The Times - UK (2022-05-02)

24 Monday May 2 2022 | the times

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name of my GP. It’s a cruel reminder

that I’ll never have “the one”. As

some consolation, I remember there

is someone contractually obliged to

witness my body deteriorate through

the decades. It’s my husband.

Gazing at the baize

T

he World Snooker

Championships end today, for

which I am profoundly grateful.

Members of my household don’t

watch snooker, they go down the

snooker hole, a catatonic state I

assumed was boredom but now

realise is a divine meditation. I had

this enlightenment on hour 498

of the snooker. Snooker is not a

sport. I mean, of course it’s not

a sport, look at the waistcoats

only otherwise seen on bar

staff on a cross-Channel

ferry in 1979. But I mean

that in a deeper sense.

Watching on telly, the

human is mostly

eliminated; the table

is a purist rectangle

in which only

sticks and the

occasional gloved

hand intrude. Instead

we see spheres struck at

different angles, they click

against each other,

conforming to the laws of

Newtonian physics. It is life

without human mess, only

objects moving through space and

time, the green baize the universe

and the balls the planets. I think I get

it: this is domestic stargazing,

reassuring and restful. Sport reveres

human perfection, snooker shows its

impossibility. Still, it does go on a bit.

Coins don’t count

I

remember hearing the story of a

footballer who paid for a pack of

mints with a tenner and chucked

away the change: the coins ruined the

line of his trousers. I thought: what a

... But since the pandemic I have
stopped using a wallet; now I
leave the house with a key and
a phone. When I encounter
coins, they seem like relics
from Ye Olde Pre-Plaguey
Englande. I am not sure my
children will remember much
of these metal discs. A
charity could do brisk
business, going door to
door, hoovering up the
shrapnel from sofas and old
pockets, until the last of our
coins’ wizard magic is gone.

Ignore the teens

T

here has been research

that teens are

neurologically designed

to tune out their mothers’

voices. What no one studies

is that mothers also become

neurologically adapted to

I

read Jeremy Hunt’s call for every
patient to have a long-term
relationship with the same GP,
which improves health so much
it makes financial sense for the
NHS. Then I tossed the paper aside
with the bitter laugh of a love-addled
old roué. Ha! Get to know your GP?
I’ve never seen the same GP twice. I
have not only forgotten all their
names, I don’t think I knew them in
the first place. My GP history is a
promiscuous blur of five-minute
quickies exposing my rashes to
strangers in soulless rooms. At my
busy urban practice there is a fast-
rotating cast of two-dozen doctors: to
hold out to see the same one again
would be seen as perversely
sentimental, even if it was possible,
like trying to “recreate the magic”
with the same Uber driver.
Instead I have to take it on trust
that I’m seeing a doctor at all: I could
be unzipping for the photocopier
repair guy. So many forms ask the

We’re getting angry about the wrong things

Commons misogyny does not merit the same fury as Putin’s bloodbath or the rise of extremism

but dissolute scholar sells his soul for

a brief period of worldly power,

promising to use his magic to make

mankind more moral and just. Instead,

as in Christopher Marlowe’s version,

he opts for a series of self-serving

stunts (playing tricks on the Pope)

and seduction of beautiful women,

notably Helen of Troy. Observant

readers may see some contemporary

parallels. Obviously, it doesn’t end

well. Faustus is dragged off to hell,

usually to be torn apart by devils.

Finally we are seeing a new

incarnation of true wickedness, in

which evil intent is presented as

compassion. Don’t be fooled.

Extremist sects sit like succubi on

the back of legitimate campaigns for

transgender equality and

environmental sustainability,

draining them of life and credibility.

Islamist gangs in Britain’s prisons are

luring young men who have reason

to feel discriminated against into the

terrorist cause.

Satan recruited a third of the

heavenly host to his cause by

complaining that God had, in effect,

discriminated against him in favour

of Adam and Eve. His charge against

the Almighty was hypocrisy of which

he, the fairest of all the angels, had

been the principal object. The most

persuasive, yet ultimately the most

repellent mask of evil is the one that

poses as victim. Our compassion and

anger is always at risk of being

twisted to purposes we abjure. These

days, people unable to control their

emotions can get help. Perhaps we

need an anger management strategy

for the whole nation. At the very

least, we need to direct our fury to

causes that merit rage.

anyone from punishment but we

should not confuse it with evil. It is

no accident that in the western

world’s enduring template for the

torments of the damned, Dante’s The

Divine Comedy, the outer circles are

reserved for the lustful, greedy, and

gluttonous who wallow in

putrefaction and are forced to howl

like dogs for all eternity. Still, give me

the swill and screaming over having

my head chewed off by Satan day in

day out for the rest of time.

True evil is on full display in

Ukraine. President Putin is daily

earning his place in the seventh

circle of hell, reserved for violent

neighbours. I wonder if his new best

friends in the Orthodox Church have

talked to him about perpetual

immersion in boiling blood, all the

while being pierced by arrows fired

by centaurs?

Closer to home, the crimes of the

convicted paedophile and former MP

Imrad Ahmad Khan, who used his

power to abuse a minor, should not

be bracketed with Parish’s buffoonish

behaviour. And Parish will not have

to pay millions of dollars to a woman

to keep whatever went on in Jeffrey

Epstein’s mansion out of the courts.

The greatest danger in our loss of

perspective is that evil often presents

itself so seductively that we don’t see

its true design until too late. Elon

Musk may well buy Twitter to

liberate its users from censorship but

breezily unleashing the demons of

social media sounds more like the

digital apocalypse than a plan for

providing rational viewpoint diversity.

Evil is often disguised as a saviour.

Every society has its own version of

the Faust legend in which the brilliant

V

oters will be pondering
where to place their mark
in Thursday’s local
elections. They take place
against a background of
conduct at Westminster ranging
from the faintly nauseating through
the jaw-droppingly hypocritical to
the downright criminal. Opposition
parties will urge us to express
disgust. They are right to do so.
However, anger is not an infinite
resource and its edge can be blunted
by overuse. Sprayed indiscriminately,
it may make us feel better without
preventing the spread of wickedness.
Expending righteous anger on lesser
sins risks leaving true malevolence to
flourish unchecked. The insults to
Angela Rayner and the coded
intimidation of other women MPs
are a wearying reminder that sexism
is rife at Westminster; but are they of
equivalent weight to the manifesto
backed by four out of ten French
voters, elements of which — a hijab
ban, for example — would be
politically unacceptable here? Or
that in part of the UK, a devolved
administration effectively intends to
erase the legal standing of women —
all women? I don’t think so.
In Alan Parker’s 1976 musical
comedy Bugsy Malone in which all
the parts are played by children, a
quartet of Prohibition-era heavies

boasts: “We could’ve been anything

that we wanted to be/ With all the

talent we had... We made the big

time, malicious and mad/ We’re the

very best at being bad.” The joke is

that Fat Sam’s crew of hoodlums wants

to be feared, but they can barely get

one foot in front of the other without

falling down a manhole. Right now,

voters are being urged to give as

much attention to the Bugsy Malone

version of wickedness as the rise of

authoritarianism, censorship and

extremism.

The fact is that for the most part

our politicians aren’t that good at

being bad. The MP Neil Parish’s claim

that the true object of his passion

was a tractor could have come

straight from Little Britain’s spoof MP

Sir Norman Fry, who explained his

own “moment of madness” by telling

the assembled media that he had

stopped to give a lift to a constituent

who just happened to be by the side

of the road in the (red light) King’s

Cross area. It’s an accident that could

befall any of us, I suppose.

Similarly the bungling criminality

of Boris Becker (“Oh, that multi-

million dollar property; I didn’t think

anybody would notice it”) appears to

have been born from a blindingly

ravenous appetite for sex and money.

He simply ceased to see the flashing

red lights screaming: “Stop right now

or you’re going to jail!”

Dimwittedness shouldn’t protect

For the most part our

politicians are not that

good at being bad

New Scotland Yard

chief must be a

fearless outsider

Sean O’Neill

A

pplications for the post of

Metropolitan Police

commissioner close this

week and not since the

early 1970s has the

selection of the country’s top police

officer been more important.

Under successive commissioners,

the latest being Dame Cressida Dick,

the Met has become an introspective,

ineffective force with a leadership

cadre obsessed by institutional

reputation rather than policing

London effectively.

Its catalogue of scandals in recent

years is staggering. Operation

Midland saw senior officers allow

blinkered detectives to destroy

people’s lives in pursuit of fantastical

sex abuse claims concocted by a

malicious liar. In the Stephen Port

inquiry homophobic prejudice

appeared to get in the way of

investigating a serial killer. The

murder of Sarah Everard was carried

out by a serving officer whose past

sexual misconduct seems to have

been well known to his colleagues.

Charing Cross police station was

the base for officers who exchanged

streams of racist, misogynistic

messages. Other officers have used

social media groups to exchange

selfies posing beside the bodies of

murder victims or obscene

pornographic images.

Each such incident undermines

public faith in policing. Yet the Met’s

leaders have all too often offered

weasel words and half-hearted

apologies. Dick reacted to some

disasters — the catastrophic policing

of the Euros final at Wembley and

the aggressive stop-and-search of the

Team GB athlete Bianca Williams —

by praising or defending her officers’

conduct. Too many senior officers

prize closing ranks above protecting

the public.

Priti Patel and Sadiq Khan must

prioritise fresh thinking and

fearlessness at the Yard. The next

commissioner needs to be untainted

by the Met’s toxic culture and stand

outside its swirl of political intrigue.

The job requires someone with the

resolve to dismantle rogue units and

confront entrenched attitudes.

When policing in Northern Ireland

embarked on radical reform 20 years

ago with the winding up of the Royal

Ulster Constabulary, the decision was

taken to appoint an outsider, the

forward-looking Hugh Orde.

In 1967, with the Met mired in

corruption, Robert Mark was drafted

in from Leicestershire. He was made

commissioner in 1972 and embarked

on determined reform, quipping that a

good police force “is one that catches

more crooks than it employs”. The

time is right for a new Robert Mark.

A good police force is

one that ‘catches more

crooks than it employs’

Trevor

Phillips

@trevorptweets

tune out their teenagers. I now

ignore the cries of pain from my

child that would have previously sent

me running: I know it is caused by a

computer-animated footballer

completing an undesirable action on

a screen. I also don’t respond to

shouts of “save me!” in a sibling

wrestling match. A body in a hoodie,

slumped on the kitchen floor, is just

“having a rest down here” and I can

safely step over it to make tea.

Feelgood buzz

I

regularly report on studies that

show doing good makes you feel

better but I always seem too “busy”

to respond. This week when typing I

suddenly noticed a bumblebee

clinging to the back of my hand. She

wouldn’t move. The internet told me

she was exhausted and needed a

sweet drink. So I used a pencil to lift

her to a plate on the windowsill, a

drop of sugary water next to her, and

watched as she sucked away using

her straw. We were two gals, needing

a drink in a cold, harsh world. After

half an hour she took off vertically,

like a Chinook.

I was — no other word for it —

buzzing. If a drop of human kindness

could make me feel this good, why

wasn’t I more altruistic, more hive-

minded, more often?

Helen Rumbelow Notebook

Five-minute

flings are all

I can expect

from GPs

@helenrumbelow