The Times - UK (2020-08-03)

24 1GM Monday August 3 2020 | the times

Comment

Some collect

stamps but

I prefer to

study egos

I

have been a dedicated armchair

psychologist for as long as I can

remember. I think my mum and

dad’s traumatic divorce sent me

down this path, the same way

other people’s parents introduce

them to stamp collecting or hiking.

At the moment my specialist subject

is egotism. I find almost all egotists

fascinating, which, discouragingly, is

probably what they want.

Anthony Powell’s novel sequence

A Dance to the Music of Time

contains the best advice I have read

on egotism. Powell says we are

mistaken to think that egotists will

be pleased or flattered when we take

an interest in their lives because they

find it hard to imagine us thinking

about anything else. I never go to a

party without bearing it in mind.

Powell’s generalisations about

egotists had me coming up with

some of my own. Egotists tend not to

be nice but they are often charming.

Boris Johnson can

wrong-foot critics

with Lords reform

Denis MacShane

T

he prime minister has come

under attack yet again from

an ex-Tory minister given

uncritical airtime on the

Toda y programme. Norman

Fowler, the Lord Speaker, was

moaning at the weekend about Boris

Johnson naming new peers including

Ian Botham and Evgeny Lebedev.

Nothing gets the British elites —

left-liberal or mainstream Tory —

more worked up than the House

of Lords. Most of it is Freudian

displacement because many of them

would secretly give anything to be a

peer. What’s not to like? It’s £313 a

day just for looking in, plenty of

business-class foreign travel, a little

light lobbying for the Chinese, Putin,

or the Gulf states, and the best

riverside bar in London.

Boris Johnson’s latest list is up

there with Harold Wilson’s

resignation honours of 1976, drawn

up by his adviser and supposed

sometime lover, Marcia Falkender,

on her lavender-coloured notepaper.

But one can’t blame the prime

minister for exercising his patronage.

All of them do it — and always will.

Let’s consider the real problems

facing this creaking institution.

Membership of the Lords is now

well over 800, compared with 100

members of the US Senate, 705

members of the European

parliament, and no second chamber

at all in New Zealand, which seems

to manage fine with just one.

Lord Fowler is 82. There were, as

of last year, 121 peers aged between

81 and 90, 12 over 90 and 298

between 71 and 80. Even the Vatican

has stopped allowing cardinals over

80 voting for a new pope.

Labour tinkered with reform in

1999 by removing hereditary peers,

bar a lucky 92 who were allowed to

stay if voted for by their fellow dukes

and earls. We should now go

further and set a ten-year limit on

membership of the Lords. Alistair

Darling, a sprightly 66, has just

announced he is retiring from the

chamber. The former Labour

chancellor sets a fine example to

his fellow peers.

There are also bigger, bolder

reforms such as having an elected

second chamber based on the

regions and nations of the United

Kingdom. The Tories brought in

a significant reform, with the

introduction of life peerages in the

1950s. Can Boris Johnson catch the

Lords reformers bathing and walk

off with their clothes? His hazy

proposals to rebalance the nation

away from London would work with

a Lords sitting in the north and

elected on a regional basis.

By embracing Lords reform,

Johnson would throw the bien-

pensant commentariat into disarray

and leave Labour speechless.

Denis MacShane is a former minister

for Europe. He has never been offered

a peerage

Inconsiderate members of my two-wheeled tribe need to mend their ways if more are to join us

Bad cyclists are holding back green revolution

songwriters. Some of the lyrics on her

last album, Lover, are simply strings

of clichés. One song contains these:

“Easy they come, easy they go... I

cut off my nose just to spite my face

... All the king’s horses, all the king’s
men/ Couldn’t put me together
again.” I find the nursery rhyme
quotation, common in pop at the
moment, especially weird. Perhaps an
enterprising toddler has quietly risen
to the top of the songwriting business.

Beauty salon

I

went to the reopened National

Gallery and had the time of my life.

I haven’t looked at a painting in

months and I bounced around the

place jubilantly. I was especially

overwhelmed by Raphael’s painting

of St Catherine. I’d always thought

Raphael a bore, but this time I felt it.

Raphael painted perfect, harmonious

beauty. I got the same sensation in

front of Velázquez’s painting of the

Virgin Mary, The Immaculate

Conception. For my money her face,

with its downcast thoughtful eyes

and slightly chubby cheeks, is the

most beautiful ever painted.

But to be moved by these paintings

you have to succumb to the old

masters’ belief in a link between

spiritual and physical beauty. I take

the opposite view and believe that

beautiful people are probably rather

spoilt and cruel. I wouldn’t have got

far in Renaissance Florence.

efforts to raise the standard of

cycling. I still remember the

solemnity of the cycling proficiency

test I took as a seven-year-old in

1969. It followed a month of
      Saturday morning classes taught in
      my school playground by a
      policeman who underlined his points
      with gory first-hand anecdotes about
      road accidents he had attended. The
      government is right to revive these
      now-shrivelled schemes, for adults as
      well as children. Free insurance
      might be a useful incentive.
      We may need to rethink the
      Highway Code (a consultation
      started last week) and also find new
      rules for electric bikes and scooters.
      Before thinking up new laws, though,
      we should enforce the ones we have.
      Fines of up to £2,500 can be levied
      for dangerous cycling. A cyclist who
      causes serious injury or death can be
      charged with “wanton or furious
      driving”, which carries a maximum
      two-year sentence.
      Such prosecutions are rare, yet I
      see suitable targets almost daily —
      such as a grim-faced fellow who
      scorched through a pedestrian
      crossing near our house last week,
      missing our dog Panda by inches. A
      few convictions would immediately
      puncture the climate of perceived
      impunity. Enforcing the law on
      lights, brakes and reflectors would
      send a useful message too.
      The overall aim should be to
      change mentality. We cyclists should
      see ourselves no longer as an outlaw
      tribe, but knights of the road: brave,
      healthy, virtuously green — and
      also exquisitely competent and
      chivalrous in our own behaviour.
      Ride on, Sir Lancelot.

speeding offences) speaks for many

when he denounces “toxic cycling”.

Demands for reform include licences

granted only after proficiency tests,

mandatory insurance, registration of

machines and riders, and penalty

points for lawbreakers, followed by

bans for the worst offenders.

I sympathise with the desire for

fairness, though it is worth noting

that cars kill about 100 cyclists a year

in Britain, and injure several

thousand, whereas deaths from

dangerous cycling total a handful a

year. But Mr Freeman’s real problem

is practicality. Nowhere in the world

has made such a system work. Japan

registers bicycles when they are sold

— but only as an anti-theft measure.

Switzerland had mandatory

insurance, signalled by yellow

stickers, but abolished the system on

cost grounds in 2010. Toronto

abolished bicycle registration

because it was hard to apply it to

children. Any system that is

enforceable would be so burdensome

and expensive that it would

discourage cycling, an aim that Mr

Freeman disavows.

That is no reason for defeatism.

Friction between cyclists and

others benefits nobody, and creates a

spiral of resentment and aggression

that spills over into our already

fractious daily life.

The obvious answer is to reduce

competition on shared roads and

pavements. Other countries manage

this far better than we do. We should

copy them. Italy is notorious for its

fiery driving manners — yet

remarkably bike-friendly.

More controversial, but also

necessary, are energetic, systematic

T

he policeman pointed

firmly at his speed gun as

the Lycra-clad group

fumed. “There’s a 10mph

limit in this bit of the park.

You were going double that. Next

time I’ll fine you.” I rejoiced inwardly

as the transgressors digested an

overdue lesson. Richmond Park in

southwest London is a glorious place

for leisure cycling. It is not a training

circuit for road racers.

Cyclists have developed, and enjoy,

an outlaw mentality. The world is

against us, in a rigged contest that

pits our fragile flesh and bones

against fast-moving steel and

unforgiving tarmac. Forced to choose

between the Scylla of drivers at the

wheel of death machines, and the

Charybdis of a dangerous pothole,

we can hardly be blamed for seizing

every chance to be safe, regardless of

the law.

This thinking is seductive. In some

circumstances it is even justified. I

revere the law, but I do sometimes

make left turns at a red light or

borrow some space on an empty

pavement. But the devil-may-care

approach easily loses touch with

reality, let alone morals. However

much you may despise cars, cycling

at night with no lights and dark

clothes is not just silly but wrong. A

driver peering into the gloaming to

see you will concentrate less on

other risks. Cycling on the pavement,

even slowly, annoys and frightens the

frail (and people with impaired

vision and hearing, and those

managing pets and toddlers).

Britain’s looming transport

revolution makes the idea of cyclists

as outlaws look archaic. After the

lockdown prompted a tenth of us to

leap into the saddle, Boris Johnson is

now splurging £2 billion of taxpayers’

money on more cycle lanes, better

parking, vouchers to fix old bikes and

subsidies for new ones. Technology,

in the form of electric two-wheelers,

is another factor. These may be

nippy scooters, or full-scale models

that are much heavier and faster

than the pedal-powered kind.

Especially in the hands of novices,

these silent, speedy machines can be

an alarming new presence on roads

(and parks, paths and pavements).

As cycling becomes more

mainstream, we need new codes of

behaviour — and not just from

drivers. Cyclists can no longer expect

to be indulged, exempt from

considerations of good manners and

public safety. If we want respect, we

must accept responsibilities. We have

our interests, but so do other people.

Increasingly, these interests clash.

The motoring lawyer Nick

Freeman (known as “Mr Loophole”

for his ability to get his clients off

As bicycling becomes

more mainstream,

we need new codes

Presumably this is because if you

desperately want to be the centre of

attention you become adept at

working out strategies to make

everybody else want to watch you.

I’ve also noticed that charming

egotists radiate promise early on but

tend not to fulfil their potential. If

you have charm you get used to

having your own way without much

work, a strategy that is decreasingly

successful the further you get

through life. The only people I’ve

ever heard seriously propounding

conspiracy theories are egotists who

are so charming and self-absorbed

that few people have ever sought to

contradict them. But if you have

egotism, charm and a work

ethic you can do almost

anything.

Mightier pen

Y

ouTube has started

serving me adverts for

something called

the Atomic Bear

Tactical Pen. I can

only assume my

search history

has been

exceptionally

moronic. The pen,

according to the

advert’s aggressive

voiceover, is a

“high-functioning,

utility-driven

defensive writing tool” made of

“military aircraft grade aluminium”

and equipped with a “glass-breaking

tungsten tip”. Models include the

“SWAT” and the “Rebel” (“a sleek

practical writing instrument with a

below-the-radar design”). My

favourite scene in the ad shows a

man lightly tapping a car windscreen

with his Atomic Bear Tactical Pen,

upon which it implodes into a billion

shards. “They’re not just pens,

they’re... something more”, the

voiceover intones. The catchphrase

needs some work but I’ve decided

I’ve got to have one.

Swift return

L

ike many others I’ve been

enjoying the new Taylor Swift

album, Folklore. Lyrically she’s

back on form. Some of the

songs on the early albums are

masterpieces of pop-lyric

writing. Proper poets could

learn from the way Our

Song and The Story of Us

use formal conceits

and patterns of

metaphor to

prevent teenage

sentimentality

spilling over into

mawkish banality.

Later in her career

she made the

mistake of working

with professional

James Marriott Notebook

Edward

Lucas

@edwardlucas