Thinking About It Only Makes It Worse: And Other Lessons From Modern Life

by David Mitchell

  He isn’t, of course. He just wants to slag burglars off, and so is associating them with the negative end of the bravery–cowardice spectrum without really thinking about what those words mean. He may as well have countered that burglars weren’t handsome but ugly, not tall but short, not symmetrical but wonky and not fragrant but stinky. Having established that burglary is a bad thing, he thinks linking it or its practitioners with any positive attributes, however incidental, is an idea too sophisticated for the British public to grasp.

  I don’t mean to blame David Cameron: this culture in which any concepts more complicated than good and bad are too nuanced to bother trying to express is not of his making. And he’s never seemed particularly keen to change things, either for better or worse. He just wants to make his way to a fireside in a cosy House of Lords bar, the words “prime minister” indisputably inked on to his CV, with the least possible fuss. He makes Macmillan look like Thatcher.

  But obviously Judge Bowers is correct. In many cases, doing a burglary is going to require considerable courage. In order to break into a house and steal stuff you have to be brave, show a bit of gumption. In order to go and get someone else’s property, you literally have to be a go-getter. Now, I’m not saying that the judge chose the best time to point out these evident truths. It would have been more appropriate and, more importantly, diplomatic to have emphasised some of the less praiseworthy attributes that burglary requires: dishonesty, unkindness, selfishness, thoughtlessness, disdain for the integrity of a window, raging narcotic withdrawal. I can understand those who dislike what he said. Not all truths need to be spoken. But that doesn’t make what he said untrue.

  Personally, I like it. I find the way it has annoyed people extremely satisfying. I’m attracted to its inappropriateness. It sticks out, it’s noticeable, which is refreshing in the current era of public discourse, when all prominent figures seem at pains to be blandly appropriate: to show the expected level of respect, rage, shock, support, joy or grief. I like the judge for having taken the trouble to find something odd to say – something interesting and off-message.

  It’s a rare skill. PC Gary Archer of the British Transport Police doesn’t seem to possess it. He described a series of thefts of dog-shaped charity collection boxes from station platforms in Oxfordshire as “simply unacceptable”. I don’t disagree but he didn’t grab my attention as much as the grainy CCTV snap of a youth tiptoeing off with a large plastic labrador. It would probably hurt the policeman’s career if he described the crimes as “funny” or “refreshing”. “More fun than a stabbing in a nightclub.” “Makes a nice change from inveigling your way into an old lady’s house by pretending to read the meter.” “Not what you’d ideally have people doing, but it shows a bit of enterprise.” Some might say that was belittling a crime; I reckon it’s looking on the bright side.

  At the risk of sounding like those people who go on about how the Nazis had nice uniforms, it’s worth remembering that bad things often have good aspects to them: burglars show bravery, smoking looks cool, Jeffrey Archer was quite good at athletics, the theme tune to Casualty is catchy. The good aspects don’t stop the things being bad. It’s vital to our understanding of a complex world, and to our intellectual dexterity, to be able to hold two different concepts in our heads at once without assuming that they’re mutually exclusive.

  This is particularly important in the arena of justice, so I like Judge Bowers’s style. As anyone who has a friend keen on amateur dramatics will know, it’s possible to think of something good to say about anything. Perhaps judges should have to do this by convention. Every time they sentence a criminal, they should be required to find something positive to say about the crime – not as an excuse, not even in mitigation, just as an acknowledgment that the world is always more complicated, baffling and contradictory than it seems.

  So a murder could be described as cunning, an assault as physically dexterous, a fraud as punctual, an extortion racket as ambitious, an act of road rage as demonstrating spontaneity, an intense period of obsessive stalking as “daring to dream”. The convicted criminal’s judicial compliment could become as strong a tradition as a condemned prisoner’s last meal.

  Of course it would annoy the hell out of some people. But mainly those who enjoy the sensation.

  *

  We often change how we express ourselves depending on whom we’re talking to. Or who we’re talking to. I might say “who” or “whom” depending on who, or to whom, I’m talking (to). Meanwhile, my mum, who’s Welsh but has lost the accent, unconsciously puts it on again when talking to Welsh people on the phone. I think it sounds like she’s taking the piss.

  Which raises the question: to whom the hell was Newsnight editor Ian Katz talking when he tweeted: “Tnks … except for boring snoring rachel reeves … playout was fun tho, wasn’t it? telly MUCH netter [sic] than snooooozepapers innit.” I put a “[sic]” after the “netter” because that was probably a typo, but there’s an argument for putting one after almost every word. I was puzzled: I’ve looked him up on Wikipedia and he’s well over 40. Why’s he expressing himself like that? It’s like halfway between Molesworth and Ali G. He’s wearing his literacy so lightly we can see his balls.

  We definitely know he had a specific recipient in mind because, as he said when subsequently apologising, it was meant to be a confidential “direct message” but he’d clicked the wrong button (as I say, he’s well over 40). The rest of his Twitter feed seems to be written in normal English, but then maybe that’s just for show? Maybe when he’s off duty, he’s all elongated vowels and superfluous use of “innit”? Maybe everyone is except me? Maybe I’m the only one left using this ancient ceremonial form of the language in daily life, like a Japanese emperor or the last Latin-speaking cardinal? Maybe there’s more to sounding contemporary than remembering not to say “thou”?

  None of that was why he got shit for the tweet. Innit. It was because he’d publicly called a member of the shadow cabinet boring, which is a silly thing to do if you’re the editor of Newsnight and rely on a steady stream of politicians being willing to turn up and endure combative questions until such time as BBC2 can respectably put on a repeat. It’s a very ungrateful response to the trouble Reeves took. After all, most of us can’t even be bothered to watch the programme, so I can barely imagine the superhuman effort it must take to be bothered actually to go on it.

  That doesn’t mean she’s not boring, of course. So I watched that section of the show and I’m afraid Katz is right: it is boring and she is boring in it. Mind you, her cause wasn’t helped by Jeremy Paxman who, in his efforts to appear disinterested, seems to be moving with the adjective’s shifting definition. It’s hard to scintillate in the face of his resolute ennui. And, at the end, she was about to slag off George Osborne and he stopped her! He can hardly blame her for droning on about public sector pay if, as soon as she tries to inject some controversy, he interrupts.

  But she did manage to say the government was “out of touch”, which should please everyone in Ed Miliband’s team. They seem firmly of the opinion that saying “out of touch” is all TV’s good for. Or radio, for that matter – or lecterns, microphones and dispatch boxes. Just say “out of touch” as often and as loudly as you can and you’ll win the next general election – that’s their view. It’s like that Dick and Dom game, Bogies, but with higher stakes and a much more banal thing to shout.

  I don’t really think it works. I don’t like the government but I wouldn’t say it was specifically “out of touch”. Ministers are forever at press conferences, or giving speeches, or lamely launching crowd-pleasing initiatives in front of displeased crowds. I know they’re on average quite rich and posh – and probably acting in the interests of their class or supporters rather than the wider public – but the evident realities of modern government necessitate their being “in touch” all the time. I think “out of touch” is the wrong slur – it conjures up an absentee emperor, a Tiberius on Capri, rather than ener
getic tweeters in suits feathering their political nests.

  Conversely, “out of touch” is how I feel because I hardly ever watch Newsnight. With or without Rachel Reeves, I’ve always found it quite boring – not in a way I blame it for, but in a way I blame myself for. Being bored by Newsnight, I was brought up to believe, is an index of my own failings. One of the clearest signs of virtue, I’ve always known, is an ability to endure the stultifying. Not just current affairs, but art galleries and ballet and opera.

  I once went to an opera. I think it was La Bohème but I’m genuinely not sure. It was staged in a Kilburn pub in a clever “promenade” way. I thought it was very accomplished but nevertheless, by the end, let’s just say I was ready for it to finish. It did not leave me wanting more. For me, the last half-hour was an all-consuming contemplation of posterior discomfort and the weird elastic nature of time. But I was proud to have got through it.

  Yet some of the group I’d gone with were crying by the end. That’s how uncomfortable the seats were. No, it was because of the opera – the music, the story, the acting. They were moved to tears by the hours and hours of musical pretending. It was a level of emotional engagement that so baffled me, I found myself claiming to share it for fear of being lynched as a philistine.

  Ian Katz knows where I’m coming from. He understands the need to tailor current affairs to people like me by involving professional performers. Who are also people like me, I suppose. Is that dumbing down – or interesting up? Is there any difference? Or is it just that if the TV is going to broadcast someone banging on platitudinously about the economy, they might as well also be able to make amusing remarks about the difference between cats and dogs?

  But, ultimately, Reeves wasn’t boring because of her presentational failings, because she lacks Churchill’s or Bevan’s or Russell Brand’s charisma; it was because nothing she says seems to matter. Nothing any politician says on TV nowadays seems surprising or important, unless it’s a gaffe. However dull the speaker, an audience will sit up and listen if what’s being discussed might change their lives. But if the words are old and much repeated, even beautiful singing can be less interesting than a hard chair.

  *

  They say that nothing is more evocative of times past than a smell. For most of history, it’s the smell of excrement. Though people are quicker to mention wisteria blossom and their mum’s apple pie.

  But, to my mind, nothing rolls back the years like the names of reports, commissions and inquiries. Those surnames that are constantly in the papers, on TV, overheard in conversations – muttered more often than the chorus of a boy band’s number one, and then gone as suddenly: Calman, Taylor, Hutton, Butler and already Leveson, names kept warm for months in the mouths of newsreaders and then abandoned, cold and salivary. They take me back as vividly as a Tardis that plays 80s hits and is powered by the aroma of home cooking.

  So it caught my attention recently when Nick Clegg said the words “Chilcot inquiry”. It rang a peal of nostalgic bells for the death throes of New Labour – not an event that delighted me in itself, but I was younger when it happened so I remember it warmly. Similarly, I have difficulty enthusing about any world-improving developments predicted for the future, as they’re likely to coincide with my decrepitude and/or demise. I think this is why people find it hard to get behind HS2.

  The Chilcot inquiry probably makes Clegg nostalgic, too. It conjures up the Iraq war, which brings back happy memories for Nick. Those were his glory days of being right about stuff and ignored, before he moved into the treacherous arena of being wrong about stuff and obeyed.

  I don’t mean to pre-empt the inquiry’s findings. Then again, I don’t really have an option because the Chilcot inquiry, set up back in 2009 by Gordon Brown (remember him? Just think of the Arctic Monkeys or Henmania if you’re having trouble conjuring him up), has still not published its report, which makes it more of a magnet for pre-emption than the Second Coming of Christ.

  Clegg was merrily pre-empting away, saying the Iraq war was “one of the most catastrophic decisions in British foreign policy – I would say the most catastrophic decision – since Suez”. I hope he hasn’t pre-empted some ongoing royal commission on the Suez crisis. He’d have egg on his face if they rushed out their long-awaited exoneration of Eden.

  Nick’s point is that it’s about time Chilcot reported and can’t everyone get on with it. He’s not blaming Sir John Chilcot himself, but the arguments about whether “25 notes from Mr Blair to President Bush” and “some 200 cabinet-level discussions” can be made public, which, he implied, various individuals are deliberately stringing out. “I do hope now that everybody involved, including those who know they will be subject to renewed scrutiny within the Chilcot report … will now accept that it is time to get this report published,” he said. That’s a forlorn hope. Those who are likely to get slagged off in it will never tire of waiting. That would be like queue-jumping on death row.

  Clegg didn’t specifically mention Tony Blair, but Tony Blair clearly thought it was all about him (a feeling I suspect he finds familiar) because he issued a riposte. It would be beneath the dignity of the great potentate to respond to a mere British deputy prime minister personally, but a spokesman said: “If Nick Clegg is implying Tony Blair is the reason for the delay, that is completely wrong. Tony Blair has as much reason as anyone for wanting the report published.” Well, the second sentence is definitely a lie.

  It feels ridiculous that this report still hasn’t appeared – there must have been several histories of the Iraq war published by now – and apparently the earliest it’ll be released, because of various inexplicable reasons, is next year, 12 years after the invasion of Iraq. This massively reduces the point of it, since everyone will have long since made their minds up about the subject by then. It’ll barely be out in time for us to learn the wrong lessons from it going into the next war.

  Everything seems to take too long. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older – although it’s precisely the opposite of what I was told getting older was like – but every public inquiry, internal investigation or official report seems, as a matter of course, to be scheduled to take a minimum of several months. At least Chilcot is investigating a whole war; the various and lengthy Plebgate inquiries are studying one bad-tempered conversation and its immediate aftermath. What is there to look at, or ask about, that takes so long? In all the reporting surrounding Maria Miller’s resignation from the government, I noticed a fleeting reference to the 14-month investigation into her expenses. Why the hell should that take 14 months? This is one woman’s bank accounts and property arrangements, not a full posthumous audit of Lehman Brothers – it shouldn’t take longer than a week.

  This is the moaning of a layman. Just because I can’t understand why some things take so long doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason (although it doesn’t mean there is). But the underlying principle to these processes seems to be that if something’s really important, it should be allowed to take as long as it takes. That’s flawed reasoning. If you say it doesn’t matter how long something takes, then you’re not saying it’s important, you’re saying the opposite. Important things need to be done by a certain time. If there’s no particular time by which something needs to be completed, then the logical inference is that it never needs to be done at all.

  Inexplicable waiting hangs heavy. My friend Toby Davies once wrote a TV sketch set in a shoe shop: the customer’s requirements having been determined, the assistant disappears into that mysterious back room, while the customer waits, as we all do, wondering when the assistant will return, what he or she is doing, whether our weird foot shape or style choice has necessitated a management conference. In Toby’s sketch, the shop’s staff are perpetually enjoying a boozy and garrulous feast in the stock room. The assistant joins them for several minutes’ wassailing before randomly picking a shoe box from the pile and staggering front of house with it.

  I’m sure Sir John Chilcot will emerge at some point
with the shoes. But the implication of this long disappearance is that nobody much cares how long we stand out here in our socks.

  *

  What ungodly things must David Silvester think Ukip has done to deserve this ceaseless media shitstorm? Silvester is the party’s Henley-on-Thames councillor, whom it suspended for repeatedly asserting that the extreme winter weather is a punishment from God for legalising gay marriage. So what biblically prohibited acts must he think Nigel Farage has perpetrated that he is constantly tossed in a tempest of mockery and disdain? What sins has he committed to deserve such relentless tossing? What unholy transgression must Nigel have been guilty of to bring down these plagues of ridicule upon the organisation he’s attempting to lead out of the wilderness?

  Did Silvester feel the hand of the Lord upon him as he wrote his nutty letter? Did he descend like an avenging angel into the BBC Radio Berkshire studio to reiterate his point? Was it God’s work that Andrew Scott was doing when he attacked Farage with a placard bearing the words “Nasty Little Nigel”? Was Godfrey Bloom’s assaulting a journalist with a brochure an example of the Lord moving in a mysterious way? Is Ukip, in fact, damned?

  The Tories must be hoping so as Farage’s party, in spite of these gaffes, seems likely to steal a significant chunk of their vote. Is “in spite of” the right phrase? Perhaps it should be “because of”. After all, David Silvester used to be a Tory councillor. Conservative business minister Michael Fallon attempted to capitalise on Ukip embarrassment over Silvester’s remarks by saying that “there clearly are one or two fruitcakes still around there”. Fair point, but he’s forgetting that many of these people used to be Tory fruitcakes. The Conservatives are losing the fruitcake vote.