"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
It's easy for politicians in opposition to talk tough, but Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron have proved that you can do it while leading a government too.
Part of a prime minister's job is speaking to the nation and speaking for the nation, and I fear that, at this time of crisis, Britain is stuck with a PM who is unwilling or unable to do either. And his whole government is wearing Starmer's lack of personality like a shroud.
Anyway, Ed Davey spoke about Donald Trump in the Commons yesterday and has an article in today's Guardian:
Donald Trump is behaving like an international gangster. His threats to Greenland this week have crossed a line, blackmailing America’s closest allies and threatening the future of Nato itself. From leaking messages with other world leaders to whining about the Nobel peace prize, the US president has gone from unstable to seemingly unhinged. And our government needs to wake up.
For months, Keir Starmer has pursued a strategy of quiet appeasement. He told us that by avoiding confrontation the UK could carve out a special status that would shield our industries from the coming storm. Only a few months ago, Trump hailed the “special relationship” at Windsor Castle after being lavished with a state banquet. Now, thanks to his actions, it is nearly in tatters. Starmer’s Mr Nice Guy diplomacy has failed.
This is from Rhythm of the Saints, Paul Simon's 1990 follow up to Graceland. Just as the earlier album had drawn on South African music, so this one was inspired by South America.
It's less well remembered today, but still full of good things.
The Liberal Democrats have tabled an amendment to the Westminster government's Railways Bill calling for the full devolution of rail powers to Wales, reports Nation Cymru.
Both the Lib Dems and Plaid Cymru argue that Wales is losing out on billions of pounds of railway investment because some projects based entirely in England, such as the Oxford to Cambridge reopening, are often classified as "England and Wales" schemes.
Nation Cymru quotes David Chadwick, the Welsh Lib Dems' Westminster spokesperson and MP for said:
"Wales has been treated as an afterthought when it comes to rail for far too long. While Scotland has the powers to plan, fund and deliver its own rail network, Wales is left with crumbs and warm words by both Labour and the Conservatives.
"This amendment is about fairness. It would give Wales the same control Scotland already has and stop us losing out on billions of pounds for rail projects that don’t even touch Welsh soil.
"If the Government is serious about treating Wales as an equal partner in the Union, it should back this amendment."
The other day I was wondering in a jaundiced sort of way when I'd last seen a news story about the Lib Dems in Wales that didn't concern farming, so I'm pleased to see them taking up this excellent cause.
I walked The Salt Path myself – we called it the South Coastal Path in those days – from Minehead to Weymouth, over four summer holidays, in the Eighties and Nineties.
Don't tell Jennie, but I left out the stretch through Torbay (my guidebook said it was allowed) because it was so built up.
Commercial Road was constructed at the beginning of the 19th century to connect London's docks with the City.
As Jago Hazzard explains in this video, a smooth granite trackway was constructed along the road in 1828 or thereabouts to speed the flow of goods away from the docks.
When the trackway was taken up is even less clear, but in 1840 a conventional railway that ran parallel to Commercial Road was opened, reducing the need for it. The road, which was opened as a privately owned toll road, was taken into public ownership in the 1860s.
You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.
Schuyler Mitchell talks to Mark Bray, a Rutgers University professor and expert on Fascism, who has fled the US with his family after being targeted because of his work: "The next day, we managed to leave – but not before being searched and interrogated by federal officers, despite facing no charges whatsoever. I’m not suspected of any crimes. I’m just a professor."
"Ofcom has repeatedly allowed GB News to broadcast biased news. Ofwat allows water companies to jack up prices enormously whilst pouring shit into our rivers and sometimes not even delivering water. And Ofgem allows electricity companies to charge some of the highest domestic and industrial electricity prices in the world." Chris Dillow on regulatory capture – the tendency of big corporations to take control of the regulators supposed to police them.
JP Spencer looks the success of the Manchester Mill news website and the potential of its model across Britain: "With the decline of many news titles, it is welcome that local democracy is getting the attention and scrutiny it deserves. ... As a big believer in the power of local decision making, we are going to need new forms of media to report on key decisions and other issues that will keep the public informed and grease the wheels of democracy."
"They didn’t poll residents about whether they felt 'interested but concerned' about automobiles. They showed them the future and made them want it. Today’s planning profession has inverted that approach. Instead of selling a vision, we survey people about their willingness to adopt one. People self-identify based on current conditions, reflecting limited beliefs about what’s possible. ... The results are predictable." Andy Boenau says campaigners should aim make freedom of mobility so compelling that people demand it.
"These files make it clear that Our Friends in the North's path to transmission would make a drama in and of itself. It had taken more than a decade for it to be successfully adapted by Peter Flannery from his own Royal Shakespeare Company play of the early 1980s." Paul Hayes digs into the BBC's archives to uncover the production history of the award-winning political drama.
Hyungwon Kang explains how 5th-century Roman glassware came to be found in high-status burials in Korea.
Metro wins our Headline of the Day Award and reminds everyone that not all nuns are as benevolent as Lord Bonkers' friends at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes in High Leicestershire.
Significant numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs are becoming frustrated by Ed Davey's cautious leadership and the party’s failure to spell out a national message to voters, according to an article posted on the Guardian website this afternoon:
Peter Walker quotes one MP as telling him:
"Morale is low. No one is saying get rid of Ed. But what they are saying is that those around him need to move with significant pace towards the development of a national story for the party to tell. We need to be a bit more serious about being the third party."
The unnamed MP is right about our lack of a Lib Dem narrative. We fought the last general election as a collection of by-elections – three bullet points and Labour can't win here – and we often appear still to be approaching politics in that fashion.
Walker quotes some Davey loyalists too, but he reports:
Many Lib Dem MPs nonetheless agree that the party needs a coherent national policy, particularly on the cost of living. "We need a big retail offer on the economy," one said. "We need to be more radical on this and if we are, Ed is the person to do it as he’s well liked, experienced and won’t scare people."
Is this just Sunday paper talk or a sign of serious discord in the parliamentary party? I can't be the only person who's heard of complaints that Davey's leadership is very top down.
Anyway, another of Walker's anonymous MPs sounds a warning note:
"There’s no shouting, there is no jostling for position. But there are penetrating questions being asked about our purpose and where we are going. At the moment it feels a bit like gruel. Ed needs to be mindful that it won’t take much more for colleagues to become really frustrated."
BBC Radio 3's Late Junction is a treasure, so of course the station's controllers can't stop cutting it. It once ran for two hours, three time a week: now it's only 90 minutes and only on Fridays.
The programme has a wide musical scope. It is not uncommon to hear medieval ballads juxtaposed with 21st-century electronica, or jazz followed by international folk music followed by an ambient track.
It was on Late Junction that I heard Carl Orff's Trees and Flowers, which is surely taken from the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic.
And I remember hearing Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa by something called Vampire Weekend. I thought I'd discovered an obscure band to feature here one Sunday, but on further investigation they proved to be about the trendiest band in the world at that time. (Normally, of course, I'm down with the kids.)
Which brings us to Nora Brown and Steph Coleman, who I heard on Late Junction the other week. Their billing for a gig at The Harrison – a pub near St Pancras where I've been known to meet Liberator friends – in 2023 explains:
First brought together by Brooklyn’s tight-knit old-time music community in 2017, Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman share a rich musical partnership that belies their 20 year age difference. Nora is a banjo player, and has released 3 albums on Brooklyn based Jalopy Records. She has performed across the US, Europe and Japan including NPR’s Tiny Desk and TED EDU.
Stephanie is a master old-time fiddler, having recorded with and toured internationally over the last two decades with celebrated artists such as trailblazing all-women stringband Uncle Earl, Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin, and clawhammer banjo virtuoso Adam Hurt.
Nora and Stephanie recorded together on Nora’s debut album Cinnamon Tree, and have performed as a duo at such renowned festivals as the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Trans-Pecos Festival in Marfa, TX, and are looking forward to performing at major festivals in Canada and Europe in the coming year including the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen.
I like The Very Day I'm Gone, though I suspect it's best listened to in the late evening.
"America has become a place where it is no longer entirely safe to speak freely. Where criticizing the Government can get you into trouble, perhaps even cause you to be fired from your job, or deported. Where engaging in public protest can get you arrested. Where every day you wake up with a clenching stomach, wondering what new Government outrage has happened overnight." Alexandra Hall Hall on living in the US today.
Thomas Lockwood says Robert Jenrick's Newark constituency "is now is now a live laboratory test for the future of the British right – and for the fragmentation and reinvention of British politics".
Zoe Crowther talks to Imran Ahmed, the British-born campaigner against online hate who is threatened with deportation from the US. He fears the "tendrils of Big Tech" have already reached Westminster.
Foluke Ifejola Adebisi reflections on the life and death of Patrice Lumumba. "We often decry our current African leaders, their incompetence, corruption, complete lack of willingness to stand up for the good of their countries or their people. But while we decry them – and we must do that with all that we have – let us not forget that we sometimes had leaders who gave their all to the struggle. Their blood, their lives, their spirit, their souls. Let us not forget what happened to them."
"This myth of 'boy books' does real harm. It narrows reading down to one-dimensional stories built around aggression or dominance. The overwhelming message boys receive is that reading is fine, as long as it reinforces orthodox masculinity and does not ask you to feel too much or think too deeply." Louis Provis on the wrong way to encourage boys to read.
"Hayley Mills was quickly growing out of her childhood film roles and this was an ideal production that helped transition her into more mature teen roles." Silver Scenes celebrates The Moon-Spinners (1964).
You know how none of us believe in ley lines? Here's the fourth part of Third Rate Content's quest following one line they have found in Shropshire.
Their YouTube blurb says:
Join Third Rate content on an epic adventure from Castle Ring to Mitchell’s Fold in the Shropshire Hills! In this episode, we hike through stunning landscapes, exploring ancient hillforts and uncovering hidden prehistoric mysteries.
Stumble with us as we discover an unmarked stone ring (approx. 100 sq ft, semi-submerged stones) not shown on OS maps, possibly a Bronze Age ring cairn or ritual site near the Castle Ring. The journey ends at the iconic Mitchell’s Fold stone circle, steeped in history and legend.
A chance chat at the car park revealed another uncharted site—could it be another secret waiting to be found? We’ll share tips on navigating this rugged terrain and hints for spotting these elusive treasures. Buckle up and I’ll see you out there.
BlueSky's hive mind has decided that branding Reform UK as "Conservatives 2.0" or something similar is a winning strategy, but I'm not so sure.
Perhaps because people who comment on such things online tend to be middle class and tend to be in the South of England - there's no real evidence for it, but it's scientific fact - the idea that Reform's voters are all drawn from the disaffected working class and backed Labour until recently has gained near-universal currency. These are people, the hive mind believes, who live up North somewhere among closed shipyards and whippets.
But as I pointed out in an article for Liberator last year, Reform swept the Tory shires in last May's local elections, and you don't do that on working-class Labour votes.
Telling these ex-Tory, newly converted Reform voters that their new party is "just like the Tories" is more likely to reassure them than alarm them. If we want them to think again, it would be better to emphasise how extreme Reform is and paint it as unpatriotic because of its dislike of British institutions like the NHS and the BBC, and its enthusiasm for Trump and Putin.
I think this is the "hopeful nostalgia" Josh Barbarinde was talking about the other day.
You could argue that Reform splitting the Tory vote will help more left-wing parties, but encouraging people to vote for far-right parties because you think it will help you in the short terms is a fool's game.
What I do like in the message from Lib Dem High Command above is "webuyanytory.com".
There is a tendency among politicos on Bluesky to announce that it doesn't matter how may Tory politicians join Reform or how disreputable they are, because most voters aren't even aware of it.
This view, too, is touched with snobbery. It may take the public a while to notice such things, but they do notice them, and once they've done so, it's hard to get them to unnotice them. It's also open to other parties to seek to speed this process, of course.
So let's stop calling Reform "Conservatives 2.0" and continue pointing out their extreme views and that they've recruited the very worst Tories.
"The government continues to frame the cost-of-living crisis as a problem that can be solved largely through domestic policy choices. Announcements focus on price caps, fare freezes and measures like free school meals and breakfast clubs to ease pressure on family budgets. But these treat the symptoms, not causes." We need to recognise that geopolitics is driving the cost-of-living crisis, argues Anna McShane.
Harriet Walter on the effect of the government's misbegotten treatment of Palestine Action: "By accusing them of being part of a terrorist organisation rather than a protest movement, the government ensures that these people who broke machinery in factories or sprayed paint on aeroplanes or helped to plan these actions can be seen not as ordinary people who are innocent until found guilty of ordinary crimes such as criminal damage or violent disorder, but as outside forces that are deeply threatening to social order and our ways of life."
Chaminda Jayanetti says falling school rolls are not just a problem for London.
"His fabulously wry first wife, Eileen, described his landmark 1941 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as ‘a little book explaining how to be a Socialist, though Tory’. Even in his most revolutionary moods, Orwell was very specific about what should stay and what should go. Small wonder that he found fault with every version of socialism except his own." Dorian Lynskey reviews two recent books on George Orwell.
"She became a byword for the brutal and controlling ways of the ‘Hollywood factory’ and its tendency to swallow up child stars. You’ve probably heard that MGM encouraged Garland’s use of drugs – ‘pep pills’ to get her to work and suppress her appetite, downers to help her sleep – only to criticise her for being unreliable when she became an addict who sometimes couldn’t show up for work. Eventually, the studio dropped her. She wasn’t yet thirty." Bee Wilson on Judy Garland.
Peter Adams has good news. The Devon Heritage Orchard at RHS Garden Rosemoor is preserving traditional apple varieties, some of which were on the point of disappearing.
Backbenchers do not hesitate to voice their opinions about state schools and ministers do not hesitate to intervene. It's as though having lost confidence in their ability to do anything about the economy, politicians have lighted upon education as an alternative arena.
But it is only state education that politicians comment on. Private schools are given a free pass.
Here's the education minister Josh MacAlister replying to a Westminster debate, occasioned by an online petition calling for schools to move to a four-day week, with the remaining days each being an hour longer:
It is essential that we do not compromise the great progress that has been made over recent years by reducing the amount of time that pupils spend at school, either in total or spread over a five-day week. Evidence, including research by the Education Policy Institute published in 2024, has shown that additional time in school, when used effectively, can have a positive impact on pupil attainment, particularly for the most vulnerable.
Schools need enough time to deliver the curriculum to a high standard while ensuring appropriate breaks and opportunities for wider enrichment. Shortening the school week would upset that balance, making it harder for pupils to secure the knowledge and skills they need to go on to lead rich and fulfilling lives.
If the evidence is so clear, why does no one question private schools' practice of having longer holidays than state schools?
You may point to the facts that private schools often have longer school days, some even have Saturday morning lessons, but those are just the sort of trade offs the petitioners for a four-day week want state schools to be able to make.
As this is England is suppose the answer is class. Schools that cater for the children of the upper classes are thought to be inevitably superior so no one much questions their practices, and there is also a feeling that such parents, and even such children, are more to be trusted.
When I told my favourite teacher at school that I was interested in studying philosophy at university, one of the books he lent me was Plato's Republic. It was a brilliant choice because it encompassed so many topics and the debates it contained were still relevant.
At university I found that one of the thinkers I was most attracted to, Karl Popper, had devoted the first volume of his wartime critique of totalitarian thinking, The Open Society and Its Enemies, to a critique of the Republic.
Popper was not the first thinker of his era to treat Plato in this way. The future Labour cabinet minister Richard Crossman had published his Plato Today in 1937.
In this, if you will, trialogue, Professor Angie Hobbs brings out the appeal of Plato's approach to discussion and, in particular, the relevance today of his analysis of democracy and demagoguery.
And I value the way Classical ethical discussion of how we should live our lives encompasses questions that our modern talk of state-guaranteed rights tends to pass over.
I'm also struck by the similarities between the training Plato sets out for his ruling class in the Republic and the education that the English upper classes used to inflict upon their sons.
The United Kingdom is the world’s worst offender when it comes to letting fossil fuel companies drill in protected areas.
An investigation coordinated by the Environmental Investigative Forum and European Investigative Collaborations has found that the UK has issued production licences that overlap with 13,500km² of protected areas – an area nearly nine times the size of Greater London.
Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and a member of the Commons energy security and net zero select committee, told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that these findings are "deeply troubling" and that the UK's place on the list is "shocking and irresponsibile":
"Protected areas exist for a reason, and allowing oil and gas exploration within them completely undermines their purpose, putting irreplaceable natural habitats at risk.
"The revelations of this investigation must weigh heavily on the government as it considers the Rosebank decision. Rosebank may not sit directly within a protected area, but the pipeline built to serve it cuts through a highly sensitive marine protected area, posing clear risks to our marine environment."
The GCR in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire are separated by 500 yards of missing bridges and embankments at Loughborough. In this video Tim Dunn looks at the project, already well under way, to close that gap.
When it's done, there will be an 18-mile heritage railway running from the edge of Leicester to a transport museum near Nottingham.
I searched for a video of Eddie McCreadie scoring a goal, only to find that his foul on Billy Bremner in the 1970 FA Cup Final replay is everywhere. So here it is instead.
It's here because McCreadie has died at the age of 85. I think that leaves Ron Harris, David Webb and Charlie Cooke as the only members of that victorious Cup Final team who are still with us. How old the world has grown.
Former Scotland and Chelsea player Eddie McCreadie, who was once hailed by Tommy Docherty as the best left-back in Europe and went on to manage the London club, has died at the age of 85.
Born in Glasgow, McCreadie scored Chelsea's winning goal in the 1965 League Cup final against Leicester City and helped the Blues lift the FA Cup five years later with an extra-time, replay victory over Leeds United.
One of his 23 Scotland caps came in a famous 3-2 victory over England at Wembley a year after the hosts had lifted the World Cup there.
And his brief but glorious spell as Chelsea manager:
After retiring from playing, McCreadie joined Chelsea's coaching staff in 1974, with Ron Suart's side sliding towards life back in the second tier.
The Scot took over from the departing Suart in April 1975 and, although he could not prevent relegation, he rebuilt the side around 18-year-old midfielder Ray Wilkins and took Chelsea back up to the First Division in 1977.
However, he left before the start of the new season after a row with chairman Brian Mears, expressing surprise that his offer to resign after being refused a company car was accepted.
The Sun reported McCreadie's happy return visit to the club in 2017 after more than 40 years. I can recall him saying something along the lines of "If I'd known I was this popular I'd have come back sooner."
To end with that foul, the way the referee waves play on after McCreadie had kicked Billy Bremner in the head in the Chelsea box tells you what football was like in this era.
And the fact that, despite the, er, robust play of McCreadie and Ron Harris, most neutrals wanted Chelsea to win, tells you a lot about what Don Revie's Leeds were like.
During his successful campaign for the Liberal Democrat presidency, Josh Barbarinde's supporters emphasised his unparalleled ability to gain media coverage. They always sounded a little optimistic in a world where not even the party leader gets as much attention as he deserves, but Josh is indeed the subject of a substantial article by Rachel Cunliffe on the New Statesman website.
Much of the piece is about Josh personally, but then his compelling backstory is part of what attracts the media. And it does eventually get on to Lib Dem strategy:
As the Lib Dems gear up for 2026, this is how they are framing the conversation. Brexit is back on the agenda, with a renewed debate about the customs union as a way to spur economic growth and tackle the cost of living crisis. Electoral reform is high up on the list too, as the electorate fractures across too many parties for first-past-the-post to be able to cope with. Both are subjects on which the Lib Dems have campaigned vigorously, and even won parliamentary votes with the help of Labour rebels.
But if neither of those subjects can be relied upon to capture the public’s imagination, there is another option: presenting the party as the alternative to the narrative of division and nationalism seized upon by Reform. As flags pop up on roundabouts across the country like mushrooms sprouting over a lawn, the visible manifestation of a deeper decay, the Lib Dems, with their 72 MPs and message of “hopeful nostalgia”, want to be the antidote.
Asked what his personal role in this is, Josh replies:
"To gee-up our party to fight for the soul of our country."
The change isn't on the Lib Dem website yet, but the party constitution was amended at last autumn's conference to say that the president "shall be the voice of party members". This suggests that Josh, like every party president before him, will interpret the role in his own idiosyncratic way.
Perhaps the Lib Dem presidency is still a victim of its history. When it became clear the first leader of the Liberal Democrats would be a former Liberal (Alan Beith or Paddy Ashdown), the important-sounding but ill-defined role of president was created so it could be occupied by a leading former SDP member.
The British Film Institute's blurb on YouTube says:
In this video essay director Will Webb highlights scenes from Powell and Pressburger films – including The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I'm Going and Black Narcissus – that tilt us off-balance, shaking what we thought we knew about the world's that one of cinema's greatest filmmaking partnerships created.
Don't worry. It also includes something from A Canterbury Tale – the first shot of the glue man here is really a boy, to make him look further away on the studio set. We also see Jennifer Jones on the Stiperstones in Gone to Earth.
"Governments and taxpayers fund universities not because they are efficient 'businesses', but because they are essential public institutions. They generate research that underpins economic growth and cultural life. They educate professionals on whom society depends. They are meant to be spaces where difficult questions can be asked and discussed. They are fundamental institutions in a democratic society." Monica Franco-Santos fears that in trying to 'fix' universities, we are quietly unmaking them.
Emma John reminds us that England has ruthlessly privatised cricket, while Australia still embraces it with constant public displays of affection: "In the parks and pubs, cricket remains the dominant summer pastime and subject of conversation. In the Grampians of western Victoria, whose peaks are better known for their world-class climbing, I constantly witnessed pick-up games in the backyards and paddocks of the cafes and restaurants, or mums and dads tossing up hit-mes to tiny toddlers holding miniature bats."
Lee Elliot Major on a Cambridge college's plans to target elite private schools in its student recruitment: "Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a 'slap in the face' for their state-educated undergraduates."
"I first watched the film this year, on moving to the West Midlands, but I’ve been haunted by screenshots of the production circulating on social media for a decade: a burnt severed hand looming over the Worcestershire countryside, a terrifying claymation-style succubus sitting on a bed, an androgynous William Blake-inspired golden angel reflected in a lake." Samuel McIlhagga discusses the enduring influence of David Rudkin's 1974 television play Penda’s Fen.
"Three women are being released from Holloway Prison on the same morning. They come from vastly different backgrounds and each has plans for what they want to do on their first day of freedom, but they have all agreed to meet for dinner that evening. This simple story, told with warmth and empathy, follows the lives of these women during the span of that one day and the touching and tragic events that take place before and after this dinner." Silver Scenes finds Turn the Key Softly (1953) is an underrated British gem.
I have been asked by the judges to emphasise that they are sure the hurdy-gurdy player in question is nothing the like the vengeful ghost of a Gypsy child.
While I'm at it, the headline comes via Yahoo! because the Press has changed it to something more prosaic since the story went up.
And the music in the video, which is the very recording used in Lost Hearts, is not of a hurdy-gurdy at all. It's a variety of zither from the Vosges region of France.
Reader's voice: You don't think you're in danger of taking this feature too seriously, do you?
The Yorkshire Evening Post (or "Eenie Po!" as the newspaper sellers used to shout in York) wins our Headline of the Day Award.
One of the crustier judges was heard to remark:
"You mark my words, Colonel, this is a very slippery slope. Allow the children to wear coats in winter, and before you know it you're abolishing the school leopard."
The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay.
Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result that it wasn't a hit.
The song's writer, Robin Pizer, says today it was merely "a loose commentary on current events during those years of global demonstrations".
I'm told that after this Gypsy turned more to a country rock sound - in fact, there's already a Neil Young flavour to Changes Coming.
It's hard to discover much about Gypsy online, perhaps because of confusion with an American band with the same name. The best article I have come across is one on Jazz Rock Soul.
And as I said in the Legay post, Robin Pizer, who was the band's singer, is still writing songs. Here he is on the discovery of Richard III.
"For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth – and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists ... many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments." To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the TheoBros, says Kiera Butler.
Martin Barrow finds that Labour's reforms of the care system are an admission that privatisation of children's homes and foster care is here to stay: "Now responsibility for where children in care live is to be removed from local councils altogether and handed to a regional body with tenuous local roots tasked with negotiating the best financial terms with private providers."
"We talk endlessly about 'local pride', yet whenever regions like Cornwall, the north east, or Yorkshire try to express that pride politically or administratively, someone in Westminster clears their throat and steers the conversation back to something safer: 'Englishness'. As if being Cornish, Geordie, or Yorkshire were a distraction rather than part of the story." Regional identity still matters, argues John Hall, but without power and respect risks being reduced to a souvenir.
Eleanor Grant reports that lawfare is stifling student politics at Oxford: "One scandal after another, each matched by an internal, quasi-legal tribunal, has now threatened to sink the Oxford Union and a series of student articles chronicling these escapades have mysteriously vanished after short-lived publication."
Casmilus watches Rock Follies, the Seventies television series about an all-woman band that starred Charlotte Cornwell, Rula Lenska and Julie Covington.
"It’s got one of the most famous opening lines of any Murdoch novel, which takes a lot from Austen: 'Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.'" Miles Leeson chooses Iris Murdoch's five best novels.
This is from Malcolm Saville's introduction to Sea Witch Comes Home, his story inspired by the East Coast floods of 1953:
Every mile of this unusual coast and the lovely country behind it is worth exploring. Southwold, with its white lighthouse towering over its streets of flint and red brick houses, is waiting for you to discover – and so is the harbour at the mouth of the River Blyth a mile away. Between the river and the town are flat marshlands which were flooded when the sea broke through the defences not many years ago.
But the narrow-gauge Southwold Railway closed as early as 1929, and Saville's characters catch the bus from Halesworth to reach the town.
This engaging video from the Rediscovering Lost Railways YouTube channel shows what remains of the line and the efforts that are being made to prevent it being forgotten. And the Southwold Railway Trust has plans to reopen it one day.
It is well known that Crystal Palace Park includes a number of Victorian dinosaur models, arranged in groups around the lower lake. Many of these species were recently discovered although not all the models are nowadays thought to be strictly accurate. Less well known is that alongside these animals there is a replica geological strata.
This was built at the same time as an educational feature and was constructed from the true strata it was based on from Ashover in Derbyshire. Coal measures, limestone and millstone grit are part of the reconstruction. In addition, a 3/4 scale lead mine was constructed behind the face in carboniferous limestone; in the 19th century visitors could tour the mine. Inside they would find stalactites and lead ore veins.
The mine, along with the geological strata, is now grade I listed alongside the dinosaurs. No access is possible at it is allegedly unsafe (although the local authority responsible for the site was initially unaware of its existence when enquiries were made).
The Victorian Web also has an article on this feature, from which I have taken the photograph above.
Nevill Holt Hall has been many things: the family home of the Cunards, a notoriously abusive prep school, the chief model for Bonkers Hall. But in the 18th century it was a fashionable spa.
The Doctor Bottled its Waters and Let His Imagination Go
In a wood in one of the highest parts of Leicestershire, where wild pigeons seek the topmost branches of fir trees, rabbits scamper unheeding of alien eyes through an autumn carpet of leaves, and an earthy tang brings a curious peace to traffic-jangled nerves.
That is the sylvan setting of an ancient spa where once Society leaders used to flock to sip the health-giving waters.
You will find it Neville Holt, a few miles from Market Harborough, but its fame died with the crinoline.
To-day it is a mere trickle as a result of a dry summer, and its crumbling brickwork is a danger adventurous boys of the neighbouring Neville Holt School.
How the spa became nationally famous is a curious story. In 1728 a tenant farmer of the owner of the estate of Neville Holt Italian Count Migliorucci, dug a pond in Holt Wood where his cattle could slake their thirst.
Much to his dismay, however, after all his hard work, the cattle would not drink the water.
Curious as to the reason, he had the water analysed and it was found to contain a medicinal mineral known as nitro-alluminous.
He imparted this information to Count Migliorucci, who caused an arch to be built over the spring, making it a grotto of two compartments.
A Doctor Short of Sheffield came to hear of this wonderful spa, which was found to cure all inflammatory diseases, and as result of energetic advertising in London and elsewhere it soon became famous.
Society and fashion hurried to the spot in search of a cure for their ailments, either real or imaginary and a road was constructed from Neville Holt to the wood for them to ride in their carriages to the spa. A search is now necessary to find the road, which is moss and weed covered through long disuse.
The water was bottled and sent to London for sale. Dr Short, who was actually something of a knave, advertised on a pamphlet that the spa waters could cure among other things "enlarged liver through excess of drinking anaemia and even corns."
His illustration of some of the cures effected could scarcely be credited by even the most gullible modern people.
The popularity of the slow-flowing health-spring waned after a few years. Perhaps the doctor’s patients found him out!
The pamphlets are in the possession of Mr. F.S. Phillips, headmaster of Neville Holt School, and form a curious link with yesteryear.
F.S. Phillips, it turned out, was no more to be believed than was Dr Short of Sheffield. (There's a heavy content warning - child abuse - for that link, particularly the comments below the story.)
"Sounding like a mob boss when speaking at Trump’s press conference at the weekend, secretary of state Marco Rubio told the world that the message of the Venezuelan intervention was that when this president says he is serious about wanting something, he gets it. The problem for Europe is that the one thing that this President covets above all is Greenland." Simon Nixon argues that Donald Trump’s "Donroe Doctrine" poses an existential threat to NATO and Europe.
Cliff Mitchell accuses Northamptonshire's two Reform-run councils of ignoring the reality of climate change across the county: "As predicted by climate scientists, Northamptonshire is seeing drier summers as well as wetter winters. Droughts are happening more quickly and becoming more intense. When combined with frequent winter floods, this leads to soil damage and erosion, reduced crop yields, and impacts on livestock grazing and biodiversity."
"It might seem silly or not worthy of attention to look into the Trump administration’s aesthetic decisions, all of the gold ornamentations smeared all over the Oval Office and ballrooms and Arc de Trumps, and etc, but the aesthetic is a way to make the political physically present. It’s a way to rally people’s energies. It’s a way to make it seem like things are changing and like Trump is keeping his promises when he’s actually not." Erin Thompson says Trump’s gilded White House makeover is all about power.
Robin Eagles discusses his work identifying Black voters in 18th-century elections.
"The BFI website suggests that Hell is a City is 'unaccountably overlooked; and suggests that it was ‘as important a film as Room at the Top’ ... They put this down to 'critical snobbery towards its solidly commercial director Val Guest' as well the fact that it was one of the very few non-horror films made by Hammer Studios, not known for its high-brow output." David Rudlin watches Hell is a City, which was filmed largely on location in Manchester and Oldham in the autumn of 1959.
It's time for another walk with John Rogers, and it's one of the kind I enjoy the most: a walk that follows one of London's lost rivers.
John describes it in his YouTube blurb as a:
walking tour of London’s lost river Westbourne from Kilburn to Chelsea via Maida Vale, Paddington, Bayswater, Knightsbridge, and Belgravia. The Westbourne is one of London’s most celebrated lost rivers and wasn’t fully buried until the mid-1800s. Consequently its course is very well documented and is famously carried over Sloane Square tube station in a pipe that can be seen from the platform.
I used to believe that the most damaging intellectual errors were essentialism and reification. These days I'm inclined to think that alliteration trumps them both.
Over the holidays I saw two Liberal Democrat MPs calling for the total abolition of the "Family Farm Tax" or the "Unfair Family Farm Tax". And the Welsh Lib Dems have just called for that too.
Here's David Chadwick, the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, quoted in the Abergavenny Chronicle:
"The Liberal Democrats were the first to call out and oppose the unfair family farm tax in last year's budget and we have been proud to stand alongside our Welsh farming communities to campaign against it ever since."
"This is about fairness and security, if we undermine Welsh farming, then we also undermine our ability to provide the country with the food we need to keep us secure in an uncertain world and to build a healthy nation.
"Despite this welcome change, many Welsh family farms will still find themselves crippled, with incomes barely at minimum wage levels. The Liberal Democrats still believe this unfair tax should be scrapped in full and will be submitting amendments in the new year to try to do so."
David puts his finger on farmers' central complaint. It's that the value of farmland has lost all connection with the income that can be derived from it. This means that small farms fear they would have to sell land or buildings to pay inheritance tax, though even before the government's recent concessions, farmers had been granted significant exemptions.
But why has the value of farmland loss any connection with farm incomes? The answer is that the generous treatment of landholdings in recent decades has led to land being used as a tax shelter. So it's the absence of inheritance or other taxes on land that has caused the problem farmers most complain about.
Here's Bio-Waste Spreader in the new Private Eye:
Has the government really "climbed down" or "U-turned", as opposition parties claim? The tax was never intended to raise much revenue (about £500m per annum) but instead act as a deterrent to ultra-high net worth individuals (think James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson) buying farmland because it was exempt from IHT [Inheritance Tax].
On farmland estates where the net worth of more than £2.5m, a 20 per cent IHT charge will continue to apply from April (the Treasury estimates that raising the tax threshold will only cost the government about £130m). So the ending of farmland's exemption from IHT will help deter super wealthy individuals from driving up prices to the point where real farmers can't afford to buy land. An initiative the Eye has consistently supported.
And, for what it's worth, it's one this blog supports too.
Julie Covington's version of this Alice Cooper song reminds me of a foggy day at Rugby station just before Christmas 1977, but I realise that may not be true for everybody.
That year Covington had a number one with Don't Cry for me Argentina and starred in the highly regarded TV series Rock Follies.
My interest in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East and obsession with the original London production of Sweeney Todd meet in this video.
And it's all true. Here's R.B. Marriott reviewing the first West End performance of Make Me An Offer for The Stage (24 December 1959):
Sheila Hancock, who originally made a personal hit in the production, repeats her success, and on the first night stopped the show with her singing of "It's Sort of Romantic".
Miss Hancock is now unlikely to be in need of work in the theatre, but I hope that her originality, talent and personality will eventually be given far wider scope, not only in "suitable" supporting parts but in leading ones, for which undoubtedly she is equipped.
Other transport modes such as aviation and railways have become almost accident free as a result of improved safety measures and better technology. Yet, motor vehicles have moved in the opposite direction.
The long term improvement in casualty figures as a result of, for example, seat belt legislation and reduction in drunk driving has stalled because cars are becoming more dangerous – not for their occupants but for those outside them.
He says road casualty deaths in the UK have remained annually at around 1600-1700, but the number of pedestrian fatalities increased from 385 to 409 between 2022 and 2024. This rise, he says, is part of a wider phenomenon in many countries and the cause reason for it is all too obvious.
He continues:
A recent report in The Age newspaper about road deaths in the state of Victoria in Australia is unequivocal about the cause, the rise of the SUV. Pedestrian deaths in the state are at a 17 year high having increase by more than a quarter since 2015 with, the article says, ‘concerns the growing dominance of large SUVs and utes [utility vehicles] is reversing years of road safety gains’.
The Age cites Milad Haghani, a transport safety researcher at Melbourne University who said ‘there was a growing body of evidence to suggest that vehicle size was causing a nationwide increase in pedestrian deaths’, Indeed, he pointed out that Australia was in danger of following the same path as the US where pedestrian deaths hit an all time low in 2009 but then grew 77 per cent to hit a 40 year high in 2022 – a period in which there had been a massive increase in the adoption of SUVs.
Wolmar doesn't give links to his sources, which is enough to get him thrown out of the Ancient Order of Bloggers, but I've found what looks like the story he is quoting here. It's behind The Age's paywall.
He also cites research on deaths in child pedestrians after they are stuck by SUVs:
While SUVs are 44 per cent more likely to kill an adult pedestrian or cyclist in a crash compared with an ordinary ‘sedan’, for children the figure is a shocking 82 per cent. This is the story of bull bars (which I have cited in a previous substack, here) being repeated, but this time no one is, so far, making a fuss about it.
A quote from a local police officer sums up the extra danger: "They are large vehicles, designed for a certain specific task that are being used on roads that perhaps aren’t fit for that task". In London, they are dismissively called Chelsea tractors and they serve no rational purpose in an urban environment.
The quotation from the police officer, at least, appears to come from behind another Australian newspaper paywall – this time the Sydney Morning Herald.
And cites a research from nearer home:
The evidence over the extra danger posed by these vehicles is mounting which hopefully will put pressure on governments to act. According to a recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, children under the age of 10 are three times more likely to be killed if struck by an SUV rather than a standard sized cars.
The link I've provided will take you to a news story about the research on the LSHTM website. You can read the academic paper that contains it on the British Medical Journal site.
Christian Wolmar reminds us that this government came to power promising a new road safety strategy, but it has yet to appear:
I suspect the delay over the road strategy is the result of ministers’ concerns that the motoring industry is not going to like what it might recommend. The growth in sales of SUV has boosted the profits of the car manufacturers as these bigger vehicles are more expensive and, indeed, massively overpriced, and trying to rein back on their sales will not go down in an industry that Labour sees as crucial for its growth agenda.
Two Conservative police and crime commissioners - Marc Jones in Lincolnshire and Alison Hernandez in Cornwall and Devon - have announced that they are leaving the party and will serve out their terms as Independents.
The interesting thing is that neither of those news reports give the impression that the PCC is about to jump ship to Reform. Both are in their third term as PCC, which means they joined the Conservative Party before it abandoned Conservatism to became an English Nationalist party.
So perhaps these resignations are symptomatic of a flight of sensible people from the party (though a study of Hernandez's Wikipedia entry suggests she is not as sensible as all that).
The government has announced that PCCs will be abolished in 2028 and you can see why. The reports on Hernandez's resignation tells us she is
supported by a team of around 30 non-political staff led by a chief executive who will "continue holding the police to account" and fulfilling their statutory obligations.
The creation of PCCs was championed by those scourges of bureaucracy Daniel Hannon and Douglas Carswell.
Back in the day, Norman Baker was my favourite Liberal Democrat MP. So it's good to see he's alive and kicking, even if his lens could do with a clean.
There's a lot to be said for a constitutional monarchy, but Norman makes a good case that there's a need for ours to be funded with less secrecy and a clearer sense of what belongs to the royal family and what belongs to the nation.
The title of his new book – Royal Mint, National Debt -– is drawn from an observation of William Cobbett's:
You can tell a lot about a country which refers to the Royal Mint and the National Debt.
Andrew Lownie is the author of a recent book on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (as he now is). Before he turned his attention to the royal family, Lownie wrote about Britain's intelligence services. He says he found them much more cooperative than he has the royals.
"What the US needs to understand is that hybrid warfare isn’t simply a weapon used between and against states. It’s a strategy being deployed by your very own government. This is both kinetic warfare – bombs and missiles – and information warfare – false constructs, false narratives, false justifications." America is not our enemy, but it's a danger to itself and the world, says Carole Cadwalladr.
Rowan Williams reminds us that migrants are at the heart of our culture: "Many of the most characteristic forms of western medieval architecture ... owe their development to the to-ing and fro-ing of engineers and architects between western Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades. And we find it easy to forget that most of the stylistic repertoire of modern western popular music would be unthinkable without the Black American tradition that itself adapted and reshaped African idioms in the new and terrible world of enslavement."
"Decades of research have demonstrated that our political beliefs and behaviour are thoroughly motivated and mediated by our social identities." David Roberts argues that the cure for misinformation is not just more information or smarter news consumers.
"Norwich, contrary to the county town image that some may have of it (though that too was true), was a densely-settled, industrial city which came under Labour control in 1933. The Council built over 7500 houses in the 1920s and 30s (twice the number of new private homes built in the same period) and rehoused some 30,000 people – almost a quarter of the population. Mile Cross was the finest of its new estates." Municipal Dreams on the history of a Norwich housing estate.
Francis Young reviews Chasing the Dark by Ben Machell: "[Tony Cornell] was wary of supernatural explanations but was open to a complex view of human psychology in which people who simulated paranormal phenomena were not always aware they were doing so, or did not necessarily see a distinction between their own agency and that of the supernatural power they believed in."
Petra Tabarelli explains the appeal of Midsomer Murders: "The characters are not merely bizarre, eccentric or exaggerated; they are condensed allegories, just as the Midsomer backdrop is itself an allegory for the idealised English landscape."
The year 1973 was good to Wizzard. They released a succession of great singles – Ball Park Incident, See My Baby Jive, Angel Fingers (the latter two both topped the UK charts) – and took part in an epic battle to be the Christmas number 1 with Slade.
This, their next single, should have been been out just after that battle had been lost, so that I listened to it while doing my homework by candlelight during the three-day week. But their new label, Warner Bros, didn't release it until 19 April 1974.
Despite this lack of seasonality, it reached number 6 and still sounds good today. Everyone now recognises Roy Wood as an insufficiently recognised genius.
After Rock 'N' Roll Winter it was all downhill for Wizzard. The size of the band, and Wood's perfectionism in the studio, meant they were expensive to run, and members began to drift away to other work to pay the bills. Wizzard split in 1975.
The song is dedicated to Roy Wood's girlfriend at the time Lynsey de Paul (aka Loony, from Spike Milligan's nickname for her, Looney de Small) with lyrics such as "Almost every song I dream of in the end, I could dedicate to you my lovely friend" and "But now your friendly music keeps me warm each night".
Roy Wood's love life was the subject of another memorable song: Northern Lights by Renaissance. Wikipedia quotes the singer Annie Haslam as saying:
The song is about leaving the Northern Lights of England ... and Roy Wood behind, when I was working over in the US.
I'm afraid the judges have some bad news for you. This story from BBC News has won our Headline of the Day Award.
They also have a new word for you – "asparamancer" – and a nice second mention: "the sought after vegetable":
Jemima Packington, a practising asparamancer, said she is able to make her predictions by grabbing "a handful of asparagus" which she then casts onto a flat surface.
Ms Packington grew up in Evesham, Worcestershire, known as a growing hotspot for the sought after vegetable.
I posted a video of the South Bank Show film on the staging of Sweeney Todd a few days ago and have been obsessed with Stephen Sondheim's musical ever since. I didn't see Sweeney in 1980, but I have strong memories of watching that film about that production, with the result that I cannot quite accept anyone but Denis Quilley and Sheila Hancock in the lead roles.
Someone has made the video above by pulling out some of the scenes of the finished show from the film, and if you are as obsessed as me you will want to listen to the audio recording of the whole of the closing performance of that first London production.
The closing performance came after four months, and a lot of money was lost. It was an expensive production, including a full orchestra, and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane was a huge venue to fill.
Stephen Sondheim was not then, at least in Britain, the acknowledged master of musical theatre that he became. Side by Side by Sondheim had recently been a success in the West End, but it was a revue and had been staged in a theatre less the half the size of Drury Lane. Nor was Sweeney Todd's subject matter calculated to bring the coach parties in.
But it was the lukewarm response of the critics that got most of the blame - you can hear Quilley mention them in his brief speech at the end of the audio recording. And even in the ecstatic response of Michael Billington, you can make out the factors that helped keep the crowds away:
Sweeney Todd is the reversal of everything we traditionally expect of a musical. It has a powerful and gripping story, hardly a single extractable tune, a fierce sense of social justice. Yet, after seeing it on Broadway 18 months ago and now at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, I would call it sensationally effective.
Indeed, burning a boat or two, I would say it is one of the two (My Fair Lady being the other) durable works of popular musical theatre in my lifetime.
Even if that was going it a little, he was a better predictor than most of his colleagues. Sweeney Todd is now accepted as a stone cold classic.
A true story?
In one of his few narrator's incursions into the South Bank Show film, Melvyn Bragg says that the legend of Sweeney Todd is based on a true story that happened in Paris around 1800 and first appeared in print in Britain in 1846.
But The Singing Organ-Grinder has found a version of the legend that sets it in 17th-century Calais. And Charles Dickens assumes in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) that his readers will know and smile at stories of people being turned into pies in London:
Tom's evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropolis.
So I suspect that Sweeney Todd and his Continental equivalents are urban legends with a long history.
Not the first musical
Searching the British Newspaper Archive, I discovered that Sondheim's was not the first musical about Sweeney Todd to be staged in London. In 1959, a musical called The Demon Barber was staged at the Lyric, Hammersmith.
A pompous introduction to the programme of "The Demon Barber," at the Lyric, Hammersmith, states that this new musical has roots which "reach to 'The Beggar's Opera', the music hall, and D'Oyley (sic) Carte". Be that as it may, the result is a feeble adaptation as a musical of the Sweeney Todd story, the blood and thunder gone and replaced by burlesque which flies wide of its mark.
It seems no one else much liked it either, as a member of cast recalls:
My first theatre job in London was in 1959 at the Lyric Hammersmith. I was Jonas Fogg the madhouse keeper (who else?) in Donald Cotton and Brian Burke’s The Demon Barber. It was quite an elaborate little musical about Sweeney Todd which Stephen Sondheim had never heard of. Sondheim didn’t know of this version when he composed the 1979 musical/opera Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
It closed on Christmas Eve after 14 performances. Not very long after, this exquisite theatre was demolished at a time when borough councils felt it was their duty to continue the work of Reichsmarschall Goering in the destruction of London. They brought a new ferocity to the task, and many of London’s theatres that had survived the Blitz were gleefully pulverised by the advocates of Progress.
The Lyric was cynically reconstituted, but it was never the same.
The writer is Barry Humphries. At least the swift demise of The Demon Barber left him free to appear in Oliver! the following July.
Don't worry. I'll have found a new rabbit hole soon.
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