Friday, November 01, 2024

John Rogers walks the Walbrook from Islington to the City

Another walk with our favourite psychogeographer, John Rogers. This time it's:

A walk from the Angel Islington to the City of London exploring the northern branch of the River Walbrook, one of the lost rivers of London. We start on Amwell Street then go to the White Conduit in Barnsbury Road. 
From here we locate the possible source of this branch of the Walbrook in White Conduit Street near Chapel Market. The route then basically follows City Road to Moorgate where it meets the branch of the stream that rises around Shoreditch. 

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

Hue and Cry and the 'Dead End Kids' of the London Blitz

Embed from Getty Images

In my original article on children and bombsites in postwar British films, which really needs to be updated with my later discoveries, I noted how children's command of these spaces was celebrated in the 1947 Ealing comedy Hue and Cry, but later films came to see them as freighted with danger.

One reason for this positive early view, I now believe, is the role played by London urchins during the Blitz.

In an article on the History Press site, Ian Parson reveals that many of the children evacuated to places of safety in the countryside soon voted with their feet and came back to London. Just before the Blitz:
evacuees, or to give them their proper title, ‘unattended children’, were returning to Liverpool Street Station at a rate of two and a half thousand every week.
What happened next is remarkable:
The youngsters who only a few months before had been tucked away, in England’s green and pleasant and safe land, were as it turned out, brave way beyond their years, and they had a name. They were the ‘Dead End Kids’ and they were the brain child of 17 year old Patsie Duggan, son of a Poplar bin man. 
Soon a gang of scruffy urchins, including Patsie’s 13 year old sister Maureen, and recruits as young as ten, had equipped themselves with an assortment of tools, buckets of sand, rope and axes. Night after night, raid after raid, they were out there. Scouring the area for people in distress, hoping to perform the most daring rescue this time round. With no adults to supervise them, the game very quickly got seriously out of hand.
During the Blitz they were responsible for a series of life saving missions. On one really bad night, as reported in the London Fire Journal, an eye witness describes, ‘They rushed up the stairs, ready it seemed to eat fires!’ The same witness then described them as ‘emerging from the building, some of them with their tatty clothes smouldering.’

They became known as unofficial fire-fighters across the East End. But it was a dangerous game.

During the Blitz children accounted for one in ten deaths, and unfortunately, or perhaps inevitably, two of Patsie’s group were killed on duty. Ronnie Ayres and Bert Eden died together on a night when Patsie himself was also badly injured. They were putting out incendiary bombs when without warning three heavy bombs came down the other side of a wall to where they were furiously working away. They died instantly, killed by the falling wall.
This sounds too good to be true - a case of heroes being found at the darkest hour of the war - but there are other sources that tell the same story. One example is Frank Lewey, who had been mayor of Stepney during the Blitz, writing in John Bull magazine (23 October 1943):
We had some bombed-out children billeted at the "People's Palace." One night a cluster of incendiaries fell in the gardens and started to blaze up against some buildings. The resident caretaker, Mr. Crawley, who himself won a reputation as a fire fighter, told me, next morning, how those small boys "went over the wall like a pack of monkeys, and dowsed the bombs as if they were snuffing so many candles." They ought to have been in bed; but their action probably saved the "People's Palace." 
The Stepney Scouts deserve a word to themselves. Into one of our shelters a woman came crying, with five tiny children trailing crying after her. Her house had caught fire, and, in the rush to escape, she had left one of her babies behind. Two small Scouts, almost extinguished beneath steel helmets, instantly raced out through shrapnel and bomb-bursts, calmly entered the blazing house, and brought the little girl back. She looked very proud of her escort. And well she may have been! There were over 700 people in the shelter at the time.
No wonder Hue and Cry was a "notable box office attraction" at British cinemas in 1947.

Telford cheese thief ordered to go to drugs rehab

Though the story soon disappears behind its paywall, the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award - and not for the first time.

I don't know what the judges think, but to me the case for legalising cheese is overwhelming. Better that people buy it in supermarkets than buy (or steal) it from street-corner dealers.

Thursday, October 31, 2024

Zoinks! It's a book about the spooky folklore behind Scooby-Doo

Mark Norman, creator of The Folklore Podcast, talks on American TV about his book Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby-Doo.

Lord Lucan helps Agatha Christie win Quote of the Day

Lord Lucan is everywhere this week, because it's 50 years since he murdered his children's nanny, attacked his wife and then disappeared.

The new Fortean Times has an article on the affair, which quotes the reaction of Agatha Christie:
“ I wonder what has happened to Lord Lucan?”
Christie may seem like a figure from an earlier era, but she did not die until 1976. And Lord Lucan died in 1974.

Or did he?

The Joy of Six 1283

"There is a pervasive rhetoric circulating on the role of environmental regulation. It goes like this: regulation blocks growth, slows things down and should be stripped back. Such blunt logic usually misses the point. There are many reasons why we have regulation but none more important than the protection it provides to people and the environment from harmful practices." Ruth Chambers argues that limiting the use of judicial review would be an assault on democratic values.

Ruth Swailes is sceptical about government plans to offer care and education for two-year-olds within existing schools: "By the time children start nursery education at 36 months (three years of age) when nursery teachers would normally first meet them, they are typically quite adept communicators. But two-year-olds are very different."

Josie Cox decided to publicise her book online. So began her journey into "the fascinating and infuriating world of self-promotion, humblebrags, 'boomerasks' and, yes, a healthy dose of sexist cultural norms".

"Now widely considered as one of folk horror’s classic films, Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) was not only the first of the unholy trinity that are seen to define the genre – alongside Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) – but also arguably the most disturbing of the three." Adam Scovell travels to Suffolk to visit the locations used in Witchfinder General.

"The effect of T20 is not just affecting Test cricket. Its penetrating deep into the grassroots.  An experienced school coach and former first-class player reports that “the U11s in Kent are being told batting long is not what we want. 10 runs off 5 balls is what we want! And a decent U13 player at Hampton school was told he does not 'hit the ball as hard as Jason Roy'! (Few do to be fair.) These may be isolated examples but you only have to watch a colts or schools match to understand the general direction of travel. Defence only exists in the NFL." Simon Hughes says the effect of uber-positive T20 batting styles is penetrating deeper into cricket, not necessarily for the good.

Eoghan Lyng chooses 10 of the best rock books of 2024.

For Halloween: From the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

"Britain ... introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it"

Robert Jenrick's assertion that the countries Britain colonised should be grateful to us, reminds me of a comment by the historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams.

Wikipedia says:

He has been described as the "Father of the Nation", having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. 

As a historian, he was best known for his book Capitalism and Slavery. Based on his doctoral thesis, it:

makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation.

In other words, it attacks just the understanding of history that Jenrick urges upon us.

As Williams once observed of such views:

"The British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

Richard Morton Jack on his biography of Nick Drake

Gabrielle Darke and her raisins have inevitably put me in mind of her brother Nick. In the video above, you can Nick Drake's biographer Richard Morton Jack talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth on their Word in Your Ear podcast.

It's an interview that offers a different perspective on Nick Drake's life and career, and on the late Sixties music scene in general.

Gabrielle Drake can be heard talking about her reasons for agreeing to cooperate with the biography on an edition of BBC Radio Four's Front Row from last year.

Mr Logan's hunter Lottery was named after the famous racehorse


A reader has kindly directed me to a document on the neighbourhood plan review for East Langton parish, which mentions the monument to J.W. Logan MP's favourite hunter Lottery. (It's hard to link to, so I have pasted the relevant extract above).

As I blogged a couple of days ago, this is widely claimed to be the grave of Lottery, the winner of the first Grand National in 1839, or at least a monument to him. But my discovery that Logan had a horse called Lottery makes that beast a much better candidate for the dedicatee.

Because the story about the Grand National winner ending his days at East Langton never really added up. Thoroughbred Heritage tells us (scroll down the page, because most of it's about this Lottery's father, who was also called Lottery) that the horse was foaled in 1829.

After detailing his many triumphs, the site records Lottery's final days:

The last race of his career was at Windsor in April, 1844. For some time after his retirement, he served as his trainer's hack. Later, he was sent to a Mr. Hall, who had a pack of harriers at Neasden, and it is said he was put to ploughing when he was "too much played-out to stand cross-country work." He was buried at Astley Grange Farm stud at East Langton, Leicestershire.

The greatest Grand National horse, Red Rum, lived to be 30, and I believe that is a typical lifespan for a racehorse. So there is no way in the world that this horse lived until 1886 - at East Langton or anywhere else.

Lottery's sad decline after the end of his racing career reminds me of the hero of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. I fear that when he became too old for ploughing, his next appointment was at the local glue factory.

Four quick points about the extract from the document above:

  • I love the detail that Paddy Logan named his hunter after the great racehorse. I shall take this as authentic local knowledge.
  • The same goes for this being a gravestone rather than just a monument, but it is, of course, dated 1886 and not 1896.
  • I suspect the, surely untrue, sentence about the Grand National winner Lottery also ending up at East Langton is taken from an earlier blog post of mine.
  • Why? Because they've used my photos from that post.

The idea that the winner of the first Grand National is buried at East Langton will probably prove one of those 'zombie facts' that keeps being repeated and will not die. I have played my part in passing it on, and I apologise.

But there is hope. The zombie fact that Reginald Gough, who was convicted of the manslaughter of Dennis O'Neill, later had his conviction changed to one of murder and his sentence lengthened by some unspecified process, is now specifically contradicted in the Wikipedia article on the case.

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Gabriella Drake advertises Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar in 1973

One of the great lost chocolate bars of our youth, along with Aztec and Summit, is Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar. Nostalgia Central says it was sold between 1971 and 1978.

This television commercial dates from 1973 and features Gabriella Drake. I don't what raisins have to with the English Civil War, but thanks again to Anachronistic Anarchist on YouTube.

That soup has missed the oil companies and splattered art lovers

"There is a price to teaching public venues to be suspicious of visitors and it is a price we all pay," wrote Stephen Daisley in response to Just Stop Oil's stunts at Stonehenge and the National Gallery. 

How right he was.

The London blogger Diamond Geezer has written about what a visit to the National Gallery now entails:

Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned?Spoilers - really very bad indeed.

And here are just some of the details:
Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. 
Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. 
By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.
From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50 per cent longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. 
The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master.
Throwing soup - which is wanky and middle-class protest to begin with, like throwing milkshakes at Nigel Farage - has left the oil companies completely unscathed. Its victims have turned out to be art lovers and the reputation of environmental protestors more generally.

Monday, October 28, 2024

The Joy of Six 1282

"As just one of a handful of MPs known to have grown up in care, I am hugely conscious of just how fortunate I have been on my journey. Fortunate because I had fantastic foster parents who then adopted me, and who always encouraged me in education and supported my aspirations. And fortunate because my experience has been so different from that of so many other care-experienced children and young people." Darren Paffey says that care-experienced children and young people are too often written off before they even take their first steps into adulthood.

Edward Henry KC talks to Legal Business: "I've been very fortunate to have two of the most remarkable cases that any barrister could hope for: the Andrew Malkinson appeal and representing the subpostmasters who were destroyed by the Post Office in the Post Office Horizon inquiry. Those clients, Andrew and the subpostmasters, are remarkably wonderful people. It’s a huge privilege and honour to represent them. I don’t think I can put into words how important their interests are to me, particularly given the monstrous injustices they suffered."

Alan Lester sets out the top five manoeuvres used to avoid discussion of reparations for slavery.

"I recently came across two rather depressing reflections on the present and future of the Internet. One contemplated the apparent death of the hyperlink, the original glue that held the World Wide Web together. The second predicted that within just two or three years, 80 per ent or more of all the text on the Internet would be machine generated." Kate Watson asks if we can make an internet fit for people again.

Laura D'Olimpio argues that encountering philosophy at school gives young people the tools to discuss difficult topics like the Israel-Gaza war.

"Some described Spring-heeled Jack as a ghost, some as a bear, an armoured man, a devil; others suspected he might be a dissolute aristocrat. As well as his flaming breath and burning red eyes, many claimed he had the astounding ability to spring or leap great distances, bounding over walls and hedges and even onto house roofs." David Castleton wonders who or what a figure that terrorised Victorian London was.

The Lottery buried at East Langton is not the winner of the first Grand National but a hunter owned by J.W. Logan MP


Later. There's a little more on Mr Logan's horse here.

I am reading John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, which is an earlier story about Kay Harker from The Box of Delights. Here Kay is tangling with his governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is also a witch and an acolyte of the villainous Abner Brown.

Early in the book, Masefield mentions "that famous horse Lottery at various stages of the steeplechase, the prints of which hung in the study". This name leapt out at me, because I once came across what Thoroughbred Heritage says is a monument to Lottery just outside the village of East Langton.

I set out to photograph it on my very first day out with a digital camera. Perhaps that's why I didn't take a better photo, though I do remember it was a baking hot day and I had to look south to take it.

Just now I searched the British Newspaper Archive for a story about the burial or commemoration of Lottery at East Langton. What I found was one that proved that this Lottery was not the winner of the first Grand National, but a hunter owned by this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

So here's the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 12 May 1939:
In view of the great interest taken by listeners acquainted with the Langtons. the writer of this thought the following particulars might be of interest to local readers of this paper. It was a pity no reference was made to Mr. Logan's famous hunter "Lottery." 
In the late seventies and early eighties, of the last century, every boy in the Langtons and adjoining villages could tell some amazing stories of this horse and Mr. Logan, his rider. “Lottery" was brought out of a plough team in Ireland by Mr. Logan, and it is said he never once had an accident or went lame, and never once missed his turn to carry Mr. Logan, who hunted and rode him till he was well on in his teens. 
One of his most amazing jumping feats was during a fast run of Sir Bache Cunard’s (now the Femie) Hounds. The fox and hounds had swam the canal and a field of two hundred horsemen and hunt staffs had go some distance round by a canal bridge. 
Mr. Logan was as usual, somewhere in the front rank of riders, left them and put his horse "Lottery." at the canal, and landed in the shallow water close up the towing path. With another spring he was out of the water and on the towing path, and went a few yards and then cleared the hedge, following the pack by himself and leaving the large field simply gasping with amazement. This happened in the Smeeton district and was the talk of the district all thot winter. 
It is said that several times “Lottery” jumped the Burton Overy brook, other riders following. and he could jump the country anywhere Of course, everyone knew that at that time Mr. Logan was one of the finest riders in the country and no one was surprised when a fair number of years later he won the House of Commons Steeplechase on "Chic.” 
During the later years of his hunting career Mr. Logan set a new fox covert which he called Home Rule Covert, though one never sees the name mentioned in foxhunting reports now.
I love Home Rule Covert, and it strengthens my theory that Logan's nickname of Paddy was given to him locally because of his pro-Irish sympathies.

Fire destroys former Buddhist centre at Kelmarsh


Last night, reports HFM News, eight fire crews fought a blaze at the former Nagarjuna Buddhist Centre in Kelmarsh. 

The main house's roof was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to the newer buildings next to it.

One of those newer buildings housed the World Peace Cafe, where I once had lunch. The cafe closed a few years ago when the Buddhists relocated to the more attractive Thornby Hall.

The main house was originally Kelmarsh Rectory, and became a care home before it was a Buddhist centre.



Sunday, October 27, 2024

Bertrand Russell: "First they fascinate the fools..."

Embed from Getty Images

When asked how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell replied: "First they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."
I have seen this tweet several times in recent days. As ever with quotations posted on social media, you have to ask if its genuine,

The answer is that there's no evidence of Russell having a conversation like that, but he did write something similar.

Quote Investigator alerts us to an essay - Freedom and Government - that Russell contributed to a collection complied by Ruth Nanda Anshen. It was titled Freedom: Its Meaning and published in 1942.

There Russell wrote:
The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

This technique is as old as the hills; it was practised in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.
So Russell didn't say that, but he did write something very like it.

In praise of Jason Beer KC, the counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry


The clinical psychologist Dr Paul Duckett examines the techniques used by Jason Beer KC, counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Notably, he sees Beer's mastery of comedy as one of the five keys to his masterly performance.

For those who have been following the hearing, it's good to re-encounter favourite characters like Paula Vennells, Rodric Williams and - above all - Jarnail Singh.

I agree with all Duckett says, and would also like to put in a word for Sir Wyn Williams, the chair of the inquiry,

When he makes one of his Columbo-like interventions - "Before we move on, can I get one thing clear in my head..." or "I'm probably being very slow, but..." - you just know he's about to ask a killer question.

The Irrepressibles: Tide

The Irrepressibles is the name under which the Scarborough-born musician Jamie McDermott works. The Tide come from his first studio album Mirror Mirror, which was reviewed on its release in 2010 by Nina Joyce:

McDermott’s exuberant performances dance on the border of disturbing, but an ability to melt between the light and the dark with such mesmerising grace has led to comparisons to Anthony Hegarty, though the heights McDermott’s voice can reach sometimes suggest a male Joanna Newsom, minus the folk. The time for the rise of the Irrepressibles is surely upon us. 

The somewhat poperatic tendencies undoubtedly catch your attention but the flamboyancy can sometimes seem more like a child starved of affection. The positive side to this is The Irrepressibles’s contagious spirit and exuberance for sticking a tongue out or a lithe finger up to convention.

This spirit spills over into their live performances, according to the Guardian's review of Mirror Mirror:

After much performing by woods, lakes and even amphitheatres, a flamboyant full debut from the 10-piece orchestral ensemble, who, lavishly dressed in anything from Flash Gordon gear to exotic fruit, pirouette as they play.

The video here, however, comes from Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature film, Ivan's Childhood. It's the famous scene of Captain Kholin and Masha among the birch trees.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

The Joy of Six 1281

"The adversarial trial system has been shown inadequate to deal with complex, and indeed developing, scientific data in Lucy Letby's trials. Procedure has triumphed over the serious search for the truth. Yet there is also the question as to whether existing legal procedures were followed over testing expert witnesses." Timothy Bradshaw claims that Lucy Letby has been betrayed by a legal system that can’t handle scientific evidence.

Ian Martin is not impressed by Boris Johnson's Unleashed: "On the basis of this magnum opus, satirists who’d pointed their lances at some imaginary political giant were in fact tilting at a windbag."

Jamie Stone, who has served at both Holyrood and Westminster, compares the two parliaments: "Having been a Member since its inception in 1999, I happen to know that when they were being trained, the staff were instructed to address the newly elected MSP’s as Mr, Mrs, Ms and so forth… but never by their first name. I also happen to know that this training fell on deaf ears from the very start. I was Jamie on day one, and still am today. I must admit that’s how I’ve always preferred it."

The organisation that became the RSPB was started by Victorian women protesting against the use of feather in millinery, shows Tessa Boase.

"The Lansbury Exhibition of Architecture would show how town planning and scientific building principles would provide a better environment in which to live and work, and how this would be applied to the redevelopment of London and the new towns planned across the country." A London Inheritance finds much of this 1951 event still standing in the East End.

Xan Brooks gives his choice of the best fiction set in the American South.

Volunteers turn out to help plant new Market Harborough park - and the local Tories are appalled

More than 30 people turned out this morning to help plant bulbs and plants at Market Harborough's new Friendship Park. You can hear one of them on the HFM News site.

I'm not surprised at the turnout. A few weeks ago I saw someone with a clipboard looking at the derelict site and guessed that she was involved with the planning of the park. I went over for a chat, and she mentioned how much support for the scheme she had found in the nearby flats.

The park is a project of the Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour coalition that has run Harborough District Council since last year's elections.

The Green councillor (and sometime Liberal England contributor) Darren Woodiwiss tweeted:

Who could be against voluntary action, a new park and friendship? Our local Conservatives, that's who.



My old friend Phil Knowles, the Lib Dem leader of the council, was spot on his reply to this nonsense:

It’s a shame that local Tory councillors won’t be coming down to Market Harborough’s new community led green space because they think it’s “silly”, or that they don’t like the residents suggestion of calling it a Friendship Park. As it sounds like they could do with a little friendship, and hopefully they’ll change their minds.

Luckily the local community, who championed this project, have warmly received the invitation to help be apart of it’s success.

“It’s rather sad that involving the community and our many wonderful volunteers is seen as a negative.  I’m proud to say that the coalition see the community and volunteer involvement as a tremendous positive.

We feel that creating a new park and community open space close to the town centre for residents and visitors to enjoy for wellbeing is a positive addition. We as we say, are not about negativity, let’s improve our district not keep talking it down!

Investing in communities is what we as a coalition do.

That's good sense and good politics. Who the Tories think the are appealing to, I cannot imagine. This attitude will do nothing to dispel the general impression that their party has gone rather weird in recent years.

And, best of all, the park is on my way into town.

Later. Another email from the good guys.

Friday, October 25, 2024

Northampton Bridge Street level crossing in use in the 1990s

Ten years ago this blog often explored Northampton - and often ended up at the former Bridge Street level crossing. This video from the 1990s shows a couple of workings using that crossing.

When I explored the land to the east of Bridge Street in 2014, I wrote:

South of the power station and the Avon building, the footpath that was once Nunn Mills Road takes you thorough a derelict industrial area. The Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership calls it "one of the largest brown field development opportunities in the UK".

I was puzzled. It all seemed very derelict, but if I had my bearings right then a train had passed over Bridge Street level crossing and through this site as recently as recently as 2006. Certainly, there are pictures of an enthusiasts' rail tour in the area in 2002.

Just as I was beginning to doubt myself, a pair of rails crossed my path.

"The number 72 was enunciated with something like reverence": An outside view of this year's Lib Dem Conference

Embed from Getty Images

Greg Taylor has written about his impressions of the three main political parties' conferences this autumn on the LSE British Politics and Policy blog.

Here's what he made of the Liberal Democrats:

The Lib Dems, up first as usual, were so full of zest that their hair practically stood on end from the moment they piled out of Brighton Station (those that had some, anyway). In debates, in speeches, and in casual conversation the number 72 was enunciated with something like reverence, something like disbelief. 72, the number of Lib Dem MPs elected in July, the party’s most ever and a jump of 645% from their devastating 2019 result. 72, the Shibboleth that elicited lusty cheers that only increased in volume over four long days.

Fringe debates on social care, on environmentalism, on education, drew hundreds of eager ears. Too many for piddling meeting rooms, leaving latecomers lingering gloomily by closed doors. Lib Dems now represent the UK’s northern reaches, its most southern tip, and urban and rural areas in-between. Their Conference gave all of them their first forum to grapple with what this means and how they should act as the third party in Westminster and hold the government to account.

Sir Ed Davey – an ever-present, bungee-jumping beacon during the election campaign, morphed into a serious statesman. Mostly. Usually ever-present around conference, this year he was barely glimpsed. Assumedly wining and dining donors, and enmeshed in serious backroom meetings, a rare spotting of the Leader was greeted with post-resurrection giddiness by the throngs.

The energy fizzed, especially during the infamous Glee Club on the final night, when attendees let their hair down by crooning specially-written hymns to Lib Demmery, set to pop tunes, in raucous unison. You could just tell they can’t wait for Conference 2025.

Thursday, October 24, 2024

It's Freddie van Mierlo vs Russell Brand


The Guardian reports from Pishill on Oxfordshire

It is an idyllic, quintessentially English scene, but rake the surface and the embers of a fierce local row soon spark into life. On one side, people determined not to lose an 800-year-old pub; on the other, a magic amulet-toting, born-again Christian broadcasting "alt-right" views to the world from its environs.

Yes, it's Russell Brand.

The author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2, Newsnight interviewee, former guest editor of the New Statesman and Guardian sports columnist, and recent adherent of whichever branch of Christianity requires you to prance about in your underpants with Bear Grylls, wants to take over the pub at Pishill:

Brand, who lives in a nearby village but often broadcasts from Pishill to his 6.83 million YouTube subscribers, saw an initial plan to convert the pub into a recording studio and a community space refused in February after more than 50 local objections. Residents argue the most recent iteration, which seeks a “mixed use of pub, ancillary accommodation, function room, media studio, offices”, would still leave them with nowhere to have a pint.

“No one believes he’s going to open the pub,” said Josh Robinson-Ward, who got married in the Crown’s function barn. “He’s said from the beginning he had plans to open the pub but never has and it’s unclear that he’ll have to open it if this goes through. From the off I think he thought that if he had enough money he could just do what he wants.”

But the forces of light have a champion:

Freddie van Mierlo, the local Liberal Democrat MP for Henley and Thame, said the Lib Dems were pushing the council to support pubs becoming assets of community value with tax relief.

He said the Crown should be opened solely as a pub. “Pubs are not the playthings of the wealthy; they are the heart of rural communities like Pishill and Stonor, and should be protected and cherished,” he said.

Tomato factory lights mistaken for 'lovely aurora'

Another win for BBC News in our Headline of the Day Award:
The pictures, showing a pink and red glow, piqued the interest of hundreds of people, with many praising the "impressive" snaps, but all was not as it seemed.

The "beautiful" glare - seen early in the morning on Wednesday - actually came from Suffolk Sweet Tomatoes’ LED light units, which are used to encourage the growth of its stock.

The Joy of Six 1280

"There is a strand of conservatism that is protectionist and isolationist but for any admirer of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher to go along with these policies is extraordinary. Trump represents a repudiation of their values on free trade and internationalism." David Gauke explains why Conservatives should have no truck with Trump.

Wera Hobhouse says it's time we had an open and honest conversation about legalising euthanasia.

Despite the fact that governments have spent the last 40 years giving capitalism's loudest voices mostly what they want, such as lower top tax rates and weaker trades unions, in the last 10 years GDP per hour worked has grown by less than one per cent a year. Read Chris Dillow on Labour and the Conservatives' shared belief in "the Scooby-Doo theory of capitalism".

At least 2000 babies were born to Black GIs stationed in Britain during the second world war and a home was created for some of them: Holnicote House in Somerset. Those who grew up there are now telling their stories, reports Steve Rose.

"As a statistician with 20 years of experience in the field of ecology, I recently faced a challenging moment. In August, some colleagues in Canada published a response to a paper that I co-wrote a decade ago, showing that the method my co-authors and I proposed back then is fundamentally flawed." Oliver Gimenez reflects on having a paper of his shown to be wrong.

"Tom Baker was in his fifth full year as the Doctor and was the well-recognised face of the series across the UK. Cleese was also a household name, but for comedy. He had started to build his comedy reputation in the late 1960s and solidified this with his work on the first three series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus between 1969 and 1973 before ascending to comedy royalty with Fawlty Towers, which he created with his then-wife Connie Booth." Oliver J. Wake on the coming together of two giants of Seventies television.

Wednesday, October 23, 2024