Time to tell the truth about fake news

EVERYTHING seems to have a different name nowadays which means an old geezer like me must be careful what he says – which is one way of explaining that this week I want to write about those spurious pieces of information we used to call ‘rumours’, which are now known as ‘fake news’.

Here’s an example. I was purchasing an item today from a specialist company which happens to be based in our village and, taking my deposit, the woman said she hoped the cardreading machine would work because there were problems with the electrical current.

“I’ve got a friend who lives near Hinkley Point and her husband works there,” she said. “Apparently the National Grid is working on something called ‘low-power-mode’ because there isn’t enough electricity to go around. My friend says it’s a problem that’s going to get worse because of shortages of gas and heating oil.”

“Which is exactly why I’m buying this new wood-burning stove!” I replied cheerily, adding that I hoped the said appliance, which will be made specifically to my requirements in a forge on Dartmoor, will arrive before we start suffering fullon power-cuts.

On the way home, however, I began to feel the strain of that electrical rumour. And I mean strain. Because I was cycling an e-bike and it’s all uphill from the stove place to my cottage. If I hadn’t stuffed the battery full of National Grid electricity earlier, I would need several lie-downs and maybe even a standby ambulance to get home safely. Those electric bikes are bloomin’ heavy.

As a journalist you become accustomed to being told all manner of stories which could end up being filed under ‘fake news’. So as I pedalled, I pondered… Could there really be a setting in the National Grid called low-power-mode?

I had a vision of a pipe-smoking bespectacled boffin in an old-fashioned white laboratory coat pushing a huge lever to LOW, painted in big letters in some crazy ramshackle laboratory filled with glowing glass tubes – and could imagine a kind of high-pitched droning sound in the background dropping several octaves, like the engines of the sort of spaceships you used to see in black and white movies.

But, being technically challenged, I could not imagine why the National Grid should require a “low-power-mode” setting. Either there is enough electricity swashing through the system or there isn’t. And if it’s the latter, the lights go out.

Or is it the same as a car I once owned that was forever going into something called ‘limp-home-mode’, meaning that it wouldn’t go more than 50mph?

Crucially, if such a setting exists, why aren’t we being told about it?

You’d have thought electricity companies would put out public notices saying things like: “Look, you power-addicted fools – we are close to running out of the old juice! Go home and turn off absolutely everything you can. Measure water for the kettle to the last molecule, and don’t heat a drop more. Turn off every TV standby in the country and we could save the equivalent of a whole power station! Take bulbs out of your fridge lights, unplug Alexa, only iron areas of clothing that will be seen by others, and buy pocket solar panels to pump up your phones. Your country needs you – to switch off!”

But no one has said any of that. So I am guessing that “low-power-mode” is actually fake news.

It reminds me of a time years ago when I was walking past a hole in a lane near Clovelly and a man popped his head out and said: “You’re that Hesp bloke from the newspapers, aren’t you!”

When I agreed I was indeed that bloke, he climbed out of his hole and pointed to a nearby lorry bearing the logo of some water company or other.

“You ought to find out about Wimbleball dam,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Leaks, it does! Leaks like a sieve! I wouldn’t live below that dam for all the tea in China. I know about the leaks cos I worked for the company that built the dam. A reporter fella like you ought to investigate and get it in the papers before a disaster happens.”

I did make enquiries. I even went to the dam and walked down the Haddeo Valley looking for leaks.

But I was assured by the powers-that-be there was no chance of a disaster ever occurring - and eventually I put the leak story down as one of those rumours you get in country areas which cast doubt over anything new, brutal and modern that intrudes on the peace and quiet of a locale.

However, it turns out the man in the hole was right. The dam did leak. Like a sieve. It leaked for years after it was built in 1978. So much so that a major engineering company was called in to fix the problem in what must have been the biggest grouting job the South West has ever seen.

So you never know. Like rumours, fake news can sometimes turn out to be true.

I wanted to say that before the lights flicker and my computer shuts down.

I have a vision of a pipe-smoking boffin in a white coat pushing a lever to ‘low power’