"Geraint has kept very well this summer, but he has been short of runs and the selectors feel this is the right time to make a change," explained chairman of selectors David Graveney.
"We have taken this decision regardless of the injury to Geraint's finger. The key factor for the selectors was his form with the bat and we believe he will benefit from having a break from international cricket and spending more time in the middle with his county."
David Hare shows he is on the side of the angels after all with these two quotations about The Fallen Idol:"It's a great, overlooked masterpiece of the British cinema. The more you read about Reed, the more you realise that he is our William Wyler - the director who seems able effortlessly to go to the heart of his subject, without ever drawing attention to himself. He just knows where the story should go, and that's the rarest gift of all in cinema."and
"the scene between the lovers in the tea shop is the most painful image of repressed love in the British cinema - the way they fiddle with the cakes and stare into each other's eyes is infinitely more moving than anything in Brief Encounter. Richardson's desperate vulnerability and his desire not to let himself down in the child's eyes is very profound."The author Claire Armitstead also interviewed Bobby Henrey, the child star of the film:
He went on to make one other "attrocious" (sic.) film, Karl Hartl's The Wonder Kid, before being sent off to boarding school.
His only subsequent brush with showbusiness was when, as a student at Oxford, he was invited to appear on [Dora] Bryan's This Is Your Life. He spent his career as an accountant in America, before retiring to work as a hospital chaplain in Greenwich Village,
The picture uses the Belgravia house as a world; the black-and-white is so beautiful it looks like something we might be on the point of inventing - at last, the drab days of colour are surpassed! The kid, Bobby Henrey, was just perfect, and Ralph Richardson seemed as dull and level and ordinary as a butler, but as you watched the film you felt the man's whole sad life.Dora Bryan has a wonderful cameo role as a tart with the heart of gold. Yet if you read the review in the Daily Telegraph you would think that Dandy Nicholls played that part. Where do they find these people?
But all of those things are just items in the larger being. The Fallen Idol tells a story in which everything fits, like the waxed pieces of wood in complicated carpentry - without a squeak or a sign of friction. Films told stories then, and they made pictures that might be modest - The Fallen Idol is a very small story, just a child's view of an adult melodrama - but which were fit for the huge crowds that went to the movie palaces of the 1940s.
Apparently, there are young people who have not heard of Carol Reed and do not know know that in just three years after the war he made three masterpieces in a row, Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. Extraordinary as that moment was for Reed, and those who worked with him, it was a fraction of the story. In the late 1940s, in Britain, we made not just a run of terrific movies - maybe they were the best ones being made anywhere in the world.
Hall wasn't claiming that George was illegitimate. The King was a bastard because of the way that he behaved:A former policeman provoked panic in Buckingham Palace in 1931 when he insisted that he had a superior claim to the throne than George V.
Anthony Hall argued that he was the 23rd descendent of Henry VIII and tried to convince mass crowds at a series of public meetings in the Birmingham Bull Ring that he was rightful heir to the throne. He started raising eyebrows in Whitehall and Buckingham Palace after making “scurrilous” attacks on the King, including a threat to shoot him.
George V, the Queen’s grandfather, was forced to intervene to make sure that Hall’s campaign came to an abrupt end, preferably in an asylum, while making it clear that the Palace’s involvement should never come to light."Forced to"? What a bizarre judgement by Jill Sherman. George was not forced to do anything. He chose to try to have Hall certified and locked up. As Sherman later writes:
On July 13 Sir Clive Wigram, George V’s private secretary, became involved, suggesting that a stop should be put to Hall’s “effusions”. He suggested to the Home Office: “Would it not be possible to keep him under observation with a view to his final detention in an Institution, without actually putting him in prison?”
Further letters showed that a summons was issued on Hall, calling upon him to find sureties or face imprisonment. Sir Clive sent a letter approving the proceedings but adding “so long as it is quite understood that His Majesty is in no way responsible for the initiation of them”.
It sounds rather like the way political dissidents used to be declared insane in the Soviet Union. The good news is that two doctors refused to certify Hall as insane.
Hall died young in 1947, but his claim was beside the point. Didn't Tony Robinson prove that Edward IV was illegitimate and find the rightful King of England somewhere in the Australian bush? It's all in Shakespeare, you know.
Richard III (Act 3, Scene 5)
Tell them, when that my mother went with child
Of that unsatiate Edward, noble York
My princely father then had wars in France
And, by just computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot.
End of the week, I'm up the Khyber, well not literally but metaphorically.Thank you, Jon.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Here comes Flintoff, who always reminds me of the cheerful part of a Housman poem, hale and hearty, a peerless youth, before Housman snuffs him out at the end of a rope.
Fifty years ago today, Egypt’s President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. The British Prime Minister compared him to Hitler, and mounted an invasion with a remarkably small number of allies; it all ended in tears. The BBC website’s ‘Eden: A man under strain’ calls him a man who “entered Downing Street as… dashing and glamorous” but left “with his reputation in tatters”. Anthony Blair must be wishing comparisons with Anthony Eden weren’t so glaring on this anniversary. I wish they weren’t, too. Mr Eden’s tragedy was that he didn’t have America on his side. Mr Blair’s is that he does.He goes on to quote a prescient passage from Conrad Russell which is well worth reading.
An exhausted Eden resigned on January 9 1957 and he and his wife set sail from Tilbury to New Zealand (which had been a staunch ally) on January 18. The ship was the RMS Rangitata and the Edens' cabin steward was John Prescott, who sometimes fought on-deck boxing matches for the entertainment of the passengers, sometimes won them, and sometimes was presented with his prize (beer or wine) by the ex-prime minister or his wife.
At Westminster I encounter a naggingly familiar figure in a grey suit. “Hello,” it says, “my name is Mark Oaten.” I look him up and down. No moccasins, no tomahawk, no feathers, but eventually I recognise him. “Rising Star!” I exclaim, “What have you done to yourself?” “I’ve decided to bin the Red Indian shtick,” he replies. “It was all based on a misunderstanding anyway.” It transpires that someone had told him that he would have to be brave to take on Winchester, and he had heard them as saying he would have to be “a brave”. “Besides,” he adds pensively, “people were starting to call me ‘Tumbling Stick’.”
Why the inverted commas around "red mercury"? The BBC explains further:Three men have been cleared of trying to procure a substance which police claimed could have made a "dirty bomb".
They were arrested in September 2004 after trying to buy "red mercury" from an undercover reporter.
Being accused of trying to buy red mercury sounds a little like being accused of trafficking Chris Morris's cake:The most bizarre aspect of the trial of Abdurahman Kanyare and his two co-defendants was the fact that no-one in the court could be certain whether the terrifying substance on which the entire prosecution case was based actually existed.
The prosecutor, Mark Ellison, admitted the police had no idea if there even was such a thing as red mercury - supposedly the main ingredient for a "dirty bomb" which could have devastated London.
But he told the jury at the outset: "The Crown's position is that whether red mercury does or does not exist is irrelevant."
He warned the jury not to get "hung up" on whether red mercury actually existed at all.
David Amess, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Basildon, was fooled into filming an elaborate video warning against the dangers of a fictional Eastern European drug called Cake, and went as far as to ask a question about it in Parliament. The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon" and was frequently referred to as "a made-up drug". Other celebrities such as Sir Bernard Ingham, Noel Edmonds and Rolf Harris were shown holding the bright-yellow cake-sized pill as they talked.You can find Amess's question in Hansard.
A Shobdon teenager highlighted the stance of London peace campaigner Brian Haw at a Sports Relief event in North Herefordshire at the weekend.
While scores of people jogged around a designated track at Luctonians’ Rugby Club in Kingsland, 13-year-old Simon Davey crawled round on a skateboard to draw attention to the enduring one-man protest mounted by Brian in June 2001 outside the House of Commons.
The Wigmore High School pupil completed his challenge in support of the protest, which directs messages of peace against the ‘war on terror’. All Simon’s sponsorship money will go to the Sports Relief fund.
Said Simon’s mum, Sarah Davey: “He pulled himself along on his stomach using just his arms and elbows, it was a rather bizarre sight, but he said he was just going to do this.”
That's all very well, but shouldn't the HRA also investigate what the horse said to provoke him into doing it?Jockey Paul O'Neill has apologised for the headbutt on a horse which could see him punished by the Horseracing Regulatory Authority.
He will be asked to explain his actions by the HRA next week after the incident at Stratford was caught by TV cameras.
You divide the world into two groups: there are sensible people like you and your readers, and there are people who hold ludicrous views. There can be no middle position.There was a good example of it today in Alan Johnson's comments to the UK Youth Parliament:
He told the UK Youth Parliament that exams were not getting easier and critics were sentimentalists harking back to a "mythical golden age".So there are sensible people who agree with Alan Johnson, foolish people harking back to a golden age and no position in between?
The dossier compiled by the Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes shows that the method of suicide said to have been chosen by Dr Kelly, far from being common as was claimed at the time, was in fact unique.
Dr Kelly was the only person in the United Kingdom that year deemed to have died from severing the ulnar artery in his wrist, a particularly difficult and painful process as the artery is deep and Dr Kelly had only a blunt garden knife.
The MP reveals that the Oxfordshire coroner held an 'unusual' meeting with Home Office officials before he determined the cause of Dr Kelly's death.
And he claims that a 'cosy cabal' of Mr Blair's friends, including Peter Mandelson and Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, hand-picked Lord Hutton, a retired Law Lord from Northern Ireland, to lead the official investigation in 2003.
His first two overs had been nervous, a mixture of long-hops and full tosses. His third and fourth were better, and the batsmen became watchful. Four balls into his fifth over, the last before lunch, a beautifully flighted delivery saw Jonathan Trott play too soon and drive a firm return catch which Rashid took two-handed low to his right. Thereafter he bowled perhaps three deliveries which could be called loose.
Ian Westwood was trapped in front by a top-spinner that hurried on to him, Luke Parker was beaten by bounce and turn, Dougie Brown by a sharply breaking fizzer, Nick Knight caught behind and Tim Groenewald padded up to a googly.
Yorkshire's teenage leg-spinner Adil Rashid produced a phenomenal performance on debut as Warwickshire were heavily beaten at Scarborough.
Bradford-born Rashid, 18, also billed as a fine batsman, took 6-67 as Warwickshire were all out for 239, losing by an innings and 96 runs.
To disaffected former members of staff at Magnet Records, home of hits for Alvin Stardust and Chris Rea, their boss Michael Levy was a tyrant who revelled in his power. His tricks included chasing people around the office and throwing ashtrays.
Within seven years the railway was costing the taxpayer three times what it had cost before de-nationalisation (up from £1.3bn to £3.7bn). The historians Terry Gourvish and Christian Wolmar have charted the subsequent shambles as probably the worst case of Whitehall mismanagement of a British industry since 1945 (a competitive contest). In the 1980s fares covered 76% of rail costs, last year 42%. The government has restructured the industry three times, so it is renationalised in all but name, operating a myriad complex Whitehall sub-contracts. Virgin's east coast route, profitable under British Rail, runs on a subsidy of £400m a year, half what the whole of BR cost in 1989.Jenkins also comes to the right conclusion:
The Tories are now rightly reluctant to reverse public ownership of Network Rail's assets of track, signals and stations. These were not privatised under the 1993 Act but subsequently with the setting up of Railtrack. They were crudely renationalised by Byers under Network Rail, in a procedure that led him through the high court. They should stay that way. The proposal now is to split Network Rail's assets under lease between the five big regional franchises so they can manage "wheel and rail" as a coherent whole. For this to work, the operators must have franchises of at least 20 years, possibly 50. The Treasury's preference for five to seven years is commercially illiterate.
Jonathan Calder remembers that John Arlott once described Masood's run up as looking like "'Groucho Marx chasing a pretty waitress'".Asif Masood was a Pakistani opening bowler in the 1970s. And the great John Arlott fought Epping for the Liberals in 1955 and 1959.
"Hindsight" my arse. Though few realised quite how bad things would be, there were plenty of people telling John Major's government that its privatisation would be a disaster at the time."We think, with hindsight, that the complete separation of track and train into separate businesses at the time of privatisation was not right for our railways.
"We think that the separation has helped push up the cost of running the railways - and hence fares - and is now slowing decisions about capacity improvements.
"Too many people and organisations are now involved in getting things done - so nothing happens. As a result, the industry lacks clarity about who is in charge and accountable for decisions."
* Not the son, as I originally suggested."The treaty under which my son was extradited is one-sided, unjust, ignores the principles of due process and is a licence to breach the rights of British citizens"...
"I also have grave concerns over the way ministers and most Labour MPs dealt with their case before they went to America."
Princes and Lords may flourish, or may fade:
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
Lord Levy may find there is an unfortunate obstacle to this willingness to co-operate with the police. Back in April Guido Fawkes repeated a Peter Oborne story from the Spectator (the original story now seems to have disappeared):"Lord Levy remains deeply, deeply disappointed that the police decided that they should use their powers of arrest for the meeting.
"Lord Levy has always been ready and willing to co-operate and to meet the police at any time of their choosing.
"He has always been only too willing, also, to provide the police with any documents that they might have needed, and he continues to do so."
it emerges that the Marylebone offices of the New Labour treasurer, Lord Levy, have been devastated by a mysterious fire. This took place last November, well before the police investigation began and around the time the House of Lords Appointments Commission raised the first queries concerning Tony Blair’s list. When I rang Downing Street for a reassurance that no papers relevant to the police investigation had been destroyed, I was informed that ‘that is a matter for Lord Levy’.I expect he was deeply, deeply disappointed by the fire too.
And, taking valuable time off from his stage shows, George Galloway:I have seen the political briefing provided to the Solicitor-General, which starts with the heading:
“Not allowing crime to escape over borders versus supporting the PR campaign of multi-millionaires charged in relation to the biggest fraud in US corporate history.”
At the end, it says:
“The Lib Dems have been spun by opportunistic PR merchants. We are fighting to get the benefits of the treaty for Britain to tackle crime. The opposition are supporting the campaign of multimillionaire bankers accused of serious crimes.”
That is the level of discourse that we are getting.
All we want is a special relationship that does not resemble that between Miss Lewinsky and a former United States President: unequal, disreputable and with the junior partner always on their knees.
Today we won an unprecedented victory against the Government in a debate on the lop-sided Extradition Treaty with the United States.
Three former employees of Nat West bank, together with south Londoner Babar Ahmed and up to 20 more British residents, face extradition to the United States under a treaty signed in 2003 that grants fewer rights to British citizens than to Americans.
Just four Labour MPs voted in favour of the treaty in the symbolic vote called by the Liberal Democrats this afternoon.
UK citizens can be extradited to the US without the United States having to make a clear "prima facie" case that they committed a crime. Yet we need to meet a much higher level of proof if we wish to extradite US citizens to the UK.
Adding insult to injury, the Government hasn't even convinced the US Senate to ratify the treaty.
The Liberal Democrats have been campaigning against this treaty for three years - ever since it was signed. We were the only party that voted against the extradition rules when they were brought into force.
But the battle isn't over: the Nat West Three, to be extradited tomorrow, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many other extradition cases are in the pipeline, and will be decided under this unfair treaty unless the Government acts now.
Thanks to today's debate and vote, the House of Commons has signalled its clear condemnation of the Extradition Treaty. Now we need you to do the same.
Please write to the Solicitor General and ask him to support my Extradition (United States of America) Bill that would repeal parts of the Extradition Act 2003 and bring an end to these unfair extradition procedures:
Mike O'Brien
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA(Personal letters are the most effective way of lobbying him).
With your help, we can put even more pressure on the Government to take action.
The former home secretary Charles Clarke yesterday sharply criticised his successor, John Reid, for postponing the programme of police force mergers, describing it as a "weak and damaging" decision that will seriously hamper the fight against terrorism.Yes, Charles Clarke is basing his campaign for political rehabilitation on an appeal to people who believe John Reid is a wet liberal.
Tony Blair's chief fundraiser Lord Levy has been arrested and bailed in connection with the "cash-for-honours" inquiry by the Metropolitan Police.Guido Fawkes has been on Levy's case since March. Today he has published an invaluable summary of links to all his postings on the man.
"The people I want to contact me, I would give them my number. Why would I want anyone else to contact me?"
Tapling was Tory MP for Harborough. He died at the age of 35 at Gumley Hall. The subsequent by-election was won for the Liberals by my hero J. W. "Paddy" Logan, and they held the seat until 1918.Leicestershire MP and cricketer's £10 million stamp collection celebrates one hundred years on display.
One of the world's greatest stamp collections - The Tapling Collection, donated by nineteenth-century cricketer and MP Thomas Keay Tapling - celebrates one hundred years on exhibition on October 5th.
Thomas Tapling was a wealthy Victorian businessman, running the family carpet making business along with his duties as MP for the Harborough Division in Leicestershire from 1886-1891. He was also a first-class cricketer, turning out for Trinity College, Cambridge, Trinity College Long Vacation Club and Cambridge University Long Vacation Club. In 1886 he also played for M.C.C against Cambridge University. His cricketing prowess also took him on tour to India and Ceylon with G.F. Vernon's side in 1889, a tour that did much to to advance interest in cricket in the region.
Or this?edna burtin [20/7/2005]
i am a mother of 2 boys, and it is very important that they get smacked when they are naughty, which is very often. once when i was in a supermarket with jason, my oldest son (11) he was baing very cheeky and rude so i pulled down his trowsers and his pants, bent him over and smacked his bare bottom very hard.And once when i had friends round jason and alex were fighting so i grabbed alex's arm, apologised to my friends pulled down his trowsers and pants and put him over my knee and spanked him hard across his bare backside, i did the same to jason.
Or this?lola charles [27/11/2005]
I have 3 children, aged 6 months, 2 years, and 5 years. My 5 year old boy has been smacked on a clothed bottom with my hand from an early age for backtalking and other serious things. Recently he has got extremely rude and I am wondering weather I should start using an implement to smack him with, and smacking him bare bottomed. I would smack him bare in public if he was playing up. I am interested to see what other parents think I should do. I have heard a successful dicipline techniqe is putting a bar of natural soap in a naughty childs mouth for 10 minutes works well. Natural soap contains no harmful chemicals and tastes worse than un-natural soap. Have other parents tried this and does it work? Should I hit my 5 year olds bare bottom with an implement?
Thanks
Loving Mother xxx
Emma [22/5/2006]All these must come from a fetish site, you will say. And if the spelling is bad, it can't be easy to type with only one hand.
I am 14 and my mum hasn't smacked me since I was 11. Last week I was cheeky to her whilst my friends were round. After they had gone she told me if I ever do that again she will take me straight upstairs and smack my bottom like she used to. I knew she meant it too, and I will never do that again as I remember it was the most humiliating thing to have friends hear my bare bottom being smacked.
As a Trustee of ChildLine I am all too well aware of the problems of child abuse in Britain.The moral is that while it is good for an MP to have a website and to use it to encourage debate, he really ought to read it occasionally.
There is more than one way of getting close to your ancestors.
Follow the Old Road and as you do, think of them; they climbed Chillingbourne Hill just as you did. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today.
And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers, the same birds singing. And when you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter, and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried.
And they turned the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury. I feel I have only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me.
The film of the week on television has to be Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale. It is on BBC2 on Tuesday, starting at 1 p.m.
As Mark Duguid writes on screenonline:
The film is structured as a mystery story, but its real purpose is to add a spiritual dimension to the propaganda message of earlier films like 49th Parallel (1941) and "...One of Our Aircraft is Missing" (1942). There are no Nazis in A Canterbury Tale and, although the war provides its backdrop, the focus is on identifying a distinctively moral and spiritual English identity, in direct opposition to the harsh material objectives of fascism.
The film offers a vision of an England with its spiritual roots in the countryside exemplified by the beauty of Kent - the county of Powell's birth - an England which its increasingly urban population have neglected for too long. Evoking Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the film charts the progress of a select band of modern pilgrims. As the trio of land girl Alison (Sheila Sim), American officer Bob (John Sweet) and British officer Peter (Dennis Price) converge on Canterbury Cathedral, each receives a 'blessing', bringing his or her most fervent wish to life. The film's peculiar power owes much to Eric Portman who, as the enigmatic Thomas Colpeper - local Justice of the Peace, prophet and one of Powell's many screen alter-egos - delivers an intense and complex performance, just as he had in 49th Parallel three years earlier.
There are links to all sorts of review and articles on The Powell & Pressburger Pages, but really I suggest you just tape it or watch it. It is an extraordinary film.
Fine, but wouldn't it be a good idea to decide what "the job" is first?Liberal Democrats leader Sir Menzies Campbell said he would support plans to send more UK troops to Afghanistan.
He said there was "no option" but to send more because current troop numbers were not enough to complete the job.
They went to the European Parliament to thank her for her work in trying to achieve EU-wide legislation to cut down on the amount of injuries suffered by healthcare workers while handling needles and other medical sharps.It is natural to try to do good when you have the power, but I am left wondering why this is a matter for the European Parliament. If there are problems in the NHS why hasn't the British government acted already? Come to that, why does it need legislation at all? What are NHS managers doing about it?
What we see in these videos are not soldiers in a war, but self-righteous young men who believe that their own moral certainty absolves them of the need to explain themselves properly.
Nobody elected Khan or Tanweer. As far as we know, they did not have relations with anyone in Palestine, Bosnia or Chechnya. Indeed, these two men did not even bother to ask their family, friends or neighbours what they thought.
At the local mosque near where three of the bombers grew up, one of the committee members, Muhboob Hussein, reacted with anger to 7/7: ‘This is not Islam, this is not jihad, these people are not Muslim. This man [Khan] never came to our mosque....’
Obviously, Khan or Tanweer did not show much interest in trying to win people over to their worldview - they thought that ‘democratically elected governments’ had less claim to act on behalf of people than they did.
An exhausted Eden resigned on January 9 1957 and he and his wife set sail from Tilbury to New Zealand (which had been a staunch ally) on January 18. The ship was the RMS Rangitata and the Edens' cabin steward was John Prescott, who sometimes fought on-deck boxing matches for the entertainment of the passengers, sometimes won them, and sometimes was presented with his prize (beer or wine) by the ex-prime minister or his wife.As someone has said, there is a play to be written about an elderly Eden expounding his wisdom to the young Prescott.
Quite.It is ludicrous to say that John Prescott was not involved in the planning process for casinos.
There were numerous links between Mr Prescott's department and the casino legislation. John Prescott chaired the Domestic Affairs Cabinet Committee, with links to the independent advisory panel recommending the location of new casinos to the Government. The ODPM was also responsible for establishing a new planning category for casinos and in its report makes detailed comments on the regeneration benefits of casinos.
It is clear that there are still serious questions that require full and frank answers from Mr Prescott.
