Policies as mysterious as a flight of gulls

ALINE of gulls just flew across our valley looking most determined. Not for one moment, as they crossed from one side of the horizon to the other, did they veer from their flightpath.

Another day this week I watched several hundred rooks all flying in the other direction – and the day before that a skein of geese was doing the same. And I wondered – as I have always wondered – how it is that these creatures with very small brains seem to all know where they are going, and why.

Perhaps they can communicate and one of those gulls said to the others: “Guys, I’ve heard rumours of bird flu coming from the east, we need to get out of here and head west as fast as our wings will carry us…”

Maybe the leader of the rooks cried out: “There’s talk of a huge field being ploughed down Taunton way and spies tell us there are leatherjackets for the taking. Let’s go!”

As for the geese… Well, geese fly about in impressive V-shaped skeins anyway. Perhaps they’re just preprogrammed to do that and there’s nothing mysterious about it.

But every time I spy even a single bird flying determinedly across the skyline, I think: “Where’s he or she going? How do they know where to go and what prompted them to make this flight on this day?”

Some, like those geese, will be following migration routes which centuries have instilled in their inherited, collective memory – but by no means all of them. It strikes me that birds just know stuff that we don’t know they know, if you follow my drift.

Ever since childhood I have pondered such questions. Indeed, as a boy I didn’t even need to go outdoors because there was a huge rookery in a wood across the field from our house and every morning the sky would go dark with commuting rooks – and every evening the same birds would turn the sky dark again returning to their nests. Thousands of them.

My point is that you only have to look out the window and you can be struck by the mysteries of life on Earth. There are far more questions than answers – and the person who asks such questions can never be bored. Perplexed, perhaps, but not bored.

Until now I have tended to regard the natural world as the main theatre for all this mystery. Not being able to speak gull, or rook or goose – or squirrel, worm or fox for that matter – it’s the things nature does which prompt me to ask questions most often.

Our human world seems easier to understand. Even complicated stuff can be understood when, for example, someone clever explains what’s happening in a newspaper or on radio or television news. When politicians come out with things that seem like riddles, we process it all under vague headings in our subconscience, half-heartedly labelled: “Message understood”. Sub-headed: “But they would say that, wouldn’t they?” However, as I write these very words, something else is flying in a determined way just north of our valley. It is a British Airways Airbus A380 carrying Kwasi Kwarteng to his fate. And his flight is causing me the same childlike lack of understanding that I feel when pondering a sky full of determined rooks.

As I say, normally there’ll be some sort of expert on hand to explain it. But on this occasion I have, for days, been listening to radio, reading newspapers and watching TV in search of an explanation, and not even the wisest hack or professor seems to have a clue. The riddle being that shot-in-the-foot otherwise known as the Mini Budget...

When one particularly impressive BBC presenter dared ask one particularly haughty politician for an explanation, they found themselves being roundly rebuked. The haughty one claimed it wasn’t in the BBC’s remit to suggest certain government policies were questionable. Which was a shocking response given that, for days, almost all the independent experts were insisting the whole thing had been an almighty cock-up.

I don’t want to mention the popinjay’s name. Every time I’ve done so in this column I receive orchestrated hate mail (we know it’s orchestrated because the writers of all the letters and emails say nice things like they wish I’d died during the heart operation I had a few years ago). But even I found it breathtaking to hear the ciaim that our public broadcasting body had no remit to question government policy. When you hear that sort of bullying, 1930s Berlin comes to mind.

We need to be wary when politicians start telling journalists they have no right to question the ruling elite. In fact, we need to be very wary indeed when the people who run the country start adopting behaviours which cannot be explained by the majority of independent commentators or experts.

Thinking about it, I might join those gulls in heading west. Sometimes flight can seem the best idea. However, given the extent of the present chaos, I don’t think I’ll be gone for long.

We need to be very wary when politicians tell journalists they can’t question the ruling elite