This just in... At a meeting this evening, the judges have awarded Headline of the Day to the Derbyshire Times.
Lord Bonkers suggests the bakery send a press gang to Melton Mowbray.
Tuesday, January 27, 2026
Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie
Andrew Lownie
William Collins, 2025; £22
Before he turned to royal biographies, Andrew Lownie wrote about Britain’s intelligence services, and he reports that he found the spies far more cooperative than he has ever found the royal family. It’s not just that many people in the know won’t talk, it’s that papers are kept secret and can be destroyed on a whim. This eye-opening biography of the aristo formerly known as Prince Andrew has been overtaken by events since it was published and can now be found on sale at a healthy discount, but it remains an impressive monument to research against the odds.
Andrew’s spoilt childhood (very different from that of his older brother), fraught marriage, shady business involvements and friendships with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are all dissected, and every claim appears well sourced. In interviews Lownie talks of being forced to leave things out by the lawyers and promises fresh revelations to come.
We get no strong sense of what Andrew is like as a person, perhaps because he lacks a coherent character – Lownie suggests his life has been bedevilled by the difficulty of deciding when he’s a prince and when he’s a normal person. Or as one young woman put it more picturesquely after a weekend house party: “One minute you’re having your bum pinched and the next minute he’s reminding you he’s Your Royal Highness”.
The picture Entitled paints of the royal family, with members leaking against each other to the press, is not an appealing one. Andrew’s role – he ceased to be needed once his brother had fathered two healthy children – is particularly unenviable, which makes you conclude that Harry did well to get out when he did.
Recent events in the United States have made us realise the virtues of a parliamentary system. Despite a thumping Conservative majority, the Commons forced two inadequate prime ministers out of office in the autumn of 2022, but it remains to be seen whether the US still satisfies Karl Popper’s pragmatic definition of a democracy – a country in which it is possible to remove a leader without violence. That uncertainty also makes a constitutional monarchy more attractive, but the reader still comes away from Lownie’s book suspecting it’s not only Andrew who needs to grow up a bit. When it comes to our reverence for the royals, we all do.
This review appears in issue 433 of Liberator magazine.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year
Tuesday
To the Alexandra Hall Hall Hall for the Christmas party I hold every year for the village children and Well-Behaved Orphans – ginger beer flows like vintage champagne and I insist on trying every cake to make sure it’s up to snuff. The afternoon’s entertainment is provided by a strangely familiar magician. Then it hits me: it’s Kwasi Kwarteng!
He, you may recall, was Chancellor for several days under the reign of that strange, pixie-looking woman who jumped ship to the Tories when Conference refused to support her motion saying she should be Queen. Unfortunately, Kwarteng proves no more adept as a prestidigitator than he was as custodian of the nation’s finances. In attempting to retrieve a rabbit from his hat, he sets fire to the stage; and as he runs about in a panic, his trousers fall down.
Fortunately, the youth of Rutland are of stronger mettle than Old Etonians: a stream of ginger beer is directed at the heart of the blaze, and the WBOs form a human chain to bring pails of water from the pond. The consensus among my young guests is that it has been the best party ever, so I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
Monday, January 26, 2026
The five railway stations of Long Eaton
Here's another great video from Trekking Exploration – like and subscribe everybody. I've visited the sites four of the five Long Eaton stations he identifies myself.
The first would be really useful to the town now, as it;s on the line from Nottingham to St Pancras.
The second is the one I haven't visited.
The third was in the centre of town - the line is still in use, but only by goods trains.
The fourth is Trent Station, one of those large interchange stations in the middle of nowhere that the Midland Railway went in for. Here I have the advantage over the video as I have photographed the very overgrown bridge it mentions. You can see it below. On my first hunt for it I got as far as Trent Cottages.
The fifth is the Long Eaton station that is open today, though its further from the town than any of the other four.
Leicestershire Reform councillor tweeted in support of ICE after the shooting of Alex Pretti
Joseph Boam, the Remain councillor and former deputy leader of Leicestershire County Council. tweeted an image including the words "I Stand With Ice" after the shooting of the nurse Alex Pretti.
As LBC notes, even Donald Trump has so far hesitated to defend the shooting, which saw Preti hit 10 times in five seconds.
Not so Leicestershire Reform's 22-year-old boy wonder Boam:
Following backlash from his initial tweet, Mr Boam doubled down on his approval for the agency saying: "For the people that don’t support ICE - Are you suggesting that the UK should not enforce its immigration law?
"When I said I support ICE’s work, I mean that I support the enforcement of immigration law, which is the task of Immigration Control and Enforcement aka ICE. That is what I stand by."
Which rather suggests that, as well as being unable to tell right from wrong, he has not yet grasped the difference between the United Kingdom and the United States.
Boam was appointed deputy leader of the county council after reform took minority control in May, but was sacked by the leader before August was out.
You can see why.
"Like trying to do geometry with blancmange": My Liberator article on Blue Labour
Nor for the first time, I am led to reflect on how hoary my cultural touchstones are growing. The first series of Reggie Perrin was originally screened 50 years ago - it's as though there had been a Liberator contributor when I first joined the editorial collective whose articles relied upon his readers having knowledge of comedy from the early Thirties.
But don't blame me: I've been waiting for a new generation of young Radicals to sweep us to one side since at least 1990, but they have never appeared.
A Better Yesterday
I’ve finally worked out who it is that Blue Labour reminds me of: it’s Doc Morrisey from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. In the classic sitcom written by David Nobbs, Perrin, deep in the throes of a midlife crisis, seeks help from Sunshine Desserts’ company doctor. They have the following conversation.
Doc Morrissey: Do you find you can't finish the crossword like you used to, nasty taste in the mouth in the mornings, can't stop thinking about sex, can't start doing anything about sex, wake up with a sweat in the mornings, keep falling asleep during Play For Today?
Reginald Perrin: That's extraordinary, Doc! That's exactly how I've been feeling.
Doc Morrissey: So have I. I wonder what it is? Take two aspirins.
Blue Labour, though some MPs claim to owe allegiance to this tendency, is largely Maurice Glasman, and Maurice Glasman is entirely Blue Labour. And the only coherent thread running through the pronouncements of Maurice Glasman (Lord Glasman – he was made a peer by Ed Miliband in 2010) is an ill-focused, Perrinesque nostalgia for the past of his country and party.
Even that is being kind to him when you consider the misshapen catch that comes up when you trawl for his recent media appearances. Among the views he has expressed are that “in order to be truly radical, Labour must recognise its debt to Jesus Christ”; that the UK’s 2050 net zero emissions target is a fantasy that should be abandoned in favour of new fossil fuel extraction while the national grid is taken over by the Ministry of Defence; and that Shabana Mahmood is like Elizabeth I – “She’s devoted to her job. She’s unique.” If Glasman were a social media account, you would have muted it long ago.
Visit the Blue Labour website in search of more intellectual substance and you will be disappointed. The featured post there is What Is to Be Done, which dates from October 2025 and is written in a semi-apocalyptic style: “The hour is late.” Nevertheless, there is something in its analysis that Keir Starmer won a “loveless landslide” and came to power without much of a legislative programme or analysis of the country’s problems behind him.
The trouble with What Is to Be Done is that it’s full of grand statements like “We should bring public services like rail, utilities like water, and critical industries like steel, back into public ownership,” but short of any practical proposals for how such ideas can be put into action. And when it does get close to making such proposals, what we get is an agenda that will be familiar to anyone with a very online Conservative MP: “drastically” reduce immigration, curb the powers of the courts, tell the police to concentrate on repeat offenders. Explore the Blue Labour website and you will find the same high ambitions and shortage of detail in other documents, even its Plan for National Reconstruction.
All of which makes it a surprise to find Compass publishing a document billed as making “the case for a new Soft Left/Blue Labour politics”. It’s Soft Skills, Hard Labour by Frances Foley, who was until recently the group’s deputy director. A surprise because, though it is affiliated to the Labour Party, Compass’s emphasis on cross-party working and support for proportional representation has meant that Liberals tend to feel quite warm towards it. So sensible is it that it’s chair Neal Lawson has been threatened with expulsion from the Labour Party.
Enter Compass
Lawson, incidentally, shares Glasman’s sense that Keir Starmer lacks direction. In a recent Guardian piece, he suggested that Starmer was promoted as Labour leader by people who decided he was the man to drive Corbynism out of the party. They assumed there was no chance of the Conservatives being defeated in 2024, so didn’t worry about his shortcomings as a future prime minister. He would be gone before Labour got in again. Yet so rapid was the Conservative collapse that Starmer found himself in Number 10. It’s a neat mirror image of the Labour left-winger who said in 2015: “If we’d thought we had a chance of winning the leadership then Jeremy Corbyn wouldn’t have been our candidate.”
There is no such clarity to be found in Soft Skills, Hard Labour. Foley’s method is to look at different tendencies within Soft Labour and Blue Labour and then map how they complement each other or conflict across the divide. So we have chapters titled “Postliberal Democrats’ challenge to the Rules-based Majoritarians” and “Democratic Communitarians’ challenge to the Rights-based Liberals”. It’s a brave effort, but her two main concepts are so diffuse to begin with that it’s like trying to do geometry with blancmange.
It may be that Blue Labour has more to it than Glasman’s eccentricities – his other recent contributions to debate include apologising to Nigel Farage live on GB News after Keir Starmer said the Reform leader’s immigration policy was “racist and immoral” and claiming that progressive liberals “don’t want you to enjoy anything, not even sex with your wife!” There is an essay collection edited by Ian Geary and Adrian Pabst – Blue Labour: Forging a New Politics – but it was published in the very different world of 2015, where it billed itself as seeking to “move beyond the centrist pragmatism of Blair and Cameron”.
Iconoclasm
Frances Foley is attracted to the appetite she sees in Blue Labour for iconoclasm, which is an attraction I imagine anyone who works in the very on-message world of pro-Labour think-tanks is likely to feel after a while. She may even be demob happy: her brief biography in Soft Skills, Hard Labour reveals she is leaving Compass “to set up a new programme matching young people with jobs in climate, whilst training them in political organising,” which sounds more valuable than what most think-tanks produce.
Whatever the reason, she is right to say:
The word “progressive” strongly implies that change is always for the better, rather than to be questioned or resisted. It also suggests that “progress” is a meaningful – and crucially agreed upon – political concept.
That is why I try to avoid using this concept, though a stronger reason is the argument put forward by Simon Titley, late of this parish:
"Progressive." What does it mean? The only discernible meaning is "not conservative" or "not reactionary"... negative definitions. The "p" word is a lazy word, so give it up. It will force you to say what you really mean. We need real politics not empty slogans.
Similarly, when Foley writes of what she terms “Rights-based Liberals”:
They tend to assert the primacy of rights as a priori, not as social constructs created by citizens, but as a first order framework that sets the parameters for what is politically viable. In this sense, Rights-based Liberals see rights as trumping pure democratic sovereignty, setting limits on what democratic societies can decide.
she is right about the attitude of many on the left towards rights: we should never forget they are human inventions and not somehow ordained by nature.
There is a better, more pragmatic argument for human rights: by inventing them we increase the chances that government will treat us well. A good example of this is the right to petition for a writ of habeus corpus – a right hoary enough, surely, to win the support of even Maurice Glasman. Nor is it clear how the working class will benefit from any abolition of rights: it’s the powerful who benefit in a free-for-all, as we see in news reports from the US every evening.
But then it’s often hard to see how the working class will benefit from any Blue Labour policies. The only mention of education you’re likely to come across in Blue Labour circles is vocational education: you rarely get the sense that they are much interested in the number of working-class university students or entrepreneurs. What they are telling working-class young people is that somewhere there is a lathe with your name on it and I remain unconvinced that is what all of them want.
Nostalgia
It's easy, and it’s largely justifiable, to dismiss Blue Labour as offering nostalgia for a vanished industrial world, but too much comment on social media from people who like to think they are on the left treats the past as something to point at and laugh. Such comment is all about the performative adoption of approved cultural opinions: nowhere will you see it mentioned that the Fifties saw full employment and record levels of trade union membership or that the Seventies saw the greatest income equality Britain has ever enjoyed.
One thing Blue Labour has got right is that many self-styled “progressives” aren’t much interested in the working class: it’s just that I’m not convinced Blue Labour is much interested in the working class as it exists today either. Maurice Glasman’s target voter is a white working-class man in a manual job in the North of England in 1957.
Treating the past as a reminder that our current economic and social arrangements are not set in stone and things could be and have been different is sensible. But demanding we return to this past, and demanding it without so much as making a gesture towards providing a route map, is ridiculous. I didn’t get where I am today without knowing the difference.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
I worry about the Well-Behaved Orphans: their lives aren't all holidays at Lord Bonkers' favourite Cornish resort Trescothick Bay.
Monday
Having risen early, I spy a party of Well-Behaved Orphans trudging across the muddy fields. Christmas is not a hectic time on the old estate like the potato harvest is, but there will still be work for them to do. It is gratifying that the Liberal Democrats have endorsed my ‘Farm First’ scheme as a model all should follow.
Equally, as someone who comes from an ancient family and owns many farms, I am delighted that our opposition to the ‘Family Farm Tax’ has borne fruit. I hear on the aristocratic grapevine that the Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.
Lib Dems call for a Rail Passengers’ Charter to improve journeys across the UK
The Liberal Democrats introduce a Rail Passengers’ Charter Bill in Parliament last week to improve customer experience and enshrine value for money into law.
The proposed charter would guarantee standards such as wifi, clean toilets and automatic compensation by law.
It would also require adequate seating on journeys longer than 30 minutes and on-board refreshments for trips exceeding two hours.
The party's transport spokesperson Olly Glover told the Oxford Mail:
"After years of passengers putting up with above-inflation fare increases for poor rail services, it’s time to bring the passenger experience into the 21st century.
"Customers deserve so much better than the sub-par service at great expense but both the Conservatives and Labour in government have failed to put passengers first.
"That’s why the Liberal Democrats are introducing the Rail Passengers’ Charter to enshrine in law improvements to customer experience and value for money so that our railways are something we can be proud of."
Olly Glover is the Lib Dem MP for Didcot and Wantage.
The photo above is also from Oxfordshire. I took it on Banbury station many years ago while waiting for a direct train to Shrewsbury. We should bring those back under our charter.
Sunday, January 25, 2026
The Joy of Six 1466
"The shortage of legal children’s homes across the UK is fast becoming a national crisis. Last week, a Public Accounts Committee report revealed that nearly 800 children were sent to live in illegal accommodation in 2024, staying an average of around six months each." Gareth Davies and Tom Wall report on a national scandal.
Chris Grey on Donald Trump, Greenland and Mark Carney: "Carney’s speech can be read as a general prescription for middle powers, of which the UK is one, in the rapidly emerging new order. It can also be read, not coincidentally, as a devastating repudiation of the core propositions of Brexiters and of Brexitism."
Emma McClarkin argues that Britain's tax regime is forcing pubs to raise the price of a pint.
"After she finished The Left Hand of Darkness in 1968, she worked for Eugene McCarthy’s primary campaign, stuffing envelopes and writing newsletters in his Oregon field office. In 1972, recovering from the first draft of her novel The Dispossessed, she did newsletters for McGovern." Julie Phillips on Ursula Le Guin the political activist.
"As I walk, I wonder what one ought to put on the grave of a cat." Natalie Guest visits Ilford pet cemetery.
Supremes: Standing at the Crossroads of Love
I was going to choose the Four Tops' Standing in the Shadows of Love, but I got reading and found that some sources suggest it was a reworking of this earlier Supremes B-side. To my untutored ears the two records don't have much more in common than their similar titles, but that would have been a very Motown thing to do.
Motown Junkies loves Standing at the Crossroads of Love:
Vibes, organ, high notes aplenty; a shimmering crystal castle of an intro, giving way to Diana Ross, who joins in by clambering youthfully right up to the top of her range to give a shrill, thin rendition of the title phrase.
Saturday, January 24, 2026
The end is near for Desborough's Lawrence Shoe Factory
The former Lawrence Shoe Factory in Desborough is likely to be demolished later this year, reports BBC News.
As I can catch a bus to Desborough and it's unusually pleasant Costa Coffee from across the road when I'm feeling too lazy to walk into town, I went there the other day to photograph the buildings again – maybe for the last time. You can read about their history on the Desborough Town Council website.
There was the usual talk from North Northamptonshire Council's Reform UK leadership of "eyesores" and preventing antisocial behaviour, but there is no sign of the long-sought developer for the site, so it will become wasteland.
At least the derelict shop, which must once have catered for the needs of the workers here, will survive the coming destruction.
Michael Elwyn talks about appearing in Joe Orton's Loot
In the post I wrote about the event, I described meeting Braham Murray and Michael Elwyn there. They had, respectively, directed and appeared in a Manchester production of Loot that established its reputation after its first staging in London had been a failure.
I recently found this video of Michael Elwyn, which may well have been recorded that day – we were all given the badge he is wearing. In it he talks about meeting Orton and his experience of appearing in the play.
Friday, January 23, 2026
William and Ed Grundy are the King's sons William and Harry
One of the great Archers scenes was the one with Clarrie in labour with her first child:
"Eddie, if I die, I don't mind you marrying again. But not that Jolene."
After the baby had been born, she told Eddie and Joe:
"His name's William and I want the house cleaned before I come home."
It was clear that William Grundy was named by Clarrie after Charles and Diana's son William.
Which has made me realise how much the Charles III's sons resemble Ed Grundy's:
- William – upright, respectable and just a bit of a prig – is William.
- Ed – chaotic, a little dodgy but likeable – is Harry.
QED.
One of the perks of helping out with Liberal Democrat News at party conference was that I used to get to talk Cambridge Footlights with Adrian Slade and The Archers with Jock Gallagher.
In one of those conversations Jock confirmed the truth of the old Archers' Anarchists theory that Brian had murdered the real Adam when he was a boy and buried him somewhere on Bridge Farm. (They never got on.)
The Joy of Six 1465
Lewis Goodall posts some hard truths from Minnesota: "The United States under Trump is no longer our military ally (Greenland), our strategic ally (Ukraine and Russia), our political ally (a National Security Strategy which openly advocates backing far-right parties to disrupt European democracies facing 'civilisational erasure'), nor our economic ally (tariffs)."
"In its manifesto, Labour promised 'to restore and protect our natural world' and 'to unlock the building of homes … without weakening environmental protections'. Sadly, for me and many other Labour supporters, the tone of the language soon changed." David Jobbins says "growth at all costs" is threatening Britain's wildlife.
Jonathan Liew sees England's hapless cricket team as a metaphor for the country: "Of the under-19 squad currently playing in the World Cup in Harare, only four did not come through the private school system, where you are eight times more likely to have access to a turf pitch and 10 times more likely to have a qualified coach. The £35m in grassroots funding announced by Rishi Sunak in 2024 turned out not to exist."
Discontinued Notes comes across an unexpected book – a collection of short stories about wartime Germany by Antony Lambton, a former Conservative minister who resigned after a long-forgotten political scandal in 1973.
"As Colin Harper once observed, Briggs wasn’t just a singer; she was 'the bridge'. She made the ancient oral traditions of the British Isles credible, sexy, and attainable for a generation of icons, including Bert Jansch, Sandy Denny, Led Zeppelin, June Tabor, Christy Moore, Richard Thompson, and Dick Gaughan." KLOF Magazine on the importance of Anne Briggs.
Mole in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's garden at Wolferton
The Eastern Daily Press, which knows a news story when it sees one, wins our Headline of the Day Award.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
An appreciation of It Always Rains on Sunday
Ealing Studios didn't just make comedies, and the drama It Always Rains on Sunday from 1947 is among their very best films.
As the blurb for this short video from the British Film Institute says:
It Always Rains on Sunday is a dark and dramatic tale set in bombed-damaged East London. The third film for Ealing by director Robert Hamer – better known for the later Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) – it takes place over one wet Sunday, and centres on the Sandigates – in particular Rose, played by Googie Withers, a housewife caught between her stable but loveless marriage and Tommy, a charismatic lover from her past (played by Withers' soon-to-be husband, John McCallum.)
It's a great ensemble cast, but I would single out Susan Shaw and Patricia Plunkett, who play Googie Withers' stepdaughters, and Jack Warner, whose wisecracking detective sergeant is a long way from George Dixon and reminds us of his range as an actor.
Shabana Mahmood shares her vision of total state surveillance with the Tony Blair Institute
How did you celebrate Christmas? At the Tony Blair Institute they asked Shaban Mahmood along to their Christmas reception to share her dream of total state surveillance.
She talked of AI and technology having a transformative impact on "the whole of the law and order space", and told them:
"My ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon. That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times."
Bentham's Panopticon was a design for a prison with a circular layout that would allow wardens to observe every prisoner at all times. Though it was never built in Bentham's day, the 20th-century French philosopher Michel Foucault saw the Panopticon as the model adopted schools, factories and police surveillance.
To Foucault, a key feature of the Bentham's design was the central tower from which a single warden could see all the inmates without their knowing when they were being watched. The result would be that the prisoners would internalise the warden's gaze, even if they were rarely or never watched.
It's hard, as a Liberal, not to conclude that Mahmood was saying the quite bit of Labourism out loud.
But let's leave the last word to Foucault's mum:
Foucault: Schools serve the same social function as prisons and mental institutions.
Foucault's mum: You're still going.
Happisburgh or: Whatever happened to our fear of quicksand?
I've seen more than one person ask this question online. Quicksand was an ever-present threat in the films of our youth, but now you never hear of it.
Not quite never. Here's a story from the North Norfolk News:
A warning has been issued for quicksand around a ramp leading down to a popular beach.
North Norfolk District Council has temporarily closed the ramp at Happisburgh following the poor weather brought in by Storm Goretti.
On Saturday, the Happisburgh Coast Watch warned that "areas of very soft sand" were developing in the area.
A spokesman for the voluntarily manned station said: "If you are visiting Cart Gap Beach today, please be aware that there are some areas of very soft sand in the vicinity of the access ramp."
The newspaper goes on to report:
Last October, a woman walking towards Happisburgh via Walcott beach came into difficulty in a patch of sinking sand near the groynes.
She was left submerged "up to her thighs" before managing to pull herself out of danger and shout for help.
But it's true that we used to hear far more about quicksand. And it's even possible to put figures on that.
For that, go to an edition of the Radiolab podcast that I included in a Joy of Six long ago:
Producer Soren Wheeler introduces us to Dan Engber, writer and columnist for Slate, who ran across a strange fact: kids are no longer afraid of quicksand. To figure out what happened to quicksand, Dan immersed himself in research, compiled mountains of data, and met with quicksand fetishists.
Dan tells Soren and Robert about his journey, and shares his theory about why the terror of his childhood seems to have lost its menacing allure. And Carlton Cuse, best-known as writer and executive producer of Lost, weighs in on whether giant pits of hero-swallowing mud might one day creep back into the spotlight.
Here's the podcast. And if you follow the link to Radiolab above you will see a graph of appearances of quicksand in films. They peaked in the Sixties.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Reform PCC for Leicestershire "asked officer to help arrange Putin-style photo with horse for election leaflet"
Rupert Matthews, the Conservative turned Reform police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, faced a police and crime panel meeting at Leicestershire County Council on today to answer questions about a complaint.
BBC News says the complaint was made after Matthews sent an "unsolicited" email to a serving officer. It was referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, which found no evidence to indicate a criminal offence had been committed.
And the exciting news is that BBC News has been leaked a copy of the report the panel was considering:
The report states the complaint was referred to the IOPC on 4 September 2025.
It said Matthews "sent an unsolicited email to a police officer within Leicestershire Police, asking her to organise for him to have a photo taken with a horse for his next election leaflet, referencing a photograph of Russian president Vladimir Putin posing shirtless on horseback".
Rupert Matthews's office told BBC News that he had lodged a complaint about the leak of the report and that he is
extremely frightened of horses and ... would never seek to work with them out of choice.
The Joy of Six 1464
Tanya Park argues that banning social media for children misses the point: "If we’re serious about protecting children online, we need to regulate the companies, not ban the children. That means enforcing existing law, strengthening platform obligations, eliminating addictive design, and empowering young people with the knowledge and tools to navigate digital spaces safely."
James Meek visited Greenland last year as Trump was starting to make noises about annexing it.
"The Peggy who emerges from these formative years is part Girl Guide, part witch: a Gothic dreamer with a work ethic; Madame Sosostris meets the persona Atwood calls ‘Ms Fixit’. She marries a fellow Victorianist because it makes practical sense but yearns for something else. She makes her own clothes but also fancy-dress costumes and puppets." Sophie Oliver reviews Margaret Atwood's Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts."
Lolly Willowes is a work of modernism not in the sense of formal innovation but in its statement that after the first world war the old order was no longer tenable. The novel is a rejection of Victorian pieties as subversive as Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians." Henry Wessells on Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel.
Johnny Campbell goes for a New Year walk in Edale and thinks of those who fought to give us access to this landscape.
Ed Davey: Donald Trump is behaving like an international gangster and Starmer’s Mr Nice Guy diplomacy has failed
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.
Paul Simon: The Obvious Child
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.
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Lib Dems call for fair treatment for Wales on railway investment
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.
An Observer podcast series on The Real Salt Path
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.
Monday, January 19, 2026
The 19th-century granite trackway along Commercial Road
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.
The Joy of Six 1463
"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.
Vladimir Putin’s mob of war-thirsty nuns are infiltrating churches across Europe
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.
Thanks to a reader for the nomination.
Sunday, January 18, 2026
"It feels like gruel": Lib Dem MPs express dissatisfaction with Ed Davey's approach
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."
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman: The Very Day I'm Gone
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.
As Wikipedia says:
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.
Saturday, January 17, 2026
The Joy of Six 1462
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).
Will Neolithic stones in garden of James Corden's former £8.5 million mansion be returned to Jersey?
It's the question everyone's asking and it's our Headline of the Day too. Well done ITV News.
Because they were in a good mood (they're allowed an extra bottle of port on Fridays), the judges also named two highly commended entries.
The Guardian for:
‘Bigger and lower’: bull in Dutch painting once had much larger testicles
Cambridgeshire Live for:
Next stage of Fens Reservoir project delayed as questions remain over how to fill it with water
Friday, January 16, 2026
Hunting ley lines in Shropshire: Castle Ring to Mitchell’s Fold
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.
Like and subscribe, my pretties. Like and subscribe.
Saying Reform UK are "just the same old Conservatives" may not be the smart line some think
Reform reveal their new branding…. It’s clear: Nigel Farage’s Reform is just the same old Conservatives that ruined the country in the first place.
— Liberal Democrats (@libdems.org.uk) 16 January 2026 at 14:19
[image or embed]
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.
Norfolk Tory accused of damaging walls at 15th century castle
The judges have been hard at work, so I can announce that today's Headline of the Day Award goes to the Eastern Daily Press.
Thursday, January 15, 2026
The Joy of Six 1461
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.
Leicestershire pensioner fined £225 by council for flicking snot out of van window
Ashby Hub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of crime in Coalville.
The judges were, however, concerned by the story below it. The first sentence states that the pensioner was fined for "snotting out his van window".
If one accepts that "to snot" is a verb, then
snotting out a window
and
snotting out of a window
are surely two different things, the former being far more newsworthy than the latter.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
Politicians give private schools more leeway than state schools
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.
I've noted before how
private schools now trade ("children can get muddy") on their freedom from the straitjacket imposed by the Gradgrinds at the Department for Education.
Get muddy in a state school and you risk being put into isolation for a week.
Why Plato Matters Now: Angie Hobbs in conversation with Jon Hawkins and Peter West
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.
Wera Hobhouse condemns "shocking and irresponsible" scale of drilling for oil in protected maritime areas
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."
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