Peter Rhodes on angling after a pandemic, misleading TV reports and why are their flames higher than ours?

The Scottish Government has pumped £25million into the Scottish fishing industry which has collapsed in the pandemic. But there's always hope. When fishing collapses it's not like a vegetable farm or dairy business going bust. Your crop does not rot in the fields or have to be washed into the slurry pit. Stop chasing fish and they start breeding like crazy. It's like money in the bank.When the fishing resumes, the pickings will be rich.

What applies to the wild North Sea also applies to your local trout lake or carp pool. Not only will they go forth and multiply during these lockdown weeks but they will also forget what a hook is. As any angler will tell you, the best fish of all are plump and stupid.

While it's encouraging to see Admiral and other car-insurance companies offering refunds to policy holders, isn't it premature? With so many drivers going nowhere during the pandemic lockdown, the insurers stand to make huge profits and it looks good to give the punters a divvy. However, when this lockdown is eventually lifted, millions of motorists who have barely touched a steering wheel for weeks will be released on to the highways. It will be like the funfair coming to town and a horde of 12-year-olds being let loose on the dodgems. If I were Admiral I'd keep the loot, and wait and see.

A reader has spotted something that most print journalists learn early in their career, namely, that a TV report of an incident sometimes bears only a passing resemblance to what actually took place. In this case it was an anti-lockdown demo in the States which, through clever filming, seemed to have attracted thousands. But from another angle it was clear only a few dozen protesters were involved. The art of filming such events for telly is to get in close with the camera and make the images as crowded as possible.

It is not unknown for TV to go further and influence what happens. I recall an anti-Nazi “march” which was actually a small, static demo in a peaceful market square until a TV crew turned up and persuaded the demonstrators to march and shout for the camera because it would look better on telly. “Why haven't we got pictures of this march?” a furious news editor (long ago and far away, naturally) asked me. “Because there wasn't a march,” I told him. I'm not sure he believed me.

Why massage the news in such a fashion? Because it's a competitive industry. One old yarn concerns TV executives of a US station watching three network reports of a fire at a Roman Catholic orphanage in New York. One executive complained that on a rival station “their flames are higher than ours. “ But a colleague countered: “Yeah, but our nuns are crying harder than theirs.”