Concorde was seen in the sky over West London for the first time in late June 1969. Less than a month later Neil Armstrong stepped from Apollo 11 onto the moon. The future had arrived. It was tangible, it was thrilling, it was now. We came to believe that we were all part of an adventure without end. This was just the beginning, the new beginning.
What we didn’t realise was that this was it. A peak had been achieved. The only way was down.
I would add that the failure of the revolution is always blamed on sabotage and the new regime takes brutal action against the supposed culprits. Once they have been eliminated, the people are told, all the promises of a better world that accompanied the revolution will be fulfilled.Brexit, we have been told, will make everything better. British trade will boom, immigration will fall and errand boys will once more whistle in the street.
"Any official working to oppose our exit from the EU should be summarily fired. If necessary, emergency legislation should be passed to make it possible."British Conservatism, at its most thoughtful, is suspicious of constitutional innovation, respectful of practical expertise and resistant to overheated rhetoric about the will of people. Baker wants to trash all that.
That is what is happening to our young people. They play truant, miss meals, and give up other normal activity to play "space invaders". They become crazed, with eyes glazed, oblivious to everything around them, as they play the machines.
It is difficult to appreciate unless one has seen it for oneself. I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members who have not seen it should go incognito to an arcade or café in their own areas and see the effect that it is having on young people.He went on:
In Dudley, in Worcestershire, a 13-year-old schoolboy is reported as having stolen £106, which his grandmother had collected for her funeral, in order to play the machines. Two schoolboys in Barnsley blackmailed a classmate, who had bought stolen property, to get money to play the "space invaders".
A Sheffield mother is quoted as saying that a Jekyll and Hyde change came over her 14-year-old son when he became hooked on "space invaders". In London, a 13-year-old vanished from his home for 10 days, visiting arcades to play the machines.
Also in London, a 17-year-old boy was so desperate for money to feed the machines that he turned to blackmail and theft, demanding £900 from a clergyman with whom he had previously had sexual relations.
Those examples show the force for evil which can arise among young people from addiction to "space invader" machines.Personally, I would have been more worried about the clergyman than the Space Invaders here, but this was the 1980s.
Caron Linday is not impressed by Norman Lamb and Nick Clegg's endorsement of Open Britain.
The 63-year-old was not only accused of harbouring two Gestapo agents in the parish rectory - and genially introducing one of them to a local farmer - but of helping the spies draw sketches of a bomb silo at nearby Cottesmore Aerodrome.
He was said to have described Germany as "our natural friend" and that a local clergyman caught the Reverend telling his children "that Hitler and Goering were the finest men in the world".
One witness said he heard him describe Churchill as "a drug addict and a dictator of the vilest kind, in fact the worst dictator in the world and in the pay of the American Jews".It all sounds unlikely, but Tibbs did make some admissions:
Writing from his cell in Liverpool Prison, Mr Tibbs admitted he had indeed, years before, belonged to the British Union of Fascists. They had an excellent agricultural policy, he said.
He admitted that one of his sons, who had also been imprisoned, had joined the party. But he said it was the uniform, rather than the fascism, that appealed to him.
He also conceded he had subscribed to the British Union newspaper, Action.This basis of fact was inflated by local gossip. The Guardian thinks it know who was behind it:
Those who informed on Tibbs to MI5 included churchwarden Joseph Morley and his brother Fred, and the Rev Douglas Bartlett, of neighbouring Market Overton.
According to the Rutland chief constable, Tibbs had expressed admiration for Hitler and, like the Mosleyites, said he wanted a negotiated peace.The Guardian goes on to say that the appeal committee recommended Tibbs' release, but restricted him to his parish. Later all restrictions on him were lifted.
So what happened in the end to the hapless Mr Tibbs?
According to Mr Saunders, he returned to the village a broken man, slipped into obscurity and died shortly afterwards. The parish was declared vacant in 1943.
"For understandable reasons, he kind of dropped from the village's memory."Let us leave the last word to the Revd Tibbs' earthly boss. The Bishop of Peterborough wrote in support of his defence against detention:
"Mr Tibbs is, in my opinion, a foolish, slippery-tongued fellow, but a harmless one."
A year and a half after its release, what do you think of the lyrics of Vauxhall And I?
I'm extremely proud of them. ... The lyrics of Vauxhall And I were terribly introspective, which is certainly not new for me - this record was nothing more than another inner trip. But before this record, I'd never known this feeling of fulfillment. An album on which not a track goes out of tune, on which every title is a perfect success. It was a new and terribly exciting emotion. Even on Your Arsenal - which I loved - there were one or two weak tracks. Vauxhall And I fits my idea of perfection. I couldn't make better.And of Now My Heart is Full he says:
One of the symbolic tracks from Vauxhall And I, Now My Heart Is Full, claimed that your heart was full, that you felt fulfilled. Could you have written this song some years earlier?
I don't think so. This song was the definitive expression of my change to adulthood, of my maturity. And, to be honest, I was very happy to be able to sing this text, to have reached this state. After this song I could perfectly retire: I've come full circle.But he didn't retire: this live version comes from only a year ago.
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| © Peter Wagon Fine Arts |
"We had an opportunity to protect residents.
"Now this opportunity has been lost.
"If Rushton and Blunt opposed these extra protections then they should have just come out and said so.
"To try and evade the issue with misleading statements is unacceptable.
"They need to admit the error and apologise."The two Tory councillors are on holiday, but the Mercury quotes a spokesman for their group as describing the complaint as "desperate and baseless".
Welcome and congratulations to Liberal Democrat Voice, which already seems to be establishing itself as the place for Lib Dem discussion on the net. Natural selection operates pretty ruthlessly there, so it is obviously doing a lot right.It's always nice to see a new blog doing well.
I recommend in particular Alex Wilcock's dissection of Trust in People: Make Britain Free, Fair and Green and the debate in the comments on Rob Fenwick's posting on the 50p top tax rate amendment.
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| Photo of the stable block at Nevill Holt by Mat Fascione |
A permanent opera house could be built in the heart of a historic country mansion.
Multi millionaire entrepreneur David Ross has filed plans to build a 400-seater auditorium in the centre of a 17th century stable yard.
It will replace a temporary structure at the medieval Nevill Holt Hall near Market Harborough which is beyond effective repair.
Agents and architects for the project say a permanent home is needed if the opera is to be retained.
For more than a decade more than 20,000 people have attended productions during the summer opera festival.
Productions have included Carmen and this year there were sell out audiences for Verdi's Rigoletto and Donizetti's The Elixir of Love.
Recently school children have been invited to sample classical music and take part in productions.Regular readers will recall that most literary scholars now believe that Nevill Holt was the model for Bonkers Hall.
"The use of full face black make up is an age old tradition, particularly within Border Morris.
"The Morris movement has always evolved over time and some sides have take their own decisions to move away from using full face black make up to other forms of colour and disguise.
"We have been approached by one group that has requested we no longer book sides that use full face black make up and another that has asked us not to change our policy and to continue to book these sides.
"The festival finds itself caught between two sides of this opposing argument.
"The festival has never wished to cause offence to any person and as such, from 2017, we will no longer book sides that use full face black make up.
"This will only impact on a small number of dance sides and festival visitors will still be able to enjoy a wide range of traditional dance from the UK and beyond."Where does the black face come from?
The blackened faces here, suggests Wikipedia, are either a reminder that morris dancing was originally known as Moorish dancing, a form of disguise adopted by 17th- and 18th-century labourers supplementing their wages with a spot of dancing and begging, or a remnant of the 19th-century craze for Black minstrels. (That last explanation seems to be the one Roy Palmer favours in The Folklore of Shropshire.)But then the idea that its history gives an expression or an activity its 'true' meaning is surely a philosophical error.
"We have enormous respect for Lord Sainsbury, and we see his help in the referendum campaign as a huge endorsement of this party's campaigning strength and our unequivocally pro-European ideals,"You bet we have respect for him.
Tim Farron, whose constituency is in Cumbria, opts for a local treat, the Kendal mint cake. It should at least help him keep his energy up in his endless, lonely journey through the political wilderness which the Lib Dems must now inhabit.
Zac Goldsmith's answer (chocolate digestive) was as boring as his campaign, while former soldier Dan Jarvis' love for army-issue garibaldis seems deep and genuine.
Nicola Sturgeon's penchant for Tunnock's Caramel Wafers (shared by her young MP Mhari Black) could be cringeworthy nationalism or could plausibly be simply because they are quite genuinely delicious.
And say what you like about Ed Miliband, he was remarkably consistent here. December 2009: Jaffa Cake. December 2011: Jaffa Cake.
Some answers are just a bit odd. Ed Davey likes fig rolls. David Cameron likes oatcakes (with, he specifies, butter and cheese). Natalie Bennett of the Green Party likes macaroons because she can't eat gluten (fair enough).The Telegraph report lists the choices of all the interviewees.
The Folvilles were a Leicestershire gentry family who, throughout the 1320s and 30s, terrorised their local community, committing numerous crimes. In 1310 the father of the family, John de Folville, Lord of Ashby Folville, Leicestershire and of Teigh, Rutland, had died leaving a widow, Alice de Folville and seven sons.
The eldest, also named John, inherited the manor of Ashby Folville and seems to have lived within the law. However, his brothers, Eustace, Laurence, Richard, Robert, Thomas and Walter formed the core of a criminal gang.But Richard was to meet a brutal end:
However, in Feb 1340 justice finally caught up with at least one of the Folville brothers. A commission was appointed to arrest Richard de Foville under the statute of 1336 and send him to the Tower of London.
In late 1340 or early 1341 Richard, who had been made rector of Teigh by his elder brother, took refuge in his church along with a band of followers - including, perhaps, some of his brothers.
Shooting arrows from within, Richard killed one of his pursuers and wounded others before being dragged out by the angry crowd and beheaded outside the church by Sir Robert de Colville, a keeper of the peace.
There is a situational logic to revolutions. Disparate groups unite to overthrow an existing regime, but once they have succeeded in doing so the cause that brought them together has gone, and they then fight one another to fill the power vacuum that they themselves have created. These internecine struggles, usually savage, among erstwhile allies perpetuate the revolutionary breakdown of society far beyond the overthrow of the old regime, and delay the establishment of a new order.
The population at large begins to feel threatened by unending social chaos, and in these circumstances a strong man who can bring the warring factions to heel and impose order comes forward and meets with widespread support, or at least acquiescence. Thus a revolution carried out in the name of civil liberties, or equality, or to bring a tyranny to and end, will itself end by putting into power a Cromwell, a Napoleon or a Stalin.
All revolutions are uncontrollable, and all revolutions are betrayed. It is in their nature that these things should be so.I suspect that this will be true of Labour's revolution too.
Swann was named in the squad for the last test of 1999 as a 20-year-old and then selected for that winter’s England tour of South Africa. By his own admission he was not yet good enough to bowl for England, but then his selection seems to have been based largely on his batting in a televised one-day game.By a small miracle you can see that batting, and a little of Swann bowling, in the clip above.
… even after adjustments for meals eaten outside the home, and for consumption of alcohol, soft drinks, and confectionery, average per capita energy intake seems to have declined by 20 per cent since 1970.
We see sport as crucial to the nation’s health and well-being. With child obesity trebling in the past decade, it is time the Department of Health took a far greater role in promoting sport and active living.
Here’s the truth – children don’t want to play sport on badly-drained 1950s scraps of land. They want showers, fences and floodlights. They want quality facilities.
Research suggests that in 20 years the ‘home habitat’ of a typical eight-year-old – the area that a child can travel around on their own – has shrunk by nearly 90 per cent.
Skulls and bones stored under a church date from 1250 to as recently as 1900, tests have revealed.
Holy Trinity Church in Rothwell, Northamptonshire - home to one of only two 13th Century crypts in the UK - contains the remains of 2,500 people.
Radio carbon dating found some skulls were older than first thought.
But scientists from the University of Sheffield, who "assumed the ossuary was a medieval thing", were also surprised to find bones from the last century.
"It seems people continued to put skulls and bones down here, not only into the post-medieval period but even as late as around 1900," Dr Lizzie Craig-Atkins said.I have never found the courage to enter it, but the crypt is open to the public on Sundays from 2.30pm to 4.30pm from Easter to the end of September.
Only Derek Underwood among the spinners took more wickets for England. Along the way Swann surpassed Laker, Lock, Titmus, Emburey, Edmonds and Illingworth. He would have settled for that at the beginning of December 2008 when, in his 30th year, he had yet to play a Test. Not a bad achievement in a career that lasted only five years.As cricket fans may recall, Swann was named in the squad for the last test of 1999 as a 20-year-old and then selected for that winter’s England tour of South Africa. By his own admission he was not yet good enough to bowl for England, but then his selection seems to have been based largely on his batting in a televised one-day game.
Off the field he was generally a delight. In the press room there was always a tinge of relief when it was announced that Swann was on his way. He shunned the usual banalities, could rarely resist that one-liner and generally provided good copy.As an analyst on Test Match Special – I suspect the Sky commentary box would remind him too much of his first, unhappy tour – he is hugely impressive. Almost at once he has become central to the programme and gives listeners a rare insight to how test cricketers think.
