. You will find that I

am not a stickler for rules and

regulations, or anything else, and if

we spokespeople are not to speak, at

length and ad nauseam, and yet say

very little, then, what, pray tell, are

we to do?

My CV, as requested, will follow

under separate cover, just as soon as

I’ve decided what to pretend I’ve

been doing for the last 30 years.

Listen to Giles Coren

every Friday, 1pm to 4pm