The three young men – born in 1970 or 1971 – had certain similarities in their personal histories. Hannan and Carswell spent their childhoods in faraway, politically disturbed countries as the children of British expatriates: Hannan’s family had a poultry farm in Peru, while Carswell’s parents were doctors in Uganda. Hannan and Reckless boarded at Marlborough before Oxford. Carswell went to Charterhouse before UEA.
To see them as a social ‘type’ might be stretching it; nevertheless they share a flashy certitude and know-all bumptiousness that might stem from their ambition, as outsiders in the muted social codes of England’s ancient universities and more expensive public schools, to make their mark.
Hannan, after all, was the Vote Leave campaigner who stood on a desk and recited the St Crispin’s Day speech to his colleagues when the news came through of Leave’s victory, and perhaps to do that it helps to have been raised as a little Briton in Peru.Whatever the truth of that, Hannan appears determined to make life less comfortable for Mr Gruber.
Later that afternoon a delegation peers - with Lord Pantsdown (sic) and Lord Newby, the Lib Dem leader in the Lords, reportedly among them - went to see Farron. Various versions of the meeting exist, with some sources insisting that "exceptional pressure" was placed on Farron. ...
What was the sensational leverage the peers put on Farron to force his departure? No one would answer Lord Gnome's queries, and the Lib Dem press office insisted the whole story of the peers' visit was "just not true" - though a significant number of well-placed sources in the party beg to differ.
This locomotive belongs to a class introduced in 1952, one of the first diesel types mass-produced by British Railways. D2298 itself was not built until October 1960, however, becoming one of a class that was to total 141 (D2200 - D2340; later known as class 04). The locomotives were ordered by BR from Drewry Car Co., who in turn had them built by other contractors. This particular machine was built by Robert Stephenson and Hawthorns of Newcastle, their works No. 8157 and Drewry No. 2679.
D2298 was sent new to Lincoln and spent most of its time on BR working from there or Boston or Colwick depots. On 7 July 1968 the locomotive was sent to Gateshead but was withdrawn from service in December of that year after only eight years work. This was due to a change of BR freight policy, 'wagon load' traffic was gradually phased out in favour of block trains which do not require sorting in marshalling yards. Thus hundreds of engines like D2298 were withdrawn after very short working lives.
D2298 was purchased from British Rail in April 1969 by the Derwent Valley Light Railway. ... At the DVLR, D2298 became No. 1 and received the name Lord Wenlock after the first chairman of the company. In 1982 it worked the very last passenger train on the DVLR, an enthusiasts special, afterwards being put up for sale. ...
In October 1982, No. 1 arrived at Quainton, having been purchased by a QRS member. It was put straight into service as No. 1 Lord Wenlock, but has since been repainted in the original BR green livery as D2298.I have omitted a garbled history of the DVLR from that quotation.
The invention of the ATM helped make it much easier to get cash out of the bank. This fall in shoe leather costs for technological reasons offset part of the normal cost of inflation, which helped make people less intolerant of it. Is it really a coincidence that inflation began to rise as the cash point machine, as popularized by Mr Varney, became more widely used? I think not.
There’s a second effect of its spread, however, which has only become appreciated in light of the rise in behavioural economics.
The easier availability of cash has reduced one constraint on our spending. Before Mr Varney used the cash point, impulse buying of good or sessions down the pub were constrained by the fact that cash was hard to obtain. After that fateful day, however, the constraint came down.But I am afraid Reg Varney's culpability does not stop there.
His portrayal of Stan Butler did much to perpetuate the image of the 1970s worker as a bone-idle work-dodger; we forget today just how enormously popular On the Buses was. And this in turn might subconsciously have contributed to the popularity of Thatcherism. How many of those who, when asked by Tories in 1979 whether the working class had become too big for its boots, conjured up a picture of Stan Butler and so voted for Thatcher?
Even at the time, Blakey was my favourite character. And I don't know if it is age, my experience of public transport or our post-Thatcher society, but I cannot help noticing today that the passengers counted for nothing in On the Buses.
Just at Alexander Mackenderick, the director of Whisky Galore!, sympathised with Captain Waggett, the representative of English officialdom who attempted to round up the whisky rescued from the wreck of the S.S. Cabinet Minister, so I now see Blakey as the hero of On the Buses and its spin-off films.
Most of the people I was on the council with have died and had roads named after them.But I did not expect to come across two of them in the churchyard at Kelmarsh on Saturday.
Gerontophobia unites Borisites concerned for Davis’s wellbeing and Brexit-minded haters of “senile dinosaur” Michael Heseltine, with progressive young humorists and their below-the-line supporters, for whom ("fat" and "ugly" being trickier to deploy these days) the insult that cannot be improved by the prefix "old" has yet to be invented.
It must also be admitted that Ming could sometimes appear a rather elderly 66 - quite understandably, in view of his illness a few years ago. But the way he was ridiculed for his age tells us something unpleasant about modern British society. It suggests we no longer have any respect for age, wisdom or dignity.
I think in particular of the Mock the Week show that went out in September just after our Conference. This is the BBC2 programme where five leading comedians and Russell Howard improvise comedy based on the week‘s headlines.
For 10 or 15 minutes they unleashed a tirade against Ming, all of it based on the assumption there is something inherently funny about being old. If they had attacked a woman or someone who was gay or black in the same way they would never have worked for the BBC again.All of which is a way of saying that I am very happy that Vince is standing for the party leadership.
One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words "Socialism" and "Communism" draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, "Nature Cure" quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.So wrote George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier.
Despite critical acclaim and a cult fanbase, the Boo Radleys were still largely unknown to the general public by the time the Britpop phenomenon broke into the mainstream in 1995.
This changed when the band released the upbeat single "Wake Up Boo!" in the spring of that year. It made the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 9. The single remained on the chart for two months, by far the band's longest run for any of its singles ... [Martin] Carr describes writing the song watching The Big Breakfast after a night on acid.The Boo Radleys were around well before Britpop, but this reminds us that the phenomenon happened under John Major, not Tony Blair.
It is a grim story only coming light after the former Bishop of Gloucester was successfully prosecuted and jailed in 2015 after a career of physically and sexually abusing and exploiting boys and young men, including some who were particularly vulnerable.He goes on:
Equally culpable, though not an abuser, is Michael Ball, his twin brother and former Bishop of Truro, who ran a campaign after his brother had been given a caution for abusing Todd in 1993 to rehabilitate him using every type of pressure he could find.
None of the authorities, with the exception of Sussex police, come out of this well, Neither the Church, Lambeth Palace, Gloucestershire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service. It is litany of failed responsibility among those in power and also the misuse of power and reputation to protect the powerful.
Peter Ball comes out of this report as a manipulative, sadomasochistic predator who appears to have used every trick to entice young men from public schoolboys to priests and damaged and vulnerable youths coming to the Church for his own sexual gratification. It is not clear even now at 85 whether he shows any remorse as he refused to co-operate with Dame Moira’s inquiry.One worrying aspect of this affair was the way George Carey, then the Archbishop of Canterbury involved himself in it.
Lord Carey emerges as a very weak character in this sorry saga. On the one level he is aware of Ball’s transgressions and tries to investigate, on another level he intervenes with the aim, whatever he says in a letter to Gloucestershire’s chief constable, to prevent a public trial of a Bishop by just issuing a caution.
In the end this is done in return for his resignation as bishop. It is here that Gloucestershire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, which now admits its mistake, are totally at fault.Hencke goes on speculate on whether Ball would today be able to be openly gay or whether he was always a predatory abuser.
I am not a believer in conspiracy theories - you don't have to be when evidence of the extraordinary unwillingness of the establishment to see Bishop Ball suffer for his crimes is openly available.
"Ed Balls was in the year below me. I lent him my O-level history notes and he never gave them back."
We need to understand why so many people get frustrated with remote power – something that Liberals should understand. The European Union is too often dysfunctional and sclerotic, yet progressive internationalists have been reluctant to admit this. While we have always recognised the need for reform of the EU, the Liberal Democrats have been perceived as being too tolerant of its failings.And:
I want the Liberal Democrats to use our potentially pivotal position in parliament to force cross-party working on the profound challenges we face: not just the Brexit negotiations, but how we secure the future of the NHS and our care system.And:
In my work as a health minister in the coalition, I became more and more outraged by the way people with mental ill health and those with learning disability and autism are treated by the state. So often I heard stories of people being ignored, not listened to.
The dad of a patient at Winterbourne View (the care home where abuse of residents was exposed by Panorama), who told me he felt guilty because there was nothing he could do for his son: no one would listen to his complaints. The teenage girl with autism held in an institution for over two years, treated like an animal. No one would listen to her family’s pleas. I helped get her out and she now leads a good life – but one minister can’t intervene in every case.I suppose the reason Norman is not standing is that he feels his views on Europe are too far from the party mainstream.
When I was an undergraduate at York, the bus from the university into the city used to cross a bridge over an overgrown single-track railway.
This was the Derwent Valley Light Railway, which in those days ran from Layerthorpe in the city for four miles out to Dunnington. When it opened in 1913 it had run almost to Selby: in 1981 it was to close altogether.
One day I walked the line to Dunnington and back. Though it shows track that had long gone by then, the video above gives a good idea of the way the line looked in its final years. So decrepit was it that I was surprised when I met a very mixed freight train coming the other way.That video has disappeared from YouTube, but I have found three photographs I took that day. I think it was in 1981, the last year of the DVR's operation.
A fun filled family day to celebrate wildflower meadows and their wealth of wildlife. FREE ENTRY, everyone welcome!
We have a packed programme of activities planned. These include guided meadow walks, family bug hunts, and the launch of the new Stiperstones Butterfly Trail.
Try your hand at scything, or show off your scything skills in the competition arena, along with hay bale lobbing and hayrick building. Alternatively, head for the arts & crafts tent where you’ll find lots of hay to play and create with.Full details on the Stiperstones & Cordon Hill Country Landscape Partnership Scheme site.
[Later. The BBC kindly tweeted a clip of this exchange, so I have now embedded it above.]An angry exchange on today's show from @HeatherWheeler and @tobyperkinsmp over #grenfelltower #bbcsp. Full debate: https://t.co/k93WHuja6g pic.twitter.com/SUZsLPAq05— BBC Sun Pol Show EM (@BBCSunPolEM) June 18, 2017
"Well they would. The word is in the clue (sic) 'union', mate. That's the clue."Note that Wheeler was so angry at the mention of the firefighters' union that she could not get her words in the right order.
Watch: Incredible moment @LondonFire Brigade fightfighters leaving #GrenfellTower brought to tears as they are clapped out by community.@LBC pic.twitter.com/ynEXUtCOpF— Vincent McAviney (@Vinny_LBC) June 18, 2017
So instead I talked to a council workman who was sweeping up the leaves. He soon explained my difficulty: "They'll all be at their places in the country." He also pointed out a house that had just had a million pounds spent on it. It hadn't been bought for a million, you understand, just renovated.
"Mind you," he went on, "this is a funny area. You've got judges living here, and junkies down the road."
"Judges and junkies: I like that," I said, thinking I might steal the line for this column.
"Judges and junkies in juxtaposition," he replied, effortlessly topping it.
And he was right; it is a funny area. Politics in Kensington and Chelsea remains polarised on class lines to an extent you rarely see nowadays. Not a single council ward has changed hands here since 1982.
It is a gossamer breeze, a tall glass of cool iced tea, and a hammock on a beach. It is about escaping to a place of music (the whole first verse) and warmth, both physical-- "You can wear your summer clothes"-- and emotional-- "You can mingle in the street." It almost seems to be more about Aruba or Provence than raucous, randy New Orleans.
