5.47am Stir abruptly to find your eyes meet the demanding gaze of a toddler.

5.51am Acknowledge eventually that this is indeed your child. Prise the hairdryer and loose radiator cap from his hands and firmly bid him to return to bed.

5.55am On his inevitable return, this time with an inexplicably-sourced plug, arise, renappy the child, and begin the first phase of the clothing process.

6.00am Tread gently downstairs to begin the morning’s Educational Session. I recommend beginning with Each Peach Pear Plum, a classic tale that mixes sumptuous illustration with splendid levels of child interaction.

6.02am Turn on Paw Patrol.

6.04am Check emails. Find nothing of substance. You will do well to repeat this essential check every two minutes for the rest of the waking day. Let this serve as your primary diurnal circadian rhythm.

6.10am Focus on the action in the room around you. Begin research on how and why a ten-year-old boy is in charge of the emergency response unit of this dystopian cityscape, and why that service has been delegated entirely to his ill-bred canine harem.

8.05am Resurface from the laptop to find the house in utter disarray, the elder toddler having encouraged the younger to transfer the majority of the household’s cutlery to the toilet bowl. It is imperative at this stage to restore order.

8.08am Turn on PJ Masks and set about foraging for breakfast. Combine three cereals in the bowl for genuinely bewildering novelty, drench in milk, and position – along with elder child – at table. Amuse younger child by throwing chunks from the Frozen (sic!) cereal box hither and thither across the floor. (Wide-ranging personal experiment reveals that these chunks are optimally constructed to be thrown at pace without unwelcome shattering: the day’s schedule will not brook interruption by the vacuum.)

8.12am Return to laptop to research how and why three errant four-fingered children have such deep-networked funding to support their nocturnal skirmishes against a child who should manifestly be in care.

8.40am Close down the videos, podcasts and fan-fiction windows in order to begin your own productive day of remote working.

9.00am Exercise time. Turn on Joe Wicks.

9.03am Mute Joe Wicks.

9.05am With regret, turn off Joe Wicks.

9.07am Rest and recoup. Release the children out of the back door, with strict orders always to stay in view.

9.15am Check Facebook for inspiration. Admire how successfully someone whose names you don’t recognise is able to bake camembert with the full co-operation of her three children, live-in nanny and housebound au pair.

9.55am Turn to Twitter. Take a look at the trending topics and work through them sedulously, repeating the protective mantra ‘We are all in this together’. Make a note in your copybook of the one term that doesn’t involve any of the words ‘Corona’, ‘Boris’ or ‘Wicks’. It just may have something positive to say.

10.33am Retrieve children from the garden, apologising to its owner three houses down. To maintain a safe seven-foot distance from her, rake or hoe the children back within reach. Restore to house and place books before them, alongside a clearly written explanation of how to read.

10.35am Set about booking the next supermarket delivery. Join the queue with British decorum, staring down your four-figure position with stoic indifference.

11.00am Time to dance! While most videos online advise make use of their home studio, it should also be fine to use the kitchen or front drive. For the barre, I find it easiest to use the kitchen work surface (adults) or rear bumper (toddlers). Be sure to enunciate your French so that the children’s instructions travel clearly through the front-door letterbox.

11.30am Creative session: an important time to take your mind off the concerns of the day. Use a honeydew melon, cocktail sticks and marshmallows to mock up a ‘larger-than-life’ Coronavirus. Explain to the children that this is not a game.

12.17pm Let this serve as the preordained time for lunch. Combine bread, plates, cheese, yoghurt, thyme and foraged fragments of Frozen cereal into a ‘construct your own’ feeding frenzy. Encourage inventiveness and self-expression.

12.40pm Quiet Time. Task elder child with reversing the bookshelves that were ordered by colour yesterday, while attempting to lull the younger into the very precisely and clearly scheduled nap time.

1.48pm Gardening is essential for all of us in these trying times. First check whether you have a garden. If you do, and if it can be viewed in its totality without passing through a gate or getting into a 4×4, check on your flowers. Encourage them in a positive but stern voice that, if they just have the right attitude, they will get through the crisis. (If you don’t have a garden, address yourself as one such flower.)

2.02pm Consult the day’s latest death stats with a stiff drink to hand. Sink further into the depths of depression as you smile back at your onlooking innocents.

2.30pm It’s at this stage of the day that you should find time to file your piece on How The Quarantine Has Changed Me. It doesn’t matter what you write, so long as you don’t confess to the mind-numbing tedium you are experiencing.

2.35pm Recheck the day’s death stats: they just can’t be right, can they?

3.00pm It is now time for the day’s ‘one form of exercise’. Strap the children into, onto or behind your bike, loop the city circular for as long as is possible before either the police ask searching questions or the offspring enter full-throated rebellion. Return home jaded and cold.

3.45pm Time for a second Facebook ‘deep dive’. Take a note of those friends who have not yet virtue-shared a picture of how their domestic upheaval has actually produced unexpected bliss. Regret that, in a moment of weakness, you did.

4.25pm Investigate #stayathome challenges which you have heard everyone raving about.

4.45pm You are prodded back into reality by the restless kids shouting ‘Stick the pig’: it seems you have been lying prone and semi-comatose for the last 20 minutes. Rustle up some tea. It can be whatever you like, of course. Still, is important that it be organic, ethically sourced, and multi-course. For inspiration, search Youtube for ‘Gastrobrats’.

5.00pm Switch on the television for a Covid update from the PM (or PM’s nominated but politically unthreatening alternative). Switch off when you realise that every single journalist is guilty of panic-questioning, greedily hoarding two or sometimes three entirely unconnected queries.

5.13pm Switch over to Bing to quell the children’s well-coordinated coup. Ask yourself, again, why ‘Pando’ removes his pants precisely when he does in the opening credits.

6.00pm Serve tea, after saying grace: be sure to pray earnestly for the greater prominence of sunshine, Ocado and Robert Peston.

6.12pm Clean up the remnants of tea that litter the kitchen, adjacent rooms and the stairwell.

6.15pm Welcome home the Key Worker, whose life is infinitely harder than you could ever imagine.

7.00pm Bathe, barter and beg the children to sleep. Dispense with the typical children’s literature and tell your own tale. Be inventive. Perhaps conjure up a make-believe world where children can visit playparks, see their friends, explore the great outdoors and see more of their other parent.

8.03pm Learn from a concerned friend that the creator of Paw Patrol is also the creator of Bob the Builder. Smile that at least one part of your chaotic world falls into order.

8.15pm Recycle the ‘one form of exercise’ by a clandestine cycle to a local park bench. Cry tactically and efficiently.

9.00pm It is now Your Time. Snuggle up next your partner and catch up on the day’s news. Find positives from the absurdly rapid construction of new hospitals, the widescale volunteering of your fellow citizens, and the complete absence of the word ‘Brexit’.

9.25pm You are now press-ganged into downloading the ‘Houseparty’ app, to which you exhaustedly acquiesce.

9.55pm After some initial shock at seeing an image of your haggard face for the first time in ten days, you rapidly hone yourself to perfection in the tragically small pool of Geography trivia questions. Lurk on Houseparty to challenge any hapless friend or family member who has merely come to talk.

10.30pm To fill the aching hollowness that looms within, turn on Newsnight.

10.34pm Allow your mind to drift off and revisit the vexed Pando Question.

10.42pm Give up on it and the supermarket order, letting queuer #638 skip gleefully into your place.

10.44pm Fall into a restless, haunted sleep.

As for tomorrow, fellow quarantiners, don’t worry. With structure, all is well: just rinse, repeat and relax!

First, Bercow heeded the sage advice from Chris Bryant MP (who differs from the Speaker in genuinely having Erskine May off pat) and dismissed the nonsense of a third Quite Unmeaningful vote. Second, he turned upon his favoured adversary, the Leader of the House, Andrea Leadsom. Why? Well, instead of staring with wide-eyed infatuation at the Speaker’s command of Roget’s Thesaurus, Leadsom had preferred to swipe through her mobile phone. On realising that Pete Wishart’s point of order was not receiving full focus, Bercow bleated his outrage:

I note that as the Right Honourable Gentleman asks his question, and I respond, the Leader of the House is playing with her electronic device… It would seem to me to be helpful if people showed respect for each other in these circumstances, and, if they were in the chamber, listened to what others had to say

Ever unflappable, Leadsom later expressed her own doubt to the Speaker that, in future parliamentary dealings, he himself would be capable of “treating colleagues with courtesy and respect”.

As a mother, one supposes, Leadsom is well placed to appreciate what matters most in the Mother Of All Parliaments. But, though bereft of such instincts, Bercow did apprehend that phone-fiddling has got seriously out of hand in the House. While the schools minister moots a ban on phones in the classroom, MPs busy their own days in the chamber navel-gazing at surreptitiously-placed screens. Even at PMQs, the crucible of cut-and-thrust debate, most find time to fiddle while Brexit burns around them. But is Bercow brave enough to do more? If the move were not certain to alienate 98 per cent of the House, perhaps he would move to ban the things in their entirety.

The matter merits serious consideration. So, to get the ball rolling, let’s remind ourselves of the three major pros and cons of using phones in the Commons:

Pros:

– While sitting on the benches debating the Law of the Land, it’s understandable for parliamentarians to suffer from the Fear Of Missing Out. In fact, it’s a national disgrace that we’re yet to have a cross-party Commons working group on parliamentary FOMO. But, until that emancipatory moment, MPs should have our full sympathy and agreement that it’s better to follow the incessant inanities of Twitter than to partake directly in the pettifoggery of representational democracy. What’s more, it’s a virtuous service to distil the complexities of national debate into a snappy 280-character format.

– Not all MPs are as fortunate as Mr Speaker: enthroned on high, he has at his shoulder all manner of clerks and flunkeys to prompt his sub-elephantine memory about the double-barrelled surname or far-flung constituency of a distant MP in meerkat mode. The man has no need for a phone when surrounded by a living-and-breathing Facebook app. But poor parliamentarians find themselves knee-deep in debate, entirely unaware of the business under discussion. Tactical googling, and copious use of Wikipedia, can at least help resolve some of the more confusing acronyms and bewildering jargon. Without their phones to hand, parliamentary papers would need laborious, and probably tedious, engagement in advance.

– When faced with the unflinching non-sequiturs of Commons blowhards, attention can easily flag. Thankfully, an internet connection can offer all manner of entertainment. Many an MP has been seduced by the appeal of games (e.g. Nigel Mills and Candy Crush Saga), pictures (e.g. Jonathan Djanogly and showgirls and chess) and Instagrammable selfies (e.g. any number of cabinet members). Unless and until we move towards diagnosing and medicating parliamentary ADHD, this seems a healthy and proper use of technology.

Cons:

– The House is often an eerie twilight zone for direct debate. Save for the “doughnut” of good-as-gold MPs who crowd around the principal figures in the discussion, the rest of the House takes on the appearance of teenagers in a bus queue. It’s a sad reality that politicians feel they can better gainsay their fellow MPs online or in the studio than face-to-face at the coalface of democracy. Ah but, the complaint runs, those in the gallery are allowed to use their phones. This remark, I’m afraid, is too thick to merit further comment.

– Phones have opened up a silent means of communication, pinging around the House as it chews over business viva voce. Few things are more pathetic than chief whips coordinating, choreographing and prompting those due to make speeches via WhatsApp chat. A sixth-form, let alone university, debate has greater intellectual candour than this am-dram read-through of a script no-one fully intends or understands.

– A century and more ago, the nation’s newspapers would have given over healthy space to parliamentary reports drawn wholesale and verbatim from the chamber. But the days of Commons debates being consumed in full by a wider public are long gone. Since 1989, cameras have been allowed in the chamber, opening up the closeted mysteries of the House to the wider world. But the last 30 years have not brought a golden age of debate. No-one spares a thought for the Hansard editors who must make something of MPs hastily-composed waffle. Instead, speakers increasingly tailor their speeches to make the news or, ideally, go viral. Whether it be a Jess Phillips wisecrack, a Peter Bone zinger, or a Geoffrey Cox hamfest, the goal is clear: not to advance debate within the House but to gain traction outside it. This isn’t debate. It’s posturing pantomime.

So, here we are. For two generations, Parliament has not had a subject of greater and longer consequence to debate than the question of Brexit. And yet it has never had a parliamentary class less interested in looking up from their ruddy phones, hearing in real time the contributions of their fellow parliamentarians, and wondering what they have to offer worthy of the benches on which they sit.

What can be the way forward? Perhaps, in this febrile atmosphere, the question of using phones in the House requires a restricted “people’s vote”, put to MPs for their honest opinion. Perhaps that referendum result will be touted as binding. And perhaps 52% of the House will decide to vote, against the Speaker’s private desires, to continue using their mobiles. Well, with such a majority, and with Bercow as champion of the people, one can rest assured that democracy would prevail.

Thank you, Love Hearts, for agreeing to meet in person. As I mentioned to your agent, I’m here with a few questions about the modern message of Love Hearts, which should hopefully help clear the air.

Awesome.

So, may we begin?

Let’s Party.

*The Eye at this point began to rotate.*

Now, it’s clear that you’re designed as a light-hearted confectionery, seeking to please any consumer, regardless of their circumstances.

Always.

But you’ll know that there are serious concerns about the message that you are perpetuating in 2019, one of anachronistic chat-up lines, hackneyed gender stereotypes and worrying body objectification.

Oh Boy.

And in a climate of heightened awareness about the importance of consent and the danger of sexual harassment, such concerns seem legitimate. Some of your messages are undoubtedly direct, and at times almost aggressive.

Meant to be.

Meant to be aggressive? Well, that impression is only intensified when each message is embossed in block capitals.

It’s True.

OK. So, to clarify first of all, is the credit for composing the messages yours?

All Mine.

So complaints should be directed to you personally?

Fax Me.

Er, right. But, to be clear, these are twenty-first century complaints. When, for instance, an uninitiated consumer of Love Hearts panics on reading messages such as ‘You’re Mine’ or ‘True Lips’, what is your advice to them?

Relax.

I’m sorry, but these are really important issues meriting proper concern. Many prominent figures have expressed their deep-seated worries in the public domain.

How sweet.

I’m afraid that tone will seem patronising to many. In a recent tweet, the Health Secretary Matt Hancock argu-

Bad Boy.

Sorry?

Cheeky Boy.

I am talking about Her Majesty’s Minister for Health, whose view should command respect.

Dream On.

Now look, whatever you think of politics, you have to accept that some sweet users could misinterpret what they read. Your messages, which inundate them at random, could be used – or rather abused – verbatim in real-life exchanges.

Cheer Up.

Oh, don’t be so glib.

Glam.

No, glib: this is a serious matter, and genuine relationships require expressions of serious emotion.

Real Love.

For instance, yes. So couldn’t a message such as ‘I surrender’ alarm someone suffering from, say –

Heart Throb.

Is that a thing? Do you mean some kind of romantic malaise?

Love Bug.

Ah. Well, whatever the scenario, shouldn’t we take the utmost care not to offend? For instance, I’m more than happy to ask whether you have a preferred pronoun.

I Want You.

Thou art indeed progressive. I respect thy choice and will refrain from so speaking lest I offend thee.

Perfect.

In turn, then, given that you do acknowledge the very real danger of offence, how do you assess Love Hearts’ future prospects?

Looking Good.

Really? I’m surprised. Just how long do you expect these messages to be fit for purpose?

Forever.

But, as the classic album goes, ‘forever changes’.

Say Yes.

No, not the iconic prog-rockers, but Arthur Lee.

In Love.

Exactly. So, given that times have changed, what messages would you still deem appropriate?

Sugar Lips.

Lovely eyes?

Sweet Kiss.

Honey Hips?

Too Much.

That is, for younger consumers?

For You.

You think I couldn’t handle that?

Trust Me.

You’d be surprised.

*At this point, the pod came to a halt. The atmosphere was palpably tense.*

Anyhow, we really must round off our discussion, do you have a message to those still concerned?

Just Say No.

To the Love Heart or the proposition?

Love Heart.

And if propositioned?

Stay Cool.

Dear dear. Well, I’m sure most of the nation will remain worried.

Just You.

Nope, there’s also Mr Hancock…

Dream Boy

And…

Tease Me.

I’m sorry?

Cuddle Me.

Cuddle? You’re a powdered tablet.

Kiss Me.

That’s not appropriate. Nothing’s going to happen between you and me.

You and I.

No, that’s a hypercorrection.

*At this point, I felt I was losing control of the situation. To expedite the close, I rifled through the remaining Love Hearts at pace. My closing responses are, I believe, too muffled to make out.*

Sweet Heart… You’re Fab… Lover… Marry Me… Don’t Cry… I Love You.

*Disclaimer: since the interview was conducted, the author has entered a formal relationship with a replacement pack of Love Hearts. The expiry date, he informs us, is ‘20XX’.*

Because MPs voted nine to one (544 to 53) on 9 June 2015 to put the question of the UK’s EU membership to the British people,

and because that consultative referendum declared to every household in the country that ‘the government will implement what you decide’,

and because 51.9% (17.41m to 16.14m) of the turnout voted on 23 June 2016 to ‘Leave the European Union’,

Parliament is obliged to ‘Leave’ the EU –

despite the fact that fewer than a quarter (~145) of elected MPs voted to do so, compared to 62.8% (408 to 242) of the UK constituencies they represent.

Therefore, in the General Election of 2017, the Conservatives promised to ‘take Britain out of the European Union’, and Labour ‘accept[ed] the referendum result’, setting out details of its own ‘Brexit deal’. Strikingly, 82.4% of the turnout (26.51m) voted in support of the manifestos of these two parties.

Accordingly, on 17 January 2018 the European Union (Withdrawal) Act was passed in its final form by Parliament (324 to 295), setting out the changes that will become law on ‘exit day’, 30 March 2019.

Therefore, if the current deal that Theresa May’s government has secured after prolonged negotiation is the most favourable deal that the EU will allow,

and if that deal cannot command the support of a majority of MPs before 29 March 2019,

the only legitimate outcome that enacts the 2016 referendum result, that honours the 2017 election mandates, that realises the will of Parliament hitherto, and indeed that acts according to the law of the land, is to leave without a formal deal with the EU on 29 March 2019, beginning trade on WTO terms with the remaining 27 EU nations until a mutually satisfactory deal is eventually struck.

Whether this transition to ‘no deal’ is ‘managed’ or ‘cliff-edge’ or anything else that sounds suitably arresting is a matter of logistical prudence, political posturing and personal temperament. The future, by its very nature, is uncertain – just as any vote cast for Leave or Remain could specify nothing certain about the world two, five, or twenty years hence. Yes, that venerable and sovereign concept – the ‘will of the people’ – has an important role to play, but its lines have long been delivered: the nation impatiently awaits the promised enactment of its decision. So when a ‘meaningful vote’ does at last come round, the House of Commons should know that there is meaning enough in what has been determined already.

For better or worse, for richer or poorer, this is where we are. If pockets of recalcitrant MPs do not accept any of the above, they should do us all the favour of explaining clearly how and why – and not grandstand about parliamentary privilege, pontificate about the ‘need for democracy’, and patronise the very electorate that wittingly placed them there.

I was in a pub, a space whose proudly pedestrian pace of change ought to keep it safe from the depredations of ‘progress’. Just a seat, a beer, and audible conversation will do the job perfectly nicely. But, for the enterprising landlord, this just won’t do. Instead the modern pub has myriad cosmetic fetishes: faux-industrial exposed interiors, deliberately mismatched chairs, incongruous ‘gourmet’ food proffered on a reclaimed roof-tile. And this is to say nothing of the palate-punishing, attention-seeking pint, aggressively infused with coriander or kale.

But the background to my miserable tale is pubs’ more recent obsession with scattering antiquarian books pell-mell into every nook and cranny. Perhaps pub companies infect themselves with this magpie-minded bibliomania in the hope of channelling the feel of the village-pub snug, which in a pre-digital age provided the sacrosanct service of an argument-settling reference library. Perhaps it is to reflect the gallimaufry of left-behind travelling books that accrete over decades on the walls of the old coaching inns. Perhaps it is to give, incongruously amidst the steel and biltong, the feel of the grand library abutting the bar of a provincial hotel.

Whatever the thinking, it’s no bad thing for all manner of books to sit there on the shelf for perusal by the curious. Yes, the purist may object that it’s an artifice: it’s not a careful curation of titles that reflect the local area, the regulars, or even the books immediately adjacent on the shelf. A handbook on the flora and fauna of Skye stands between an orphaned volume of The British Essayists and an impossibly serious manual on lawnmower maintenance. A whole host of unknown unknowns jostle for attention. But this reflects the joyous serendipity of the unpretentious second-hand bookshop, and that is all to the good. In fact, a good barman, though blinking in disbelief, will let you buy the odd title – in acquiring which he played no role – for a nominal sum.

But to get back to what set me shivering. This pub I sat in – a recent addition to the Cambridge scene and kitted out full-spec. in a prime location – had done the utterly unthinkable. It had taken random blocks of books, the sort of clump you could fit in a farmer’s hand, and actually glued them together, board pasted to board. A shelf of thirty assorted books, then, is in fact made up of six pieces. Try to pick up a title that takes your fancy, and it hauls up four or five of its nightmare neighbours. With some effort, you force open the contents of that book, but as you struggle to read anything inside it a couple of books splay open, akimbo in mid-air, on either side.

Someone, somewhere, stared down their colleagues and intoned sagely, ‘Of course, we’ll need to glue the books.’ Sober nodding followed – and perhaps no explanation was needed. But the thinking here is as unfathomable as it is unconscionable. If it’s for security, that is an atrocious way to treat paying customers, not least because a decent pint glass can easily outweigh a battered interwar paperback in value. If it’s instead for aesthetic reasons, of keeping the books arranged aright without a meddling customer moving them, it’s hard to think of anything more pathetic.

Books, it is true, have always flirted dangerously with surrounding furniture. The great aristocratic libraries had their ‘house’ bindings not so much to announce their rightful ownership as to provide a uniform appearance to the beautifully-tooled and finely-gilted spines stretching along their hardwood shelves. On occasion, a hidden door is disguised by a plausible-looking veneer of books. In the libraries of Chatsworth and the Travellers Club, for instance, Paddy Leigh Fermor had fun decorating these portals with similarly false works: Abel N. Willing’s, Consenting Adults and Ivor Guinness’ Through a Glass Darkly give you the idea. In recent decades, the vogue has emerged for trompe-l’œil wallpapers of antiquarian books – evidently an irresistible temptation for pub corridors. You may also be wearily familiar with mocked-up and hollowed-out books that spend their days as photograph stands, novelty bookends and VHS cases (anyone?).

The whole business has got sillier – and costlier. Not so long ago, I was sat next to a chap at dinner whose job was to cover the walls of hunting lodges and chocolate-box cottages with ‘walls of books’. Any favoured topics, I enquired? The response was unequivocal: ‘anything will do, so long as it looks authentic.’ It is the look of authenticity, not the reality, that carries weight with those prepared to spend many thousands on books they never intend to disturb. More than one interior designer has decided that books look prettier when shelved with spines facing inwards, a contrariness that ironically (if unwittingly) resurrects the practice of mediaeval librarians.

Well, compared to the carnage I stumbled across, I suppose it’s relatively cultured to leave books entirely unharmed on shelves. But, for someone to bulk-buy a tonne or so of second-hand books, to assort them very roughly by size or colour, and to sit there with a pot of glue, steadily spreading thick paste over leather and cloth covers, and squeezing them into an unmeaning medley of misery, a Sammelband of woe! The mind melts. Surely the irreversible destruction of books to satisfy the faux quirkiness of a bibliophobic ‘art-is-anal’ pseud needs to make it onto the statute book post haste?

Pubs should remember that, for ages of ages, they’ve been the bastion of unshowy simplicity and common-sense convenience. Forget that, and they soon enough leap into the furnace of untrammelled barbarism. If pubs really think that patrons will be impressed by the tokenism of tangible but forcibly unreadable books, then what remains of British pub culture urgently needs UNESCO World Heritage protection.

So here my story ended. Weeping into my pint, I drank up much the bitterest draught of the summer, and headed outside in search of civilisation.

A lot of nonsense has been talked about Love Island being ‘light-hearted entertainment’ by a ‘private company’. Is that really what evening and weekend television has come to? No, not in my name. Nor yours, either, I expect. Mercifully, however, it would be a relatively minor matter to move Love Island from an outmoded, unrepresentative fleshpot to a fairer, purer, profounder viewing experience. I therefore implore the producers to consider following this ten-step route to due diversification.

1. The first thing to say is that, with the stakes so high, Love Island needs to find a premium island that combines a surfeit of sun with a scarcity of space, to guarantee an enforced but ethically-sourced large-scale love-in. Various satisfactory possibilities present themselves, but much the simplest option is Malta.

2. Next, transfer the Maltese populace abroad for a three-month spell; of the several viable destinations for these temporary emigres, the easiest in logistical terms is presumably St Helena. With the right PR, this relocation can be successfully billed as a long-lasting and long-deserved national holiday – albeit one rigorously policed and enforced. With Malta thus opened up for business, it will be feasible and frictionless to import the entire population of Britain.

3. Once installed, instruct the 66.6 million contestants that they are free to do as they please, within the strict remit of the Love Island terms and conditions. They must be free to sleep, roam, feed and moan howsoever they desire.

4. Welcome, then, to Love Island – a Love Island that reflects the complexity of the British people truly and perfectly, in fact with a precise one-to-one mapping. But this Love Island Rebooted is, of course, fully representative of Britain alone, and can make no claim beyond the nation. It is therefore quite obviously essential that the show be screened exclusively to Britons.

5. No less obvious is the fact that there will be no British public at hand to watch the show back in Blighty, which is lying dormant and vacant. The 400 episodes, filmed over three months, will need to be recorded in advance, carefully stored on off-shore servers, and screened in sequence to the British populace only when they have collectively returned.

6. But how will Love Islanders be voted ‘off’ without a real-time viewing public? Good question. It will be easiest, I assume, to divide each region of the newly-populated Malta into a few thousand voting wards, each with constituency powers to vote out of their immediate living area those whose presence they no longer desire. Since it is unconscionably divisive, problematically disproportionate and legally doubtful actually to send off the island anyone deemed less welcome, the unfortunate votees could, with some mild co-ordination, simply osmose from one ward to another, where they can seek to rebuild their Love Island lives. By the same process ‘new faces’ would constantly be introduced to each border-fluid community.

7. There is, I own, some complexity in overseeing all of this. In order, then, to manage these various processes throughout the course of the programme, a higher body – a parliament, for want of a better term – will need to be brought into play, and given a clear charter of rights and responsibilities. Members of the Love Island Parliament should be selected by random lot-drawing, to keep at bay the banquoesque spectre of democratic favouritism. To incentivise elected Islanders to carry out the role diligently, instead of spending their days punch-drunk on a cocktail of sexual pursuit and flight, such positions will need to be stipendiary, the cost of which should be defrayed by taxation of the majority not serving as MLIPs. This rudimentary scheme of taxation should continue for the relevant financial quarter, provided that Parliament is itself held accountable in spending that money appropriately – maintaining civic institutions, building and staffing community resources, and committing to a minimum 2% spend on defence against intrusions from foreign paparazzi. (Needless to say, none of the production team, camera crew or standing make-up and body-paint army can be British.)

8. There is no need to worry about minors – or, for that matter, new-borns – who can be located indiscriminately in the Kids’ Quarter, a promontory with a free-wheeling laissez-faire mentality somewhere squarely between Butlins and Lord of the Flies. If parental consent is mandated, and the Islanders very properly accept due devolution of powers to a KQ regional government, few or no issues should crop up.

9. Since the show will be unable to profit from selling broadcast rights abroad, lest it become even more disturbingly unrepresentative of its unknowable viewing audience, there will be an appreciable shortfall in revenue. However, the production company will be able to recoup these losses easily by under-the-radar quantitative easing, and trading any freshly-minted currency for GBP as far as their budget requires. This, of course, will require the Maltese to make a prior change in currency from the Euro, the ECB and the EU, but a swift and no-nonsense Mexit will happily spawn a new currency, whose notes may proudly bear the winners of Love Island Rebooted.

10. The Maltese proper need not worry about any unfortunate effects on tourism. The island will be able to boast not only that it has the highest concentration of churches in Europe, but also that during the filming process it has – by a marked degree – the highest concentration of Britons in the world, at 545,000 per square mile. Nor would Love Islanders themselves become embarrassing Little Islanders with their back turned on the rest of the world: on any day of Love Island Rebooted any other country across the world will be sure to have the second highest concentration of Britons.

This is only a blueprint, and its creases doubtless need a little ironing. But if entertainment companies are to get serious about fair, equitable and honest representation, they must first get serious about honest, fair and equitable representation. I, for one, will only cast my hard-won vote for the show’s – and nation’s – sexiest couple when I can be sure that the show guarantees that no Briton is being chosen ahead of any other.

Some have had the temerity to say that a society that complains about the precise make-up of gameshows has lost sight of the battles that are worth fighting. But those cocksure panjandrums do not understand that Love Island is about, and is worthy of, so much more.

David Butterfield is a contributing editor of The Spectator. 

Surely, you may think, things aren’t quite so bad. After all, views on films, fashion, football and food are exchanged in stringent terms without much bother. British society seems to enjoy an antagonistic restaurant review, or hyperbolic critique on a TV talent show. True enough. But move beyond the relatively relaxed realms of consumerism and leisure, and you’ll find a very different atmosphere indeed.

Somehow, opinions have been hauled up and sent down for being divisive. This is inevitably true: any judgment in favour of any thing implicitly segregates itself from those that judge otherwise. Since inclusivity isn’t a possible outcome in the separatist world of ‘views’, the absurd notion has gained traction that strongly-held opinions with a subjective basis are the exclusive currency of right-wing provocateurs.

Try telling modern Britain that ‘Keats was a better poet than Kavanagh’; that ‘reading books is healthier than watching Netflix’; that ‘some civilisations produced more beautiful art than others.’ A calm course of action would be to discuss how and why you think any such thing– or at least say with Cicero, de gustibus non est disputandum: there’s no arguing about matters of taste. Instead, outrage is inevitable, and any such black-and-white claim is politicised as the Ranting of the Right. By contrast, supposedly Left-wing beliefs are held to be the natural communal view of humanity uncorrupted.

This seems bizarre, but the route of thought is clear enough. Whereas opinions are acknowledged to be inevitably divisive, and unacceptable for that reason, group associations of identity are promoted as inclusive and non-prejudicial, without word or thought muddying the waters. Remove opinions from public discourse entirely, you see, and all will be fair. But the reverse, in fact, is true. Any opinion can be taken up and defended by anyone at all, should they wish to. By contrast, categories such as race, place of birth and biological sex are immutable; whatever club these distinctions do create has a closed membership, restricted to those who have had no say in the matter. Configuring the world by how people choose to think is progressive; structuring it according to individuals’ born identities can only be regressive.

To look at the increasingly vocal and politically-engaged sectors in British society, it may seem perverse to say that forceful opinions are losing ground. But there’s a crucial distinction here between positive and negative propositions. On all sides of the political polyhedron, there’s a frightening dearth of positive ideas to chew over. Instead, public debate faces a proliferation of negative thought, which feeds not on self-standing premises and original conclusions, but on rejecting current policies or practices that are deemed unwelcome or unpopular. Rather than promoting the value of A and B, our airwaves are clogged with denunciations of how (rarely why) X and Y are unconscionable. Yes, corruption is wrong, crime shouldn’t pay, equal opportunities are desirable, and peace beats war. But these are universal truths at which no sound-minded person would baulk. To take things forward, fresh, cogent arguments must be constructed on their own intellectual terms, rather than predicated on upending others’.

The tongue that lashes often fails to lead; the politics of protest often fail to progress.

This is not, I am surprised to conclude, a free speech issue. The increasingly self-confident incursions – from authorities and individuals – on what is and is not sayable are in fact a symptom, not a cause, of the real problem. The university sector, in particular, has borne a lot of criticism for the palpable decline of debate in Britain. Plenty has been said about safe spaces, no-platforming and deproblematised curricula. But, on the ground, these practices are still mercifully rare, and typically condemned by the majority of the academic community, students and staff. The far larger problem is one that transcends any particular institution, group or class. Strong opinions have become strongly objectionable. Reasoned arguments, if cogently expressed, become – by some strange alchemy – unreasonable.

The world is more connected than ever with rapidly-evolving current affairs; exchanging views with strangers has never been easier. The need to encourage individual opinions, and let them fly or fall in a world of open intellectual debate, is paramount. Instead, we are collectively warned from sticking our necks out: just look at what’s happened to others who’ve tried to explain their rational, if personal, thought in public. Even if discussion does manage to get off the ground, it’s hampered by an array of misunderstandings, woeful and wilful. The very business of logical discourse is something most have lost time for. This isn’t an ivory-tower condemnation of unsophisticated debate; the basic principles of discussion and deliberation are being designedly suppressed. Here are five ubiquitous stumbling blocks:

First, the generalisation has been outlawed: a sweeping opinion is dismissed as Neanderthalic crudity. And yet it’s manifestly idiotic to forbid express generalisations on the ground that they apply only to 99% of the field, and thus misrepresent the 1%. Almost every exchange in society depends upon pragmatic generalisations. The very word ‘idea’ has, since Plato, referred to an abstract concept, which can only be rendered imperfectly in the real world. But many would be too stupefied by fear to deploy a catch-all statement of the type ‘humans are bipeds,’ lest it be an outrageous insult to those who are, or perhaps to those who can think of, people without two legs and yet are, indeed, very much humans. This is in no sense a provocative example – and yet, give it a shake, and the unknowable panjandrums on- and increasingly off-line will tell you that heads should roll for such hateful speech.

Second, false equivalence besets many stages of discussion: if A and B share one characteristic, they are yoked together wholesale as ‘no different’: Stalin, for example, used words to persuade people, and murdered the innocent; all politicians and journalists use words to persuade people, and are thus ‘really no different from Stalin’.

Third, the erroneous belief that, if I believe X and you believe Y, this marks the end of the argument rather than the beginning of it. ‘That’s your opinion, and that’s fine.’ But opinions should be weighed, not counted: if I have two positive arguments, and you have two negative, it will very rarely mean a 50-50 draw that renders progress impossible. Anodyne remarks about everyone being allowed to do and think as they please only kick the bigger arguments into the long grass.

Fourth, conditional propositions – where the ‘if’ clause sets the crucial conditions for the main assertion – are outlawed from ‘serious’ conversation because they are merely ‘hypothetical.’ Instead of discussing the complexity of an issue honestly, or debating ‘What should be done if’, any thought beyond the here-and-now of present reality is dismissed as fanciful irrelevance

Fifth and finally, while bizarre cryptocurrencies, unfathomable to most, trade at ever higher prices, the value of facts has dipped to an all-time low in the modern era. Printed facts, never in greater abundance and never more readily accessible, are wilfully overlooked, as if outmoded by their very medium: surely all worthwhile data (the modern mind supposes ) must have made the digital transition. And yet those facts that are laboriously dredged up online are uniformly subjected to grave doubt and irresolvable dispute. A difficult but decisive argument is often binned because of the weak-kneed claim, ‘I don’t believe your figures.’ And yet most of what is knowable – and worth knowing – is known.

In such an environment of obscurantism – deliberate or otherwise – opinions are left dangling, neither secured by supportive arguments nor lopped down by incontrovertible reasoning. Any views left in play must face the knee-jerk response that strong convictions must mean strong offence, which must in turn mean strong leanings to the Right. After all, it’s far easier to dismiss robust opinions as crude dogmatism than work them through the cogs of rational debate.

This all really matters, especially for those entering the public sphere afresh. There has never been a historical period when teenagers did not want to rise above their place in society, to challenge their immediate environs, and to aspire to be something else, real or imagined. Views, opinions, beliefs and ideas are the lifeblood for personal motivation, for social mobility, even for happiness. To debate in the abstract is to learn how to live in the concrete. Deprive ourselves of that right – and that pleasure – and we’re in the dark.

Ideas, let it be said, are as ebullient as ever in science, medicine and advertising. But, look closer, and they’re dragging a price tag behind them. In society more broadly, ideas are in short supply. The arts, in particular, are deafeningly quiet. The BBC, it seems, has lost confidence in posing ideas, instead fumbling about in a haze of relativism. Occasionally opinions are aired openly – at 10a.m. on Sunday (The Big Questions), or 10.45p.m. on Thursday (Question Time) – but these are hurried sessions, with only snippets of clear-headed reasoning. As often as not, the brightest flashes of clarity come from the audience, not the pointy-headed panel. Meanwhile, Hollywood retreats into itself, looking back for answers that are as boring as the questions posed: what, oh what, can we remake again? Celebrities, now granted unmediated contact with a wider audience than ever, fritter away that opportunity in marketing plugs or blank expressions of global solidarity. Twitter is a platform of empty leaders: the larger the following, the lesser the thought.

The complaint that politics is more boring than ever is true, if not new. With aspirant MPs showing far greater concern for their careers than their constituents, a grim admixture of brass-necked partisanship and tight-lipped obsequiousness have trumped ideas-first originality and principle-over-party conviction. More cogent arguments are now conducted in the pub and across the dinner table than in the public chamber.

Strong opinions, of course, still can find a market. The press profits in no short measure from its most outspoken opinion-mongers, albeit within a fervid feedback loop. In wider society, this process is commonly mocked as an oafish public being carried along by silver-tongued, black-hearted demagogues. Few stop to consider why such writers persuade in such large measure: in part, it’s their arguments that compel and corral; in part, however, it’s that they are prepared to argue often controversial topics openly and in the uninterrupted flow of a column, without anyone wincing, wailing or walking off.

It’s a self-fulfilling ordinance that strongly condemning the strong condemnation of opinions will be dismissed as the worst of the worst. Perhaps, but I think not quite: far worse is shooting down unwonted and unwelcome sentences before they’ve even reached the main verb.

The city’s more recent history, however, is easier to relate. Some 500 years ago, Dinopolis was a city rife with strife and injustice. The Pyrites, who had (they claimed) always lived in their own urban quarter, had reached an impasse with the Uranites, who argued that no area of the community should be the exclusive domain of one group. The fall-out was immense. Every Dinopolitan found that they had to choose a side: to defend or to dismiss the right of groups to self-segregate. What began as sectarian riots soon became pitched battles. Dinopolis was desperately divided, and the hundred-year war that ensued was truly devastating.

The following 300 years were mercifully different. Faced with the horrors of their recent past, both sides sought to repair their relationship: a first thaw in hostilities eventually brought floods of change. Crucially, Dinopolitans cast a critical eye on their collective past and realised some astonishing truths: all of them – whether Pyrites, Uranites, both or neither – were equally human; although none was quite the same as any other, all deserved mutual respect and commensurate opportunities. Their differences, though real and apparent, could not obscure their fundamentally shared origins. No Dinopolitan had any inherent right to treat others differently because of the group to which he or she had been consigned – by birth or by choice. Enlightened by this realisation, the community collectively evolved – over a dozen generations – to remove every unjust and indefensible division that segregated them.

And so, only a hundred years ago, Dinopolis was a spectacle, a paragon of human endeavour, experiment and enterprise. The city nourished and celebrated individual talent, irrespective of background or personal circumstances. Astounding achievements were made by all in all fields: remarkably, the distribution of success was organically uniform. Works of literature, music and art were judged according to their merit, not their creator; intellectual and scientific enquiry of infinite variety was pursued by all suited to it; in every sector, all Dinopolitans found employers honestly appraising their skills and interests. With the opportunity and freedom to choose their careers, citizens’ success was proportional to their efforts and talents. Perhaps most astoundingly, everyone had unfettered access to the full panoply of recorded knowledge – a privilege previously unknown to the world, and one for which countless others had died.

But this halcyon age was not to last. After so many generations had fought to secure these freedoms, and had become gradually attuned to a new world of unquestioning acceptance, the generation that followed took these peaceable environs for granted. Without a stake in the struggles of the past, some came to resent the uncanny perfection they saw around them, and sought for a cause to make their own. Dinopolis did indeed have a complex past, the vestiges of which were still visible if you knew where to look. In earlier centuries, all manner of citizens had been unjust to others, sometimes unspeakably so. No-one could point to individual crimes, for no such records existed; but there was no doubt that certain groups had been broadly responsible for various aggressions.
This small but keen pack of difference-hunters swiftly found that, for all the progress over subsequent centuries, it was still possible to dissect Dinopolitans by old – and new – groups. Many of these categories were innate: for instance, there still were Pyrites and Uranites, many of whom were avowedly proud of that heritage. Beyond such tribal divisions, there were also undeniable differences in gender, sexuality, age, experience – and everything else you could conceive.

It’s unclear who started the process that followed, but once it had begun it only gained in pace. Once groups of citizens were identified, they were isolated socially – and soon after spatially. The Pyrites were told that the Uranites living among them were not, after all, the same, and should be treated as distinct: once thus grouped as collectives, they were told that their different pasts made them unintelligible to those outside. Many individuals complained that their association to groups was not under their control, and that they felt no burden of responsibility for people that, quite simply, were not them. Still, Dinopolis changed vanishingly fast: schools became group-specific in pupils and curricula; communities were strictly patrolled by Anti-Diversity Police; the arts excluded those outside the artists’ groups. The reasoning was ruthless: meaningful cross-group communication was dismissed as impossible, and even undesirable. ‘Empathy’ was panned as naive presumption, ‘humanity’ as crass oversimplification.

This process didn’t happen spontaneously, of course. It was a few Dinopolitans (their names and groups are not known) who steered the process, eventually enshrining their Code of Categorisation in law. But further legislation was inevitable, for each group, once segregated, found itself internally divided. Not all Pyrites, for instance, emerged to think or be the same: some had Uranite family, some had renounced their culture, some had wealth, and all had different views on the world. So a new set of subgroups was implemented to subdivide them appropriately. To the dismay of the Legislative Council, this only recreated the problem of latent differences, albeit on a smaller scale. In fact, once the Council had imposed all of their ratified subdivisions, not one Dinopolitan ended up being quite the same as another.

To the distant viewer, the Dinopolis that emerged looked like the city of old – of individuals proudly distinguished by their own personal characteristics. To the careful observer, the truth was very different: each was instead the lead spokesperson, willy-nilly, for a vastly complex – and unique – cocktail of categories that, in totality, rendered them inaccessible and incomprehensible to all the other souls accidentally born in that once great city.

In the present day, Dinopolis is still famous: its name crosses all corners of the world. Some call it the City of a Million individuals, others The Regressive Miracle. I have never visited – no official passes are issued – but the Dinopoliticians would be quick to dispute their reputation. They would tell us that justice has been done, for everyone at last has their proper place.”

The preceding account, only recently rediscovered, has caused considerable debate among academics. While historians are agreed that Dinopolis most certainly existed, it remains curious that no trace of it or its culture survives. It’s an open question, therefore, to what degree this document could reflect reality.

David Butterfield is a Lecturer in the Classics.

In both of these debates Bristolians and Liverpudlians have shown themselves alive to the issues. Bristol has been bold enough to rename Colston Hall, the city’s largest and oldest concert hall, in order to distance itself from Edward Colston, an eighteenth-century slave-trader. It will reopen in 2020 suitably rebranded. Colston Girl’s School, by contrast, has refused commensurate ablutions. It’s not year clear whether Colston Street (on which Colston Hall stands) or Colston Tower or The Colston Arms will respectfully change their designations. Liverpool, too, has rightly worried about Penny Lane, a street in the city’s Mossley Hill suburb that commemorates another eighteenth-century slaver, James Penny. Perhaps it will soon undergo the necessary amelioration: if so, it would be most crass and insensitive to continue celebrating that location in popular music. Should a song that has been voted in the top 500 songs ever (!) remain so conspicuous in our quotidian culture? Of course not. I am not saying that The Beatles should re-record ‘Penny Lane’. That would, after all, be impossible. In an ideal world ‘Penny Lane’ could be redubbed as (e.g.?) ‘Bemmy Lame’: but, failing that, is it too much to ask that this tune, which tacitly supports an abhorrent institution, be debarred from compilation albums, radio play and unrestricted streaming?

The problem extends far beyond this one awful aspect of our past. Being based in a mediaeval University town, I cannot turn a blind eye to the names of the institutions around me: Cambridge’s various colleges literally embody the names of unelected autocrats (King’s), rac(ial)ists (Darwin), imperialistic apologists (Selwyn, Churchill), religious extremists (Christ’s, Corpus Christi, Emmanuel, Jesus, Magdalene, St Catherine’s, St John’s), bribers of the electorate (Downing, Fitzwilliam) and feudalistic overlords (Clare, Pembroke). This makes any stroll through the city not just genuinely confrontational but ineffably depressing.

We should call these what they are: Macro-Aggressive Toponyms (MATs). Place names that cause aggression on a massive scale, by both their own sheer physical size and the far-ranging circulation of their triggersome names. I don’t want to live in a world where my fellow humans are ambushed, every day, by MATs – where MATs don’t just occur in speech but are literally enshrined by public signage. It could be so simple to emend this disrespectful situation. We need #DomesdayReloaded, a project that surveys with due care and sensitivity the names of all British places – buildings, institutions, streets, settlements – to see where real or potential problems lurk. With little effort, an ad hoc committee in each region could assess all local proper names against an appropriate source – the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, say – with a view to highlighting every case that acknowledges or echoes individuals whose beliefs would very probably be out of step with the views of our infinitely more enlightened age. Once identified, necessary changes could be constructively imposed. The process may have to start with activism (progressive vandalism) and end with legal decree.

If we are to treat these issues honestly and openly with the maturity they require, we should realise that there’s an elephant in the room. (N.b. I say this not as a pachyderm shamer but because this phrase precisely describes the problem.) I mean that most conspicuous badge of our verbal identity: the surname. Now, I’m not saying that we should abandon this core aspect of our selves: that would be stupid, not to say impractical. Instead, I’m arguing for a situation where we can objectively assess the names we bear: is the surname we have been given (without our consent, I grant: this is not to victimise the dysnamed) identical to that of a notorious Name Of Problem? If it is, we should be alive to the fact that such a surname could – when heard out of context, perhaps over a post office counter or a supermarket Tannoy – trigger offensive thoughts of an earlier wielder of that NOP.

If you think this sounds absurd, think again. Imagine someone has the surname James or Jones. For most people, this would indeed be unproblematic. For some, it may even conjure up admirable and approved figures from our history, such as Henry James or Tom Jones. But for others, it could be unimaginably different: images of violent gun-based crime or horrific mass suicide would cause instant disgust for those who can only recall the grim spectres of Jesse James or Jim Jones. Not only is this regrettable – in the 21^st century we should declare this irresponsible. Nor should we be cowed by the scale of the problem: over half a million Britons are burdened by either of these NOPs; a handful yoke both together in a union of woe. And yet simple and inventive workarounds are at hand: for instance, why not have each ‘owner’ of an unapproved name choose a new surname? They could even form an anagram of their surnames, thus preserving each aspect of the genuine family heritage a surname conveys, but in an order reworked and realigned on twenty-first century principles. I honestly would be proud to meet a Mr Jesma or Mrs Sejon. Certainly, NOPs are a currency that should not be imposed upon spouses or children. Why correct part of our past and leave the rest flagrantly unchanged? It will simply not do so to say that the discordant views of our past inform us in the present about the evolution of ideas and the shifting sands of custom.

We can, I hope, go further. The English alphabet takes due pride in its 26 letters. Among that peaceable crowd, however, there’s a letter which – let us at last be honest – bears the heavy baggage of a controversial past. None of us has felt brave enough to call it out hitherto. Instead, we all (ab)use an abusive letter to make our everyday lives easier. I am, of course, talking about the letter K. Since its history is too well known to rehearse, a few flashpoints will suffice. K is the letter that begins almost every concept we universally disown: killing, kicking, kingship, Kardashianism, the Kraken and (notwithstanding the letter’s silent stealth) knives and kneecapping. K is the benchmark of thermodynamic temperature,  not only associating with material that is often incendiary but also memorialising the eponymous William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, an opponent of Irish Home Rule and Darwinian evolution. K is the chemical symbol of Potassium, the apocalyptic horseman of lethal hyperkalemia. K is the letter that has been cloned in triplicate to denote the most racist degenerates in the world. It gets worse: the letterform K evolved from the Phoenician kap, a stylised version of a human hand, the symbol of its probable hieroglyphic ancestor. In the current climate of unwelcome and wandering hands, this hardly seems an appropriate letter to sprinkle irresponsibly amongst our otherwise seemly graphemes.

So what to do? I suggest we remove so awkward and anachronist a letter from our contemporary alphabet. Let’s fight to #knockkout. We would not be the first to do so: the Romans, after several centuries of using K, duly came to their senses and ousted it: they found they could do all they needed to do with the letter C. Well, we can do the same. (If you are worried that this could become a free speech issue, don’t be: anyone still can say C*C or F*C!)

My anxiety throughout this think-piece has stemmed from the hypocrisy of those who successfully remove one or more NOPs but do not carry out – as they should – the full rebranding of their broader setting. I therefore demand that we phase out K entirely, not just from modern English orthography and usage but also from its irredeemably chequered historical record. It will be an easy business to remove it universally from digital databases; more concerted work will be required in other spheres, such as existing printed books and long-established place names. But, if the will is there, texts can be tweaked and signs emended. Are we really so small-minded as to object to naming our cities Blacburn, Yorc or Cilmarnoc? Are we really so precious as to throw down The Worcs of Shacespeare or abandon the novels of Philip C Dic? I humbly suggest that we are not.

David Butterfield is a Fellow in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Relax, dear reader of Reaction, this isn’t going to be a political screed. Instead, I want to explore the absurd thinking behind this clockwork complaint: the people’s decision is vitiated by and ridiculed for its lack of picture-perfect providence. This criticism is jaw-droppingly thick – and prompts the crucial question: are these would-be clairvoyants deluded about their own powers of prophesy or deceived about the world they live in? The answer, quite clearly, is both.

The world, in reality, is a glorious nexus of inscrutable uncertainties. For all the intricate modelling of scientists and pontification of experts, our daily lives teem with unpredictability. Nothing in our future can be precisely delineated and dissected. Why, then, when there are so many weighty things to worry about, has our fear of taking calculated risks become so debilitatingly acute?

Risk – action without security – is a fundamental aspect of being human: we must constantly weigh the probability of undesired losses against potential gains. But this is not instinctive. Every baby, as the fearless escapades of my fourteen-monther reveal in technicolour, is powered by the whirring cogs of curiosity and experiment. It’s trial and error that set the framework for human lives: risk aversion is learned behaviour, its degree a personal response to the challenges of life.

But we live in an increasingly – and at times ludicrously – risk-averse society. I’m not talking about securing the essential and indisputable safeties, especially in construction, travel and disaster planning, where such strictures save lives. Instead, I worry about the small-scale absurdities that we increasingly face.

Yes, you’ve heard this before: graduating students can’t throw their mortar boards; kites can’t be flown; some promenade benches can’t face the sea; cobbled streets are torn up as trip hazards. Even this year’s World Shin-kicking Championships, hosted each June by the 400-year-old Cotswold Olimpicks, were cancelled, along with the rest of the festivities, beneath overbearing health and safety pressures.

These minor matters may be laughable in isolation, but taken together they reflect a much profounder, and perverser, problem. The more that supposedly well-meaning bodies restrict our options, the more our capacity to profit from independent risk is closed down. In Britain, this diminution of personal autonomy is not just distressing, it’s starkly at odds with our nation’s deep-seated admiration for risk-taking – in music, sport, careers, and even relationships. No-one doubts that Health and Safety measures are of the utmost necessity in matters of mortal danger; nor does anyone object to protecting those who cannot protect themselves. But the gradual incursion of preventative measures has moved from the momentous and mandatory to the impossibly trivial. The previously mundane is now viewed as a minefield of potential danger.

With common sense disregarded as the rarest of commodities, smugly worded warning signs have vastly expanded their territory. A portion of these do an essential job, but the pathetic, often pointless proliferation of their kind has introduced the graver and more palpable risk of defacing beautiful spaces.

There is a price to pay in all this: the grim parade of high-vis jackets to the dread rhythm of Risk Assessment Exercises distracts from the ineluctable reality of personal responsibility. What’s worse, in contrast to our society’s obsession with diversity, the blanket imposition of such rules imposes artificial uniformity.

Left to our own devices, we would doubtless have in each sphere a spectrum of sites to choose from, ranging from nigh-on-zero to near-maximal risk: some pubs could and would allow smoking, some lakes swimming, some offices heavy lifting. There would be a mature and elegant simplicity in countenancing opt-in spaces where people could willingly pursue their own (legal) pleasures. Take alcohol, for instance, which of course carries all sorts of genuine risks. But that’s precisely what brings the frisson of uncertainty to social gatherings. It’s therefore a fillip to fitness but a blow to bonhomie that, for probably the first time in documented history, a quarter of 18-25 year olds in the UK are now teetotal.

Perhaps it’s inevitable that a generation so regularly bombarded with the distorted view of the wider world as something to fear, abhor and avoid has become unduly risk-averse. Public activity seems to portend myriad dangers: if it’s not the exaggerated risk of being attacked physically or verbally, the choice to let your hair down may be punished by photographic evidence turning up online.

Most institutions have pruned back risk-taking at work to protect themselves from the looming threat of compensation culture lawsuits. The infantile misconception that every misfortune occurs through human fault, combined with the (often self-righteous) belief that the fault is not one’s own, gives the green light for flinging blame at others.

But is the menace of ever more petty and pedantic litigation as real as corporate bodies suppose? Or is their own life made easier by paring back individual autonomy? Corporate legislation seems more about corporate risk aversion – of bad headlines from far-fetched lawsuits – rather than a genuine worry about risks to others.

Post-Brexit Britain we should restore some common sense here: a good part of society would celebrate institutions that advocate personal responsibility and arrest the evaporation of autonomy.

The profound problems of replacing personal accountability with corporate responsibility were seen in the banking crises of 2007, now a decade in our rear-view mirror. They also exist on a smaller scale – on the high street, in the workplace, across the community.

To take a narrow but telling example, litter blights most of Britain’s urban environments not because of ignorance or laziness but because of a dwindling sense of personal responsibility for one’s surroundings. If someone else is tasked with keeping the place clean, why take pride in the work of others?

We need to revisit the risk register where it matters. Education, for instance, should be the crucible of risk-taking, where new ideas, attitudes and activities are tried out. It’s the duty of all such institutions to support an environment of calculated jeopardy: the intellect advances with leaps of faith into foreign and challenging territories. sapere aude – dare to be wise – is not a tag that died with Horace: it takes real boldness to construct your own view of the world. Human error shouldn’t be hidden as an embarrassment but welcomed as a route to improvement via a lesson learned.

Sport too – including its dangers and disappointments – should be an essential rite of passage in growing up. Contact sport, now a doom-laden dodgeball for many schools, should play an especially prominent role. Indeed, not enough is said about the salutary shock of a high-speed ball to the face or studs to the near-frostbitten hand. Risk pricks pomposity. If – as happens disconcertingly often – I walk into a bollard when reading on the move, the fault is mine alone, not reprehensible street planning. If I slip when running for a train, I rollock my timekeeping not the station’s surface.

And let’s not suppose that every risk dices with danger. Some create safer behaviour: to risk going walking without a map ensures keener attention to any surrounding hazards; not reducing the excess on a hire car intensifies focus on the road.

Yet when all personal risk is airbrushed out of life, two distinct but unfortunate consequences follow: people either choose not to test and challenge their immediate limitations, or, to break free from this fabricated straitjacket, they undertake absurdly risky and irrational activities. It’s telling and tragic that wildly escapist ventures such as climbing cranes, surfing trains and jumping off buildings while on fire have burgeoning cult followings.

Remarkably, we have come full circle: risk-taking now needs its own safe space. Is it any surprise that the great outdoors have an ever greater allure? Second only to their sheer beauty is the total control they allow over personal jeopardy. Once many miles from civilisation and signage, in forest or on mountain, you roam on your own terms and at your own risk. The sole caveat is deliciously simple: you alone are responsible for every step you take.

Life thrives on careful speculation and calculated gambles: a life of minimised risk is one of unfulfilled potential. Fortune does indeed favour the brave – if not the foolhardy. Let’s stop acting as though the world owes us something and instead embrace whatever risks we each choose. But let’s also promise not to complain if our decisions prove to be absolute shockers.

David Butterfield is a Fellow in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

The bee has long been the defining image of the Mancunian character. Since 1842 it has crowned the city’s coat of arms: atop the crest sits a globe around which buzz seven bees. These are, of course, the archetypal hard but selfless workers: focused in ambition but broad in range, this auspicious number flit across the world, symbolising the global reach – cultural and commercial – of Manchester. The motto that sits below is equally unambiguous: concilio et labore, “by assembly and work”. Collaborative words and productive deeds are the quintessence of the city, uniting it and pushing it forward.

Powered by the whir of the Industrial Revolution, Mancunians have for centuries been depicted as workers in their beehives – which, in “Cottonopolis”, were mostly mills and factories. Conditions were often grim and oppressive, but a collective spirit of endeavour ran throughout the city, a spirit that has not been lost. The efficacy of bees as a model of divided labour and shared gain had already been established in Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (1714), long before Adam Smith so influentially formalised his ideas. It was appropriate, then, that the beehive formed the logo of the British co-operative movement, which began in 1844 with the Rochdale Pioneers a little to the north.

But the beehive symbolised even more: the whole activity of a society that was on the same page. As famously depicted by Cruikshank, the whole of Britain could be viewed as one harmonious hive. The Royal Family stand at the head, propped up by the pillars of state, the Lords and Commons. The free press takes pride of place beneath; professionals, tradesmen and labourers combine in their ranks below to form the congruous whole. The image is not mere Victorian fancy: it succinctly depicts the collective values of western democracy under a constitutional monarchy, of a country united in its core principles.

Well, the hive of activity in Manchester produced astounding results that soon spanned the world. Benjamin Disraeli, having visited Manchester to attend a debate (with Dickens in the chair), did not hesitate to assert in his novel Coningsby (1844) that:

“Manchester is as great a human achievement as Athens… It is the philosopher alone who can conceive the grandeur of Manchester and the immensity of its future.”

Yet it wasn’t always obvious that this was what the future held. The city could have given up after a terrible act of butchery. Almost 200 years ago, Manchester suffered the worst incident of civic strife on English soil, the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. A crowd of some 70,000 people, protesting vociferously for greater representation in Parliament, had amassed on St Peter’s Field. The yeomanry, failing to keep the crowd in order, panicked and fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Fifteen Mancunians were killed that day, and to national outrage. The event not only led to the foundation of the (Manchester) Guardian, but added great weight to the momentum for change, and in due course the Great Reform Act. A generation later, on the site of this tragedy, the Free Trade Hall was built, a physical embodiment of the principles that successfully repealed the Corn Laws. And so, out of violent tyranny sprung forward-thinking freedom.

The crystallisation of Mancunian ambition and self-assurance is the Town Hall, designed by Alfred Waterhouse (one of several Liverpudlian benefactions to the city) and completed in 1877. It is handsome externally, but internally is a true triumph of craftsmanship. Chief among these are celebrated murals by Ford Maddox Brown. But everywhere there are bees, with a swarm of 67 dominating the intricate mosaic.

The decision to set bees so prominently within the hub of civic activity is not idle. As well as being a potent symbol of industry they have always been at the heart of western civilisation. Bees fed Zeus (or, for the Romans, Jupiter) from his birth; they were the celebrated symbol of Athens; they were harbingers of poetic genius; they epitomised Roman industry. Coming to terms with the Roman Empire that was crystallising around him, Virgil gave his famous vignette of bees in the Georgics. “They alone,” he wrote, “share the buildings of their city with equal rights, and pass their lives under majestic laws, and they alone know a fixed fatherland and home.” Virgil’s bees were citizens and patriots, working selflessly for a communal greater good. In fact, the very empire that Virgil watched grow would later found Manchester: in 79 AD Agricola, then governor of Britain, headed west from Eboracum (York) and laid the foundations of Mamucium.

Two millennia later and the Mancunian bee is ubiquitous: it adorns masonry and merchandise, bins and bollards; it is rife in graffiti – on walls and now on bodies. Even the time is told in bees: the imposing tower of the Principal Manchester has a splendid clock, but on each of its four faces there are no numbers, only bees.

We all have ties with Manchester, direct or indirect, geographical or cultural. My first school was outside Oldham; my first wondrous sight of dinosaurs was in Manchester Museum; my first rugby kit – Oldham RLFC, away 1990-1 – gave me thrills of pride with the stitched bees of the Boddingtons logo. Not all memories are so comforting: I remember hearing the shuddering explosion of the Arndale Centre bomb in 1996. But I have always been drawn back to Manchester for pleasure: as a teenager, I travelled to Manchester for my first gig; I wrote my undergraduate thesis in a Whalley Range garden; I still seek out there the country’s best record shop whenever I can. Yet even those who have never been to Manchester can feel its reach. The most recent example is the victory of Manchester United at last night’s Europa League Final, watched and celebrated by fans across the globe, putting a firmly Mancunian stamp on perhaps England’s most famous export.

Some things do not change. When Queen Victoria observed of her visit to the city in 1851 that “in no other town could one depend so entirely upon the quiet and orderly behaviour of the people as in Manchester”, she was impressed by the self-restraint of the locals. In 2017 that same respect towards others is still a special feature of the people. But there are things Mancunians will not stand for. To bomb the most innocent of all – passionate and peaceful music lovers, among them helpless, wide-eyed children – is infinitely beyond the pale. Manchester cannot be the same again, and the scars – like the tattoos – will be permanent. But its underlying spirit is immutable and will endure. If a tin-pot, thick-as-mince Islamist thinks that his act of utterly mindless evil will cause the beating heart of Manchester to stop, he and his kind are tragically – but also laughably – mistaken.

St Chrysostom wrote that “the bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours, but because she labours for others”. Well, that same selflessness of Manchester has been brought into the public eye once more by the most horrific of triggers. In a moment of such abject despair at what atrocities the world can produce, we can find some solace in celebrating the proud, brave Mancunians and their inspirational hive of ceaseless activity. In an age when most tattoos have become so trite and trivial, the #ManchesterBee is a salutary and moving reminder of what transcendent eloquence a tattoo can have.

Dr David Butterfield grew up in Manchester. He is a Fellow in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

Tonight the show reaches its annual climax, with Wolfson College, Cambridge facing down their Varsity rivals of Balliol, Oxford. Much of the attention will be drawn to the two captains, each now minor celebrities online: the light blues’ Eric Monkman, who has wedged between his bowl haircut and titanium jaw an Ikea’s worth of knowledge, pits his powers against the dark blues’ Joey Goldman, the happy result of the congress of a chipmunk and the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For all their quirks, both are white-hot quizzers, among the best players in the show’s history.

Yet there’s more to celebrate here than the spectacle of frenetic answer-ferreting. In an age when television programming suffers the constant – and merited – criticism of dumbing things down, of reducing complex topics to the lowest common denominator, the uncompromising character of University Challenge stands firm against the tide, a Canute in square cap. It has no frills, no gimmicks, no prize money – in fact nothing beyond the temporary loan of a trophy for the winners. For half an hour two teams of four students battle at the buzzer; correct answers receive no song and dance, and wrong answers are quickly passed over, mostly without comment. For almost fifty years on air (the show had a seven-year hiatus when dropped by ITV in 1987) University Challenge has showcased the diverse knowledge of quick-firing minds without changing its simple formula – or title music. Remarkably, the programme has had only two presenters, the inimitable Bamber Gascoigne and the redoubtable Jeremy Paxman.

Many tune in for the spectacle alone, happy to marvel at the intellectual range and mental recall of an unpredictable array of students, and at the latest sartorial and crinal abnormalities of the Youth of Today. Many are delighted to hit upon any correct answer. Others enjoy competing against the combined intellects on screen. (The rules for playing at home are simple: answer before the contestants do; first answers are taken; wild guesses are welcome. Over 10 correct answers is sound, over 20 good, over 30 excellent, over 40 phenomenal; one has heard talk of over-50 folk but these may be fanciful rumours.) University Challenge rewards not just simple trivia but hard-earned learning: many questions require fast-paced thought and lateral thinking, not knee-jerk recall of crammed facts; many can only be known by those who have truly immersed themselves in a subject.

Yet, despite the impressive talents on display, this is not a Barnumesque freak-show of oddballs: student quizzers are gregarious, affable and wittily irreverent. In fact, for these contestants the most difficult question of the programme is the most unavoidable: how to answer a question correctly without annoying the viewer? Merited confidence will be taken as arrogance, feigned insouciance as cockiness, and light-hearted drollery as smugness. Best to play with a straight bat: stare blankly and impassively forwards.

History, geography, natural history, literature, politics, science and mathematics are staples of the show, and rightly so: such learning cannot but enrich our understanding and experience of the world. Other subjects are typically off-limits: celebrity culture and – ironically enough – television (but not film); many episodes keep sport at arm’s length. Long-standing viewers will know its particular penchants. A knowledge of Greek and Latin pays dividends, as many questions (on any subject) open with etymology: “From the Greek for amber…”. One recent show had classicists correctly guessing “petrichor” and “vellichor” without ever having encountered these perverse neologisms. Some question setters have an unhealthy obsession with American presidents, some with metallic ores, some with Keats, some with country code top-level domains. If a math’s question baffles you from the outset, you’ll do surprisingly well with a punt on “1” – or, if you want to try your luck – “0”.

Among devotees of the show its heroic names are intoned with wide-eyed reverence – Bayley of Balliol (2001), Trimble of Corpus Christi, Oxford (2009), Guttenplan of Emmanuel, (2010), Morley of Trinity, Cambridge (2014), and Powell of Peterhouse (2016). Whereas many fine quizzers have remained firmly in the academic world, others have poured forth their talents elsewhere: John Simpson (Magdalene, 1965), Christopher Hitchens (Balliol, 1968), Julian Fellowes (Magdalene, 1969), Sebastian Faulks (Emmanuel, 1972), Charles Moore (Trinity, Cambridge, 1978) and Stephen Fry (Queens’, 1980). 

Yet University Challenge is more than an exhibition of the country’s brightest students. Its title may be taken polemically: it not only challenges those at university but universities themselves. Although knowledge and intelligence are different entities, and need not coexist, the two self-evidently exist in harmony. Universities rightly seek to instil the former and reward its adept manipulation by the latter. Yet University Challenge counteracts the risk in modern degrees and post-graduate research of excessive specialism, of such depth and focus occluding all other fields of knowledge. It rejects any narrow and blinkered perspective of the world and instead celebrates eclectic learning beyond and beside one’s immediate studies. It does not reward “interdisciplinarity” (a buzzword among universities that is often abused or misconstrued) but rather the salutary ability of students to pursue and enjoy a wide range of diverse intellectual passions at once. Universities – and indeed all teachers – are thus reminded in technicolour to recognise and encourage such broad interests that lie beyond the scope of a given degree or examination syllabus.

A good University Challlenge quiz player necessarily covers manifold subjects, innately unable to limit themselves to a single specialism: to have no detailed knowledge outside a physics / medical / art history / English degree is to be of use only for a handful of answers. Instead, every successful player has allowed their natural curiosity and love of learning to spread into several, perhaps more than a dozen, other topics that have fascinated them over the years. The show rewards the chemist who has obsessed about heraldry and Motown, the Celticist who has gazed long at the stars and French cinema, the classicist who delights in romping through nineteenth-century memoirs and the Lakes. Such genuine eclecticism – which could (and should) not be tested via school or university examinations – is a delight to see: knowledge that gives pleasure to the holder for its own sake.

This is not a paean to Britain’s students nor indeed to Paxman (which would surely require verse) but rather to the dogged determination of University Challenge to celebrate knowledge about what is interesting and important and not to downplay or dissemble that fact to mollycoddle viewers. Although it is regrettable that this very constancy may most accurately be described as “anti-anti-intellectual”, the BBC deserves credit for salvaging and supporting so meritocratic a crucible. As the late Brian Sewell observed, “it’s very simple, it’s very fair: it’s a test of knowledge and nerve – without any violence.”

Dr David Butterfield is a Fellow in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge.

The Romans had it right: otium (leisure) was so integral to life that all business was classed as negotium (not-leisure); to be active (impiger) was to be not-inactive (piger). Though laziness was despised, leisure productively spent (otium negotiosum) enthused the Middle Ages. For most of British history, leisure was the preserve of the elite. But, in the 19th century, mechanised manufacturing, improved travel networks and earnest social reform pared back inhumane working hours, ushering in a new era of leisure pursuits and amateur sports. By the 1940s, the eight-hour day and five-day week were de rigueur, and leisure time was communally observed. Yet the astoundingly rapid and transformative technological progress of recent decades hasn’t helped whittle down the working day, but has instead let it dictate more of our lives than ever.

Yes, the convenience and versatility of digital technology frees up time: correspondence criss-crosses the globe in milliseconds and infinite information is accessed by finger-trill. But any time saved is instantly reallocated to further work. Employers eagerly offer digital devices to their staff, knowing that the short-term cost is paid off by long-term working hours. Emails arrive at all hours via laptop, tablet, smartphone, which most of us unthinkingly deal with whenever – and wherever – they come. And so the boundaries of the workplace become ever fuzzier, the work-life balance unsteadier.

For many workers, faced with a flat wage and no prospect of promotion, the most valuable and desirable commodity is time. But salaries are taken in pounds, not hours. Amidst this struggle to eke out free time, most traditional modes of leisure have suffered a significant shift. They are no longer enjoyed absolutely in their own space, but are consumed incidentally as tools of distraction – to palliate the monotony of the commute, to mollify the pain of the treadmill, or even to relieve the tedium of talk.

The alluring convenience of multitasking dilutes the true value of leisure in isolation. Take some typical leisure activities. Film of course remains popular, but with many people priced out of the cinema or stymied by their closure, movies are shoehorned onto tiny screens and squinted at spasmodically: it is little surprise that sales have flatlined. Music is consumed almost entirely as background noise, effortlessly sourced but contextually bland, as intangible singles float in isolation amidst the digital stream. Sport remains thrilling excitement to play, but ever more determination and ingenuity are required to find opportunities for participation. As for watching it on screen, that’s an experience interrupted by incessant adverts for inane dross or Iagoesque incitements to bet on increasingly absurd minutiae, monetising pleasures that transcend profit. Stuck for fresh ideas, leisure has found refuge in both the television and the inexorable desire to eat: cooking, baking and dining shows enjoy more popularity than ever.

Leisure is threatened not just by work creep and email overexposure, but also by the encroachment of social media. Facebook profiles and Instagram accounts, crafted and curated with mindboggling exactitude, agitate for unconditioned likes and sterile emoticons. Smartphones are checked hundreds of times a day (and night): this is not leisure but the panic reflex of captives. FOMO (fear of missing out) is a self-fulfilling condition: burying your head in the digital sands is a sure-fire means to MO. Unless daringly turned off, smartphones not only fragment leisure time but ward off real social engagement, offering a hand-held safe space that plays on loop the reassuring muzak of a bespoke echo chamber. Attention spans too have atrophied in the Age of Twitter: a short-termist audience readily dismisses detailed discussions with the dreaded acronym “tldr”: too long, didn’t read.

Reading, of course, is not dead, but its context has also shifted. Books are digested increasingly piecemeal and in transit via Kindles-and-co. These bitesize bursts, constantly disturbed by other digital distractions, necessarily limit immersion in any text. Newspapers and periodicals are mostly consumed digitally and story-specifically rather than opened and closed on the editor’s terms. Such fleeting, open-ended consumption amidst the infinite online void withholds the satisfaction of closure that finishing a physical magazine or returning a book to the shelf can give. It’s no surprise that simple tasks offering a palpable conclusion have regained popularity: the craze for sudoku and adult colouring-in books will doubtless be followed by jigsaw puzzles or sticker collecting. More remarkably, amidst such inescapable and frenetic distraction, “mindfulness” has won devotees. In previous decades we called this thinking.

As for conversation, one of life’s most leisurely pleasures, technology again limits rather than facilitates it. Online exchanges more often descend into staccato argument or posturing than flourish into the spontaneous quirkiness of personal conversation. Yet – as pathetic as it sounds – it’s now harder than ever to converse, an art in which both experience and opportunity are waning. Yes, discussion still thrives over the pint or wine bottle – less so the vodka shot and Jägerbomb – but even the inimitable warmth of the pub has become a challenging space for leisure, a battle for focus amidst piped music, vibrating phones and virtue-signalling condiments.

The most hackneyed adage remains the truest: the best things in life are free – or trivial in cost. The leisure afforded by the great outdoors is and always will be incomparable – although it’s an outrageous development that the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park will now charge campers to enjoy nature. The company of friends and family has the profoundest value, but time available for this varies desperately between age groups, class brackets and pay scales. Indeed, the much-maligned millionaire banker who trudges from dawn to dusk – and scarcely sees his family or home in daylight – is more to be pitied than envied.

What then to give leisure a new lease of life? The answer can’t be the infantile introduction of “playtime” to the workspace. Perhaps instead the reach of work could be pruned back? Take France, where since January companies employing more than 50 workers must declare times when their staff can clock off from digital communication. Could Britain follow suit with some sort of top-down messaging curfew? Or would employees’ FOBO (fear of being overtaken) break the system?

At any rate, a reality check is due. We con ourselves that immersive technology promotes, rather than obstructs and obscures, leisure. Amidst the transient presentism of online blather, it – along with other intrinsic values of culture and society – are being lost in the fug. Leisure, whatever form it takes, is life-affirming activity: it needs both the space and time to be taken seriously.

Dr David Butterfield is a Fellow in Classics at Queens’ College, Cambridge.