Sat, 09 Jan 2021 22:04 UTC London's Carnaby Street is pictured above on Saturday under the national lockdown. What if the days did not, after all, start to grow longer after Christmas? Well, yes, of course they will (won't they?) but I feel a dark, oppressive foreboding which makes spring seem very far away. Why is this? I sense that I and some others have now become the targets of a worrying wave of spite, censorship and intolerance, very like the McCarthyite frenzy in 1950s America which swept up all kinds of innocent people in what claimed to be an attack on Communism.