The Sunday Times - UK (2022-06-05)

The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 29

COMMENT

Office parties lift morale?

You’re not seeing straight

There was much to be

incredulous about in the

PM’s interview with

Mumsnet’s founder, Justine

Roberts, last week. But right

up there was his seemingly

new justification for those

parties. He said leaving

drinks were necessary

because “staff were working

blindingly hard” and “we

had to keep morale high”.

I’m sure that’ll strike fury

into those frontline workers

who battled to keep our

hearts beating. And the

relatives told that sorry, no,

they couldn’t lace their

fingers through those of

their dad one last time.

But the bit that niggled

me anew was the idea that a

work party — with this

government in particular —

would raise morale. We’ve

all worked with some

dreadful people. We may

well have been the dreadful

people ourselves. And in

those cases, the only respite

is the clock striking 6pm.

Those times when we are

forced to attend a work

party — full of awkward chit-

chat and enforced fun (hey,

your boss is doing Limp

Bizkit on karaoke!) — are

something to be endured.

Yet in No 10 the end of the

day seemed to mark the

start of a different kind of

day — one in which the

booze and vomit flowed. If

they really did enjoy those

parties and had their morale

raised by being there, then

they really are out of touch

with the country.

PM has gone

off the rails

You might not have guessed it

from Twitter, but we weren’t

all hanging out the bunting

for the new Elizabeth Line.

“Better transport grows the

economy, levels up

opportunity and creates

jobs,” tweeted the PM. Er,

levelling up? By extending

excellent transport links to

(checks notes) Reading? The

north shook with anger.

The north, where

transport is creaking and

expensive and trains often

resemble buses (but slower).

It’s only months since

Northern Powerhouse Rail

and HS2 were cut back and

our dreams of convenient,

affordable travel with them.

Better get shaking that magic

money tree, Mr Johnson. The

north never forgets.

NEWMAN’S

VIEW

— that is guaranteed to needle

the loss. To remind me: my

God, I miss her.

So while I can’t disagree

with the arguments about the

cost of the jubilee and am still

no great monarchist, I will

still toast the Queen.

I’ll be raising my glass to

her but remembering

another great woman. One

who’d have told her stories of

duty, country and character

once more as we watched the

Platinum Jubilee play out. But

now my son would be the one

at my feet, and I’d be the one

in tears.

It’s fair to say that I’ve never

been a passionate

monarchist, a state only

entrenched by events of

recent years. But I’ll tell you

who was: my late nana. She

cried whenever she heard

God Save the Queen and

Jerusalem (and Land of Hope

and Glory, for that matter).

She organised the greatest

street party in the village for

Charles and Diana’s wedding,

and followed suit with Fergie.

The shame of that first royal

divorce landed as though it

were her own children.

I remember sitting at her

feet, post-bath, hair drying by

the gas fire, as we watched

the 1989 BBC Proms. I didn’t

know then why she cried

when she told me the story of

the Queen’s life, of what she’d

sacrificed and lost. Of how

she thought they were

similar: independent,

spirited and funny. She was

proud to be one of her

subjects, proud to be like her.

In the almost two decades

since my nana has been gone,

it’s a glimpse of the Queen —

shouting “Cows!” or

shrugging nonchalantly at

Alan Titchmarsh’s eulogising

Spirited, funny and doing her duty:

my nana was the queen of my life

lThere are many own goals

in the Metropolitan Police’s

decision to prosecute six of

those who attended the

Sarah Everard vigil.

It came hot on the heels

of the Met losing its battle

with the vigil’s organisers,

Reclaim These Streets

(official vengeance is not a

good look). Secondly,

arresting those breaking

Covid rules to pay tribute to

a woman murdered by a

police officer who had

kidnapped her by

pretending she’d broken

Covid rules is, well, tone

deaf at the very least.

But perhaps most

surprising is that the Met

appears to have declared

the vigil illegal and its

attendees potential

criminals when among

them was the Duchess of

Cambridge. And if the six

are being prosecuted for

allegedly gathering with

more than two people (the

breach in question), how do

the rest of the attendees

avoid the same charge?

The Met may not care

about the bloody nose it will

get for pursuing mourners

of a woman murdered by an

officer, but you’d imagine it

would worry about one for,

in effect, criminalising a

future Queen’s behaviour.

Terri White

Week ending

F

rench toast. Sunday brunch.

Johnson out. Green juice. Donate

Now to the Red Cross. You Won’t

Believe How Smart This Dog Is.

You Won’t Believe This One

Trick For Weight Loss. Beach

sunset. Your ex is engaged. A

child bleeds on the side of the

road, the victim of a Russian shell.

French toast again.

What does it do to the human brain

when all these become one? When they

show up, one after another, presented in

the same format, post after post on the

endless scroll of a social media site? The

hosts of The Content Mines, an internet

culture podcast, call this phenomenon

“structural dissonance”: when the

format of the information relayed is

jarringly disconnected from the content

it contains. “It’s confusing and weird and

is breaking our brains and making it

harder to understand actual reality,”

they write.

Amid this slew of information, that

which is real and important can be

drowned. Real people, real suffering,

become just part of the stream of

content washing past our eyes. I felt this

sense acutely watching the Johnny Depp

v Amber Heard trial reach its conclusion

last week. Depp was awarded $10 million

by a Virginia jury, which found that his

ex-wife had defamed him by writing an

opinion piece for The Washington Post

in which she described herself as a

victim of domestic abuse.

This is a trial that has consumed and

been consumed by the internet. TikToks

with the hashtag #JusticeforJohnny have

been viewed 19.8 billion times.

Observing the avalanche of content

created about the case, I was reminded

of the murder of a 22-year-old woman

last year. When Gabby Petito went

missing in August 2021 while on a

holiday in Wyoming with her boyfriend,

an unholy cottage industry of amateur

detective work sprung up on TikTok.

Influencers built up huge followings by

scouring Petito’s social media for clues.

Might some indicator of her fate be

contained within her Instagram posts or

Spotify playlists? By September 2021, the

hashtag #gabbypetito had been viewed

212 million times.

Petito left behind a vast archive of her

internet self for the amateur detectives

to pick through. The sleuths were sure

that there must be some clue: why

would there be such a wealth of

information available if not to provide an

answer? The truth, of course, is that the

world is not that neat: there was no

reason for the information to be there.

No reason why it might contain a clue.

But Petito’s death became a mystery

to be solved, a game to be won. Nothing

on the internet feels real and, by the

time it was done with her, Gabby Petito

— a bright, young woman mourned by

her family — did not feel real either.

Last week, TikTok exploded again

with amateur detective work. Could we

tell from Heard’s facial expressions that

she was lying? When she stumbled over

her words, was it a sign she was

fabricating the claim that Depp had

abused her? Hours of footage emerged

from the trial. Surely they must contain

some clue? Surely there is a role for us as

observers to play?

The internet teaches us to look for

patterns, and so do our brains. It is

innate for us to look for order, to look for

meaning, to draw a larger narrative from

random events. We are also wired for

empathy: to see ourselves in Heard, or in

Depp. Then, the internet tells us that we

are involved. We can be part of the

narrative, we just need to click post.

It all has to mean something. We all

have to be a part of it. And so we end up

here: being told that the trial marks the

end of the MeToo movement. “The

Heard trial does feel like a tipping point

in our culture’s response to gender

violence,” said The Guardian. There has

to be a lesson drawn from the chaos; this

is the lesson we seem to have learnt.

Yet it is bad practice to draw a general

societal rule from a single case. There is

no reason to believe we are looking at a

watershed moment. What if we are just

looking at two damaged people who

have made each other’s lives immensely

miserable? There is no reason why the

trial’s outcome is indicative of anything

other than a complex, devastating case.

There are consequences to this

cognitive bias. If we are wrong to see this

broader meaning, we are causing

unnecessary distress to victims of sexual

assault and domestic abuse: telling them

society has moved away from them. I see

the consequences on Instagram: French

In a delightful clash between

the two most powerful

women in the world, the

American celebrity Kim

Kardashian last week

allegedly had her request to

attend yesterday’s Platinum

Party at the Palace rejected.

I tell you this not because I

think it should interest you,

but because it gives me the

opportunity to share my

favourite useless fact: at

5ft 2in Kardashian is,

astonishingly, an inch shorter

than the Queen.

Farewell, then, to the civil

service fast stream:

suspended next year as part

of the government’s doomed

attempt to cut the number of

civil servants it employs. Its

loss leaves a void. Where will

the next generation of

graduates send their

panicked, half-hearted

applications when they

suddenly realise the real

world is looming?

Somewhere in the

recesses of the government’s

computer system is one such

application bearing my

name, abandoned when I

decided that I could not be

bothered to complete the

accompanying maths and

verbal reasoning tests. Teach

First, I believe, is also in

possession of one of these

unfinished relics. “I like

children”: a lie. As is

Goldman Sachs. “I like

working hard”: even more of

a lie.

So many different lives I

could have led. I could be

ordering Bollinger in a club in

Ibiza, or barracking a child in

the suburbs of Birmingham.

The fast streamers from my

generation seem to be

running most of the

economy now. Which

perhaps explains a lot about

the economy.

But where will the

generation of leaders after

them receive their training? I

suppose, like me, they will

have to become columnists

instead. What better training

for high office? It is all going

so well for Boris Johnson,

after all.

I like to think it was this

difference that was behind

the supposed rejection of her

request to attend the

concert. Height is an

underrated factor in event

planning, something which I

realised when I learnt that at

5ft 9in I am the average

height for a British man. This

means that I have a good

chance of a photographer

asking me to crouch down

for my wedding pictures.

Better to remain single and

avoid the indignity, perhaps.

I’ll be making sure any future

husband doesn’t fall short

Our future

leaders are on

a fast stream

to nowhere

The internet

exploded

with amateur

detective

work for the

trial. We all

wanted to be

involved

The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard case consumed the internet, with 19.8 billion views for the TikTok hashtag #JusticeforJohnny

toast. Beach sunset. Today’s ruling is

hard for me, a victim of sexual violence.

What is unnerving is the backlash the

case has created among those who want

to make Depp an everyman: a victim of a

culture they see as having swung too far

in favour of women. Again, this stems

from the same error: the determination

to see the universal in a single life.

Real lives, real people, do not

conform to the neat patterns or societal

lessons we wish to impose upon them.

What appears on our social media feeds

is the result of a random and messy

world. It is not there to teach us a lesson

or to provide a moral for the story. This

is the true structural dissonance: the

structure of the internet is neat and

contained, a closed loop. Real life is not.

To confuse the two is dangerous.

Camilla Long is away

There’s no meaning to be found in the misery

of Heard v Depp — whatever TikTok thinks

Charlotte Ivers

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES