Monday, February 17, 2025

A true US populist would support vaccination in poorer communities

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Republican politicians from the poorer states are already having doubts about Trump and his team. This is from the Guardian:

Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.

Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department.

This led me to wonder how Huey Long (1893-1935), the populist governor of, and then senator for, Louisiana, approached vaccination. 

The answer is to be found on a website devoted to his memory and career:

Through the Board of Health, Long tripled funding for public healthcare. The state’s free health clinics grew from 10 in 1926 to 31 in 1933, providing free immunizations to 67 per cent of the rural population.

I find Long a fascinating figure and, while I know we're supposed to disapprove of populism, I miss the days when it was part of the varied ideology behind community politics. 

Liberals then saw themselves as the people who looked after the run-down end of the borough and who made Town Hall listen to local residents.

But then much of our campaigning at the last election  - on the health and on water - had an element of populism. But has the Conservatives had succeeded in uniting pretty much the entire nation against them on these issues, it was hard to accuse us of being divisive.

Sunday, February 16, 2025

The Joy of Six 1325

Amanda Litman argues that it's time for the ageing leadership of the US Democrats to stand down: "While their wisdom and experience have value, and while some can certainly still hold their own, the septuagenarian and octogenarian class of Democratic leaders - predominantly older white men—are by and large ill-equipped for this crisis we have found ourselves in."

How do radical ideas go mainstream? Alice Evans studies the women's magazines of the 1970s to help her understand the rise of feminism.

How well did Queen Elizabeth II get along with her prime ministers? Rebecca Cope has the answers: "It would be easy to think that as a Labour Party leader from a northern middle-class background, Harold Wilson would not have gotten on well with the Queen, but quite the opposite was true. A regular at Balmoral, he was frequently asked on picnics with the wider family, and reportedly enjoyed the informality of the occasion, mucking in to help clear up after the Duke of Edinburgh’s famous barbeques."

Ellie Robson on the philosopher Mary Midgley: "In the 1950s, the philosopher Mary Midgley did something that, according to philosophical orthodoxy, she wasn’t supposed to do. In a BBC radio script for the Third Programme (the precursor of BBC Radio 3), she dared to point out that almost all the canonical figures in philosophy’s history had been unmarried men."

Writing in Country Life of all places, Lewis Winks demolishes the case against allowing wild camping on Dartmoor.

Michael Wood goes to the movies and thinks about Brady Corbet’s films: "How brutal or damaging does your childhood have to be to make you a great dictator or a memorable pop star? Are the connecting words ‘because of’ or ‘in spite of’? Or is there no causality here at all, just a sort of baffling coexistence? Are the films in love with an ugly idea of chance? This possibility seems especially relevant to The Brutalist."

John Major: The last Conservative statesman

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John Major was a figure of fun to many while he was prime minister, but compared to any leader the Conservative Party has come up with since, he is a titan.

Here he is talking about J.D. Vance's speech on the World at One earlier today:

That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world. It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off very dangerous signals.

It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr. Putin.

In Mr. Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, on the statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.

You can listen to the whole thing on BBC Sounds - Major's interview begins at 12:20.

One interesting point Major makes is that his own father was brought up in the United States.

Cat Stevens: Matthew & Son

Cat Stevens was a big name in his early days, as both singer and a songwriter. He is one of the central figures of David Hepworth's 1971 – Never a Dull Moment: Rock’s Golden Year.

He even took Morning Has Broken from our school hymn book into the top 10.

My image of a male singer-songwriter of this era involves long hair and an acoustic guitar, and there are plenty of pictures like that of Cat Stevens. But here he is on a West German TV show in 1967 as a teenage dandy.

I have a couple of DVDs of performances from that show - Beat! Beat! Beat! Because its video tapes didn't get reused, its archives are a valuable record of this golden age of British pop and rock.

Cat Stevens was born Steven Demetre Georgiou to a Swedish mother and Greek Cypriot father in London. In the late Seventies he converted to Islam and left the music scene, returning 20 years later using the name Yusuf Islam.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Remembering Adrian Slade (1936-2025)

I knew that Adrian Slade had died because I saw we were discussing commissioning an obituary of him for the next Liberator. But I had not found any announcement of the sad news until this morning, when I saw this notice in The Times:

ADRIAN SLADE
Adrian died peacefully on 24th January 2025, aged 88. CBE, cabaret performer,adman and Liberal politician. Husband of Sue. Father of Nicola and Rupert. Much loved by friends and family.

The notice also links to a memorial page for him.

Discussing comedy with Adrian was one of the perks of helping out with production of Liberal Democrat News at party conference - I have mentioned his memories of Peter Cook, whom he auditioned for the Cambridge Footlights, here more than once.

But Adrian was also a politician. He won Richmond at the GLC elections of 1981, defeating Edward Leigh in the process. to become its only Liberal member.

What was impressive was how well known he was. When we went down to the bar after a Liberal meeting, there were always people who came up to him to sat hello or ask for advice. If Adrian had been the parliamentary candidate, we might well have won Richmond earlier than 1997.

That GLC victory was not without cost for Adrian, as the Conservatives contested the election lodged an election petition, contesting the result because of technical errors in Slade's return of expenses. The election result stood, but he was left with potentially ruinous legal expenses. His showbiz friends organised a comedy evening to help pay the bills - sadly the link in my post that told you who was there no longer works.

His experiences of Ken Livingstone were more pleasant. When he went to see Ken, the GLC leader as a new councillor, and was asked which committees he would like to be on. They then fell to discussing where Adrian should sit so as to upset the Tories most.

So farewell to Adrian Slade. We shan't see his like again.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Milton Jones: "My whole act is reverse engineered"

As I once wrote:

I love Milton Jones's comedy. He doesn't just use puns and word play. If that was all he did, he's be Tim Vine.

It's because every funny line of his creates an alternative world. And that world exists for a second or two on stage with him until its bubble bursts and it is no more.

Here Jones talks to the always likeable Rob Brydon about his career and approach to comedy.

The party's autumn conference is in Bournemouth this year. I doubt I'll have the self-control to resist stealing Jones's joke about the Japanese attack on Poole Harbour for Lord Bonkers.

Beavers return to Northamptonshire after 400-year absence

Rushden Lakes shopping centre is welcoming the first beavers to be seen in Northamptonshire for four centuries. 

Boudicca, Alan and their six kits - I don't know if there is a class system among beavers, but I can't shake off the suspicion that Boudicca married beneath herself - will be living in a 42-acre fenced enclosure there.

But if it's true that, following escapes from such enclosures, there are now hundreds of beavers living wild in Kent, it won't be long until Boudicca and Alan, or their friends and relations, turn up on the River Jordan here.

Anyway, Katie King-Hurst, education and communities manager for the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, told the BBC:

"They're incredible. "They ... create other habitats that the other animals thrive in. There's been a few beaver releases around England, but these beavers share their fences with a shopping centre with millions of visitors a year, so it really is an opportunity to see an inspirational species right on people's doorsteps."

It's the Liberal Democrats who are taking on Trump and Musk

Josh Graham writes on politics.co.uk:

The Lib Dems, after a historic general election campaign under Ed Davey’s buccaneering leadership secured 72 MPs, have found their voice in a crowded UK political scene as the prime critics of Trump’s revolution.

The Lib Dems have assumed this anti-MAGA mantle largely by default, that said. The Labour Party, a natural ideological opponent of Trumpism, has been silenced by its government duties and diplomatic responsibilities. The Conservative leadership has positioned itself as supportive of Trump’s general initiative. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is MAGA’s British spin-off. Meanwhile, the Green party - whose criticism might even trump Davey’s - still struggles to cut through the Westminster noise.

The bottom line is this: political circumstance, on both sides of the Atlantic, has conspired to carve a neat niche for Ed Davey’s party - one it is excitedly exploiting.

The video shows the first of Ed Davey's two questions to the prime minister on Wednesday.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Nowhere to Go: Maggie Smith's first credited film role

Yesterday we saw the first television appearance by Julie Walters. Tonight it's Maggie Smith's first credited film role, which was in 1958.

Being Maggie Smith, she received what we'd today call a BAFTA nomination for it.

Talking Pictures TV showed it a couple of days ago, but it's not found its way to their catch-up channel TPTV Encore.

Nowhere to Go was the penultimate film made by Ealing Studios. With its jazz soundtrack and refusal to spell everything out for the viewer, it looked forward, not back.

You could call it 'Ealing Noir', and that's not a ridiculous concept. One of the best Ealing films, It Always Rains on Sunday, has a claim on the Noir label too.

In this trailer look for a brief glimpse of Andrée Melly, then Harry H. Corbett in the back of the car in his days as the British Brando (again, this is not a joke) and then we see Maggie Smith. Playing a rich girl looking for kicks, she lights up the screen.

You can find Nowhere to Go on a dodgy Russian site if you ask Google Videos, but I didn't tell you that, right?

If you watch it, here are three notes on the locations.

The disused railway platforms at the start are long since demolished. They were on the still operating North to East curve at Kew Bridge station.

When the villain and Maggie Smith arrive in Wales we see, not the Brecon Beacons, but Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. The chimneys do not belong to a steelworks in the valleys but to the old Tunnel Cement works at Pitstone.

And the big house is Gadebridge House, which was in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was demolished long ago, and its grounds now form Gadebridge Park in the new town.

The Joy of Six 1324

"For so long the US has been the core UK and European ally, the backbone of NATO, the largest contributor to the WHO, and the loudest voice in proudly proclaiming its democracy. It seems unbelievable to state baldly that the US is a threat to the global economy, to global health and to global stability. But it is, and the sooner this is acknowledged the better." Christine Pagel shows that Trump is following the playbook that has seen democracy die in other countries.

Nataliya Gumenyuk explains why Ukraine wants to fight on: "The horror of Russian military rule has been felt not only in areas of the south and east, where much of the war has been fought, but also near Kyiv in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion, when Russian forces committed widespread atrocities in the capital’s suburbs."

"I have been very anxious to show that these young people are not 'problem young people,' but young people with problems." Richard Kemp reminds us that one of his key themes as Lord Mayor of Liverpool are the problems faced by care-leavers and many other disadvantaged children in the city.

So concern for the Welsh language scuppered a nuclear power station? Rubbish, says Dan Davies.

Brian Klaas on what Detectorists has to teach us about the meaning of life: "Throughout the show, the allure of money and valuable treasure lurks, but whenever it seduces the detectorists and they lose sight of their intrinsic motivation, their lives begin to fall apart, cursed by a momentarily conversion to the False Gospel."

Colin Yeo, an immigration lawyer, reviews Paddington in Peru.

Lib Dem bill challenges Labour's rabbit-in-the-headlights stance on dark money in British politics

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Manuela Perteghellas, the Liberal Democrat MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, yesterday tabled a private member's bill that would cap how much individuals and companies can give to political parties in the UK. It would also restrict the ability of foreign nationals to donate through UK-registered companies.

She told Byline Times:

Our politics has been exposed. It’s far too easy for those who don’t have our country’s national interest at heart, or who have made money through illicit means, to funnel dark money into British politics.

The bill would establish an independent committee to determine an appropriate cap on political donations for UK parties. It would also assess the impact of donation limits on political parties' ability to function, while ensuring legitimate political participation isn’t undermined.

You can read Manuela's full speech in Hansard - her bill is listed for debate on 16 May.

It stands no chance of being passed into law, but it will increase the pressure on Labour to change its rabbit-in-the-headlights stance on dark money in British politics.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Julie Walters' first screen appearance is on YouTube - and Don Warrington is in it too

A thousand thanks to the Classic British Telly YouTube account - like and subscribe - for posting this television play from 1975

Julie Walters, in her very first screen appearance, works behind the bar in a club, while the star is Don Warrington, already famous from Rising Damp. Their exchange about education looks forward to Walters' role in Educating Rita, and once again I am left mourning the disappearance of the single television play.

As Warrington was born in Trinidad and came to England at the age of six, it was a stretch for him to play a young Jamaican man newly arrived in Handsworth. But then, in Rising Damp. Philip knew no more of Africa than Rigsby did.

Club Havana was shot by the BBC at Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham and screened as part of its series Second City Firsts. It was written by Barry Reckord, a pioneering Jamaican playwright whose work was widely produced in London.

I've heard of him because on of this blog's heroes, David Hemmings, appeared in his play Skyvers at the Royal Court in the early Sixties.

District council offices to host banking hub for Market Harborough


Market Harborough will have a banking hub by the end of this month, reports the Leicester Mercury.

While the search for its permanent home is concluded, it will be temporarily housed in the offices of Harborough District Council in the town.

My old friend Phil Knowles, who leads the Lib-Lab-Green coalition that runs the council, told the Mercury:

"Although lots of people do their banking online nowadays, there are many residents in the Harborough district who find this difficult, do not have internet access or prefer to do their banking in person. 

I have campaigned for a banking hub for Market Harborough for a while following the steady closure of high street banks in the town, and I’m delighted that the council has been able to assist with welcoming the new banking hub provided by Cash Access UK by hosting the hub temporarily in our council offices. 

I am looking forward to the banking hub opening for residents later this month."

Lloyds will close its Market Harborough branch at the end of March, leaving the town without a branch of any of the big four banks.

Politicians on children swimming in sewage

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Here's the latest from Tameside Radio:

A Tameside councillor married to disgraced MP Andrew Gwynne joked about youngsters swimming in human waste on the 'racist and sexist' Trigger Me Timbers WhatsApp group.

Allison Gwynne made the comments as members of the group joked about someone falling into filthy water.

She posted: "Kids in Denton have always enjoyed swimming in street rubbish/raw sewage'.

Allison Gwynne, as the Guardian has pointed out, is a significant local politician in her own right:

Allison Gwynne, who posted in the group about local children who have “always enjoyed swimming in street rubbish/raw sewage”, is understood to remain in her role as chair of the council’s overview panel – a position she is believed to have been awarded by Labour HQ.

When I heard that a Labour politician had talked of children swimming in sewage, my mind went back to a Conservative councillor from West Norfolk, Brian Long:

"When I spent my summers down at Northrepps and Cromer beach as a child, you could visibly see pipes that came out of the cliff side, staining all the way down and going straight into the sea," he said.

"Nobody was monitoring anything.

"We'd come out of the sea and have a cold shower to clean off before eating our sandwiches. I don't think anyone was harmed by it." 

Brian Long's remarks were silly rather than poisonous. He was looking back to a neverland where children had grazed knees, scrumped apples and got a clip round the ear from the local bobby. And, er, went swimming in sewage.

There was nothing in them of the contempt for people you see in Allison Gwynne. 

Class snobbery is alive and well on the right, but the left is more given to intellectual snobbery. Anyone who fails to share their political opinions is stupid. If you doubt me, just spend a few minutes browsing Bluesky or Twitter.

I'm reminded of the 1997 general election and the only time I have been canvassed by Labour here in Market Harborough. I said I didn't like the sound of their policies on workfare, at which I was told by the canvasser that she had a friend who was doing a PhD in the area and I was wrong.

My conclusion is that when a Conservative politician suggests it's OK for working-class children to swim in sewage, it may be out of a peculiar sense of nostalgia. When a Labour politician makes that suggestion, it's likely to be out of contempt.

Private Eye is still raising young men to run the British Empire

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that Private Eye's Literary Review is written by the idiot grandson of someone Ian Hislop was at prep school with.

Take his review, in the Eye last, of a biography of the man of letters Richard Blythe, who enjoyed a period of fame in the 1970s as the author of Akenfield:

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward flew into London with hopes of making Akenfield the movie. But Blythe preferred theatre director Peter Hall, who resisted suggestions to cast Jon Voight and shift the action to the US Midwest. 

In the end, his TV version featured an amateur local cast including Blythe himself playing a vicar and got 15m viewers in 1975. Private Eye paid tribute with Akenballs column and Princess Margaret declared herself a fan, one of the few who could understand the local dialect.

Behind the jocular claim that a regional accent is impossible to understand lies the ingrained belief that a Southern public school accent is normal and anything else is to be laughed at. 

As I said in an earlier post on this Eye column, if the author was aiming to hit the tone of a 17-year-old writing in his public school's magazine 50 years ago, then he scored a bull's eye. 

And behind the idea that Blythe's enthusiasms - liturgy, poetry, history, landscape - are something to be mocked, lies the fear that if a boy grows up with different views from his classmates, he will not be the right sort to take his place as a district commissioner in British West Africa.

Private Eye's investigations are a public service, but its humour and many of its columnists have been of a far lower standard for years.

Tuesday, February 11, 2025

The Making of Gone to Earth 2

A second behind-the-scenes video from the film shot by Powell and Pressburger in the Shropshire hills and released in 1950.

Local extras are paid in cash. David Farrar rides his horse. Jennifer Jones relaxes. Esmond Knight, playing her father, ropes her in to carry a coffin. Michael Powell helps manhandle a wind machine up a hill.

At the end, Cyril Cusack prepares to baptise Jones at Lords Hill Chapel above Snailbeach on the Stiperstones.

The music's nice, but they really should have used this.

Voters think Ed Davey would make a better prime minister than Farage or Badenoch


There's good news for the Liberal Democrats and their leader in a new opinion poll from YouGov: voters think Ed Davey would make a better prime minister than Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch. You can see the details above.

But as London Economic explains, the poll is bad news for the Conservative leader:

The findings were part of larger research carried out by YouGov looking at Badenoch’s favourability after 100 days as leader of the Conservatives.

Safe to say, the findings don’t make great reading for the leader of the opposition, Just under half of Tory voters (48 per cent) say she doesn’t look like a prime minister in waiting, and only a quarter think she has done a good job as leader of the party.

Meanwhile, twice as many people think she is untrustworthy than do trustworthy (39 per cent vs 19 per cent), and she tied with Farage when people were asked who would make the best prime minister (22 per cent for each).

Robert Jenrick has given few reasons for Tories to conclude that he would be any better at the job than Badenoch. So look out for calls for a pact with Reform - or even for Farage to become their new leader.

Monday, February 10, 2025

The surprisingly complicated history of Highbury and Islington

Jago Hazzard gives a thorough and entertaining history of this long-neglected, but now thriving, London station. I too have stood beside the Famous Cock and found that fragment of the original grand Victorian building.

The North London Railway's City terminus at Broad Street has disappeared into history, but in the early Eighties I was a regular user. 

The London Chess League matches, in which I played for the Richmond and Twickenham club, all took place at the nearby Bishopsgate Institute. When my game was over, I would catch a late train from Broad Street all the way home to Kew Gardens.

In case you don't believe me, here's the indicator board at Richmond in those days.

Anyway, you can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

The Joy of Six 1323

Hannah Forsyth surveys the history of the commercialisation of higher education and concludes: "Universities need to be democratic in both structure and purpose."

John Cromby complains that left-wing political commentators treat psychiatric diagnoses as uncontroversial: "This has the effect of reifying psychiatric diagnoses – of making them appear more real, more concrete, more legitimate. It also works to undermine critiques: of diagnosis, and of psychiatry more generally."

"G.K. Chesterton once wrote that journalism was, 'saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive'." A hundred-and-some years later that sounds rather quaint. Today, it’s asking three different sources with a vested interest in the matter whether Lord Jones is in fact dead, and posting their contradictory answers in real-time as you receive them." Martin Robbins argues that Donald Trump - and Robert Peston - have broken the news, and that it's probably time to rethink your information diet.

Many of the oligarchs who supported Hitler ended up in concentration camps, reports Timothy W. Ryback.

David Trotter reviews the new British Film Institute book on Ken Loach's Kes (1969): "Kes marked a conscious departure from the 'go-in-and-grab-it' style of Up the Junction. The aim now was to observe, sympathetically, at a distance, but still with a view to avoiding as far as possible any suspicion of extensive rehearsal."

"In the popular imagination, Birmingham isn’t thought of as an artistic bohemia. The city’s historic stereotype, judging by the backdrop to the likes of Peaky Blinders or the risible Tolkien biopic from 2019, is summed up by no-nonsense men bashing iron in huge factories, often to a heavy metal soundtrack." But there's more to the city than that, says Jon Neale as he looks at the role of the Arts and Crafts movement in its history.

Generate your own Penguin Classics cover

 


It's easy to do and it's here.

Sunday, February 09, 2025

Was Lucy Letby let down? What happens next?

In another of his informative videos, Alan Robertshaw looks at how Lucy Letby's case now stands and at the role of the expert witness more generally.

Endangered frog dads travel 7,000 miles to 'give birth'





 BBC News hops away with out Headline of the Day Award.

Jethro Tull: Pibroch (Cap in Hand)

It's the summer of 1977. England are regaining the Ashes under Mike Brearley, and Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull is the best album I know or can imagine.

When I play it loudly at night with my bedroom windows open, I can hear a pair of class 20s  on the Market Harborough to Northampton line. They're slogging up the bank to Great Oxendon with a coal train bound for London.

Yes, it was all a long time ago. Over the years I must have featured most of the tracks on Songs from the Wood here, but not this one. At eight and a half minutes, it represents Tull's blend of folk rock straining to become something more pretentious.

And 'Pibroch'?

Pibroch, piobaireachd or ceòl mòr is an art music genre associated primarily with the Scottish Highlands that is characterised by extended compositions with a melodic theme and elaborate formal variations. Strictly meaning 'piping' in Scottish Gaelic, piobaireachd has for some four centuries been music of the great Highland bagpipe.

Saturday, February 08, 2025

The Joy of Six 1322

"Like in all families, there will be differences and even outright conflicts; still, its members feel the bonds of their family resemblance, orienting their ideas and inclinations, both domestically and on the world stage, to a shared ideological purpose." Victor Shammas on the growing club of far-right, hardline nationalist and fascist political leaders that is working hard to transform the world.

"Any assessment of the Reform-Tory battle leads inexorably to the conclusion that Badenoch has not only failed to alleviate her party’s existential predicament - she has deepened it. The Conservative Party’s polling since the July general election tracks on aggregate graphs as a bell curve. The party gained at Labour’s expense during its protracted leadership contest. It peaked as Badenoch assumed the mantle of leader. It has declined since." Josh Self foresees panic in Conservative ranks.

Ana Isabel Nunes writes in praise of legislative theatre: "A form of community-based theatre that gives participants an opportunity to actively explore, analyse and transform their lives through drama and roleplay."

"English cricket has always been a brutal thing, cruel even to its elite players. Mike Brearley’s remark that the Bazball attitude is a reaction to depression is still the most interesting thing anyone has said about it. ... Bazball seems basically to be about being in a group and feeling good. It’s deeply relatable. Don’t you want some of that too?" Barney Ronay on Bazball as a death cult.

Taylor Parkes enjoys The Professionals: "What The Sweeney is to worn-out mid-1970s Britain (tin ashtrays, floral headscarves, bent-faced men in grey slacks and platform shoes kicking each other in the bollocks), so The Professionals is to the very late 70s and very early 80s: huge microwaves, Harrington jackets, Eddie Kidd in a neon nightclub drinking Harp from a glass with a handle."

A London Inheritance visits North Woolwich: "A station, pier, pleasure gardens and causeway."