There is always an alternative to panic stations

In modern parlance, the phrase “Don’t panic” means, in effect, “Panic”. Last year, at the beginning of Covid, it was loo paper and pasta. Last week, no sooner did the authorities use those words about petrol supplies than queues formed at the filling stations.

Is there anything to be done about this? It is hard to see what other words the Government could employ. We in the media would soon detect ministers if they pretended there was no shortage. Yet as soon as they admit there is one, we ask them how the public should react. They have to say “Don’t panic”, because that is the right advice. Unfortunately, it is also the trigger.

I suppose ministers could lecture people for being so silly, but that is rarely a productive tactic. Perhaps there is nothing that can usefully be said: it is just a matter of the public calming down and getting the measure of the situation. This weekend, I found most country neighbours simply making fewer car journeys and trying to sit the mini-crisis out.

It would help, though, if the authorities had some temporary remedies up their sleeves. In rural areas particularly, there is a lot of “red diesel” about, reserved for tractors and other vehicles that do not use public roads, and stored on farms. It is red because it is so dyed for identification: it needs identifying because it is untaxed. It works fine in normal diesel cars, so the red is supposed to detect tax evasion in the engine.

How about emergency measures in times of shortage which removed the fines for using red diesel on roads and allowed its owners to sell it to customers running out of the normal stuff ? It would be an additional attraction in farm shops.

No doubt safety experts would protest noisily, but I say, “Don’t panic”.

It is now the party conference season but, like “The Season” in high society (Henley, the Eton/harrow match, the Derby, debutantes etc), it is a shadow of its former self. Commerce – in the form of lobbyists and PR – has taken over. The conferences of the main political parties are no longer the gatherings of great tribes. Instead they are media opportunities for the Westminster people who are already in charge anyway.

Does this matter? It is not, after all, as if Tory or Labour conferences in the old days were hotbeds of intellectual vitality. It was not always fun to sit for a week (they were much longer drawnout occasions 40 years ago) in Blackpool. But I think it does matter a bit, for the same reason that talk of the Red Wall, “levelling up” and “people from Somewhere” mean something.

As a journalist in the 1980s, I attended both main party conferences every year. I did not exactly like either. Labour, threatened by the Bennite/ Arthur Scargill Left, was extremely rancorous. The Tories, usually riding high, were smug. But one did feel that both, in their very different ways, were occasions in which metropolitan preoccupations did not dominate. You could see the workings of each party’s grass roots, discussing the things they cared about. You could witness one of the most important features of the first century of democracy – the power of a mass movement.

In the 21st century, the masses hold enormous power, as interpreted by focus groups, but extremely little by means of direct political engagement. The unhappy paradox is that our age, though obsessed with equality, is run by elites much more cut off than in the past.

Rewilding is all the rage. It contains many interesting ideas and possibilities. But the name can be misleading. In a small, long-settled, quite heavily populated country like Britain, nothing can be truly wild. Almost all ecology needs to be stewarded by the human race.

At present, most of the inhabitants of the areas targeted for rewilding feel uneasy. If they make a living by farming, shooting, fisheries or forestry, they tend to be disapproved of by rewilders. The two sets of people most keen on rewilding usually come from outside the districts they wish to change. Either they are committed ideologues or they are extremely rich people who, having made lots of money through modern industrial and commercial economies, have turned romantic.

The recently announced Affric Highlands project (“Scotland’s wild east-west corridor”) is accompanied by an improbable painting of how the future rewilded scenery might look. It resembles an illustration in one of those children’s books that cram as many species as possible into one spot in order to identify them. Deer, otter, birds of prey, wild boar, wildcat, pine marten, red squirrels and lynx seem to flourish within a few feet of each other.

In a rather obscure part of the picture, a stalker with a deer’s carcass slung over the back of a pony can be discerned. This last is a pleasing concession to reality: the culling of animals, by people, is essential to the balance of species.

I hope a way forward can be found which links human prosperity to the flourishing of nature. If not, much of Scotland will be subjected to a re-run of the notorious Highland clearances in the early 19th century, with ecolairds as the villains.

Parallel with rewilding, there should be re-peopling. Human beings too have natural habitats, and these should be respected.