Norfolk Tory accused of damaging walls at 15th century castle

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The judges have been hard at work, so I can announce that today's Headline of the Day Award goes to the Eastern Daily Press.

Yes: Wonderous Stories

Deeply unfashionable though prog rock is, this still sounds lovely.

The Joy of Six 1461

"The government continues to frame the cost-of-living crisis as a problem that can be solved largely through domestic policy choices. Announcements focus on price caps, fare freezes and measures like free school meals and breakfast clubs to ease pressure on family budgets. But these treat the symptoms, not causes." We need to recognise that geopolitics is driving the cost-of-living crisis, argues Anna McShane.

Harriet Walter on the effect of the government's misbegotten treatment of Palestine Action: "By accusing them of being part of a terrorist organisation rather than a protest movement, the government ensures that these people who broke machinery in factories or sprayed paint on aeroplanes or helped to plan these actions can be seen not as ordinary people who are innocent until found guilty of ordinary crimes such as criminal damage or violent disorder, but as outside forces that are deeply threatening to social order and our ways of life."

Chaminda Jayanetti says falling school rolls are not just a problem for London.

"His fabulously wry first wife, Eileen, described his landmark 1941 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as ‘a little book explaining how to be a Socialist, though Tory’. Even in his most revolutionary moods, Orwell was very specific about what should stay and what should go. Small wonder that he found fault with every version of socialism except his own." Dorian Lynskey reviews two recent books on George Orwell.

"She became a byword for the brutal and controlling ways of the ‘Hollywood factory’ and its tendency to swallow up child stars. You’ve probably heard that MGM encouraged Garland’s use of drugs – ‘pep pills’ to get her to work and suppress her appetite, downers to help her sleep – only to criticise her for being unreliable when she became an addict who sometimes couldn’t show up for work. Eventually, the studio dropped her. She wasn’t yet thirty." Bee Wilson on Judy Garland.

Peter Adams has good news. The Devon Heritage Orchard at RHS Garden Rosemoor is preserving traditional apple varieties, some of which were on the point of disappearing.

Leicestershire pensioner fined £225 by council for flicking snot out of van window

Ashby Hub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of crime in Coalville.

The judges were, however, concerned by the story below it. The first sentence states that the pensioner was fined for "snotting out his van window".

If one accepts that "to snot" is a verb, then

snotting out a window 

and 

snotting out of a window

are surely two different things, the former being far more newsworthy than the latter.

Politicians give private schools more leeway than state schools

Backbenchers do not hesitate to voice their opinions about state schools and ministers do not hesitate to intervene. It's as though having lost confidence in their ability to do anything about the economy, politicians have lighted upon education as an alternative arena.

But it is only state education that politicians comment on. Private schools are given a free pass.

Here's the education minister Josh MacAlister replying to a Westminster debate, occasioned by an online petition calling for schools to move to a four-day week, with the remaining days each being an hour longer:

It is essential that we do not compromise the great progress that has been made over recent years by reducing the amount of time that pupils spend at school, either in total or spread over a five-day week. Evidence, including research by the Education Policy Institute published in 2024, has shown that additional time in school, when used effectively, can have a positive impact on pupil attainment, particularly for the most vulnerable. 

Schools need enough time to deliver the curriculum to a high standard while ensuring appropriate breaks and opportunities for wider enrichment. Shortening the school week would upset that balance, making it harder for pupils to secure the knowledge and skills they need to go on to lead rich and fulfilling lives. 

If the evidence is so clear, why does no one question private schools' practice of having longer holidays than state schools?

You may point to the facts that private schools often have longer school days, some even have Saturday morning lessons, but those are just the sort of trade offs the petitioners for a four-day week want state schools to be able to make.

As this is England is suppose the answer is class. Schools that cater for the children of the upper classes are thought to be inevitably superior so no one much questions their practices, and there is also a feeling that such parents, and even such children, are more to be trusted.

I've noted before how 

private schools now trade ("children can get muddy") on their freedom from the straitjacket imposed by the Gradgrinds at the Department for Education.

Get muddy in a state school and you risk being put into isolation for a week.

Why Plato Matters Now: Angie Hobbs in conversation with Jon Hawkins and Peter West

When I told my favourite teacher at school that I was interested in studying philosophy at university, one of the books he lent me was Plato's Republic. It was a brilliant choice because it encompassed so many topics and the debates it contained were still relevant.

At university I found that one of the thinkers I was most attracted to, Karl Popper, had devoted the first volume of his wartime critique of totalitarian thinking, The Open Society and Its Enemies, to a critique of the Republic. 

Popper was not the first thinker of his era to treat Plato in this way. The future Labour cabinet minister Richard Crossman had published his Plato Today in 1937.

In this, if you will, trialogue, Professor Angie Hobbs brings out the appeal of Plato's approach to discussion and, in particular, the relevance today of his analysis of democracy and demagoguery.

And I value the way Classical ethical discussion of how we should live our lives encompasses questions that our modern talk of state-guaranteed rights tends to pass over.

I'm also struck by the similarities between the training Plato sets out for his ruling class in the Republic and the education that the English upper classes used to inflict upon their sons.

Wera Hobhouse condemns "shocking and irresponsible" scale of drilling for oil in protected maritime areas

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The United Kingdom is the world’s worst offender when it comes to letting fossil fuel companies drill in protected areas. 

An investigation coordinated by the Environmental Investigative Forum and European Investigative Collaborations has found that the UK has issued production licences that overlap with 13,500km² of protected areas – an area nearly nine times the size of Greater London. 

Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and a member of the Commons energy security and net zero select committee, told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that these findings are "deeply troubling" and that the UK's place on the list is "shocking and irresponsibile": 

"Protected areas exist for a reason, and allowing oil and gas exploration within them completely undermines their purpose, putting irreplaceable natural habitats at risk. 

"The revelations of this investigation must weigh heavily on the government as it considers the Rosebank decision. Rosebank may not sit directly within a protected area, but the pipeline built to serve it cuts through a highly sensitive marine protected area, posing clear risks to our marine environment."

Bridging Loughborough Gap to create an 18-mile heritage railway

I once described the the Great Central Railway – Nottingham as 

a bit of a mystery to those of us in Leicestershire. Rather like the Eastern Roman Empire.

Since then I've visited Constantinople and written three posts about it: Rushcliffe Halt, Above the Brush Works and Ruddington Fields.

The GCR in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire are separated by 500 yards of missing bridges and embankments at Loughborough. In this video Tim Dunn looks at the project, already well under way, to close that gap.

When it's done, there will be an 18-mile heritage railway running from the edge of Leicester to a transport museum near Nottingham.

Chelsea and Scotland legend Eddie McCreadie has died

I searched for a video of Eddie McCreadie scoring a goal, only to find that his foul on Billy Bremner in the 1970 FA Cup Final replay is everywhere. So here it is instead.

It's here because McCreadie has died at the age of 85. I think that leaves Ron Harris, David Webb and Charlie Cooke as the only members of that victorious Cup Final team who are still with us. How old the world has grown.

BBC News describes McCreadie's playing career:

Former Scotland and Chelsea player Eddie McCreadie, who was once hailed by Tommy Docherty as the best left-back in Europe and went on to manage the London club, has died at the age of 85.

Born in Glasgow, McCreadie scored Chelsea's winning goal in the 1965 League Cup final against Leicester City and helped the Blues lift the FA Cup five years later with an extra-time, replay victory over Leeds United.

One of his 23 Scotland caps came in a famous 3-2 victory over England at Wembley a year after the hosts had lifted the World Cup there.

And his brief but glorious spell as Chelsea manager:

After retiring from playing, McCreadie joined Chelsea's coaching staff in 1974, with Ron Suart's side sliding towards life back in the second tier.

The Scot took over from the departing Suart in April 1975 and, although he could not prevent relegation, he rebuilt the side around 18-year-old midfielder Ray Wilkins and took Chelsea back up to the First Division in 1977.

However, he left before the start of the new season after a row with chairman Brian Mears, expressing surprise that his offer to resign after being refused a company car was accepted.

The Sun reported McCreadie's happy return visit to the club in 2017 after more than 40 years. I can recall him saying something along the lines of "If I'd known I was this popular I'd have come back sooner."

To end with that foul, the way the referee waves play on after McCreadie had kicked Billy Bremner in the head in the Chelsea box tells you what football was like in this era.

And the fact that, despite the, er, robust play of McCreadie and Ron Harris, most neutrals wanted Chelsea to win, tells you a lot about what Don Revie's Leeds were like.

"Fight for the soul of our country": Josh Barbarinde profiled in the New Statesman

During his successful campaign for the Liberal Democrat presidency, Josh Barbarinde's supporters emphasised his unparalleled ability to gain media coverage. They always sounded a little optimistic in a world where not even the party leader gets as much attention as he deserves, but Josh is indeed the subject of a substantial article by Rachel Cunliffe on the New Statesman website.

Much of the piece is about Josh personally, but then his compelling backstory is part of what attracts the media. And it does eventually get on to Lib Dem strategy:

As the Lib Dems gear up for 2026, this is how they are framing the conversation. Brexit is back on the agenda, with a renewed debate about the customs union as a way to spur economic growth and tackle the cost of living crisis. Electoral reform is high up on the list too, as the electorate fractures across too many parties for first-past-the-post to be able to cope with. Both are subjects on which the Lib Dems have campaigned vigorously, and even won parliamentary votes with the help of Labour rebels.

But if neither of those subjects can be relied upon to capture the public’s imagination, there is another option: presenting the party as the alternative to the narrative of division and nationalism seized upon by Reform. As flags pop up on roundabouts across the country like mushrooms sprouting over a lawn, the visible manifestation of a deeper decay, the Lib Dems, with their 72 MPs and message of “hopeful nostalgia”, want to be the antidote.

Asked what his personal role in this is, Josh replies:

"To gee-up our party to fight for the soul of our country."

The change isn't on the Lib Dem website yet, but the party constitution was amended at last autumn's conference to say that the president "shall be the voice of party members". This suggests that Josh, like every party president before him, will interpret the role in his own idiosyncratic way.

Perhaps the Lib Dem presidency is still a victim of its history. When it became clear the first leader of the Liberal Democrats would be a former Liberal (Alan Beith or Paddy Ashdown), the important-sounding but ill-defined role of president was created so it could be occupied by a leading former SDP member.

Powell and Pressburger's most bizarre moments

The British Film Institute's blurb on YouTube says:

In this video essay director Will Webb highlights scenes from Powell and Pressburger films – including The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I'm Going and Black Narcissus – that tilt us off-balance, shaking what we thought we knew about the world's that one of cinema's greatest filmmaking partnerships created.

Don't worry. It also includes something from A Canterbury Tale – the first shot of the glue man here is really a boy, to make him look further away on the studio set. We also see Jennifer Jones on the Stiperstones in Gone to Earth.

The Joy of Six 1460

"Governments and taxpayers fund universities not because they are efficient 'businesses', but because they are essential public institutions. They generate research that underpins economic growth and cultural life. They educate professionals on whom society depends. They are meant to be spaces where difficult questions can be asked and discussed. They are fundamental institutions in a democratic society." Monica Franco-Santos fears that in trying to 'fix' universities, we are quietly unmaking them. 

Emma John reminds us that England has ruthlessly privatised cricket, while Australia still embraces it with constant public displays of affection: "In the parks and pubs, cricket remains the dominant summer pastime and subject of conversation. In the Grampians of western Victoria, whose peaks are better known for their world-class climbing, I constantly witnessed pick-up games in the backyards and paddocks of the cafes and restaurants, or mums and dads tossing up hit-mes to tiny toddlers holding miniature bats."

Lee Elliot Major on a Cambridge college's plans to target elite private schools in its student recruitment: "Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a 'slap in the face' for their state-educated undergraduates."

"I first watched the film this year, on moving to the West Midlands, but I’ve been haunted by screenshots of the production circulating on social media for a decade: a burnt severed hand looming over the Worcestershire countryside, a terrifying claymation-style succubus sitting on a bed, an androgynous William Blake-inspired golden angel reflected in a lake." Samuel McIlhagga discusses the enduring influence of David Rudkin's 1974 television play Penda’s Fen.

"Three women are being released from Holloway Prison on the same morning. They come from vastly different backgrounds and each has plans for what they want to do on their first day of freedom, but they have all agreed to meet for dinner that evening. This simple story, told with warmth and empathy, follows the lives of these women during the span of that one day and the touching and tragic events that take place before and after this dinner." Silver Scenes finds Turn the Key Softly (1953) is an underrated British gem.

Steve Parissien charts the rise and fall of Babycham.

Hurdy-gurdy player unveils plans to restore Norfolk's former whaling HQ

The Eastern Daily Press wins our prestigious Headline of the Day Award.

I have been asked by the judges to emphasise that they are sure the hurdy-gurdy player in question is nothing the like the vengeful ghost of a Gypsy child.

While I'm at it, the headline comes via Yahoo! because the Press has changed it to something more prosaic since the story went up.

And the music in the video, which is the very recording used in Lost Hearts, is not of a hurdy-gurdy at all. It's a variety of zither from the Vosges region of France.

Reader's voice: You don't think you're in danger of taking this feature too seriously, do you?

Dixon Unity School in Leeds adjusts uniform policy to allow students to wear coats outdoors during cold snap

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The Yorkshire Evening Post (or "Eenie Po!" as the newspaper sellers used to shout in York) wins our Headline of the Day Award.

One of the crustier judges was heard to remark:

"You mark my words, Colonel, this is a very slippery slope. Allow the children to wear coats in winter, and before you know it you're abolishing the school leopard."

Gypsy: Changes Coming

The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay.

Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result that it wasn't a hit.

The song's writer, Robin Pizer, says today it was merely "a loose commentary on current events during those years of global demonstrations".

I'm told that after this Gypsy turned more to a country rock sound - in fact, there's already a Neil Young flavour to Changes Coming.

It's hard to discover much about Gypsy online, perhaps because of confusion with an American band with the same name. The best article I have come across is one on Jazz Rock Soul.

And as I said in the Legay post, Robin Pizer, who was the band's singer, is still writing songs. Here he is on the discovery of Richard III.

The Joy of Six 1459

"For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth – and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists ... many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments." To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the TheoBros, says Kiera Butler.

Martin Barrow finds that Labour's reforms of the care system are an admission that privatisation of children's homes and foster care is here to stay: "Now responsibility for where children in care live is to be removed from local councils altogether and handed to a regional body with tenuous local roots tasked with negotiating the best financial terms with private providers."

"We talk endlessly about 'local pride', yet whenever regions like Cornwall, the north east, or Yorkshire try to express that pride politically or administratively, someone in Westminster clears their throat and steers the conversation back to something safer: 'Englishness'. As if being Cornish, Geordie, or Yorkshire were a distraction rather than part of the story." Regional identity still matters, argues John Hall, but without power and respect risks being reduced to a souvenir.

Eleanor Grant reports that lawfare is stifling student politics at Oxford: "One scandal after another, each matched by an internal, quasi-legal tribunal, has now threatened to sink the Oxford Union and a series of student articles chronicling these escapades have mysteriously vanished after short-lived publication."

Casmilus watches Rock Follies, the Seventies television series about an all-woman band that starred Charlotte Cornwell, Rula Lenska and Julie Covington.

"It’s got one of the most famous opening lines of any Murdoch novel, which takes a lot from Austen: 'Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.'" Miles Leeson chooses Iris Murdoch's five best novels.

Steam to the Sea! The Southwold Railway Story

This is from Malcolm Saville's introduction to Sea Witch Comes Home, his story inspired by the East Coast floods of 1953:

Every mile of this unusual coast and the lovely country behind it is worth exploring. Southwold, with its white lighthouse towering over its streets of flint and red brick houses, is waiting for you to discover – and so is the harbour at the mouth of the River Blyth a mile away. Between the river and the town are flat marshlands which were flooded when the sea broke through the defences not many years ago.

But the narrow-gauge Southwold Railway closed as early as 1929, and Saville's characters catch the bus from Halesworth to reach the town.

This engaging video from the Rediscovering Lost Railways YouTube channel shows what remains of the line and the efforts that are being made to prevent it being forgotten. And the Southwold Railway Trust has plans to reopen it one day.

The abandoned lead mine in Crystal Palace Park

Photo by Jacqueline Banerjee

Like W.H. Auden, I have a thing about abandoned lead mines. So I was intrigued to learn that there is one in Crystal Palace Park.

Subterranea Briannica explains:

It is well known that Crystal Palace Park includes a number of Victorian dinosaur models, arranged in groups around the lower lake. Many of these species were recently discovered although not all the models are nowadays thought to be strictly accurate. Less well known is that alongside these animals there is a replica geological strata.

This was built at the same time as an educational feature and was constructed from the true strata it was based on from Ashover in Derbyshire. Coal measures, limestone and millstone grit are part of the reconstruction. In addition, a 3/4 scale lead mine was constructed behind the face in carboniferous limestone; in the 19th century visitors could tour the mine. Inside they would find stalactites and lead ore veins.

The mine, along with the geological strata, is now grade I listed alongside the dinosaurs. No access is possible at it is allegedly unsafe (although the local authority responsible for the site was initially unaware of its existence when enquiries were made).

The Victorian Web also has an article on this feature, from which I have taken the photograph above.

When Bonkers Hall was a fashionable spa

Nevill Holt Hall has been many things: the family home of the Cunards, a notoriously abusive prep school, the chief model for Bonkers Hall. But in the 18th century it was a fashionable spa.

This feature from the Leicester Daily Mercury (Friday 21 September 1934) tells the story

When Society Descended on a Leicestershire Spa 

The Doctor Bottled its Waters and Let His Imagination Go

In a wood in one of the highest parts of Leicestershire, where wild pigeons seek the topmost branches of fir trees, rabbits scamper unheeding of alien eyes through an autumn carpet of leaves, and an earthy tang brings a curious peace to traffic-jangled nerves.

That is the sylvan setting of an ancient spa where once Society leaders used to flock to sip the health-giving waters.

You will find it Neville Holt, a few miles from Market Harborough, but its fame died with the crinoline. 

To-day it is a mere trickle as a result of a dry summer, and its crumbling brickwork is a danger adventurous boys of the neighbouring Neville Holt School.

How the spa became nationally famous is a curious story. In 1728 a tenant farmer of the owner of the estate of Neville Holt Italian Count Migliorucci, dug a pond in Holt Wood where his cattle could slake their thirst.

Much to his dismay, however, after all his hard work, the cattle would not drink the water. 

Curious as to the reason, he had the water analysed and it was found to contain a medicinal mineral known as nitro-alluminous.

He imparted this information to Count Migliorucci, who caused an arch to be built over the spring, making it a grotto of two compartments.

A Doctor Short of Sheffield came to hear of this wonderful spa, which was found to cure all inflammatory diseases, and as result of energetic advertising in London and elsewhere it soon became famous. 

Society and fashion hurried to the spot in search of a cure for their ailments, either real or imaginary and a road was constructed from Neville Holt to the wood for them to ride in their carriages to the spa. A search is now necessary to find the road, which is moss and weed covered through long disuse.

The water was bottled and sent to London for sale. Dr Short, who was actually something of a knave, advertised on a pamphlet that the spa waters could cure among other things "enlarged liver through excess of drinking anaemia and even corns."

His illustration of some of the cures effected could scarcely be credited by even the most gullible modern people.

The popularity of the slow-flowing health-spring waned after a few years. Perhaps the doctor’s patients found him out! 

The pamphlets are in the possession of Mr. F.S. Phillips, headmaster of Neville Holt School, and form a curious link with yesteryear.

F.S. Phillips, it turned out, was no more to be believed than was Dr Short of Sheffield. (There's a heavy content warning - child abuse - for that link, particularly the comments below the story.)

The Joy of Six 1458

"Sounding like a mob boss when speaking at Trump’s press conference at the weekend, secretary of state Marco Rubio told the world that the message of the Venezuelan intervention was that when this president says he is serious about wanting something, he gets it. The problem for Europe is that the one thing that this President covets above all is Greenland." Simon Nixon argues that Donald Trump’s "Donroe Doctrine" poses an existential threat to NATO and Europe.

Cliff Mitchell accuses Northamptonshire's two Reform-run councils of ignoring the reality of climate change across the county: "As predicted by climate scientists, Northamptonshire is seeing drier summers as well as wetter winters. Droughts are happening more quickly and becoming more intense. When combined with frequent winter floods, this leads to soil damage and erosion, reduced crop yields, and impacts on livestock grazing and biodiversity."

"It might seem silly or not worthy of attention to look into the Trump administration’s aesthetic decisions, all of the gold ornamentations smeared all over the Oval Office and ballrooms and Arc de Trumps, and etc, but the aesthetic is a way to make the political physically present. It’s a way to rally people’s energies. It’s a way to make it seem like things are changing and like Trump is keeping his promises when he’s actually not." Erin Thompson says Trump’s gilded White House makeover is all about power.

Robin Eagles discusses his work identifying Black voters in 18th-century elections.

"The BFI website suggests that Hell is a City is 'unaccountably overlooked; and suggests that it was ‘as important a film as Room at the Top’ ... They put this down to 'critical snobbery towards its solidly commercial director Val Guest' as well the fact that it was one of the very few non-horror films made by Hammer Studios, not known for its high-brow output." David Rudlin watches Hell is a City, which was filmed  largely on location in Manchester and Oldham in the autumn of 1959. 

Lynne About Loughborough goes in search of the town's forgotten Football League club.

Following the River Westbourne from Kilburn to Chelsea

It's time for another walk with John Rogers, and it's one of the kind I enjoy the most: a walk that follows one of London's lost rivers.

John describes it in his YouTube blurb as a:

walking tour of London’s lost river Westbourne from Kilburn to Chelsea via Maida Vale, Paddington, Bayswater, Knightsbridge, and Belgravia. The Westbourne is one of London’s most celebrated lost rivers and wasn’t fully buried until the mid-1800s. Consequently its course is very well documented and is famously carried over Sloane Square tube station in a pipe that can be seen from the platform.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and he blogs at The Lost Byway. 

It's the lack of taxes on land that's causing small farmers a problem

I used to believe that the most damaging intellectual errors were essentialism and reification. These days I'm inclined to think that alliteration trumps them both.

Over the holidays I saw two Liberal Democrat MPs calling for the total abolition of the "Family Farm Tax" or the "Unfair Family Farm Tax". And the Welsh Lib Dems have just called for that too.

Here's David Chadwick, the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, quoted in the Abergavenny Chronicle:

"The Liberal Democrats were the first to call out and oppose the unfair family farm tax in last year's budget and we have been proud to stand alongside our Welsh farming communities to campaign against it ever since."

"This is about fairness and security, if we undermine Welsh farming, then we also undermine our ability to provide the country with the food we need to keep us secure in an uncertain world and to build a healthy nation.

"Despite this welcome change, many Welsh family farms will still find themselves crippled, with incomes barely at minimum wage levels. The Liberal Democrats still believe this unfair tax should be scrapped in full and will be submitting amendments in the new year to try to do so."

 David puts his finger on farmers' central complaint. It's that the value of farmland has lost all connection with the income that can be derived from it. This means that small farms fear they would have to sell land or buildings to pay inheritance tax, though even before the government's recent concessions, farmers had been granted significant exemptions.

But why has the value of farmland loss any connection with farm incomes? The answer is that the generous treatment of landholdings in recent decades has led to land being used as a tax shelter. So it's the absence of inheritance or other taxes on land that has caused the problem farmers most complain about.

Here's Bio-Waste Spreader in the new Private Eye:

Has the government really "climbed down" or "U-turned", as opposition parties claim? The tax was never intended to raise much revenue (about £500m per annum) but instead act as a deterrent to ultra-high net worth individuals (think James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson) buying farmland because it was exempt from IHT [Inheritance Tax]. 

On farmland estates where the net worth of more than £2.5m, a 20 per cent IHT charge will continue to apply from April (the Treasury estimates that raising the tax threshold will only cost the government about £130m). So the ending of farmland's exemption from IHT will help deter super wealthy individuals from driving up prices to the point where real farmers can't afford to buy land. An initiative the Eye has consistently supported.

And, for what it's worth, it's one this blog supports too.

Julie Covington: Only Women Bleed

Julie Covington's version of this Alice Cooper song reminds me of a foggy day at Rugby station just before Christmas 1977, but I realise that may not be true for everybody.

That year Covington had a number one with Don't Cry for me Argentina and starred in the highly regarded TV series Rock Follies. 

Arrest after £5k found stuffed in man's underpants

BBC News, as so often these days, wins our Headline of the Day Award.