jamescalumcampbell

The Tony Blair Institute has developed a New Grand Enthusiasm.  Last month’s Enthusiasm was for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the NHS.  This month’s Enthusiasm is for the population-wide general roll-out of Anti-Obesity Medication.  The argument seems to be based on economics rather than pathophysiology.  Because obesity is linked to so many pathological conditions – cancer, ischaemic heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, diabetes etc. – the removal of one major risk factor will help sustain a healthy population and workforce, and hence, the prosperity of the country. 

Other Enthusiasms have come to light his past week.  There is an Enthusiasm for chemically castrating sex offenders.  First it would be voluntary, but its champions are not ruling out making it compulsory.  Nothing is off the table.  When politicians are “minded” to go one step further like this, it usually means they are flying a kite; or sticking a wet finger in the air to see which way the wind of public opinion is blowing.  I seem to recall that Alan Turing, now a great hero of the proponents of AI, once himself deemed to be a sex offender, was chemically castrated.  Was it voluntary or compulsory?  Or was it offered as an alternative to imprisonment?  In other words, was he coerced?  He took his own life. 

Another Enthusiasm is to create separate acute assessment units for patients with issues of mental health.  The “chaos” of “A & E” is not helpful to them. 

These, and other similar initiatives share two common features.  First, they are public health initiatives, based on perceived crises, pandemics of morbid obesity, sexual abuse, and poor mental health.  Public health initiatives are usually preventative measures, designed to protect whole populations by lowering a relative risk.  They are not, by and large, “patient focused”.  Secondly, they tend not to be initiated by health care professionals, but rather by groups, factions, and vested interests which seek to organise and shape the societal Gestalt, politicians, Think Tanks, QANGOS, and various allied “Medinfluencers”.  Doctors and nurses are often the last to know what the latest societal manipulation is going to be, because they are too busy seeing patients.  Patients consult them; but the medinfluencers don’t.

I certainly don’t mean to knock public health initiatives across the board.  Vaccination, after all, has been the most successful public health initiative of all.  We have known of its overriding beneficence for hundreds of years, ever since medieval villagers got their children to climb into bed with a child who had cowpox, because it protected them – nobody knew why – against smallpox. 

But it seems to me that, over the course of the new millennium, the focus in health is shifting from the individual, to the populace at large.  Everybody is at risk of something; everybody is on a spectrum of disease.  I first started noticing this when patients were referred to hospital, either acutely or via outpatients, with symptoms suggestive of cardiovascular disease – chest pain, shortness of breath, exercise intolerance.  The tests – CXR, ECG, treadmill test, echo, bloods – would all be normal.  But the patient would still come home on a swag of preventative medication – statins, antihypertensives, aspirin…  The next development was the polypill.  Just put everybody on that swag of preventative medication even if they are entirely well.  Why not?  These drugs are well tolerated (mostly; so, for that matter, are anti-obesity drugs, apparently).  The notion of normality, of “normal values”, became eroded.  Traditionally, a blood pressure of 140/90 was regarded as “the upper limit of normal”.  No longer.  130/80?  Too high.  Drive it down as low as you can (without keeling over).  Same with cholesterol.  Don’t even bother measuring it.  Just take the statin.  “Fire and forget.”  New diagnoses crept into the medical lexicon – “pre-hypertension”, “pre-diabetes”.  Something similar has happened in mental health.  Everybody is on the spectrum of something

It’s hard to overestimate the extent to which this prevailing trend is completely alien to the way I was taught as a medical student in the 1970s.  Then, the whole structure of medical practice was based on the concept of diagnosis.  The medical consultation was designed, and systematically conducted, in order to reach a clear, and accurate, diagnosis.  It was based fundamentally on the elucidation of a very careful history, taken from the patient.  That was paramount.  The patient was not thought of as a cog in a huge, national industrial wheel, that had to be kept turning, but rather as a unique individual. 

The history was followed by the physical examination.  We were taught to elicit physical “signs”, evidence of pathological processes.  We were encouraged to be decisive about the presence, or absence, of signs.  A cardiac murmur, a palpable abdominal mass, a neurological deficit – either it was present, or it was absent. 

The history and the examination predicated, perhaps, some highly specific and targeted radiological and laboratory investigations, designed to confirm, or repudiate, the formulation of a pathophysiological process.  The confirmation of a diagnosis was the solid bedrock of therapeutics: treatment, and patient management. 

All this has been eroded.  Why bother talking to the patient when you can simply run them through an algorithm?  Why bother examining them, when you can order up a swag of tests?  (I remember hearing a GP give a presentation in which he said, somewhat boastfully and without a trace of irony, that he didn’t own a stethoscope.  It was the worst medical talk I ever heard in my life.) But the trouble with practising Blunderbuss Medicine is that soon you are inundated with an entire population which has been persuaded that it is unwell.  No wonder “A & E” is described as “chaotic”.  We need to ask ourselves: why are so many people overweight?  Why are so many people miserable?  My theory, on both counts, is that it is because they have been encouraged by the masters of the universe to spend their entire lives, both professionally and at leisure, in front of computer screens.  I have no doubt that for some patients, some weight reduction drugs have a place.  But for the most part, and for most of us, millions of people in the population, we don’t need them.  So Log off, and go and climb a hill.  It’s cheaper, healthier, and much better fun.         

Meandering round the Milngavie Reservoir the other day I beheld the awesome sight of an Emirates Airbus A380, newly airborne out of Glasgow, and passing overhead at about 3,000 feet.  The enormous airframe seemed almost stationary in the cloudless sky, defying the laws of physics, the engine note remarkably quiet.  In a few moments it had disappeared into the deep blue.  I think on the same day news had come out that Qatar was to gift President Trump a brand new, extremely luxurious, and extremely expensive Airforce One.  It’s not really for me, said the President, but for America.  Timeo Danaos, et dona ferentes.  (As a child studying my Virgil I used to think of Donna Ferentes as a Latin American pop star.  The name has a certain euphony; all Latin verse lines end in the same rhythm: strawberry jam-pots.) 

Political leaders have been in receipt of gifts since time immemorial.  Think of Lloyd George and cash for honours.  More recently, Tony Blair’s New Labour were in receipt of £1,000,000 from Bernie Ecclestone, and, by a curious coincidence, the ban on cigarette advertising in sport was found not to extend to Formula 1.  Sir Tony had a kind of Teflon defence – it was perhaps its first manifestation – that clearly everything had been done in good faith because, “Most people know I’m a pretty straight sort of guy.”  When more recently I heard of the Prime Minister et ux receiving gifts of fine apparel and free tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, I remember I shook my head and muttered, “Don’t they know there is no such thing as a free lunch?”  These transactions carry with them a vaguely noxious subliminal aroma.  People who donate are not merely philanthropic; they expect something in return.  A friend of mine once attempted to shout another friend a coffee in a place in Sicily.  The barista shook his head and said, “Everybody pays for himself here.”  That was how the Mafia got you, with a gift.  Once you take the gift, they own you.  You may not think they own you, but your opinion no longer matters.  They’ve got you.  A big guy with a quiet hoarse voice, his gums stuffed with cotton wool says, “That’s a lovely wife and family you have.  It would be a pity if something unfortunate were to happen to them.” 

I found myself smugly reflecting that I would never succumb to a bribe.  After all, I’ve never even received a professional bonus (apart from when as a boy I delivered newspapers for £1.00 a week.  I got £2.00 at Christmas).  But then I remembered. 

When I was in medical practice I would see representatives of pharmaceutical companies – drug reps.  Not all my colleagues did.  They refused to be influenced to prescribe one drug over another, other than on the basis of evidence-based medicine.  Many of them prescribed generically, without recourse to brand names.  I saw reps largely as a courtesy.  If they had the patience to sit in the waiting room until I had finished consulting, it was only polite to give them five minutes of my time.  I had a running joke with the practice receptionists – politically utterly incorrect – that I would see them if they were attractive enough. The receptionist would pass me the rep’s business card and say, “You’ll definitely want to see her!”  I told myself that whatever the rep’s pitch, I would not be influenced; water off a duck’s back.

Twenty odd years ago I had a fling with a rep, and when she eventually dumped me I buried my sorrows my going on a spree of posh pharmaceutical meetings.  Perhaps I wanted to wreak some generic revenge upon the industry – who knows?  This was at a time when going on such junkets was deemed perfectly acceptable.  Indeed they were almost a requirement of continuing medical education, the need to demonstrate that you had attended so many hours of lectures, seminars, etc.  I went for the top end, and I remember in particular three weekends at five star hotels, first at Gleneagles, where I occupied a suite, with exquisite underfloor heating, the size of a badminton court; then a golf hotel in St Andrews round the corner from the Old Course; and finally, of all places, Trump Turnberry, though the President-to-be had yet to acquire it.  I remember little of the academic content of these meetings.  I do remember at Turnberry a lawyer giving a talk on medical misadventure, litigation, and the perils of going to law.  “Remember,” he said, “When you go to law, you may think you are inviting us to enter your world.  But we are not entering your world; you are entering ours.”  That is remarkably similar to what the barista told my friend in Sicily.

Of course, I ended up prescribing the drugs of the pharmaceutical companies hosting the events.  They didn’t even have to advertise them, plug them, push them, or give me a scintilla of evidence that they were more potent, or efficacious, than those of their competitors.  The names, the branding, the ambience; these were enough.   

Shortly afterwards, meetings of this kind came to an abrupt end, when, as I recall, a pharmaceutical company hosted a group of GPs to a dinner of spectacularly conspicuous consumption.  A dozen people in a restaurant racked up a bill of about £50,000.  Scandalous.  This happened around the time of Shipman, and the whole creaking edifice of drug-sponsored continuing medical education was replaced by “Appraisal”, a system by which every GP would be assessed annually by an appraiser, ostensibly to ensure they were keeping abreast of the contemporary customs and mores of practice.  I actually trained as an appraiser, and appraised 25 of my colleagues over the course of a year, before packing it in.  I never believed in the efficacy of appraisal.  It was just another hurdle to be negotiated.  I colluded with my appraisees: this is the easiest way to tick this particular box.    

GPs generally adopted an attitude of resigned cynicism towards appraisal.  “Shipman would have been an exemplary appraisee!”  It was said that he was rather a good GP, and a popular one. There was indeed something vastly incongruent about appraisal as a logical response to Shipman.  Shipman after all was a serial killer.  It was as if an airline pilot had been discovered to be poisoning his passengers when they visited the loo.  In order to ensure this would never happen again, the pilots’ ability to fly the aircraft would be more rigorously assessed.  It was as if General Practice as a whole was being collectively punished because the most prolific serial killer in the history of the UK happened to have been a GP.  When Shipman committed suicide in jail, I happened to be at another medical meeting, in London, not sponsored by Big Pharma, but by the British Medical Association.  On news of Shipman’s death, David Blunkett, Home Secretary at the time said, “De-cork the champagne bottles!”  Or words to that effect.  I voiced disapproval.  The Home Secretary should not rejoice over the death of a prison in-mate, no matter how heinous his crimes.  My observation did not go down well.   

Now that I’ve hung up the stethoscope, I’m not aware that I am the recipient of any bribes, bungs, or sweeteners.  But you never know.  That is the subtlety of a bung; it is invisible.  One of the delights of retirement is that you can shout your friends a meal without any expectation of reciprocation.  When they demur, I say, “Give me this small pleasure!”  It’s as if I want to demonstrate that there is, after all, such a thing as a free lunch.          

The other day I plugged my all electric Skoda Enyaq into a local charge point, and I got an “Access denied” message.  So I phoned the provider.

“Hoy o thru Adammyatakyrnemandpozzquot?”

“Sorry?”

“Yanampozzkyott.”

“I don’t understand you.  Could you possibly speak a little more slowly?”

“Hello, you are through to Adam, may I take your name and postcode?”

He had a Scottish accent.  It wasn’t as if he was at a remote overseas location.  He explained that access was denied me because I hadn’t paid for half a dozen charges over the previous three months.

“But how can that be when you automatically charge my credit card, and I have settled my latest account?”

Pause.

“We’ve been having software glitches.”

Ah.  But billing apart, as it turned out, the charge point was kaputt. 

I suppose I was a bit tetchy.  It has been a difficult week for me, as the orchestra rehearsed, and performed, Mozart, Grieg, and Brahms.  Maestro iterated, and reiterated the mantra, “Play nearer the bridge, James!”  But I’m not sure I want to.  It sounds so strident.  I said to him, “Old dog, new tricks.”  He wants us all to download an app on to our smart phones, and tune to A441.  Why bother listening to the oboe when hi tech can do it for you?

Talking of tech, the schools in Edinburgh have been hacked and everybody’s data compromised.  The pupils had to go to school on Saturday and be issued new passwords, in order to continue receiving teaching materials on line.  There is a move afoot across various countries in the world to ban pupils from bringing their smart phones to school.  I think this should certainly be extended to the teachers, who should be banned from using IT as an educational modality, unless they are teaching computing science.  For the most part, all you need is a room, quietude, a blackboard or a whiteboard, books, and a meeting of minds.

Then the supermarkets got hacked and the shelves emptied with extraordinary rapidity.  The hackers’ motive appears to be purely venal and rapacious; they want to hold the supermarkets to ransom.  All viruses will be expunged, for a fee.  And why not?  Isn’t it just another form of trade?  Business is business.  Everything has become so transactional.

Tech malfunctions also seem to have disrupted business at Stansted, and at Newark.  And, in respect of electricidade, there was a huge outage in Iberia.  People got stuck in lifts.  And nothing worked.  It just shows you.  When things fall apart, you must have the facility to move back, with ease, and rapidity, to the analogue world.  When the computers crash in the GP surgery, doctors must remember how to keep a record using pen and ink.  Aviators know this.  When the instrument panel goes blank, they must reaccess and summon the ancient navigational skills of mental dead reckoning, and compass turns. 

I bet the cardinals didn’t use electronic voting last week in the Sistine Chapel.  Some very rare ballot papers have been unearthed in the National Library of Scotland, from the conclave of 1655, which apparently turned down the favourite Giulio Cesare Sacchetti, in favour of the compromise candidate Fabio Chigi, Pope Alexander VII.  Of course used ballot papers are burnt, so these rare documents are thought to be spares, including ballot sheets and a list of cardinals eligible to vote.                       

They say that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.  When Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday, I wouldn’t have said for a moment that Robert Harris, the author of Conclave, would have rubbed his hands with glee.  But he must have recognised that the reality of a forthcoming conclave would by no means harm the sales of his book, already boosted by its reincarnation as a successful film.  I remember that I started reading Conclave with no high hopes; how could you possibly turn a prolonged committee meeting into a thriller?  But having read many of Robert Harris’ oeuvres, I should have known better.  It was a page turner, full of twists and turns, not least the final twist at the end.

The process of a conclave is shrouded in secrecy.  We know that the Pope-elect requires two thirds of the cardinals’ votes.  But what voting system is deployed?  STV?  Some sort of modified D’Hondt?  Or is it simply a looser process of horse trading and argy-bargy?  Whatever it is, it seems to work.  White smoke has appeared above the Sistine Chapel.  Habemus Papam. 

Pope Leo XIV seems to be going down well with the people congregated on St Peter’s Square.  A prerequisite of the papal role seems to be that the incumbent must be a polyglot.  I believe Leo’s first address as Pope was delivered in Spanish, and he has subsequently spoken, and indeed sung, in Italian, Latin, and of course English.  It would seem that he was chosen as the continuity candidate in the footsteps of Francis.  He undertook a great part of his priestly career in Peru, ministering to the poor.  In terms of his world view, he has called for peace; peace in Ukraine, in Gaza. 

Does a papal call for peace exercise any influence on the world stage?  Remember a notorious remark of Stalin in response to a previous call for peace from the Vatican.  “How many divisions does the pope have?”  In other words, might is right. 

The notion of might being right, after 80 years of relative peace in Europe, by no means unbroken – remember Yugoslavia – has come once more to the fore.  That loathsome harangue of President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, from Trump and Vance, brought it all back.  “You don’t have the cards!” said Trump.  Nothing about an illegal invasion of sovereign territory.  Quite the contrary.  Zelenskyy started it!  That’s another old trope that has returned.  The Big Lie.  The first casualty in war is the truth.  If you tell a lie often enough, people begin to believe it.  Dr Goebbels understood that.  And America, said Trump, has given away $350,000,000,000 of aid to Ukraine, much more than Europe.  Actually the US has given about $120,000,000,000, somewhat less than Europe.  But why let facts get in the way of a good story?  In the light of all that, it is not merely tasteless that Trump should allegedly retweet (or rather re-X, or rather re-truth social) – he denies it – a mock-up of himself in papal vestments, it is actually rather sinister.  A proponent of might dressed as the champion of the meek.  A wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

We live in a secular world, and you might suppose that people who regard the religious life as being merely superstitious would have a refined sense of the difference between truth and falsehood.  I think it was G. K. Chesterton, a distinguished Catholic, who said that the trouble with ditching a religious belief is not that you end up believing in nothing, but rather you end up believing in everything.  People believe, for example, that the ills of the world can be surmounted through technology.  Artificial Intelligence, says Sir Tony Blair (another prominent Catholic), is the Next Big Thing.  I’m sceptical.  Technology has a place, many places, but the woes of the world are at heart humanitarian.  Leo’s reiterated message of faith, hope and love, lies at the heart of Christianity.  Light is stronger than dark, good is stronger than evil, love is stronger than hate.  These notions are right now under attack, just as democracy is under attack.  Things fall apart, as once more, the strong men “slouch towards Bethlehem”.  The last time Europe was taken over by a dictator, it was not the white smoke above the Sistine Chapel we saw; rather the acrid black smoke issuing from the chimneys of Auschwitz-Birkenau.    

But as the difficulties of the world expand, coalesce and magnify, our politicians continue to trumpet high tech as a kind of deus ex machina that will solve all our difficulties, local and international.  But remember what the Dean of Coventry said in 1940, amid the blitzed ruins of the cathedral.  We shouldn’t seek vengeance, but rather, a kinder, simpler world.

So I continue to tune my viola to the oboe.  I’m not downloading the app.  A plague on your app.      

As the 80^th anniversary of VE day looms this coming Thursday, I cannot help but reflect on my father’s experience of the occasion. He was a pilot in Coastal Command, stationed at the time in Accra in West Africa.  He told me of a general sense of euphoria on the RAF station when the news of the surrender of Nazi Germany came through.  People at the airfield said, “Give us a show, James!”  Whether or not he performed a few victory loops I don’t know.  He fully expected to be posted somewhere in the Far East to continue the war with Japan.  But in due course, the atomic bombs were “cast” – Churchill’s word – and the Second World War came to an abrupt end.  

Sometimes I look over his RAF log books, which I cherish.  They cover the period from 1941 to 1945.  In 1939 he was a constable in the City of Glasgow Police, aged 21.  When the war broke out, two of his brothers, my uncles, were enlisted in the army and navy respectively.  I suppose he might have stayed on in the police, a reserved occupation, but I think he sensed a duty to follow in the footsteps of his brothers.  Then in 1941 the Germans bombed Clydebank.  I think – well, I know – the scale of the destruction had a profound effect on him, and he volunteered for the RAF.

There followed a rapid induction in London, a treacherous voyage across the Atlantic (on deck on Sunday morning service the troops sang “For those in peril on the seas” with great fervour), and a train across Canada to Saskatchewan, there to be trained as a pilot. 

Initially it didn’t go well.  I think his flying instructor was a bully.  Now I know a little about this because, 30 years later, I was a cadet pilot in the University of Glasgow and Strathclyde Air Squadron (UGSAS).  So I know a little about the traditional teaching methods of the RAF which were, basically, that if you fouled up, you received a “bollocking”.  Ab initio, my father received a lot of “bollocking” until he said to his instructor – and I give him great credit for this, I honour him for this – “If you continue to berate me like this, you will not get the best out of me.”  I think the instructor cut him some slack, and my father won his wings.

The ethos of the RAF of that time is well captured in the 1969 film The Battle of Britain.  I was in UGSAS, and the RAF Volunteer Reserve, between 1970 – 72.  One of our instructors in Glasgow flew Spitfires for that film.  Whenever I see the film, I instantly recognise the then RAF’s “sink or swim” attitude.  That poor guy who forgot to drop his undercart when landing, who is given a devastating flying lesson by Robert Shaw, on how to survive a dog-fight, and who eventually is gone for a burton… well, couldn’t they have done better by him? 

The most intriguing part of my father’s RAF log books is the record of his trip back to Europe from Canada, where he had been engaged monitoring submarine manoeuvres in the north Atlantic.  He flew from Montreal to Bluie West One, in Greenland, thence to Keflavik, in Iceland, thence to Prestwick, in Scotland.  He was now ten miles from his family home.  He requested permission to visit my grandmother. This was denied.  But he went anyway, so I suppose in a technical sense he was a deserter.  But he never got into trouble.  From Prestwick, he was posted to England for a time, thence to Africa, where his war eventually ended.   

As a youngster I knew that sooner or later I would learn to fly.  Of course I was intrigued by my father’s wartime activities.  He had a great pal who had been a POW in Stalag Luft III, and having seen the 1963 film The Great Escape, I wanted to ask him all about people like Bushell, Bader, Tuck and so on.  His only comment was, “Frightful fellows.”  My father took me aside and gently suggested I not enquire further.  Some people didn’t like to talk about the war.

When I went to New Zealand in the 1980s I resumed my flying activities and was amazed at the easy-going attitude of my Kiwi instructors.  No more bollocking.  I flew hundreds of hours, the length and breadth of the country, in many aircraft types.  Around 1992 I did a twin engine rating in a Beechcraft Duchess.  Most of the training involves coping with a single engine failure after take-off.  You lose power and directional control, and in the heat of the moment it can be difficult to figure out what is actually happening.  Experienced pilots have shut down the wrong engine in error.  So you train to get the appropriate response into the muscle memory.  I was on the phone one night to my father in Scotland and I told him I was finding it difficult.  Without any hesitation he intoned the pilot’s mantra, “Dead leg – dead engine – identify – verify – feather.”  He hadn’t flown an aircraft since 1945.

On their next visit to NZ, I took my parents flying.  We flew from Auckland down to Tauranga in the Bay of Plenty to visit friends of mine who ran a Kiwi fruit orchard in Omokoroa.  I remember after take-off I handed control over to my father.  I think I may have used the North American expression, “Your aeroplane”.  For me it was a very moving experience.  And I thought, “Gosh!  You can fly!”

To the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on Saturday, to listen to Mozart’s Requiem, serendipitously, on the day of Pope Francis’ funeral.  Maybe that coincidence added a further layer of solemnity to the occasion, as well as suggesting a possible reason as to why the auditorium was filled virtually to capacity.  The programme, overall, had a funereal theme.  We began with Beethoven’s rarely heard Op 118, Elegischer Gesang, Elegiac Song, composed in 1814 for string quartet and a small group of voices.  We heard a scaled-up version performed by the strings of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, and the RSNO Chorus.  The piece was composed in memory of one Eleanor, the wife of Beethoven’s friend and benefactor Baron Johann Baptiste Pasqualati.  Eleanor had died in childbirth, in 1811, aged 24.    

Sanft, wie du lebtest,

hast du vollendet,

zu helig für den Schmerz! 

Gently as you lived

Have you ended,

More holy for the pain!      

Extraordinary to hear some undiscovered Beethoven.  With its hushed opening, we immediately entered Beethoven’s world.  It was as if the great man himself were present in the room.

Conductor Patrick Hahn then directed Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto, with soloist Carolin Widmann.  The ensemble had recorded the Berg, along with Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto, earlier in the week, and they were now going to make a live recording, presumably for the RSNO archive, so Maestro Hahn politely asked us to unwrap our cough sweets now.  The audience was very attentive, so no retakes were required. 

The Berg is a serial piece, based on a 12-note tone row and heavily influenced of course by Schoenberg.  But I think of it rather as late romantic, and very lyrical.  I don’t think, on the occasion, that this performance entirely came off.  The soloist made a beautiful but not a big sound, which was occasionally drowned out by the orchestral forces, and similar imbalances within the orchestral tutti concealed the melodic line. 

Ha!  Everyone’s a critic.

But Mozart’s Requiem was wonderful.  Some of the music is severe, and austere.  The clarinets and bassoons which introduce the Requiem aeternam are so doleful.  The use of trombones renders an added solemnity, in the Tuba mirum, and in subsequently reiterated and rapidly moving passages for trombone trio, brilliantly played.  It is a well-loved piece, no doubt made famous by the film Amadeus.  It comes with its mythology – the mysterious commission, conveyed by a masked stranger; an ailing Mozart dictating passages of music on his death bed; the contribution of the amanuensis Süssmayr.  Wonderful music, wonderfully performed.

It just shows you; if you put on beautiful music, you can fill the hall.  Of course filling the hall, bums on seats, is a serious preoccupation for impresarios.  It always has been.  Looking at the prospectus for the 2025-26 season, you can tell that the RSNO are trying to reach out to a wider audience.  RSNO at the movies – Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Gladiator etc.  And in the recently published brochure for the forthcoming BBC London Proms, there’s something about The Traitors, and Claudia Winkleman.  I have no idea what that’s about.  But then I haven’t turned my telly on for about six weeks. 

The debate about “standards” in music has been going for a long time.  The classical repertoire versus “dumbing down”.  Even in Mozart’s time, some people thought The Magic Flute was a pot-boiler, and a bit naff.  Of a lovely spring afternoon on Thursday I sat with some friends in a very beautiful garden under the flightpath out of Glasgow airport, and we discussed whether it is better to keep classical music classical, or to try to attract a wider, and possibly younger, audience, with “gaming” music and so on.  Predictably, I inclined to the purists’ camp.  When I first saw the BBC Proms brochure I felt a bit impatient with it, though with the serenity of retrospection I can see some wonderful music is in there.  Similarly, the RSNO prospectus is very clever – a combination of the familiar and the new. 

But in fact the problem in programme planning is not really a matter of mainstream versus dumbing down.  The problem actually resides within the purists’ camp itself.  The repertoire is in fact quite limited, limited, if you will, by flavours of the month.  Current flavours of the month across the classical world are undoubtedly Mahler, and Shostakovich.  The current RSNO season ends with an all-Shostakovich programme, and the new season opener is Mahler 7.  The Proms are doing Mahler’s 2, 3, 5, and 7, as well as Das klagende Lied, and one of the Rückert Lieder.  Shostakovich is appearing eight times throughout the season.  Now don’t get me wrong; I admire Mahler and Shostakovich; I just don’t want to hear them every day of the week.  Other composers are available.  For example Arnold Bax, a great hero of mine, does not appear at all in either brochure for the Proms or the RSNO.  There is, in fact, a huge repertoire of beautiful music out there that we never hear.    

Why not? 

Do I detect the baleful influence of managerial pseudoscience?  I have a horrible notion that programme planning may have been taken over by focus groups, strategic planners, audience researchers, and a variety of other “influencers”.  People who know what will “sell”.  Life has become so transactional. 

With respect to music on the BBC, I would suggest Auntie might take some advice from what in this context might seem an unlikely source.  Have you heard Amol Rajan’s interview with the footballer and pundit Gary Lineker?  I recommend it.  Two very smart cookies, and nobody on the back foot.  Lineker famously got suspended (I think a kinder expression was used – he temporarily “stepped back”) when he allegedly breached the BBC’s impartiality rules for voicing political opinions.  He advised the BBC not to pay any attention to the furore; just ignore it, and it will go away.  Besides, even-handedness is not always a virtue.  If somebody says it’s raining, and somebody says it’s dry, you don’t need to give them equal air time.  Just look out the f****** window.  I suppose the analogy is a bit of a stretcher, but in music, you don’t need to research what the audience taste is.  Just play music that is beautiful, and beautifully played, inspirational, and deep.  And people will fill the hall.               

“Servus James!” said my local shopkeeper, who occasionally likes to slip into German.  “Wie geht’s?”  (Hello, how are you?)

“Prima!  Ausgezeichnet!  Lebend den Traum!”  (Champion, top notch, living the dream!)

But I sincerely hope I’m not living out my dreams.  That might be more like lebend den Alptraum.  Living the nightmare.  My dreams, at least the ones I can recall, are not to be envied.  I once tried to delve into them by reading Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, but I abandoned the book when I came up against Freud’s assertion that dreams are basically wish-fulfilments.  Well, if that were so, I must be of a peculiarly masochistic disposition. 

I have recurring dreams, a phenomenon of which Freud said he had no personal experience.  For a lengthy period I had a dream about being back at school.  I find myself in a school corridor (I’m not sure if corridor is the right word, rather loggia, these passages being open to the elements and therefore supposedly protective against tuberculosis), late for class, struggling to interpret a copy of my timetable.  You know the sort of thing – maths, French, double English…  I am in school uniform.  As the dream recurred this became more and more bizarre, and certainly contributed part of the general sense of angst.  A man in his 40s, in school uniform.  This dream visits me less often now (or perhaps it is I who, like a ghost, revisit the old alma mater), but it still occasionally returns, and I wake to wonder, why have I gone back to school?  Surely it must be to carry out some task.  There is something I should have done when I was here, that I did not do.  I have returned to complete unfinished business.  What business?  What can it be?  What challenge did I not face up to?

But this scenario has largely been replaced by something frankly much more disturbing.  Now in my dream, I am back at work, as a doctor.  Always, the dream takes place in hospital, never in general practice in the community.  Again, I am in a corridor, flitting between units, simultaneously grappling in my mind with a particularly difficult and thorny problem of medical diagnosis or management.  I stay in the corridor, shirking the problem, avoiding the encounter, full of a sense of skulking guilt at my malingering, and wondering how long I can get away with this lack of activity, before I am found out.

I wake in a cold sweat.  What can it possibly mean?  Clearly these two recurring scenarios have common themes.  They are anxiety dreams.  Underlying them is a strong sense of Impostor Syndrome.  They don’t seem to serve any useful physiological, psychological or spiritual purpose, nor to exhibit any positive adaptive value.  I wonder if they don’t perhaps evince a mild form of post- traumatic stress disorder.  I say mild, because I can well imagine that army veterans who have experienced at first hand the horrors of war can, and do, suffer intolerably.  I count myself fortunate that when I rise in the morning all the shady apparitions dissolve. 

The real world and the dream world are as different as night and day.  In the morning, I let it all go.  I’m not attracted to researches in the unconscious.  I think I incline to the stiff upper lip ethos of the late Duke of Edinburgh, and just get on with it.  I have a deep distrust of the medical profession.  It isn’t okay to say you’re not okay.  I wouldn’t dream of undergoing psychoanalysis.  What a can of worms that would open up.  A Pandora’s Box.  So I just keep smiling.  With respect to PTSD, in time of war, Winston advised his officers, if you can’t smile, grin.  If you can’t grin, keep away until you can.  He wouldn’t have recognised the term PTSD.  He might have recognised shell shock, which is at least better nomenclature than cowardice.

I’m told I smile a lot.  I’ve even been reprimanded for it.  “Why are you always smiling?” asked Hobsbaum, my Senior Honours English Lang & Lit tutor, a lifetime ago.  I said, “It’s a way of telling people you wish them no harm.”

“Humph.”

I even received a one-on-one tutorial from a consultant orthopaedic surgeon – who else? – on how to be intimidating to colleagues, in order to get your way.  “And don’t smile!”

What a load of tosh.  Didn’t Our Lord tell us to be the light of the world?      

Sometimes I adopt a Calvinistic attitude towards my dreams.  Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit/Of that forbidden tree…  They are my version of the grotesque portrait in the attic.  Surely I have wasted my substance in wild and riotous living.  Yet why should I be tormented by memories of my erstwhile efforts to help people?                 

Yet I count myself fortunate that, for the most part, these nocturnal disturbances to not extend into the wakeful day.  By the time I reach the village shop to collect my newspapers, I am entirely euthymic, and ready to indulge in some light-hearted banter. 

“Servus James!  Wie geht’s?”

“Prima!  Ausgezeichnet!  Lebend den Traum!”

On Saturday evening, appropriately enough on the eve of Palm Sunday, I attended a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, given by the Dunedin Consort, directed by John Butt, in the New Auditorium of Glasgow Royal Concert Hall.  It occurred to me that the last time I encountered this huge masterpiece at close quarters, I was actually playing my viola in the orchestra, in St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh.  Herrick Bunney conducted; the composer Kenneth Leighton was at the harpsichord, and the evangelist was none other than the great Peter Pears.  What a privilege to be a part of that.

The Dunedin Consort were magnificent.  The forces were quite small: two orchestras to left and right of the director, each comprising four violins, a viola, a cello (or viola da gamba), double bass, two flutes, and two oboes.  Additionally there was an organ placed centrally opposite the director, who conducted also from the organ.  The choir was made up entirely of eight soloists: two sopranos, a mezzo, a countertenor, two tenors, and two bass-baritones.  In addition, during Part 1, the RSNO Youth Chorus made contributions from a gallery above the orchestra, and the ensemble was completed by an unobtrusive – but remarkably expressive – sign language interpreter.  The work was sung in German.

It’s a lengthy work; we started at 7.00 pm, had a short break half-way, and it was after 10.00 when we finished.  Yet it passed in a flash.  The orchestra took much time, and devoted a great deal of close attention, to tuning up, but once they got going there was nae hingin’ aboot, and the rapidity of the events depicted enhanced the sense of intense drama.  Of course the music is utterly inspired, and very beautiful, but there’s no denying an atmosphere of austerity (these plangent oboes!) and a sense of impending and inevitable tragedy in the unfolding of the story, bookended by the great choruses Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen, and Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder. 

Much of the Matthew Passion concerns fickleness, and human frailty.  Peter disowns Jesus three times, and when the cock crows, he is consumed with shame, and grief.  Erbame dich, Mein Gott, um meiner Zähren willen!  Judas betrays Jesus, but when he sees him condemned to death, he is filled with remorse, and tries to return the blood money, thirty pieces of silver.  The chief priests couldn’t care less.  Judas promptly goes out and hangs himself.  Pontius Pilate knows Jesus is without fault.  His wife tells him to have nothing to do with condemning an innocent man.  He offers to free either Jesus or Barabbas, a murderer.  The mob want Barabbas.  So what, asks Pilate, should I do with Jesus? 

Laß ihn kreuzigen!

The crowd is most fickle of all, the same crowd who welcomed Jesus, seated on a donkey, to the streets of Jerusalem, strewn with palm leaves.  I have a notion that Bach had some compassion for Peter, and Judas, and Pilate, but that he really didn’t care for the crowd.  Their protestations become even more baleful in the St John Passion.

Pilate is cornered.  He washes his hands of the matter.  There’s no going back.  The end is inevitable.  Thank goodness Bach offers us some respite in that most beautiful of bass arias, Mache dich mein Herze, rein. 

It’s impossible to hear this great unfolding drama without putting it in the context of the world as it is today.  President Putin appears to be gearing up for a Spring Offensive.  A Russian missile attack killed at least 34 civilians in Sumy, Ukraine, on Palm Sunday.  The Polish Foreign Minister has said that Russia is mocking the USA’s attempts to broker peace.  President Zelenskyy has invited President Trump to Ukraine, to see the destruction for himself.  I have a notion – though I’d like to be proved wrong – that he won’t take up the offer, because what he would see would not fit with his own “narrative”.  In this respect he is like Pilate, who said “What is truth?” – but would not wait for an answer.  Meanwhile Israel has bombed the last functioning hospital in Gaza.  Trump is waging a trade war with China, whose effects will pretty soon be felt by everyman, and woman, in “Main St”, across the world. 

As a species, we don’t seem to be able to get past war, of one kind or another, so-called “discretionary” war, as an instrument of policy.  We don’t seem to want to find a better way of all getting along together.  This is why the Matthew remains so relevant.  And whenever I hear the latest bad news from the Middle East, I always think of the profoundly unsettling opening – these plangent oboes again – to the St John.  But that’s another Passion.            

Nuclear War, a Scenario

Annie Jacobsen

Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, 2024

You’ve got to read this book.  You’ve just got to.  I read it in two days, not because it brought me happiness, or peace and joy; not because it changed my life, or altered my world view; not even because it was a page turner – although clearly it was.  Its compulsion rather resided in its authenticity.  The book was so carefully researched, referenced, and annotated, that it was hard to keep in mind that the scenario was imagined and not real. 

Spoiler alert: if you want to read the book without this trailer, stop now.  But make sure you buy the book and read it. 

Annie Jacobsen conjures a scenario in which North Korea, with all its paranoia, and its known long range ballistic missile capacity, launches a surprise attack on the United States.  Three missiles are launched.  One burns up on re-entry.  The other two hit their targets – a nuclear power station in California, and the Pentagon, in Arlington County Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington DC.  In the short time that it takes for these missiles to traverse the globe, the US detects their approach, and advises the president, who authorises a counterattack on Pyongyang. 

But here’s the rub.  The retaliatory missiles must cross Russian soil.  And in all the blind panic and confusion of war, the US fails in its attempts to inform Russia that they themselves are not under attack.  Now Russia is confronted with the threat which faced the US barely thirty minutes previously.  Apparently, the US has launched a full scale attack in their direction.  Ergo, they respond, with an all-out attack upon the US. 

It does not end well.  The word Armageddon comes to mind.  And “nuclear winter”.  This is what will happen if things get out of hand.  

Annie Jacobsen based her scenario on a lengthy series of conversations with people in the US military who have spent their professional lives in defence.  (Should that read “defense”?)  So in a sense all of the putative scenarios are real; something like each of them has already occurred.  She doesn’t pull her punches.  The sheer hellishness of a nuclear apocalypse is graphically depicted.  When I read some truly gruesome descriptions, I thought, this is a bit over the top.  But no.  I understand why Annie Jacobsen is spelling it out.  She wants people, she wants us, to understand what the reality of nuclear warfare would mean. 

One of the most upsetting, perhaps the most upsetting, description in the book is not of a conjured scenario, but actually of something which really did occur, at Omega Site, in the Los Alamos woods, in May 1946.  A physicist, one Louis Slotin, was working on a plutonium bomb core.  Slotin accidentally dropped a nuclear sphere, which went critical.  There was a quick flash of blue light, and a wave of intense heat.  Nine days later, Slotin died from acute radiation poisoning.  The description of his gradual physical deterioration is so gruesome that I almost wished I had been spared the graphic detail, but I can quite see why Annie Jacobsen opted to spell it out.  It is peculiar that one can read, in an apparent state of equanimity, of the demise of billions of people; but that it is the description of the demise of one single individual that turns out to be so upsetting.  She drives her central thesis home: the doctrine of “Mutually Assured Destruction” is, truly, mad. 

The core idea of the doctrine of nuclear deterrence is that a nuclear attack will instantly result in nuclear retaliation.  The system is “locked and loaded”.  Annie Jacobsen’s book shows how frighteningly dangerous the nuclear stand-off is.   

Some people might argue that there is nothing to be gained by being frightened to death.  Henry Kissinger, with the crackling voice of an oracular cicada, said as much when the 1983 film, The Day After, starring Jason Robards, was broadcast by ABC, and caused widespread panic, much as had Orson Welles’ 1938 radio drama of his (near) namesake’s The War of the Worlds.  On its first showing, The Day After was watched by over 100,000,000 people.  What is the point, asked Kissinger, of putting everybody into a state of blind panic?  But in this regard I side with Nikita Khrushchev, whose remarks are recorded on the frontispiece of another book well worth reading, Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly, a New History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Allen lane, 2021):

Of course, I was scared. It would have been insane not to be scared, I was frightened about what could happen to my country and all the countries that would be devastated by a nuclear war.  If being frightened meant that I helped avert such insanity, then I’m glad I was frightened.  One of the problems in the world today is that not enough people are sufficiently frightened by danger of nuclear war.

That still rings true today.  There is a fearful complacency apparent in the attitude of our politicians, who champion the doctrine of nuclear deterrence.  They say it has kept us safe for 80 years.  Maybe, but if Mr Putin chose to deploy a “tactical” nuclear weapon above Kiev, how would we respond?  It’s a question politicians dodge.  Because of the deterrent, it won’t happen.  Yes, but what if it did happen?  It won’t.  When Putin says, “I’m not bluffing”, he’s bluffing.  Thus is a problem kicked into the long grass.

How are we going to rid the world of these hellish contraptions?  Annie Jacobsen doesn’t tell us.  Perhaps that’s her next book.  I hope so.  We need our best minds to grapple with this issue, not to pretend that it is not a real and present danger.  The Prime Minister is currently much exercised about a TV drama, Adolescence, all about toxic masculinity.  He wants it to be aired in schools.  In a similar vein, I think Transworld Publishers should send copies of Annie Jacobsen’s book to every member of the Cabinet.   

I wonder what Sir Keir has written, in his letter of last resort, to the submariners aboard Trident.  In the event that BBC Radio 4 stops broadcasting, I hope he has advised them to deactivate and shut down all the missiles, and sail to a friendly port, if they can find one.  After all, if the UK has ceased to exist, it will prove that the nuclear deterrent doesn’t work, and has never worked.  So I sincerely hope that Trident is a bluff.  But if it is, it’s a hellish expensive one.              

BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House opened with a gag yesterday at 9.00 am.  After the pips, I heard the tranquil sound of waves lapping on a seashore, followed by a delightful Eric Coates melody.

A sleepy lagoon,

A tropical moon,

And two on an island…

Desert Island Discs!  It must be 10 o’clock.  Of course!  The clocks sprang forward last night.  For a moment I was discombobulated.  But it was only a typical Paddy O’Connell gag.  Paddy being Paddy.  I had to laugh. 

I’m a bit allergic to change.  Now that we’re back on British Summertime, I wish we could just stay put, as I prefer light in the evening to light in the morning.  There is an argument that early morning light in winter is better, and safer, for commuters, particularly school pupils.  But, especially in this age of working from home, can’t we be a little more flexible, and alter our habits, rather than the clocks?  Winter is surely a time to hunker down.  I’d be happy to stay indoors in the dark, with my oil lamp, mending my fishing nets.

But talking of change, I was more concerned about the announcement ten minutes before the 9 o’clock pips, rendered in Neil Nunes’ sonorous tones following Sunday Worship, that next up was to be the last A Point of View, ever.  A Point of View is, was, a continuation and evolution of Alistair Cooke’s Letter from America, and had therefore been on the go since 1946.  Alistair will be turning in his grave!  (Except, of course, that not only was he cremated, but his bones were first purloined in a bizarre and macabre Burke and Hare act of malicious larceny.  But that’s another story.)

So I listened to the last A Point of View, given by Howard Jacobson.  Appositely, it was a reflection on the art of composing, and expressing, on air, a point of view, a reflection on the nature of the essay form.  Jacobson is a fine essayist.  Like his fellow presenters, Michael Morpurgo, and Will Self, he can be acerbic.  Perhaps it is a kind of Point of View house style.  Anyway, it came to an end, to be followed by Tweet of the Day, which has already been reduced to Tweet of the Week.  I thought, surely A Point of View won’t go quietly.  There will be audience “push-back” on Feedback.  I’m quite good at anticipating what will turn up on Feedback. When Emma Barnett got really aggressive with the conservative politician Robert Jenrick the other day on the Today programme, I thought, you’ve crossed the line, Emma.  You’ll be on Feedback.  Sure enough.   

With respect to A Point of View, Feedback got its retaliation in early, and invited a “controller” in to justify the axing of the programme, even before the audience had time to complain, on the grounds that the topic would end up on Feedback come what may. 

I can’t say I was convinced by the controller’s justification for ending A Point of View.  Apparently there are plenty more equivalent formats on the airwaves.  (Are there?)  And cost is, as ever, a consideration.  (Is it?  Sticking a leading writer in front of a microphone doesn’t strike me as being a particularly expensive exercise.  They said the same thing about Tweet of the Day.  Maybe the birds, like divas, were charging exorbitant fees.  Didn’t Lord Reith try to stop Beatrice Harrison accompanying a nightingale in her garden with her cello?  Reith thought the nightingale would be a prima donna and refuse to perform.)

I don’t object to change, per se.  But sometimes I think the BBC rejects that which is tried and trusted, in favour of the hip, the trendy.  It’s a managerial trait.  I once heard a hospital manager say, without a trace of irony, “If it works, break it.”  Moreover, it strikes me that there could even be something sinister about cancelling a programme with the title A Point of View.  The clue is in the name.  The public space has become fearful of opinion, particularly of the lone voice, of dissent.  We see this in the way universities have clamped down on offering a platform to people whose opinions diverge from received groupthink.  Their opinions are “egregious” in the literal sense – e grex – removed from the herd.  Why would you take the trouble to give the “oxygen of publicity” to somebody who might well stir things up, when you could more easily put on another game show?     

Is the BBC dumbing down?  As the essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele had their character Sir Roger De Coverley remark, much can be said on both sides.  On the one hand, I find the trailers, particularly for drama, excruciating.  Then there is the relentless deployment of musical wallpaper behind discourse.  David Dimbleby is currently trailing a forthcoming series about free market economics, Invisible Hands, to a background of musical dross.  The controllers are terrified of dead air.  Much radio comedy is too smug, complacent and self-satisfied to be truly funny.  And some programmes are definitely tired.  Any Questions is frankly boring and tedious because the politicians don’t want to say anything controversial.  They don’t want to be e grex.  And besides, curator Alex Forsyth says it all for them, all the pros and cons.  But nothing strange or startling.  What else?  Shouldn’t Friday night is music night be on Radio 2 and not Radio 3?  Or am I a musical snob?

On the other hand, Radio 3 did more or less devote Sunday entirely to the music of Pierre Boulez, the 100^th anniversary of whose birth we are celebrating, which just about stretched me to breaking point.  And there are still plenty of good programmes.  They seem to me to be characterised by simplicity of form, and directness of subject matter.  Michael Rosen’s Word of Mouth is a programme about linguistics.  Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed is about the Social Sciences.  Last Word is quite simply a series of obituaries.  Tim Harford’s More or Less is about statistics and is a triumph in making interesting a subject which could quite easily sound very dry.  But in this day and age of fake news, political propaganda, and blatant lies, its fact checking has become indispensable.

Equally indispensable is Michael Barclay’s Private Passions.  Michael Barclay is simply the best interviewer currently broadcasting and, in a rare example of bucking the trend and going against the tide, Private Passions has been expanded from 60 to 90 minutes in length.  There is yet hope.  Call it musical snobbery (again), but it is superior to Desert Island Discs.

Then again, that’s just my point of view.      

A tremendous row has kicked off about Heathrow’s “outage” on Friday, following a fire at an electricity substation.  The airport closed for most of the day, on grounds of safety, saying that the essential problem was not with the airport per se, but with the national grid.  Other substations were available, said the grid.  Yes, said the airport, but it takes too long to switch over.  Shouldn’t there be a contingency plan? – asked the politicians.  Shouldn’t there be resilience?  Meanwhile something like 1300 flights were cancelled, leaving a quarter of a million people stranded, not just at Heathrow, but all over the world.  Incoming airborne passengers had to be diverted to Glasgow, Lyon, Paris and so on.  Even when normal service was resumed, all the aircraft and all the pilots were in the wrong place.  There will be an inquiry; it will report within six weeks – a short time frame, always a sign that people are seriously narked.  Lessons will be learnt.

But are we asking the right question?  The question, as it is currently posed, is this: how can we ensure in future that we keep the airport running at capacity, even when faced with a rare adverse event?  But I would rather ask: why is it, when we are obliged to have some time out, that we get so upset?  Even a cursory examination of the status quo reveals that it is highly ridiculous.  Let us suppose that Heathrow has a quiet time, if not exactly a curfew, during the wee small hours.  Let us say that 1300 aircraft take off, and another 1300 land, during an 18 hour day.  So there are about 72 takes-offs, and 72 landings, every hour, or one take-off, and one landing, every 50 seconds.  In other words, given that there are 2 runways, there is yet another aircraft rolling down each runway, every 50 seconds, all day.  And they want to build another runway, not to relieve congestion, but to increase capacity, and the aircraft numbers even further. 

Madness.

One is reminded of an ancient music hall turn, in which a juggler sets about spinning plates on a series of poles, and then runs himself to exhaustion in order to refresh the angular momentum of each plate as its spin decays.  The audience takes a kind of sadistic pleasure in watching the juggler attempt to reach each plate as it wobbles at a perilously lopsided angle.  Not just aviation, but much of human activity resembles this madcap frenetic rush to keep the show on the road, in pursuit of the postmodern holy grails of “growth”, and “productivity”.  Our hospitals run at 110% capacity.  So do our prisons.  Our GP practices are oversubscribed and run a fortnight behind time.  Our hospital clinics run 18 weeks behind time, if we are lucky.  Elective surgeries can be years in arrears.  But fear not.  Artificial Intelligence will sort it all out.  International trade runs on a “just in time” basis such that, should a ship get stuck in the Suez Canal, fruit, meat and vegetables lie rotting on wharfs, all over the world.  Our economy is like a marauding tiger wreaking havoc across the environment.  We sit on its back holding on for dear life, in terror that if we fall off, we will be gobbled up.   

I like airports, but I have never liked Heathrow.  It is vast, faceless, and impersonal.  It seems to emphasise the gap between rich and poor.  The VIP lounges are invisible and unattainable.  Policemen armed with submachine guns eye you coldly on terminal concourses. 

By contrast, I’m very fond of Auckland, domestic and international.  It lies to the south of the city, its lengthy single runway running more or less east to west.  If you are coming in from the north or north west, as most of the traffic from Australia or Asia does, and if the local wind is a westerly, you reach top of descent roughly as you make landfall at Cape Reinga, bring back the power as you cross Kaipara Harbour, and level out on a downwind leg over the Waitemata Harbour to the east of the city, the iconic silhouette of Rangitoto on your port wing.  Then a base leg over the sprawling southern city suburbs, to take up finals roughly abeam McLaughlins Mountain, one of Auckland’s 48 volcanoes.  Then you track straight down Puhinui Road, the piano keys of runway 23 on your nose, the Manukau Harbour beyond, and Manukau Heads on the horizon.  It must be one of the most beautiful approaches in the world.

The atmosphere in the Control Tower is one of calm.  Most of the international traffic comes in in the early morning, and thereafter the airport is pretty quiet.  I like to think that the Kiwis have got their priorities right.  They are laid back, cheerful, self-sufficient, and resilient.  They live in a very beautiful country, and they have a tremendous respect for the environment.  In that respect, I am convinced that New Zealand culture is predominantly Maori.   

Yet, although I still visit relatively frequently, I haven’t lived there for a quarter of a century, and I have a notion that in the interim, NZ has become a little more preoccupied with money, and its acquisition.  House prices have sky-rocketed in Auckland, and the gap between rich and poor, once relatively narrow, has widened.  It has become a little bit more like the rest of the world.

The last time I was there, I flew Emirates, Glasgow – Dubai – Auckland, in 2020.  The leg from Dubai to Auckland is the longest passenger flight in the world, at 17 hours 15 minutes.  I made the return journey, arriving home on March 8^th, just as the whole world locked down.

Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe, and the second busiest in the world.  The busiest airport in the world is Dubai, and as I transited through, I remember the interminable taxi from the terminal gate to the holding point, past the serried ranks of seemingly hundreds of Airbus A380s.  I remember thinking, “We can’t go on like this.”

Back in Scotland, during the first wave of the pandemic, the skies overhead went silent, the roads were quiet, and all I could hear as I walked in my local area was birdsong.  We all said that we must remember this golden silence, and that we mustn’t go back to our bad old ways.

Hah!