The Third Leader: Continuity in a changing world

Welcome. Spring is here, I notice, harbingered in by the traditional blizzard between Norwich and Thetford at the weekend. You will notice, at this time of magical burgeonings and pulsing vitality, that we today present you with a newspaper resoundingly and similarly renewed. Nevertheless, there can be too much change, you know. Humanity requires the consolation of constants. It is not that long, after all, since the rising of the sun was not considered guaranteed unless there had been only a slightly more bloody ritual sacrifice of the kind recently visited on poor Howard Flight.

Welcome. Spring is here, I notice, harbingered in by the traditional blizzard between Norwich and Thetford at the weekend. You will notice, at this time of magical burgeonings and pulsing vitality, that we today present you with a newspaper resoundingly and similarly renewed. Nevertheless, there can be too much change, you know. Humanity requires the consolation of constants. It is not that long, after all, since the rising of the sun was not considered guaranteed unless there had been only a slightly more bloody ritual sacrifice of the kind recently visited on poor Howard Flight.

So it is good to get the latest news on proboscidean overkill. You may recall that the demise of the woolly mammoth used to be blamed on a change in the weather. Now scientists are arguing that it was caused by too much hunting of the mighty creatures. Imagine, if you will, the impassioned arguments in the flickering cavelight between the conservationists and the hunters, with urgent representations from the gatherers, who might well have been in two minds, quite possibly preferring acorns.

Such ponderings on the prehistoric and unchanging somehow lead me to the Duke of Edinburgh, who, as usual, wants to chop down trees in Windsor Great Park. These ones, though stricken, are home to several rare species of beetle. Here in The Third Leader department, we also find it pleasingly reassuring that Windsor is one of the most important sites for dead wood in the country, if not the world.