The Joy of Six 1228

"AI skeptics - who are legion, and not necessarily part of the fringe tin foil hat crowd - are begging Silicon Valley to take a beat before unleashing AI to the world. But tech companies, faced with the most powerful computing innovation in a generation, are running around like kids who just found their dad’s gun." Allison Morrow reveals Silicon Valley's determination to produce an AI dystopia that no one has asked for.

Matthew Pennell reviews the Liberal Democrat performance in the London mayoral election: "A few activists have asked the Lib Dem leadership to be bolder in the context of Conservative implosion and Labour timidity. We saw exactly that in the London Lib Dem campaign - a manifesto focused on reforming the blue light services - the Met Police and London Fire Brigade. It was unprecedented to see a politician from a mainstream party run on a platform of police reform and it set us apart from the other parties."

Justin Garson looks to Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy to help him understand the nature of depression.

"When Germany began to reconstruct its modern history after 1945, angels were needed to replace the recent legions of devils. The Bauhaus, in its American imagining, became a place of heroism, even martyrdom. Nazism was, by definition, something done to the school, not by it." Charles Darwent finds the truth is less comforting.

"One of the most startling things about the enigmatic man who became the architect of the new Houses of Parliament was that he was born and brought up in Westminster itself and knew the area inside out even before the competition which changed his life." Caroline Shenton on Charles Barry.

Francesca Wade says George Eliot made her life, as well as her fiction and art, outside the conventions of the marriage plot.

Rishi Sunak's speech today: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

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In his speech today, Rishi Sunak said the next five years will be some of the most difficult and dangerous in the UK's history.

If Sergeant Wilson were here to advise him, I feel sure he would have said: "Do you think that's wise, sir?"

Because the British people seem to have decided that, not only do they not much like Sunak, but that he's not much good at his job either.

I base this, not just on his individual poll ratings, but on the fact that you never here anyone expressing enthusiasm for him. His own party members chose Liz Truss when allowed a choice between them.

So why should the voters turn to Sunak if they agree we are approaching dangerous times? That belief is more likely to make them turn so someone else to govern them.

And a final point on today's speech: a party that is serious about the nation's defence does not put Grant Shapps in charge of it.

The Tories' Angela Rayner obsession has come back to bite them

It was predictable - indeed, I remember retweeting someone who predicted it - that the Mail's pursuit of Angela Rayner over her supposed failure to pay capital gains tax would rebound on the Conservatives.

That's because Conservative MPs own more houses than Labour MPs and may be fonder of baroque ways of avoiding tax.

And, sure enough, here is a report from today's Mirror:

Tories making a lot of noise about Angela Rayner and capital gains tax are less vocal when it comes to the profits their own MPs have made from selling second homes.

Four who have raked in £5.4million between them ­from flogging houses funded by the public have repeatedly declined to reveal if they paid any tax on the profits they made. The Tories were accused of ­hypocrisy after pushing for police to probe deputy Labour leader Ms Rayner over a £48,000 profit she made selling a former council house before she became an MP and an alleged capital gains tax bill of a mere £1,500.

The party did not respond to Mirror requests to comment on our ­investigation into whether David Tredinnick, Eleanor Laing, Shailesh Vara and Maria Miller paid capital gains tax on second homes they sold.

No doubt the Labour Party looks forward to this being an issue at the coming general election

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Martin Scorcese's tribute to the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Made in England, received its premiere in London yesterday and is now being shown at the British Film Institute and at screens around the country.

It's on at the Phoenix Cinema and Arts Centre in Leicester on Friday, for instance.

The BFI website says of it:

Martin Scorsese presents an impassioned and highly personal tribute to Powell and Pressburger’s work, richly illustrated with clips and rare archive material. It’s been said that had Martin Scorsese not become one of the world’s great filmmakers, he would still have been one of its greatest teachers of film history. 

This impassioned exploration of the films of two of his formative and most treasured inspirations follows the US filmmaker’s film essays on American and Italian cinema, delivering deeply personal reflections on what Powell and Pressburger’s work has meant to his life, alongside wonderfully illuminating analyses of the films themselves. 

Drawing richly from the BFI National Archive, as well as private material from Scorsese and the film’s editor (and Powell’s widow) Thelma Schoonmaker, David Hinton’s film is ... an ideal introduction to Powell and Pressburger’s work.

The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists exhibition comes to St Albans

On Friday the exhibition The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Book Artists opened at St Albans Museum and Gallery. It runs until 8 September.

The venue's billing says:

Uncover the story of the talented artists who illustrated Ladybird books for more than 30 years. This colourful, family-friendly exhibition includes rare books, original artwork and artefacts, and reveals how illustrators played such an enormous role in Ladybird’s extraordinary success. 

Tracing the interconnected work of these artists, the company’s story is recounted over Ladybird’s ‘golden years’ – 1940 to 1975. Visually rich and varied, the exhibition will evoke many memories of childhood.

This exhibition has been touring the country for a few years now, and I saw it when it came to Leicester. I can thoroughly recommend it. I came away impressed by the sheer quality of the illustrations that Ladybird Books laid before children by commissioning leading commercial artists.

Those who dismiss Ladybird as purveyors of nostalgia are mistaken. Many of their books were about technology, social progress and the future. In fact Ladybird has a good claim to to be the most progressive children's publisher in those post-war decades.

Their history books were written by a Liberal, L, du Garde Peach, whom some at the BBC (he was a pioneer of radio drama) suspected of Bolshevism.

And I learnt to read with Ladybird's Key Words reading scheme ('Peter and Jane') in a new town in the 1960s. The world of those books was the world I saw around me.

By welcoming Natalie Elphicke, Keir Starmer risks making Labour look desperate or devoid of principle

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When Natalie Elphicke crossed the floor last week, there were plenty of us who had doubts about Keir Starmer's wisdom in allowing her to take the Labour whip.

But there were also worldly commentators who criticised us as political obsessives. The average voter, we were reminded, knows very little about politics. All they will notice is that a Conservative MP has joined Labour, and they will conclude that Starmer and Labour must be doing well.

But it's now beginning to look as though the average voter will come away from this episode with the conclusion that Labour will take anyone and must be desperate or devoid of principle.

Longstanding readers of this blog will not be surprised. For Calder's Third Law of politics holds that:

When politicians do something which they think is very clever, it will eventually turn out to have been very stupid.

Kwasi Kwarteng's only budget exemplified this. Boy, did it exemplify it!

Incidentally, you can find all seven of my Laws of Politics in an earlier post on here.

The Beatles: I'll Follow the Sun

Time to circle uneasily around the Beatles again, as I heard this in a coffee shop the other day.

Paul McCartney wrote I'll Follow the Sun when he was 16. I can't decide whether the mismatch between the sweet tune and the selfish lyric is a sign of that immaturity or what makes the song interesting.

Hunting for locations from The Fallen Idol in Belgravia

The Fallen Idol was the film Carol Reed made before The Third Man and it's nearly as good.  If you've not seen it, there's a good introduction in this interview with Richard Ayoade.

It was filmed in and around Belgravia, so I went to look for it on Friday before a Liberator meet up.

The external shots of the embassy were of 1 Grosvenor Crescent, just off Belgrave Square. You can see it in the photograph above.

I you know the film you will recognise the curving terrace below - it's Grosvenor Crescent.

And you will also recognise Belgrave Mews West and The Star public house. The Star has another claim to fame: it's where the Great Train Robbery was planned.

Government's proposed legal duty to report suspicion of child sexual abuse is a fudge, says inquiry chair

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Alexis Jay, chair of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse,  has said she is deeply disappointed by the weakness of the government's proposed law making it a legal duty to report suspicions of such abuse.

The Guardian reports:

Alexis Jay said she was “deeply disappointed” by the new legislation.

“The victims are upset and angry and I’m not surprised. It’s a fudge and an opportunity missed,” she told the BBC.

“I am deeply disappointed in it and very much more so for the victims and survivors who had such high expectations that what the inquiry had recommended was going to be implemented,” she said.

“They are upset. They are angry at this and it’s not surprising.”

The long-awaited “duty to report” legislation, set out in an amendment to the criminal justice bill, was described as falling far below recommendations of the seven-year independent inquiry into child sexual abuse and has triggered outrage from campaigners and lawyers.

The new law is needed to put an end to the current situation where teachers in private schools or staff in care homes who have come under suspicion tend to leave the organisation in which they work for jobs elsewhere, aided by glowing references.

But the government's proposed version is seen as too restrictive in its application and too easy to avoid.

The reaction of Alex Renton, a campaigner on child sexual abuse, is reported by BBC News:

Mr Renton welcomed the new offence for deterring or blocking reporting, but said in his experience of many thousands of cases, it was rare that someone tried to block the reporting of child abuse.

It was far more frequent that the person who suspected or was told of abuse did not report it.

He described the amendment as a “kick in the teeth” for victims who have been campaigning for decades.

Leading Brexiters remind us of the project's closeness to Putin

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The past week has reminded us of the friendly relations between Putin's Russia and some prominent supporters to Brexit.

The i held an interview with Dominic Cummings, not in the basement of his parents's castle or the Tapestry Room of his Islington town house, but in a North London pub.

That interview is behind a paywall, but the Politico report has plenty of detail:

In an interview with the i newspaper, Cummings — who led Britain’s Vote Leave Brexit campaign and spectacularly fell out with Johnson in 2020 — declared that the West “should have never got into the whole stupid situation” and claimed sanctions against Russia have had a greater impact on European politics than in Moscow.

The former adviser was scathing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and comparisons with World War II.

“This is not a replay of 1940 with Zelenskyy as the Churchillian underdog,” he said.

“This whole Ukrainian corrupt mafia state has basically conned us all and we’re all going to get f**ked as a consequence. We are getting f**ked now right?”

Isn't he butch?

Meanwhile, Lord Frost appeared on - and was taken far too seriously by - the One Decision podcast. In the course of his interview he suggested that Russia should be allowed to keep some of its conquests in Ukraine.

Walking the Regent's Canal from Limehouse to Paddington

On the day of the London Marathon, we walk with John Rogers along the entire length of the Regent's Canal from Limehouse Basin in East London to Paddington Basin in the west. 

We pass through Mile End, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Haggerston, Shoreditch, Islington, Camden, Regent's Park, Marylebone, Maida Vale and Little Venice.

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

Oliver's Crossing: A disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville

Snibston Colliery was developed by George Stephenson and opened in 1832. Coal from it reached the outside world via his Leicester and Swannington Railway, one of the first of the steam age.

Oliver's Crossing lies on the line that led from the colliery to the Leicester and Swannington, running through what became the centre of the town of Coalville - a name that could have come from Hard Times.

The crossing was named after Oliver Robinson, who became crossing keeper here in the 1880s after suffering a mining accident. The hut that sheltered him can still be seen.

Oliver's Crossing remained in use until the colliery closed in 1983.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

The local elections have gone and the general election is not yet upon us. So this could be a good time to write a guest post for Liberal England.

Please drop me a line if you've got ideas or opinions you'd like to share with the readers of this blog.

As you can see from the list below, I accept posts on subjects far beyond the Liberal Democrats and British politics.

I'm happy to entertain a wide variety of views, but I'd hate you to spend your time writing something I wouldn't want to publish. So do please get in touch first.

These are the last ten guest posts on Liberal England:

• Councillor defections: The scores on the doors at the end of 2023 - Augustus Carp
• Snailbeach and the music of abandonment - Eric Loveland Heath
• Sex, spies and scandal: The John Vassall Affair - Alex Grant
• Jon Pertwee's Doctor tackled many of the problems we face today - Peter Chambers
• Martyn’s Law and its unintended ecclesiastical consequences - Augustus Carp
• The Lib Dems approach the general election in a far weaker position than in 1997 - Anselm Anon
• A book that explains why Britain voted for Brexit - Peter Chambers
• No smoke without political economy - Anselm Anon
• In old age a shared past is rich and comforting - The Secret Support Worker
• So far this year, 49 councillors have left the Tories and 42 have left Labour - Augustus Carp

Politicians aren't gaslighting the public: we're being lied to

We should all be more like Jason Beer KC, the lead counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Because you don't hear politicians accused of lying any more. Instead, they're accused of gaslighting us.

The concept comes from Gas Light, a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton set in the London of the 1880s. In it, a man tries to convince his wife that she is going mad.

The story is so well known because, under the title Gaslight, it was twice filmed. First in England in 1940 and then in Hollywood in 1944. It was the latter production that gave the 17-year-old Angela Lansbury her big break in movies.

I suppose the concept of 'gaslighting' appeals to modern sensibilities because it paints the voters as victims. We faint alternately on the sofa like ineffectual Victorian heroines.

And for a certain sort of left-winger, the masses do now exist to be counselled, policed and therapised.

I prefer a radical politics that wants the workers to take control of their own lives - even to run the industries in which they labour.

So let's give up 'gaslighting' and be more like Jason Beer KC. If we hear a lie we should say so.

The Joy of Six 1227

Jan Dehn outlines the many questions being considered by the government inquiry into what happened on Alderney under Nazi occupation: "It is known that the camp held Russian and Ukrainian prisoners as well as Spanish Republicans, captured French resistance fighters, and jews, but precisely how many people were there, who they were, and where exactly they came from remains clouded in mystery. There are also suggestions in some quarters that there are mass graves on Alderney, but where they are located and who is buried in the pits is unknown."

Carlos Moreno, the father of the '15-minute city' has a new book out, reports Feargus O'Sullivan.

"'It’s become increasingly mundane to see intrusive and inappropriate surveillance technologies, once reserved for the police and prison estate, deployed in our schools,' says Caitlin Bishop, senior campaigns officer at Privacy International." Adele Walton on the dangerous rise of surveillance in UK classrooms.

Paul Powlesland tells the tragic story of Hoad’s Wood, used as a landfill and ignored by authorities, and suggests it shows we need Rights of Nature and guardianship.

"A parade in Rogation Week around the old borders of one parish ended in 1751 with an incursion into Richmond Park, which had been built a century before by king Charles I by buying, acquiring and enclosing land from several parishes - an act that had caused decades of anger and friction, as people not only lost access to common land for subsistence, collecting firewood, grazing livestock etc, but were also denied access along traditional footpaths." London Radical Histories unpacks the many meanings of the ceremony of Beating the Bounds.

Huw Turbervill ranks the 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers.

How Bermondsey got its tube station

Jago Hazzard presents a short but complicated history.

Note one of the comments:

It seems to have been forgotten that the initial pressure to build Bermondsey (and Southwark) Jubilee line stations came from the then local MP Simon Hughes, whose aims came to fruition, meaning that the line didn’t run direct from London Bridge to Canada Water without stopping.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.

Sunak's chess tables in the park are a victim of the Twitter approach to politics

'Levelling up' chess tables costing £50k installed https://t.co/z6t9A7Nhi7

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) May 7, 2024

This BBC News story has been generating outrage and ridicule all day, not least because it has been written to make it sound as though each table has cost £50,000. In fact that's the total cost of all 20 tables.

And let me extend a particular hello to the gentleman from Buckinghamshire who asked if people in the North can play chess.

I will admit these tables are another of the strange ragbag of policies that Rishi Sunak has come up with as prime minister. But they seem to me a benign and inexpensive idea compared when set against most things the Conservatives have offered recently.

Somewhere in the opposition to them are currents of both snobbery and inverse snobbery. Would anyone have made a fuss if the government has put 20 sets of goalposts in these parks?

Mostly, though, the chess tables are a victim of the accepted approach to politics on Twitter. Everything your party does is right, and everything the other parties do is not just wrong, but wicked and ridiculous too.

I realise I can be as guilty of this as anyone, but it's not an approach that has done British politics any favours.

The Conservative Party will eat itself

📮🗳️ Postal voting - it’s time to scrap it.

— Brendan Clarke-Smith MP (@Bren4Bassetlaw) May 7, 2024

Why would a right-wing Conservative MP want to scrap postal voting? 

I smell a conspiracy theory. The Tories really won the mayoral election in London or the West Midlands but were somehow cheated out of it by all those postal votes. 

It's nonsense, of course, but we should encourage Tories to believe in this conspiracy theory. That's because scrapping postal votes would harm them, not help them.

Her's another tweet that explains why - I assume BES is the British Electoral Study.

Party breakdown for 2019 from the BES probability sample (all modes, postal n=689) pic.twitter.com/WespXB9n7o

— Matt Singh (@MattSingh_) May 7, 2024

If I am reading this correctly, at the last election the Conservative Party won 43.7 per cent of the votes cast at polling stations and 49.3 per cent of votes cast by post.

As the Conservatives won 42.3 of all votes cast in 2019, I may have missed a subtlety or two. Perhaps it's that these figures rely on how respondents said they voted rather than how they actually voted or  that the sample is on the small side.

Still, Clarke-Smith's comments a good example of how the increasing influence of conspiracist thinking on the Tories is driving them mad.

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Movie

Not many books about philosophers become bestsellers, but one that did was David Edmonds and John Eidinow's Wittgenstein's Poker, which came out in 2002. Now there are plans to produce a short animated film inspired by it.

The book tells the story of a famous encounter between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper:

On 25 October 1946, Sir Karl Popper (at the London School of Economics), was invited to present a paper entitled "Are There Philosophical Problems?" at a meeting of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club, which was chaired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. 

The two started arguing vehemently over whether there existed substantial problems in philosophy, or merely linguistic puzzles—the position taken by Wittgenstein. In Popper's, and the popular account, Wittgenstein used a fireplace poker to emphasize his points, gesturing with it as the argument grew more heated. 

Eventually, Wittgenstein claimed that philosophical problems were non-existent, in response, Popper claimed there were many issues in philosophy, such as setting a basis for moral guidelines. Wittgenstein then thrust the poker at Popper, challenging him to give any example of a moral rule, Popper (later) claimed to have said:

Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers

upon which (according to Popper) Wittgenstein threw down the poker and stormed out. 

Wittgenstein's Poker collects and characterizes the accounts of the argument, as well as establishing the context of the careers of Popper, Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. This meeting was the only time the three were in the same room together.

The story grew with its telling over the years, particularly when Popper told it, and I don't suppose it was as violent as the video above suggests.

Nevertheless, I am delighted by news of the plan to make an animated film of the encounter. You can read all about it and support it on the film's Kickstarter page.

If you want to know more about the background to the encounter between Popper and Wittgenstein, which the book uses to open up the history of philosophy in the 20th century, then I recommend a video of David Edmonds speaking at a book event in the US.

At the start, he talks about tracking down the other people who were present at that meeting of the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club.

One of them was the philosopher Margaret Masterman, who was one of Wittgenstein's inner circle of students. I must have come across a paper of hers when I was at York, because I can remember reading the book in which it was included: Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge, edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave.

Later Masterman worked on the problem of teaching computers to understand everyday human language. Her work here has been influential and she deserves to be better known than she is.

And, wonderfully, she was the daughter of my favourite Edwardian Liberal, Charles Masterman.

Otters playing in the Welland at Market Harborough

The Welland, which only a few weeks ago was threatening to flood the town, is becoming overgrown for the summer.

And here, posted yesterday, are an otter and her pups playing in the narrowing channel.

Thanks to The hedge finding missile for the video.

A mud-walled outbuilding in Foxton

Yesterday was sunny, so I went to Foxton Locks for the umpteenth time. Yet I still noticed something new in the village.

This outbuilding has mud walls, parts of which were later replaced with brick. Its roof would presumably once have been thatched.

There are more examples of such walls on this blog's mud walls label.

The Joy of Six 1226

He may be writing for Conservative Home, but William Atkinson has no comfort or advice for the party in the wake of Thursday's defeats: "Well, perhaps one small suggestion. Have you tried sticking underpants on your head and pencils up your nose?"

Andrew Cockburn argues that the media has failed Julian Assange: "WikiLeaks took away the filters through which we are normally directed to view the world. Without it, we would have little idea of the number of civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan during the American invasion, or of the United States’ war crimes, such as the execution of eleven handcuffed people, including five children, in a 2006 raid on a house in Iraq."

"A 2016 study, conducted in the USA, found that just 33 per cent of employees had complete faith in their management team. And a 2008 poll found that 25 per cent of American workers considered their bosses to be outright dictators. Less than half believed their workplace fostered creativity." Joss Sheldon makes the case for workplace democracy.

Thomas Leatham on how Antonioni's 1966 Swinging London film Blow-Up destroyed censorship in Hollywood.

"Cricket of this early period required players literally to bowl the ball along the ground, hoping that a clever bounce from a speedy ball would get past the batsman; for his part, the batsman held a curved wooden bat that now brings to mind more a hockey stick than a modern cricket bat; the stumps are two in number, with a single bail balanced atop, the target being appreciably wider and squatter than the modern three-stump wicket." A Latin poem dating from 1703 gives what may be the best picture we have, says an article on Antigone.

Martin Gordon, bassist on the 1964 Sparks album Kimono My House, takes us behind-the-scenes of this classic album in the latest edition of The Strange Brew podcast. For the album's 50th anniversary, he shares details about rehearsals, studio sessions and interactions with the band members and the team involved.

Ed Davey: The Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country

A new Guardian article suggests the Liberal Democrats' strong performance in the local elections means its strategy of concentrating campaigning on key seats may deliver gains from the Conservatives at the coming general election.

It quotes the party's leader, Ed Davey, on a visit to Dorset, where we took control of the council after gaining 13 wards from the Tories:

"This victory in Dorset is an historic and stunning result for the Liberal Democrats,” he said. “People here in Dorset and right across the country are fed up with this chaotic and out-of-touch Conservative government and they’re voting for change with the Liberal Democrats. ...

"After our victory in Somerset two years ago and our stunning successes in Devon last year, this win in Dorset confirms that the Liberal Democrats are back in the West Country and will be the main challengers to Conservative MPs here whenever the general election is called."

Paul Weller: Wild Wood

When Paul Weller released his second solo album, Wild Wood, in 1993, two quips did the rounds.

The first was that it had taken Weller 15 years to go from being a mod to being a hippy, when in the Sixties people managed it in 15 months.

The second was that it owed so much to Traffic that it should have been called Winwood.

Never mind. I was pleased Weller was back and connecting with the ruralist strain in English culture. And, more than 30 years on, it still sounds good.

A recent Mojo article describes how Weller and his collaborators got it together in the country, not at a Berkshire cottage, but at Richard Branson's residential studio The Manor at Shipton-on-Cherwell in Oxfordshire.

In it, Weller talks about the influences on the record:

Elsewhere, in The Manor’s living-cum-listening room, records were spun, and cassette mixtapes played into the wee small hours, shaping the contours of the album. Traffic are often cited as the chief source of inspiration for Wild Wood. “Definitely an influence,” Weller nods, “but I mean, people were probably saying that because it had a flute on it!

“From the ’90s onwards, I was listening to so much different music which I’d cut myself off from in the past. I was sort of blinkered when I was younger. To the point of not buying records because someone had long hair or a beard. I dropped any sort of barriers at all and so it was a real learning curve as well.”

Other names on the Wild Wood sessions playlists included CSNY, Nick Drake, Free, Donald Byrd, Shuggie Otis and A Tribe Called Quest, whose Luck Of Lucien from their 1990 debut People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm led Weller, via their sample usage, back to jazz-funk trumpeter Billy Brooks’s 1974 album, Windows Of The Mind.

That's an interesting list, particularly as Nick Drake was not then the ubiquitous figure he has become in the 21st century.

Another Mojo article ranks all of Weller's solo albums and has Wild Wood in first place:

A classic with a capital C, Wild Wood has lost none of its allure and magic over the last thirty years. The aforementioned Sunflower was a more nimble version of future hit The Changingman, Can You Heal Us (Holy Man) could be Traffic themselves, while the title track was a folk standard for a new decade; mystical, soulful and stoned. The formula would be tweaked to more commercial success a couple of years later, but here is Weller truly finding his voice as a solo artist.

 This is the title track.

The Rex, Coalville: "An astonishing Moderne style façade to find in a small town"

I knew I had to look for a derelict cinema in Coalville and, when I turned my mind to the search, I found I was standing outside it. 

Cinema Treasures reveals that it had 1200 seats and two screens, and says:

An astonishing Moderne style façade to find in a small town, originally surmounted by a neon-lit semi-sky sign. Inside the two-level auditorium, the main feature is the highly-ribbed ante-proscenium, covered in silver plastic paint and up-lit from the balcony parapet. The tabs were up-lit from the false orchestra pit. ...

The Rex Cinema opened on 2nd February 1938 with Errol Flynn in “Charge of the Light Brigade”. Like the Regal Cinema, it was operated by the Deeming family. It was converted into a twin cinema in May 1973.

The Rex Cinema closed on 3rd May 1984. It went over to retail use as a store for the textile company Dunelm Mill, which closed on 26th June, 2016.

You can find newspaper stories about the Rex being reopened, but I don't know if they are more than wishful thinking. For the time being, enjoy the picturesque dereliction.

Laura Kuenssberg has the approach of an ambitious young reporter, but the BBC uses her in senior roles

Later. It has been pointed out by a reader that Chris Mason is now the BBC's political editor. I'm sorry for the error and have changed this post's headline as a result. However, in many ways the problem remains: Laura Kuenssberg has the approach of an ambitious young reporter, but the BBC uses her in senior roles.

This was Laura Kuenssberg last night, talking up the gossip about the London Mayoral contest when not a vote had yet been counted and nothing about the outcome could be "clear".

The story about a Conservative victory seems to have originated from someone who had looked at the turnout figures for the different boroughs, put two and two together and made eleven.

It could have come from Labour talking down expectations, but there's less point in that after the polls have closed.

Or it could have come from Trumpist Conservatives, wondering if they could run with the idea that Sadiq had stolen the election if the Labour victory turned out to be narrower than expected.

Wherever it came from, the BBC's political editor should have been able to see through it. Kuenssberg's is a role that call for reflection and judgement, but she does not appear to possess those qualities.

I recently included an article in one of my The Joy of Six posts that developed this argument most convincingly.

Patrick Howse wrote:

I saw Kuenssberg in action close up when I worked for the BBC in Westminster for a year either side of the 2010 General Election. She was confident, ambitious, and good at her particular job – which at that time was to supply live commentary for the news channel about every development in the Westminster bubble, every day.

She did so fluently and energetically. She loved being on air, she loved being the first to get a story, and she could be trusted to ‘wing it’. In other words, she was a good continuous news reporter, always available to fill airtime.

After a spell at ITV, Kuenssberg was chosen to be the BBC’s political editor, replacing Nick Robinson in the summer of 2015. She was picked because of the qualities that I have outlined above. Unfortunately, these were not the qualities the BBC should have been looking for to fill that post at that time.

What they got was a journalist with access to the upper reaches of the Government, with a determination to get on air and tell everyone the whispers that she had heard from ministers, advisors and officials - before Sky or ITN.

What the BBC needed was someone who could take a step back, away from the scrum, and tell audiences when they were being lied to. That was something neither the BBC nor Kuenssberg has ever come to terms with.

Not that she is alone at the BBC in having been promoted into a job she is not suited for: the corporation's cricket correspondent needs a ghostwriter.

Ed Davey and the Dinosaurs: The cheesy Lib Dem post-election stunt is in

These election results show what we’ve all known. It’s time for a General Election.

Liberal Democrats will fight for you and your communities, for a Fair Deal and to make this awful Conservative government history. 🦖 pic.twitter.com/nADINpattT

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) May 3, 2024

Lord Bonkers tells me the party's original plan was to use his old friend Ruttie, the Rutland Water Monster, but in the event it proved impossible to agree a fee.

Learning to celebrate St George's Day

I miss blogging in scuzzy internet cafes. I was in one in King's Lynn when I looked out the window and saw the town's Conservative Club was flying the flag of St George.

As I then wrote:

Until a very few years ago it would have been unthinkable for it to have flown anything but the Union Jack.

We never used to be so keen on St George. I remember the saint's day being a big deal in the Cubs - we took part in a parade and the mayor was there in full fig - and churches would fly his flag, but that was about it.

The modern renaissance in the use of St George may date from 1996, when both England, the hosts, and Scotland qualified for the European Football Championship.

England fans, it is argued, showed a grasp of the politics of the Union that their countrymen have not always matched and realised they could not brandish the Union Jack. So they rallied behind the Flag of St George instead.

Certainly, by 2014 Leicester felt it ought to mark the day with a St George's Festival, which I went along to:

With its morris dancers, knights and dragons, there was perhaps something contrived about the whole affair. But I was pleased to see it taking place for two reasons.

First, there is variety of left-winmething that whites, particularly the white working class, do not have.

So is good to see St George taking his place alongside Vaisakhi, Diwali and Hannukah in Leicester's roster of municipally recognised festivals.

And perhaps the idea that other people's festivals are authentic while yours are contrived is part of the same faulty view of multiculturalism. After all, every festival was invented if you go back far enough.

Second, if people of goodwill do not take up 23 April, then others will.

In 1979 the National Front staged a march of around 1000 people in Leicester on St George's Day. There were clashes with anti-fascist demonstrators, 40 injuries and 80 arrests.

Even if you don't care for morris dancing, you have to admit it's preferable to a National Front march.

The recent row over England's kit for Euro 2024 was an example of patriotism gone sour, but I stand by these words today.

Time to say "Evenin' all" to the police and crime commissioners

Police and crime commissioners have not lived up to the hopes for them when the role was created, so it should be scrapped.

In 2012 David Cameron told us:

"This is a big job for a big local figure. It’s a voice for the people, someone to lead the fight against crime, and someone to hold to account if they don’t deliver."

And:

"This isn’t just for politicians, but community leaders and pioneers of all sorts. People with real experience who’ve done things and run organisations, whether they are charities or companies.

"Whatever their background, they will need to be outstanding leaders ready to take a really big role on behalf of all of us."

While the Home Office press release those quotes are taken from said:

PCCs will bring a democratic voice to people in 41 police forces across England and Wales (outside London), replacing the current system of police authorities. They will not interfere in operational decisions, but will set the direction for chief constables. 

PCCs will be driven by one clear aim - to use the backing they have received from the public to deliver a real, tangible difference to the lives of the people they serve by cutting crime.

Yesterday saw the third round of PCC elections, and I believe we can now say that the experiment has failed. It has not delivered any of what Cameron and the Home Office promised.

Not only that, it has proved an expensive experiment. PCCs have discovered the need to appoint a deputy on a generous public salary as well as the need to employ researchers.

Here in Leicestershire, Leicester and Rutland, there was no visible campaign - on the doorstep or online - for the PCC election. And the Labour and Conservative candidates were both party hacks who have never made it to Westminster.

Though to be fair to Labour's Rory Palmer, he has, unlike his Conservative opponent Rupert Matthews, never been a lecturer on the paranormal for the International Metaphysical University or expressed the view that "the evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling".

It seems that who wins the PCC contest here depends on what other elections are taking place at the same time. 

In 2016 it took place at the same time as Leicester City Council elections, so the Labour vote came out there and we got a Labour PCC. Five years later it coincided with county council elections, so the Tory vote came out and we got a Tory PCC.

Yesterday there were no other elections and Rupert Matthews won a second term with a majority of only 860. Rory Palmer would have won for Labour if the Tories had not changed the voting system since last time.

As to what we put in the place of PCCs, I suggest we go back to something like the old police authorities, which included various interest groups like local councils and magistrates.

I've seen no evidence that the system that replaced them has been better at overseeing local police forces.

Hugglescote: An Edward VIII post box with horns

I've been to Leicester's Saffron Lane Estate. I've to Earl Shilton. And now I've been to Hugglescote, so I've photographed all three Edward VIII post boxes in Leicestershire.

Since you ask, Hugglescote is a village that has now been absorbed into Coalville.

Oss Oss Wee Oss!: May Day in Padstow

This is a lovely film from 1953 about the 'Obby 'Oss festival, which is held every May Day in the Cornish town of Padstow.

Those taking part are convinced of the festival's ancient roots, though historians (well, Wikipedia) say there's no evidence to suggest that it began earlier than the 18th century.

But that has never taken away from anyone's fun on the day or in the run up to it, and no one gets burnt in a wicker man.

The Joy of Six 1225

Jamie Driscoll’s challenge to Labour in the North East mayoral contest may be a taste of things to come if a Starmer government disappoints, argue Joe Guinan and Martin O'Neill.

Martin Roche says Ofcom is not fit for purpose and must be replaced: "The entire entity is unfit for purpose. It must be replaced with a new body with a stiff backbone and sharp teeth, one that acts without fear or favour and is impervious to political pressure. This is about democracy and truth. Both those elements must be bigger than regulators and bigger than demagogue politicians."

Megan Kang shows that America's love affair with guns is a surprisingly recent phenomenon.

"As a child I used to swim in the River Wye and I remember the clouds of mayflies in the summer, as well as huge leaping salmon." Oliver Bullough on the Welsh government's lack of concern for the despoilation of this once-beautiful river.

"Women in philosophy​ have always needed a special stroke of luck. Like men, they have usually had to be well-born, well-off, talented and - in the European tradition at least - white. But most women philosophers before the late 20th century needed something more: access to a man who held the uncommon view that women - or at least certain women - could be serious thinkers too." Sophie Smith reviews two books on female philosophers.

Lindsay Anderson looked back over his career as a director in an he interview he gave in 1989.

Hastings's two funicular cliff railways

A short film on the two cliff railways of Hastings. When I was in the town the other week, I went up to the clifftops on the West Hill Railway but didn't get to travel on the East Hill Railway.

The latter enjoys some great sea views because it doesn't run through a tunnel.

The British right is increasingly attracted to the idea of forced labour

Isabel Oakeshott published an article in the Telegraph this morning under the headline:

Get benefits claimants back to work - cleaning our filthy streets

That article is behind the paper's paywall, but Vox Political has a few quotes. If they give a fair representation of the piece, it is designed to evoke disgust, not just of dirty streets, but of the people who live in them.

But Oakeshott's partner Richard Tice was in no doubt of its quality, retweeting it with the words:

Let’s make Welfare work…..

Let’s get Benefits claimant’s cleaning Britain….

Let’s ignore the howls of woke lefties….

And his deputy as leader of Reform UK, Ben Habib, chimed in:

Absolutely right Richard. 

The human condition requires work to be settled. It is good for the people and good for the country.

I like clean streets too, but I like them to be cleaned by people who are paid a good wage for doing the work and who belong to trade unions.

But this hankering after an army of unpaid workers is creeping in on the right of British politics.

When I saw tweets about Oakeshott's article, I was reminded of a an article by my own MP.

Blogging is what Neil O'Brien seems to do most of the time these days, which pleases me as a fellow exponent of a dying art. But this was not on his own Substack but Conservative Home.

And there he wrote:

In the 1990s, the visionary New York police chief, Bill Bratton, put Broken Windows policing into effect, and crushed crime. It has two elements: creating orderly places, and making sure lower level crimes get swift and certain punishment.

To create orderly places, community payback offenders shouldn’t simply beput (sic) into charity shops. Instead, they should be helping deliver a massive national drive to reduce graffiti and tidy town centres.

So there's another reserve army that can clean up Britain while undercutting council workers: prisoners.

What will be suggested next? Making this free labour available to private companies? That's what already happens in the vast US prison system - see this article from the American Civil Liberties Union.

And you could read Crime Control as Industry by Nils Christie, which long ago alerted me to look for this trend. It's one we should all fear.

Chess Masters sees the return of the game to the BBC

Embed from Getty Images

News from the BBC Media Centre:

BBC Factual today announces an exciting brand new Factual Entertainment competition format, Chess Masters, for BBC Two and iPlayer. Across eight episodes, passionate and highly-skilled players from all backgrounds will battle it out across a series of rapid chess games before one will be crowned the title of Chess Master. ...

Catherine Catton, Head of Commissioning, Factual Entertainment and Live Events, says: "In a market of competitions that celebrate physical feats we’re really excited to back an idea that foregrounds strategy and smart-thinking. Curve has devised a format that makes chess both entertaining and accessible for all."

Camilla Lewis, Executive Producer, Curve Media, says: "Chess Masters has been a joy to develop with the BBC. We are delighted to be making this warm, inclusive and clever series, where the emotional as well as strategic stakes are high. There is untapped talent out there. Amateurs from 8 to 80 will get the opportunity to compete with the best and the audience will get unique insights into the psychological and practical gameplay of this age-old but highly accessible game played by all cultures and by people of all kinds."

Malcolm Pein from the English Chess Federation adds:

The world’s oldest game has evolved into a 24/7 365 activity as well as a big money e-sport that has appeal across the generations. The way chess almost uniquely crosses all boundaries of age, sex, language and culture convinced me that our national broadcaster is its natural home.

"The chess community has waited over thirty years for the game to return to our screens and everyone is hugely excited at the prospect of creating an innovative format with the best broadcasting professionals to bring the 64 squares to life for the millions of new players and for those whose chess journey has not yet begun."

It is indeed 30 years since chess featured on the BBC in the shape of its coverage of Nigel Short's unsuccessful challenge to Garry Kasparov for the world championship.

And back in the Seventies, the BBC screened the innovative programme The Master Game. As I blogged last year:

When the BBC tried to sell The Master Game, a series of televised chess tournaments, to other national broadcasters, they were told: "We've tried doing chess on television, but it doesn't work." Then the representatives of those stations heard the players apparently voicing their thoughts during the game and bought the programme.

What format the new programme Chess Masters will take remains to be seen, but the return of chess to be BBC has to be welcomed.

Phil Edmonds's fairy-tale debut for England in 1975

Here in 1975, introduced by John Arlott, is Phil Edmonds in his blond Adonis phase, making his test debut. In his first 12 overs for England he took 5 Australian wickets for 17, his victims including both Chappell brothers.

He was to bowl much better than this for England, but never with so much luck. Still, his sudden appearance on the test scene was part of the revitalisation of the team under Tony Greig's captaincy.

From his debut until his last test, against Pakistan in 1987, Edmonds only played 51 of a possible 126 games for England.

In part this was because we rarely played two spinners, though Edmonds and John Emburey were fixtures in two successful Ashes series in the 1980s. But it was also because he came to be seen as a difficult character.

Sometimes the selectors went to ridiculous lengths to avoid picking him. In 1982 Edmonds took 80 first-class wickets for Middlesex, but three off spinners (Eddie Hemmings, Vic Marks and Geoff Miller) were taken to Australia that winter and there was no place for him.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was hidden from voters during the 2019 general election campaign

The prime minister's critics in the Conservative Party, reports the Telegraph, know what he needs to do:

Tory critics are urging Rishi Sunak to promote Right-wingers to an “election war Cabinet” after the local elections, which are predicted to deliver sizeable Tory defeats.

Two Tory MPs have endorsed the idea to The Telegraph, with Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Jenrick put forward as possible names to be in contention.

One name jumps out here: that of Jacob Rees-Mogg. That's because he had to be hidden from the public during the last general election campaign.

On 11 December 2019, the eve of polling day, a Guardian article looked at the politicians who had been prominent during the campaign and those who had been absent from the fray.

This is what it said about Rees-Mogg:

From being a near-perennial fixture of political coverage in 2019, Rees-Mogg vanished from the airwaves following uproar over his comments about the Grenfell tragedy.

His presence among the top 20 most prominent campaigners in the press and TV in the campaign’s first week was largely a result of coverage of the Grenfell issue – and by the second week he had disappeared.

Instead, a series of pictures on the politician’s Twitter account suggests that he has been instructed to largely restrict himself to his safe seat of North East Somerset.

And it wasn't just the Guardian that notices. When Rees-Mogg took his mini-me son with him to the polling station the next day, the Express reported:

Mr Rees-Mogg has rarely been seen during the last few weeks of campaigning.

This may have been due to controversial comments about the people who died in the Grenfell Tower tragedy. 

The Tory MP told LBC host Nick Ferrari that the victims would have survived if they’d have just ignored what they were told by London Fire Brigade. 

He added that he would have left the building as “it just seems the common sense thing to do”.

Mr Rees-Mogg then did not attend the Tory manifesto launch at the Telford International Centre, despite other Cabinet ministers attending. 

If bringing back Rees-Mogg is the best card the Tories can play now, they're in even more trouble than we thought.

GUEST POST So far this year, 49 councillors have left the Tories and 42 have left Labour

Augustus Carp gives his latest bulletin on councillors who have changed party. Individually, these moves may be insignificant, but the overall totals do show which way the tide is running.

It’s odd the things that political journalists think important, isn’t it? On Saturday evening a somewhat obscure Suffolk MP crosses the floor, and it’s headline news. Meanwhile, nearly 100 councillors have defected since the New Year, and it barely gets a mention in their local paper.

Obviously, the actions of a former health minister have more immediate impact than those of a sometime chair of the highways and byways subcommittee on Slagthorpe Borough Council, but the cumulative effect of numerous small-scale defections might, on balance, be rather more significant.

So far this year there have been net defections of 49 Conservative councillors, 42 Labour, 1 Lib Dem, 5 Greens and 2 Nationalists. The balancing figure is a net increase of 99 'Independents', broadly defined.

There are only 12 examples of councillors defecting directly from one political party to another - five prefiguring Dan Poulter MP and moving from Conservative to Labour, four from Conservative to Lib Dem, one from Lib Dem to Labour and one each from the Conservatives and Labour to the Greens.

My thesis is a simple one: a councillor defecting from a political party means that they will be less likely to vote - and, more importantly, to work - for that party at a general election. Their families and friends might withdraw from the fray as well, and their local knowledge of their ward will be lost to the party they formerly represented.

Does it matter? Well, that depends on how important you think leafleting, canvassing and sitting outside polling stations might be for a parliamentary election. A winning team in a close contest needs to expend thousands of volunteer hours, a process which is very difficult to organise, manage and motivate.

Perhaps that’s why some bright young things would rather try to maximise support and get voters to the polling stations via social media alone, but personally I still think a bit of physical effort is required.

The well-reported mass defections of Labour councillors have continued this year, notably the 10 in Pendle. This action has been replicated on a smaller scale elsewhere, with some Labour defectors expressing dissatisfaction with the party’s position on Gaza and other, undefined, 'leadership issues'.

As a consequence, several new, ostensibly 'Independent' groups have been established in some authorities by ex-Labour councillors. Meanwhile, Reform, the People’s Party and Alba have all attracted new converts, but they remain scarce.

The local election results on Thursday and Friday will no doubt overshadow Mr Poulter’s resignation, and all of those tallied above, but it might not be long before pressures, personalities and politics create fissures in the newly elected council groups.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

The US is living through its own version of the Jeremy Thorpe Affair

Readers of a certain age will remember Rinka. She was the dog shot to persuade her owner, Norman Scott, not to talk about his affair with the Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe.

Now it's the US's turn to live through a political scandal about a shot dog.

Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, was one of the favourites to be Donald Trump's running mate this November. But she appears to have ruined her chances of becoming Vice President by publishing a book.

The Guardian takes up the story:

"Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old," the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an "aggressive personality" and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.

What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.

By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going "out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life".

That's a picture of Cricket above.

The Guardian report goes on to say: 

"I hated that dog," Noem writes, adding that Cricket had proved herself "untrainable", "dangerous to anyone she came in contact with" and "less than worthless ... as a hunting dog".

"At that moment," Noem says, "I realised I had to put her down."

Noem, who also represented her state in Congress for eight years, got her gun, then led Cricket to a gravel pit.

"was not a pleasant job," she writes, "but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realised another unpleasant job needed to be done."

Yes, she also shot a goat the family owned.

According to Noem, it was "nasty and mean", because it had not been castrated. Furthermore, the goat smelled "disgusting, musky, rancid".

Donald Trump is 77.

Karl Popper, the Post Office Horizon IT scandal and solutioneering

Private Eye reminds us of the genesis of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal:

Conceived in 1996 as one of the first private finance initiative contracts, between the Post Office and the Benefits Agency on the one hand and computer company ICL on the other, the Horizon IT system had an unpromising start. It had been set up to create a swipe card system for payment of pensions and benefits from Post Office branch counters. 

When, in May 1999, the plug was finally pulled on what the Commons public accounts committee called 'one of the biggest IT failures in the public sector', taxpayers had lost around £700m. Something had to be salvaged, however. 

So, against the better judgement of its IT specialists, the Post Office decided to use the system to transform its paper-based branch accounting into an electronic system covering the full range of Post Office services. The new Horizon project became the largest non-military IT contract in Europe.

And, though I can't find the reference today, I have read that considerable pressure was put on the Post Office. Its executives were told they could whistle for more government investment if they didn't buy Horizon.

All of which reminds me of Roger James, who wrote a book seeking to apply the insights of Karl Popper's philosophy to public affairs. That 1980 book, Return to Reason, can be found online.

One of the useful concepts James introduces is 'solutioneering', which he characterises as:

Jumping to a solution before clearly formulating what the problem is (or indeed if there is one at all) or how success or failure are to be judged. Achievement of the solution then becomes the goal; and, when opposition develops, the problem becomes how to get the solution accepted, while the question of how best to solve the original problem, if there was one, never gets discussed at all. I call this mistake solutioneering.

Horizon wasn't a solution to one, clearly defined problem, but the Post Office was nevertheless determined to defend its reputation at all costs. Anyone who raised doubts about whether it could do all that was being asked of it was treated as a threat to the organisation.