GUEST POST The state of our canals - and riverside pubs - today

Fresh from a canal holiday made difficult by unannounced closures, Peter Chambers looks at the many challenges facing the Canal & River Trust.

The British have been using waterways for a long time: we are told that the canal called the Fossdyke was created by the Romans. 

Things started to get busier as entrepreneurs such as the Duke of Bridgewater and Josiah Wedgewood raised capital for specific ventures that would pay for something that by-passed the toll roads of the day – iron mining and pottery in their cases. 

This was the start of the first Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. Once these connections existed, the marginal cost for other uses dropped and more firms used them. The logic of places such as Birmingham became evident, as you were taught in O level Geography. The more you link, the more profitable it is to link more.

At the time. each new major canal required an Act of Parliament. Limited liability companies solicited funds, and shopped around for an MP to propose another Canal Bill. The canal age had started. The emergent network was a strange one. Different fees, widths, depths, keys, windlasses, heights and naming conventions. It topped out at about 8000 miles. Today we have the best 2000 in preservation.

The canals survived into the 20th century. They played a part in winning the two world wars, helped by a big public works programme run by Herbert Morrison in the 1930s.

Then reality caught up. The combination of the post-war car economy and the railways removed most of the profitable trade. The network was taken into public ownership under the British Transport Board. The canal network was put under the British Waterways Board (BWB). Even today there are artefacts stamped BWB. 

The Department of Transport debated the future of the waterways with its boards. However, despite attempts at running high-latency cargo, leisure was the only viable long term use identified. The BWB settled in for a long stretch running a national ‘linear leisure park’. 

During this time a large number of restoration societies restored hundreds of additional miles to use. They then handed over the restored mileage to the BWB, often during ceremonies involving the Queen. Or Prunella Scales.

This led to a happy time for many people. The canals had been built by thirsty 'navvies' for whom real-ale pubs had been constructed. These pubs were retained for the thirsty boatmen who worked the boats during and after the first Industrial Revolution. 

Generally, blond continental beer was kept away from key waterway junctions for decades. Additional supplies of real ale could be supplied by breweries such as Wadsworth's at Devizes on the Kennett and Avon Canal, which operates today and runs tours ending in a small shop only a short walk from the Caen Hill flight of locks.

The restoration effort even benefited from additional charitable funds from the National Lottery. An umbrella body – The Waterways Trust – was formed in 1999 to use charity funds to open new facilities and attract new interest and spending on the water ways. 

Restorers entered a peak activity phase, linking up old routes, and pushing into Wales with the Montgomery Canal past Offa’s Dyke. The "Monty", as it is known, is only a few miles away from the award-winning real-ale pub The Bailey Head in Oswestry (dogs welcome). 

It is probably best to moor outside the Queen’s Head (closed on Mondays) and make your way into town. Alternatively you can cross the border near Chirk and press on to Llangollen, with its excellent hostelries. Ideally do both.

Time, however, moved on. In 2012, during the time Justine Greening was transport secretary, all of British Waterways responsibilities and assets in England and Wales were transferred to a new charity, the Canal & River Trust (CRT). This had the advantage of removing the liabilities of the waterways from the books of the government. 

The CRT was endowed with the assets of the BWB. It was also intended that it would receive tapered funding from the state. It would continue to provide a public benefit, but would increasingly stand on its own thousand feet. One day licence fees and other charges would have to rise, and the ageing physical infrastructure of the endowment would require gradually increasing maintenance charges. 

The restored plant of the waterways had been stabilised, but no programme of replacement or upgrade was baked into the system. There would be no refresh, only an endless set of repair patches, done in priority order. The staff and facilities of the BWB started to age out. After a while the maintenance capability became increasingly contractorised.

Following the Covid pandemic, many old canalside pubs closed. They lacked the financial 'bottom' of large chains, and often served distinct local clienteles. A victory for continental lager seemed certain,, with blond 'craft beer' often substituted to tempt the unwary.

In 2025 there exist many unplanned remedial works that will consume millions in unbudgeted funds. This will mean that planned work to partly remediate the effects the pandemic will not happen, and the deficit of the CRT will rise above £10m. A general review of fees is promised, with all up for grabs – widebeam fee increases, loss of green initiatives, possible closures.

In addition to the effects of long-postponed asset failures, the long-term effects of climate change are making themselves felt. Several waterways this year have restrictions or stoppages due to low water conditions. The Pennines are all but closed. The Macclesfield is in doubt. The Rochdale looks rather dry. The Trent is low, but usable. When planning journeys in these areas, the bleating of the fossil-fuel shills sound particularly self-serving.

Finally, I could mention the pollution levels and the water companies. It is enough to say that you should wash your hands every time you go indoors afloat. I mean it.

Layla Moran on Gaza: "Starvation shouldn't be a weapon of war"

The senior Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has warned that people in Gaza face "unbearably cruel levels of destitution" and called on the government to match its recent tougher tone on Israel with action.

Speaking to the Guardian she said:

I remain frustrated that while the government’s words and tone have changed, in terms of concrete actions, not much has changed.”

She called on the government to recognise a Palestinian state, which would "safeguard Palestinian interests and also send a very clear signal to Israel that there are consequences to their actions". She also condemned the government for allowing trade from illegal settlements and for "still arming Israel when they shouldn’t be".

The report goes on to detail the suffering of the family of Mohammad, an NHS doctor who operated on her last year and whose elderly parents remain stuck in northern Gaza.

He describes conditions on the ground as a "slaughterhouse" and says people are on the brink of starvation.

Layla told the Guardian:

"Starvation shouldn’t be a weapon of war and it is unbearably cruel that it’s got to the levels of destitution that Mohammad’s family are describing, but their story is just one of millions that are now trapped in northern Gaza in a situation that seems even worse than at the beginning.

"It has to stop now and the UK government needs to redouble its efforts to make that happen."

Disney child star looks unrecognizable on Cannes red carpet 32 years after hit film’s debut

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In making our Headline of the Day Award to the Independent, the judges congratulated the online newspaper's editors on grasping the fact that children grow up.

Spyro Gyra: Morning Dance

In the summer of 1979 this track was everywhere. It made the UK top 20. It was radio friendly, Radio 2 friendly and made for use in television trails. But I wonder if I've heard it this century.

Spyro Gyra come from Buffalo in New York State. Morning Dance was the title track from their second album, which reached no. 11 in the UK charts - high for a jazz album in that or this era.

The unusual elements on it, like steel drums, make it more interesting than I have so far made it sound.

And Spyro Gyra are still going. Here's an advertisement for a gig of theirs at Buffalo State last year:

In 2024, Jay Beckenstein and band observe the 50th anniversary of what started as a diversion, something that was just for fun (and twenty-five cents at the door). It began inauspiciously when Beckenstein and a few musician friends in Buffalo NY organized a get together on their shared night off from working in bands that actually made money. It was a simple, humble idea with a name that was likewise simple and humble, "Tuesday Night – Jazz Jam". 

Fast forward 50 years and this jazz super group has released over 30 albums, garnering gold and platinum along the way. They’ve played over 10,000 concerts on six continents. Spyro Gyra has maintained its standards of excellence and that has sustained them on the "A list" of live attractions in jazz for 50 years.

The Joy of Six 1360

"If Morgan can beat the BNP in Barking, goes the argument, then surely he can do the same for Reform in Britain too. Yet in all the coverage of McSweeney’s supposedly unique ability to slay the far right, through deploying tough messages on crime and immigration, almost nobody has actually bothered to check whether it’s true." Adam Bienkov explodes the founding myth of Morgan McSweeney.

Nandi Msezane says migrant workers prop up the UK’s social care system, but are now being forced out.

Cameron Joseph argues that Donald Trump is borrowing a playbook from other elected leaders who have used the tools of democracy to destroy it: "Would-be autocrats often move to eliminate structural checks on their power. They intimidate opposition parties, threaten potential dissenters within their own ranks, and defy the courts. Autocrats punish and bully the news media, protect allies from legal prosecution while targeting political opponents, and purge senior military and government ranks of career staff in favor of loyalists."

"There were numerous attempts at creating Labour-affiliated clubs, as Labour became a serious party of government for the first time. It is also easy to see why the inherent contradictions around that gave these clubs a limited appeal within the Labour Party." Seth Thévoz on the attempts to establish a London club for Labour parliamentarians.

"It was a reminder of a time when democratic politics wasn’t viewed with contempt but was understood as a form of collective expression and - for some (for very many in the 1940s) - as a means of making a better world." Municipal Dreams looks at the at creation and reception of the 1943 County of London Plan.  

Katherine Stockton explores the problematic implications of Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys.

St Paul's, Covent Garden: The Actors' Church

"George Smiley! Oh, but you lovely, darling man!"

Down in London on Thursday, I came across St Paul's, Covent Garden, which is known as 'The Actors' Church'.

I found some interesting figures remembered in the dedications on the churchyard benches.

Brian Glanville, greatest of football reporters, has died aged 93

The first things I can remember, as a child, reading with pleasure in an adult newspaper are Brian Glanville's football reports for the Sunday Times.

He was still teaching me new words when I was 16. I can recall his writing about England's 3-2 victory over Italy in the USA's Bicentennial tournament. England fielded two young debutants: Gordon Hill, a left wing from Tommy Docherty's exciting Manchester United side, and Ray Wilkins (often called Butch Wilkins in those days), the 19-year-old Chelsea captain.

He described Hill as an "urchin" figure and Wilkins - in a new word for me - as a "gamin". Wilkins had looked thoroughly at home in midfield, passing the ball like an experienced international. You can see England's starting XI in the image above.

This morning I heard that Glanville has died at the age of 93. Richard Williams is quoted among the tributes on the Football Writers' Association site:

Some of us are old enough to remember a time when colleagues often sniggered at Brian Glanville’s ability to pronounce the names of foreign footballers – particularly those of Italian players – correctly.

They stopped laughing when English teams were suddenly filled with foreign players, and the ability to avoid mangling their names became a necessary part of a football reporter’s skillset. 

Brian’s interest in the game as it was played in other countries sprang from his cosmopolitan nature; it turned out to be prophetic, and I often felt that the rest of us should have been paying him some sort of pathfinder’s royalty.

A sophisticate as much at home at the Chelsea Arts Club as at Stamford Bridge, he came from a time before football became gentrified but played and wrote about it with wholehearted commitment and without condescension towards those who’d come to it via routes very different from his own.

London's lost underground lines - with a note on the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club

Jago Hazzard is our guide to a collection of lost lines, repurposed lines and abandoned oddments, some of them 50 miles out of London and deep in the Buckinghamshire countryside.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page and follow his YouTube account.

One scheme that never advanced far enough to carry trains was the Waterloo & Whitehall Railway, which:

was authorised in 1865 to construct a pneumatic railway (that is, one where trains are pushed though a tunnel by air pressure) from Great Scotland Yard to Waterloo station. The single cast iron tube, 3.89 m (12'9") in diameter, would have crossed the river by being laid in a ditch dredged in the bed of the Thames. 

Though work did start, a general financial crisis prevented additional capital being raised, and the work was abandoned in 1868, with the company being wound up in 1882. The trench excavated at the northern end is now the wine cellar of the National Liberal Club.

That Reform UK programme for Leicestershire: Bus cuts and a consultants' bonanza

Reform UK won 25 of the 55 seats on Leicestershire County Council on 1 May and has now formed a minority administration.

What will they do with this power? It's hard to know. They didn't produce a local manifesto for the elections, and I'm not sure things are much clearer after the new council leader's interview with the Leicester Mercury.

A few extracts...

Q: Reform UK has promised an audit of the county council’s finances to identify waste and efficiencies. How are you going to fund the audit given the council’s difficult financial position?

A: We'll find that sort of money because it's vital. It's vital. We'll be able to do that, don't worry.

The Mercury could have pointed out the council's finances are audited internally and externally every year. So this sounds like a firm commitment to unnecessary extra spending.

On flooding, they want to solve the problems in the county, but don't seem to know what needs to be done or how much it will cost.

There will be not cuts in social care: apparently these new auditors are going to be "an external company of experts" and will tell them what to do.

This sounds very like the practice among Conservative councils of spending a fortune on consultants because you don't trust your own officers for ideological reasons.

Reform UK's clearest commitment seems to be cuts to bus services:

Q: What will you do to ensure rural communities have access to public transport?

A: If we've got efficiency and if we've got savings, we can then do something. But, we've got to review the buses because the problem was we had buses driving around with two or three people in and there was no take-up.

So when it suddenly goes, everybody wants to join a petition to say ‘yes we want it back’. So it's one of those, if you're not using it, you could lose it.

We've just had a major review of bus services in Leicestershire under the last Conservative administration, but, sure, let's have another consultants' bonanza. It's only taxpayers money.

The real test of what Reform UK are about will come when they discover there's not millions of pounds of wasteful spending to be cut or reallocated. But the early signs are not promising.

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: I watched Sir Edward Heath being hunted through the lobbies by a full pack of beagles

Lord Bonkers mentioned the other day that my rent falls due on Lady Day. I took this as a subtle reminder that it's a long time since I looked to see what the old brute was saying 30 years ago.

So here's an entry from his diary in Liberator 227 (March 1995), when John Major was fighting the bastards of Euroscepticism - he now seems a giant in comparison to the Tory leaders who were to come after him:

The Palace of Westminster is not a happy place at present. One can hardly enter the gentlemen's lavatory without seeing a gang of Europhobes forcing some poor moderate Conservative's head down the pan and pulling the chain, and this morning I watched Sir Edward Heath being hunted through the lobbies by a full pack of beagles. 

The problem, I would argue, lies in a lack of leadership at the very top of the Conservative Party. This little grey chap they have nowadays may be very good when it comes to traffic cones and motorway service stations, but he is not the sort one would readily follow into battle. It is all too reminiscent of Woolacombe in 1968, when Jeremy Thorpe had to be rescued after he was pushed through a trap door and imprisoned under the stage by the Young Liberals.

I also enjoyed a detail from his visit to Wales, where he passes and enjoyable evening at a village whose name, he is informed, is best translated as: 

The Church of St Mary in the hollow by the pool where Lloyd George seduced Bronwyn - you know, the big girl who used to work in the Co-op.

It doesn't go back quite this far, but there's a free archive of back numbers of Liberator on the magazine's website.

The Joy of Six 1359

"Adults are going hungrier to keep children better fed. The most vulnerable – infants, pregnant women, breastfeeding mothers and others needing special diets - are already starving. The very poorest, those unable to call on better-off relatives, those cut off by military checkpoints, are already wasting away as their internal organs suffer irreparable damage." Alex de Waal on starvation in Gaza.

Ben Jackson says the government must change direction on child poverty: "When governments are remembered after they lose office, their achievements are unforgivingly distilled into a few pithy bullet points. Does Keir Starmer really want one of his bullet points to be that he was the unusual Labour prime minister who presided over an increase in child poverty?"

Rose Dixon reports the success of Iceland's experiment with a four-day working week.

"The men would wait for the Germans to pass over them and then come out at night. Their role was not to fight the Germans face-to-face. Their brief was to hit the supply chain, causing enough chaos to slow down the German advance, blowing fuel and ammunition dumps, destroying railway lines, bridges, and convoys. Local country houses that had been taken as German HQs were to be destroyed and German officers and British collaborators assassinated." Andrew Chatterton explains how the British Resistance would have fought Nazi occupiers.

"Meryl marched into the hotel suite where Hoffman, Benton, and Jaffe sat side by side. She had read Corman’s novel and found Joanna to be 'an ogre, a princess, an ass,' as she put it soon after to American Film. When Dustin asked her what she thought of the story, she told him in no uncertain terms. They had the character all wrong, she insisted. Her reasons for leaving Ted are too hazy. We should understand why she comes back for custody." Michael Schulman tells the story of how Meryl Streep battled Dustin Hoffman, retooled her role and on her first for Kramer vs. Kramer.

Peter Black discovers an Edwardian mystery: The story of Violet's Leap.

William Wallace: Reading Biggles in Westminster Abbey

Liberal Democrat Voice has a thoughtful post by William Wallace - Lord Wallace of Saltaire - on the relation between Liberalism and religious faith.

But I was most taken by this personal reminiscence:

I grew up as a Protestant Anglican. I learned what I now understand as social liberalism from the sermons of Canon Marriott, preaching the 'social gospel’'in Westminster Abbey (putting down my Biggles book, which choristers were allowed to take in to keep us quiet during sermons).

Reform council leader thinks circumcision causes transgenderism

The new Reform UK leader of Lincolnshire County Council has suggested there's a link between circumcision and transgenderism in children, reports the Jewish Chronicle.

In a now-deleted post on social media, Sean Matthews, who earlier this month became leader of Lincolnshire County council, said: “It's no surprise that children want to remove their penises and become girls.

"Most of their parents started the process shortly after birth, by chopping their foreskin off in the name of (insert deity).”

I'm not going to blog about every fruitcake, loony and closet racist that got elected as a Reform councillor on 1 May, but this guy is a council leader.

Incidentally, in the Britain of the 1930s, 35 per cent of boys were circumcised, with the practice being particularly favoured by upper class parents.

But I bet Mr Matthews will tell you there were no transexuals in the good old days.

Nick Cohen's podcast: Don't back any horses tipped by Nick Tyrone

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Nick Cohen's latest podcast dropped two days ago. His guest, billed as an expert on the Conservative Party, was Paul-Marshall-era Liberal Democrat turned Reform supporter Nick Tyrone.

In the course of their discussion Tyrone argued that when Robert Jenrick replaces Kemi Badenoch, as he surely will, he'll prove no more popular than she has.

He then suggested that the Tories should go for someone untainted by their 14 years in government and choose a leader from their 2024 intake of MPs.

Pressed for a name, he suggested Patrick Spencer, who was arrested the following day.

Spencer denies the charges against him and may go on to have along political career, even leading his party. But this exchange did reinforce the impression that Tyrone isn't the great political forecaster out there.

Because he has previous. Here he is in the Spectator on the eve of a 2021 by-election:

"The Chesham and Amersham by-election is on Thursday. Thank God it’s almost here — hopefully then we can stop hearing any rubbish about how the Lib Dems are set to tear down the Conservatives’ ‘blue wall’ in the home counties. As the campaign has demonstrated, the Lib Dems are miles away from being able to cause such an upset.

"Instead, the Lib Dems will lose on Thursday, most likely fairly badly, and they will have no one to blame but themselves. If they want to get back to being the by-election masters of old, they will have to do a lot better than this."

As you may recall, Sarah Green won the election for the Lib Dems with a 25 per cent swing from the Conservatives.

He was more confident about the Lib Dem performance in 2015:

Ahead of the 2015 General Election, Tyrone predicted that the Liberal Democrats would receive "17 per cent" of the popular vote and that the vote share for the two largest parties appeared "on course for an all time low". 

The two largest parties subsequently both increased their vote share, while the Liberal Democrats received 7.9 per cent.

Nor did he much admire Nigel Farage in the run up to the European Union referendum:

In 2015, Tyrone argued that fellow pro-Europeans should give their "gratitude to Nigel Farage for hanging around the British political scene just a little bit longer" as he believed it would ensure "the pro-Europeans win".

We all like to sound confident when we make predictions, but I wouldn't back any horse that Nick Tyrone tipped. 

Fleetwood Mac: Dust My Broom

Scintillating slide guitar from Jeremy Spencer. 

Thought for the Day: “We know that at night-time someone goes by amongst the trees, but we never speak of it”

I first came across this saying in Visionary and Dreamer, David Cecil's study of the artists Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones. If I'm remembering correctly, it was a favourite of the latter.

Looking for it online the other day, I found this formulation of it in several places:

A Pacific island chief was being bullied by a missionary about his beliefs.

"Have you, my dear, no conception of a deity?"

The chief replied: "We know that at night-time someone goes by amongst the trees, but we never speak of it."

"Come back, Shane!" are not the last words spoken in the film

I've come across another Mandela effect online, this one involving the classic Western, Shane. Some people - and I'm one of them - are convinced that after calling out "Come back, Shane!" several times, little Joey Starrett's final words in the film are "Bye, Shane." 

This changes the meaning of the film's ending by turning it into something about growing up and the death of the old West. Yet any time you find this final scene online it seems to be missing those two words. Have we misremembered the film?

No, because here is the full version and you can clearly hear Joey call out "Bye, Shane". 

Do people posting clips online end the scene early because they've become convinced that the famous "Come back, Shane!" ends the film? Or has television's cavalier attitude to cutting films short to trail the next programme infected them?

I don't know, but I did once work out that Joey Starrett would have been 73 when Shane was released. And I have also written about the career of the boy who played him, Brandon deWilde.

And now we have the correct ending, another question arises. The last we see of Shane, he is slumped in the saddle and riding through a graveyard. Is he already dead?

You may say this is reading too much into the closing shot. But as someone pointed out, George Stevens spent 18 months editing the film, so nothing you see on the screen is there by accident.

New Leicestershire Reform councillor was sacked as a police officer last year

BBC News reports, nay reveals, that a newly elected Reform member of Leicestershire County Council was dismissed from Leicestershire Police in January 2024:

Andrew Hamilton-Gray won a seat in Loughborough for Reform, with almost 40 per cent of the vote.

It has now emerged that a police misconduct hearing in January 2024 found he had called in sick, to travel to Spain, when he should have been working as a PC.

The misconduct hearing found that was one of two occasions when he reported sick to pursue his outside business interests.

The BBC says Hamilton-Gray has told them he has been advised not to comment.

Alistair Carmichael: Labour is falling into the same trap the Tories did on immigration

The senior Liberal Democrat MP Alistair Carmichael has given a measured and Liberal response to today's intervention on immigration by Keir Starmer. I was pleased to see this following a disappointing press statement from the party this afternoon.

Alistair gave his response in a thread on Bluesky - here's what he wrote:

I fear that Labour is falling into the same trap that the Tories did - leaning on hostile rhetoric around immigration and damaging our public services and our economy in the process. 

We should not pander to the far right but instead fix the problems that enable them. If you feed that wolf eventually it will eat you. 

We need a flexible, dynamic legal migration system that works for our country and our economy, while treating everyone with dignity and respect.

We should have no truck with the demonisation of desperate people fleeing persecution, war or starvation, nor indeed of those who are on the frontline of our health and social care sectors. The last thing we need is to do more harm to our fragile public services.

 There will always be a need for integration and fair play in our immigration system, but we should not ignore the enormous benefits that immigration has brought to our country. These are our friends and neighbours, people who enrich our cultural fabric and help drive our economy across the UK.

My fear, if the government fails to get better at making its case, is that, at the next election, Labour will fall back on the argument that you have to vote for them to stop Reform getting in.

The danger then is that the voters will here this as: "If you want to get rid of Labour, vote Reform."

Three men held over suitcases stuffed with hermit crabs

Thanks to a nomination from a Liberal England reader, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges were relieved to find that the story below it is not about a novel form of torture.

To celebrate St Pancras Day: The Beatles at Old St Pancras and a 1983 Steve Winwood interview

Today is St Pancras Day. To celebrate it, here's another showing for this video recreating the Beatles' visit to Old St Pancras churchyard on their London Mad Day Out in 1968. You can read more about their time in the churchyard in an old Guardian article.

When you add in the fact that today is also Steve Winwood's birthday, it's clear 12 May should be a public holiday in the Midlands. 

Certainly, it's a big deal here on Liberal England. To celebrate, here's a 1983 interview with our favourite musician.

Winwood talks about his past with the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith, and about his then burgeoning career as a solo artist.

The Joy of Six 1358

"Quite apart from winning Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Shropshire outright, the Lib Dems are set to lead Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Devon councils, with the possibility of a deal in Hertfordshire, and a long shot at power in Cornwall." Matthew Pennell reviews the local elections.

Rei Takver reports that the new Reform UK constitution gives its chair sweeping, unchecked authority within the party.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead on a report that shows women in the North of England face deep inequalities: "Northern women work longer hours for lower pay, are more likely to live in poverty, have fewer qualifications, and face a shorter life expectancy than women in other parts of the country. They are also more likely to take on unpaid caring responsibilities."

"International research has demonstrated that IM [independent mobility] benefits children physically, psychologically, cognitively and socially. IM allows children to explore their environments, at their own pace, based on their own decision-making processes. As such, IM increases children’s confidence, autonomy, social skills and capacity to move around public space while strengthening their bonds to and familiarity with place." Katherine L. Frohlich and Patricia A. Collins survey research on links between children’s right to the city, their independent mobility and public health.

"Well before the term 'nepo babies' entered the cultural lexicon, Bogdanovich cast a real father and daughter as Moses and Addie. ... Bogdanovich had recently worked with Ryan O'Neal on What’s Up Doc, though he actually approached the actor’s eight-year-old daughter Tatum to audition first, at Platt’s suggestion." Sara Batkie celebrates Peter Bogdanovich's film Paper Moon on its 50th birthday.

Jeremy Benson walks the canal towpath from Leicester to Market Harborough.

Lib Dems watch Reform: Reform watches the Lib Dems

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The Liberal Democrats have set up an internal "Reform watch" to monitor Nigel Farage’s party in local government, reports the Guardian. The paper quotes Ed Davey as saying Labour and the Conservatives are too scared of the threat from Reform to hold it to account.

The report sets out what the work of the unit will be:

A key part of the monitoring will be to see if and how Reform-run councils try to cut services, Davey said. Many families had been “alarmed” by Farage’s comments saying too many people were being diagnosed with special needs or mental illnesses, he said.

Other areas would include culture war battles, such as Reform barring councils from flying the Ukraine flag as a show of solidarity, and trying to cut back on climate and net zero-related work.

Davey said: "When you look at what councils do on climate change, the vast bulk of the work is insulating people’s homes. So is Nigel Farage essentially going to say to less well-off people: ‘We’re not insulating your home, you can pay higher energy bills, and that we’re pleased about that because that can make climate change worse.’ Is that the Reform position?"

It's clear that this work will be more substantial than the trawling of the social media accounts of individual Reform councillors for extremist or embarrassing posts. (If you enjoy that sort of thing, Reform Party UK Exposed on Bluesky is a good follow.)

The unit is being spearheaded, says the Guardian, by Amanda Hopgood, the leader of the opposition group in the Reform-run County Durham; Antony Hook, who performs the same role in Kent; and Mike Ross, the leader of Hull city council, who came second to Reform in the Hull and East Yorkshire.mayoral contest. You'd imagine they have quite a bit on their plates already, though.

Meanwhile, reports Conservative Post, a new website has been launched by Luigi Murton. The Post doesn't mention it, but he is a former Conservative HQ staffer who now works for Reform UK.

The report says Liberals Exposed will expose Liberal Democrat tactics and pledges

support ... for anti-Lib Dem candidates across the UK, offering digital megaphones, campaign muscle, and boots on the ground for those who want to take the fight to the doorsteps of Liberal control.

So far the website has three articles. One explains why we are so keen on getting those 'Lib Dems Winning Here' posters up: a second looks at inconsistent Lib Dem attitudes towards congestion charging.

And the third?

Bizarrely, this looks at the current Romanian presidential election and cheers on George Simion:

Deemed by some as 'Romania's Trump' due to his strong support for the US President and his Conservative views, Simion is offering a fresh direction and perspective for voters. 

How that will be any help in combating the Liberal Democrats in local government is far from clear. But it is a reminder that hanging Nigel Farage's admiration for Donald Trump around the neck of Reform UK is part of the work of defeating it.

Arthur Brown: Give Him a Flower

Before Arthur Brown released Fire, he released a single called Devil's Grip on Me. And this was on the B-side.

Give Him a Flower is a mixture of groovy Hammond organ, Kevin Ayres vocals and an early David Bowie novelty record.

An interview with Psychedelic Baby! reveals that Brown fits my ideal profile of a Sixties musician: he had a father who played jazz and he sang as a boy.

It also reveals that he was one of the first graduates on the scene - before then the expectation was that you would put away childish things like "pop music" when you went to university.

There's more about Brown's career in a Classic Rock interview from earlier this year.

When I saw Arthur Brown at the Harborough Theatre ten years ago, his show was all about looking back at his life and career:

Finding himself treated as a guru by some because of the themes of his songs, he felt a fraud and has dedicated his life since to seeking enlightenment.

And tonight the way brought him to Market Harborough.

But, wonderfully, despite occasionally setting himself alight with the flaming headdress he wears when he sings Fire, Arthur Brown is still with us and still touring as The Crazy World of Arthur Brown at the age of 82. 

Catch him in York, Milton Keynes or Bromsgrove next month. He was one of the pioneers of combining rock with elements of theatre, circus and other arts, and we should cherish him.

I love Harborough in the springtime

I think it was the daily walks under Covid Lockdown that did it, but in recent years I've come over all Fotherington-Tomas about flowers and blossom.

So here are some recent photos from Market Harborough.

More good news from Shropshire: Plan to pollute the Onny dropped

Severn Trent Water has dropped plans to pipe treated sewage from Bishop's Castle to the River Onny.

The BBC News Shropshire pages report:

Severn Trent Water had proposed building a four-mile pipe to take treated sewage from its plant in Bishop's Castle and discharge it into the River Onny, which sparked a local campaign against the move.

The water company said on Friday that the plan would not proceed, as early modelling had shown it was not possible to guarantee that there would be no impact on the Onny.

This scheme was drawn up because this sewage is currently discharged in a way that eventually takes it to the River Clun, is protected by law as it is a conservation area. 

The Onny does not have the same status, yet it is home to otters, kingfishers and dippers. It also contains a strong population of brown trout and grayling, and is an important site for Atlantic salmon.

Geoff Hardy from Fish Legal said when the pipeline was proposed:

"Rerouting sewage releases from one river to another that is miles away but has less legal protections cannot be the way to solve pollution and planning problems in this country. This is illustrative of the whole mess surrounding water industry activity and regulation to protect our rivers.

'"On the face of it, this is a cynical 'gaming’ exercise by a shadowy cabal of regulators and the local council to get around current restrictions on adding more pollution to the River Clun. We want to know why other options were not prioritised and why the Environment Agency appear to have agreed to this given that their own latest fishery report recommended using the Onny as an Index river - a critical means by which fish populations are monitored."

The pipeline certainly sounded like an expensive way of getting round the letter of the law while evading its spirit.

The photo above shows the River Onny at Craven Arms. The only thing I will add is that when my mother died Severn Trent was the easiest and kindest utility to deal with.

Nick Tyrone comes out for Reform UK

"That I’m flirting with voting Reform might surprise you," writes Nick Tyrone at the start of his latest piece for the Spectator.

On the contrary, I don't think it will surprise anyone who has followed his recent career.