The Times - UK (2020-10-14)

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26 1GM Wednesday October 14 2020 | the times


Comment


W


ith a turn of phrase
so deadly that it
encapsulates its own

meaning and would
send Ken Dodd
sobbing into therapy, Stanford
University academics say that in the
corporate world laughter is “under-
leveraged”. They run an MBA course
on “enhancing influence and status”
through office humour: it earns as
many credits as their managerial
accounting module. People, in short,
must laugh with colleagues not from
companionable joie de vivre but to
earn more money and “leverage”.
Shades of Ricky Gervais in The
Office. Or the despised management
stooge Gus in Drop the Dead Donkey,
forever cooing “Office banter, great!”
as his colleagues mock him.
The Stanford team seem puzzled

that laughter decreases at the age of
23, only to return in old age. Hmmm.
Doesn’t take an MBA to guess why
that might happen in today’s
po-faced culture. Humour, whether
satirical or surreal, depends on
perceiving absurdity in people or
situations. At 23, you fear for your
job if you dare point out that
absurdity. Forty years later you don’t
give a damn: if your employer,
company policy, board member or
cabinet colleague deserves an
ill-concealed snort of amusement,
you let rip.
Moreover, the modern workplace
is a hostile environment for humour.
Earnest business advisers agonise
over office banter, with lists as

proscriptive as that 1948 BBC ban on
references to “lodgers, effeminacy in
men, chambermaids [and] ladies’
underwear”. One training website
warns not only against illegal “hate”
references and mocking your line
manager or product, but joking
about “dress sense, generational
differences, family size, social
activities, hobbies, [or] sport team
support”. Is it any wonder laughter
flickers and dies?
It was not always so. Joking is the
salt-and-pepper of office life. I have
shared breaches of all the above
taboos and been a butt of many: as a
temp typist at Tanqueray Gordon
and ICI in the 1970s, serving in an
Irish bar, presenting on Radio 4’s

Toda y programme, working in print
newsrooms, and in half a dozen BBC
offices including religion (that was
ripe!). So far I’ve survived. But I
secretly honour the fallen, such as
the patron saint of ill-advised
hilarity, Gerald Ratner. He got away
for years in his office (and in my
interview with him for The Times)
with that joke about Ratner earrings
being more short-lived than an M&S
prawn sandwich. Then he was outed.
The earrings (not to mention the
infamous “crap” sherry decanters)
were fine, the company was healthy,
the joke was about the profitability of
low-price bling. But it cost him and
has made laughter dangerous ever
since. A martyr to the cause.

It’s a small


point but why


can I only


get medium?


I


t’s so infantalising, this three-tier
risk level for lockdowns. Medium
risk, high risk or very high risk?
So in this pandemic are you
“scared”, “very scared” or
“extremely scared”? These are the
only options. And of course, as soon

as the latest “simplified” system was
announced, ministers started to
muddy it: within “very high risk”
there are now mini-tiers for
Liverpool. Are we really too stupid to
understand a five-point scale where 1
and 2, though available, are
unoccupied at present? And I have
given up my fight for a small latte
from Costa Coffee; medium is the
smallest they do. As with T-shirts,
we’re all medium, large or extra
large. “Small” is too downbeat for the
marketing psychologists.
“Who’s been eating my porridge?”
said the medium-sized bear... “But
mummy, aren’t there any little
bears?”... “Hush, child, and listen to
Mr Hancock.”

National treasures


I


loved Theresa May’s phrase “the
good that government can do”. It’s
unshowy and reminds us of the
thousands of quiet little ways that
public-spirited politics can help
public-spirited people. The
thoughtful, unsensational slew of
relatively minor arts and heritage
grants announced by Oliver
Dowden, the culture secretary, bears
the stamp of his intelligence. The
headlines will only be in local
newspapers but in whatever place
these awards land there will be
rejoicing whose sound hardly
carries to Whitehall and Fleet
Street. Take my part of England:

the public gardens in Matlock,
the theatre in Chesterfield,
Tissington Hall, Haddon Hall,
Derby Museums, Buxton
Opera House, the
Wirksworth Heritage
Centre... these are people
as well as places: unselfish
enthusiasts, volunteers,
people who look after
things, people who want
us to see and enjoy the
small treasures that
they care for. I was so
pleased to see the Friends
of Friendless Churches
get an award, as well as
Y Not, the outdoor music
festival near my home.

The arts are not only for the middle-
aged. “The growing good of the
world,” wrote George Eliot, “is partly
dependent on unhistoric acts; and
that things are not so ill with you
and me as they might have been, is
half owing to the number who lived
faithfully a hidden life, and rest in
unvisited tombs.” Our national army
of benevolent men and women are
neither forgotten nor hidden but
they are modest; and in offering
them modest assistance, an unusually
modest minister and his civil servants
have shone a light on the good they do.

Half-baked experts


W


hen you hear an expert
clutch at fad-language

for support, be afraid.
They want to sound clever and
cool. First, with Covid, there
was “exponential” spread.
Scary or what? But your
savings with your bank
at 0.025 per cent are also
growing “exponentially”:
it just means compound
interest. And now comes
“baked in”. Every
mindless pundit who
wants to say something
has been assumed/
included/factored in, now
has to sound like some TV
chef. In comes Professor
Van-Tam, the deputy chief
medical officer, turning

Matthew Parris My Week


Britain will have to make some swift diplomatic adjustments if the Democrats win next month


There’ll be no special relationship with Biden


Biden-the-Restorer. But the world
has changed and not just because of
Trump. If the US is going back to the
Paris climate process, then Biden is
going to have to pile diplomatic
pressure on China to cut back its
carbon emissions. If he’s returning to
the WHO, then it has to be a
reformer that questions China’s
undue influence on the organisation.
And if he wins, he will have to come
to the negotiating table with Russia

to extend the New Start arms control
pact which expires in February.
Unlike Trump, he will have to press
President Putin hard.
There’s a risk that he will, like the
restored Bourbons, come to power
having forgotten nothing and having
learnt nothing. Tension with China,
US trade disputes, irritation with
European defence spending, Iran’s
malign activity across the Middle East:
all these preceded Trump and still
need to be fixed. A Biden presidency
may be too short to be more than an
anti-Trump presidency; short, and
perhaps weak as the progressives
push him leftwards and America’s
real problems are shunted aside.
But Britain should be able to find

common ground — Johnson is
already swearing by wind power —
with a new US administration that
pledges to be more multilateral, that
values allies and human rights, that
is consistent and calm in a crisis.
There are ideas that appeal —
a D10 group that could reinvigorate
democratic states as they face up to
cocky autocrats is a natural axis for
both the US and Britain. What
awaits us, though, is a more distanced
relationship: collegiate, not free from
friction and no, not special at all.

more radicalised presence, no longer
beholden to cautious advisers and
driven only by the desire to get the
domestic economy going again.
Trump’s teenagerish joyride while
under Covid treatment could be a
foretaste of what’s to come: a
messianic president unchained. That
makes the Johnson government’s
dream of becoming a mediator
between a difficult-to-decode
Washington and a nervous, over-

censorious Europe all but impossible.
Trump is sick of being “explained”.
And it’s not a role we could play with
a Biden administration. In so far as
one can read the runes, their
preferred European partner could be
France: unafraid to use its military, an
easy-to-deal-with presidential system.
The French have been following
Biden very carefully since he was
vice-president to Obama.
Much depends on how big Biden’s
win could be, and above all the kind
of presidency he seeks: one of
retrenchment, restoration or
reinvention. There will have to be
some retrenchment, a trimming of
defence budgets, a withdrawal from
costly wars (already an ambition of

Obama and Trump), a focus on
domestic recovery. But many are
counting on a restoration, a return to
pre-Trump normality. That would
mean returning to the Paris climate
agreement and perhaps making
climate change a priority. It would
also entail rejoining the World
Health Organisation (WHO). And
banishing the Trump rhetoric about
leaving Nato.
The national security
establishments on both sides of the
Atlantic are thus cheering on

B


ritain has let itself be
blindsided on Joe Biden.

Until Covid-19 erupted, the
government was lazily
assuming that Donald
Trump was a shoo-in for a second
term. Now, with only weeks to go
before election day, the president is
struggling and there is a real prospect
he will be replaced by Biden, an Irish-
American with no particular love for
Boris Johnson or Brexit Britain.
We could have spotted this coming
after Biden’s success in the Super
Tuesday primaries in March. Sir Kim
Darroch, the British ambassador to
Washington until a leaked cable
revealed some scepticism about
Trump, had sniffed the ambition of
Biden early on and laments in his
memoirs: “I wish I’d had more

confidence in my instincts and told
London back in early 2019 that he’d
be the Democratic candidate, when
he hadn’t even decided to run.”
The chances are, though, that the
government wouldn’t have paid
much attention: foreign policy has
been geared for the past four years to
adapting to Trump, trying to
anticipate his whims and building
bridges with the generals and
diplomatists who considered
themselves the adults in the room.
There are back-channel contacts with

Biden team brains such as Jake
Sullivan, Tony Blinken and Tom
Donilon yet it is difficult to shake off
the display of Trump fandom
presented, publicly at least, by
Johnson.
When Johnson accused Barack
Obama of an “ancestral dislike of the
British Empire”, he came across as a
calculated pleaser of Trump. And
when all’s said and done Biden is the
son of Jean Finnegan and the great

grandson of James Finnegan who
emigrated from Co Louth in 1850.
For him the Irish Catholic will
always be the underdog in its
dealings with Britain, and the US
and the European Union its true
defender. The Good Friday
agreement set that principle in stone.
No one in the Biden team is inclined
to give the British government the
benefit of the doubt over Ireland’s
borders.

Ireland will be a real sticking point
when it comes to negotiating a free
trade agreement with a President
Biden. The government seems to be
calculating that if the UK joins the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, and if
President Biden rejoins, then at least
some of the obstacles to a quick
trade deal will be dodged. For the
moment, that’s pie in the sky.
Britain’s dilemma is becoming
increasingly obvious. Even if Trump
were to be re-elected there’s every
chance that he would come back as a

Johnson’s dream of


becoming a mediator


would be impossible


Po-faced office


culture is killing our


sense of humour


Libby Purves


casualties into currants: “Already...
we have baked in additional hospital
admissions and sadly we also have
baked in additional deaths.. .”
It’s like those radio historians who
say everything in the present tense
(“So Henry has Anne Boleyn
beheaded, and he’s looking for
another wife”) because, like most
academics, they want to talk as all
the others do. Beware: they probably
want to think as all the others do too.
Like vulnerability to every passing
virus, a susceptibility to each passing
linguistic fad indicates an underlying
health condition. Of the intellect.

Slave to the rhythm


O


n Sunday evening on Radio 3,


Tom Service presented a deep
and quite personal analysis of
the place of syncopation in the
rhythms of music. He described
syncopation as the slight, calculated
violation of what would otherwise be
a metronome’s mechanical beat. I
was gripped. How is it that rhythm
can give music swing or bounce,
jollity or solemnity? Mr Service
concluded it was all about dancing.
His case was compelling but not, I
believe, comprehensive. You can
make an adult smile, or a toddler
laugh with delight, with a syncopated
beat. I believe there are pathways in
the brain between rhythm and
humour, rhythm and suspense,
rhythm and surprise.

T


h


Roger


B oyes


@rogerboyes

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