Lord Bonkers' Diary: “Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!”

I hadn't been intending to do this. Instead, I had been dreaming of a public row at Liberal Democrat HQ that would give me a pretext for getting rid of Freddie and Fiona altogether. But having had the idea, I realised that their buying a weekend cottage in Rutland might have hilarious consequences.

Fiona's “Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!” was inspired by a half-remembered Posy Simmonds strip about the manners of the weekending classes.[Amazingly, after writing this I found it online.] And with it, we finish another week in the company of Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

Sunday

As the Revd Hughes Went On A Bit at St Asquith’s, I have called in at the Bonkers Arms for a restorer before lunch. To my horror, I encounter Freddie and Fiona at the bar. “We’ve just exchanged contracts on a weekend cottage here,” they announce. “We love your Notswolds”. 

Worse than that, Meadowcroft is playing up to them shamelessly, singing folk songs of his own invention and retailing country lore that I for one have never heard before. “If polling day falls when the wheat be green, then turnout will exceed the mean” is just one example. 

“Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!” exclaims Fiona, kissing his beaming, rubicund face. Feeling suddenly unwell, I make my excuses and leave.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's
• Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself
• We feed them sausages and plum bread
• My failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe

The Joy of Six 1196

"Animal factories are amongst the worst atrocities ever perpetrated by humanity. Animal factories are inherently cruel and create massive suffering for billions of animals, destroy the environment and even undermine our health." Jane Goodall and Koen Margodt make the case for adopting a plant-based diet.

Iain Sharpe (Mr Dorothy Thornhill) reflects on how elected politicians can hold experts to account in the light of the Post Office Horizon scandal: "Among the reasons for my dear wife's longevity as Elected Mayor of Watford was a willingness to keep asking questions until she got an answer she understood and a sixth sense for when someone's story wasn't stacking up, the latter skill perhaps deriving from her previous career as a schoolteacher." 

"Giving control to Network Rail would lead to the railway being run to suit its needs, rather than those of the passengers. Trying to get Network Rail to change its spots is unrealistic. The railways must be run in a customer-focused way, and that must be at the heart of any structure the Labour Party devises." Christian Wolmar gives his ideas about how a Labour government should reform the railways.

Oliver Wainwright celebrates the survival of the brutalist Park Hill estate in Sheffield: "The current state of the place – still completely derelict at one end, spruced up at the other – reads as a surreal diagram of how attitudes to postwar architecture have shifted over the years, and how an estate can be scrubbed up for sale in different ways".

Kyle Chaka explains why every coffee shop looks the same - it's the tyranny of the algorithm.

"In 1968 Schulz noticed the Civil Rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and read a letter from Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman. She had a question for Schulz: would he include a black child in the Peanuts gang?" Flashbak explains how Charlie Brown acquired a black friend.

Six of the Best 675

Mark Pack gives us four things to note about the record electoral fine levied against the Conservative Party: "The Conservative Party repeatedly refused to cooperate fully with the Electoral Commission investigation, requiring the Commission to go to court to get access to relevant evidence."

You've heard of climate-change deniers. Now, reports Emily Atkin, there are air-pollution deniers too.

"The capitalist class seeks to avoid responsibility for the many problems it causes, so it frames pain and suffering as somehow natural and inevitable." Susan Rosentahl offers a marxist theory of mental illness.

Sam Knight tells us what will happen when the Queen dies: "BBC 1, 2 and 4 will be interrupted and revert silently to their respective idents – an exercise class in a village hall, a swan waiting on a pond – before coming together for the news."

Bob Mankoff is retiring as cartoon editor of the New Yorker after 20 years. He discusses some of his favourites with Jennifer Schuessler.

Philip Butler celebrates the modernist architecture of Dudley Zoo.

Page 94: The new podcast from Private Eye

Private Eye has launched a podcast.

The first Page 94 begins with Ian Hislop laughing at his own jokes, but gets better after that. There is good coverage of the magazine's own Paul Foot Awards for investigative journalism and a tribute to the cartoonist Martin Honeysett, who died recently.

It will never replace those flimsy records they used to stick to the cover of the magazine though.

Charlie Hebdo in Presteigne

© Colin Smith

There are reports that several newsagents selling copies of Charlie Hebdo have been approached by police.

One of the places where this has taken place is Presteigne in Powys - not a town noted for its inter-faith tensions.

Fashion may have moved on, but a few years ago it was where the cool kids who had decided to settle on the Welsh border went to live.

According to the Guardian:

Paul Merrett, 57, the owner of a newsagent in Presteigne, Wales, said a detective and a police community support officer from Dyfed-Powys police spent half an hour asking his wife Deborah, 53, about the magazine. 

“They wanted to know about Charlie Hebdo. They came in unannounced and we had customers,” he said. “There were questions asking where we got the Charlie Hebdo copies from, did we know who we sold them to – which we didn’t say. We were a bit bemused because it was out of the blue.” 

“My wife said, ‘Am I in trouble?’ because she thought she was in trouble for selling them. They said, ‘No, you’re not in trouble’ but just continued with their questioning for half an hour.” 

Merrett added: “It was all about Charlie Hebdo. I guess they wanted names and addresses of people we sold them to, which we didn’t tell them anything like that. We sold 30 copies. 

“My wife was a bit worried with the questioning but she certainly wouldn’t have given any names to the police. I’m shocked they asked. They wanted to know where we got the copies from, how did we let the customers know that we had them.”

Dyfed-Powys Police have issued a statement confirming shops in the town were visited but denying that customers' names were requested:

"Dyfed Powys Police can confirm the visits were only made to enhance public safety and to provide community reassurance."

You can be sure that when the last of our liberties is removed it will be done "to enchance public safety". And, while I am not sure exactly what "community reassurance" means, I suspect this intervention failed to provide it.

But why Presteigne of all places?

There may be a clue in a recent story on the Hereford Heckler ("Anarchist news and views from Hereford and beyond"):

A barmy local vicar has compared satirical cartoons in the French anti-racist magazine Charlie Hebdo with the anti-Semitic blasphemy of Nazi Germany. 

Writing in Presteigne’s parish magazine, Revd Steve Hollinghurst called it ironic that the west condemns the murder of Jewish people under Hitler’s rule but defends “to the hilt the right of others (cartoonists in this case) to ridicule and offend people of faith and their beliefs”. 

The vicar goes on to ask readers, “didn’t the holocaust begin with vile anti-Semitic cartoons? Is there that much difference?”

That post goes on to tell the story of the police's trawl of shops in the town and ends by asking:

So which of these two stories more accurately portrays life in Nazi Germany: The one where satirical journalists poke a bit of fun at all religions but ultimately promote a message of love and tolerance; Or the one where the strong arm of the state harasses a newsagent and demands to know details of customers who have bought copies of a legally published magazine?

Thanks to John for introducing me to the Hereford Heckler.

Martin Horwood draws a cartoon rather than write a column

Martin Horwood, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, writes a regular column for the Gloucestershire Echo.

This week, however, he has sent the newspaper a cartoon instead. You can find it on the Gloucestershire Echo website.

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Carl Minns says we should blame the politicians not the voters if there is a low turnout in tomorrow's elections. He's right, you know.

The commonly used yardsticks of how well the national parties are doing in local elections can be confusing or deliberately misleading, and there is likely to be a lot of ‘spin’ after the elections of Thursday 2 May. Lewis Baston argues on British Politics and Policy at LSE that studying the votes cast in marginal parliamentary constituencies, particularly in areas where there have been other local elections since 2010, is a better guide to electoral trends than council control, seats won, or even – sometimes – aggregate votes cast.

"Have you ever wondered how to spot the murderer in a TV detective series? Or specifically whoprobablydunnit in Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Father Brown, Inspector Morse and more? I reveal Richard and my (almost) infallible Rules of Suspicion." "I" here is Love and Liberty.

How did Ben Elton's "The Wright Way" get it so wrong? Tom Phillips explains on the New Statesman site.

The Best Time Of The Day Blog went to this year's Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

Should Wales have its own cricket team? asks Graham Henry on Wales Online.

Richard III dig latest

Cartoon by Martin Shovel

Follow @MartinShovel on Twitter
and read his blog Creativity Works

More about the Richard III dig from
the University of Leicester

Liberal England anticipates Steve Bell

A couple of weeks ago Simon Hoggart wrote:

Strange meeting with David Cameron during the Tory conference this week. I was at the Spectator party with Steve Bell, who, as you cannot have failed to notice, always draws the prime minister with a condom over his head. They have discussed this before, at a chance meeting during the election campaign, when Steve explained that it was because his skin appeared remarkably smooth and even taut, so it looked as if his head was encased in tight rubber.

In a Liberal Democrat News House Points column from October 2005 I said of Cameron:

His complexion is so unblemished that, like Elijah Wood in the Lord of the Rings films, he appears to have had his face covered with a thin layer of plastic film.

You read it here first.

Cartoon: Peter Mandelson's memoirs

Howard's cartoon from today's Liberal Democrat News (click to enlarge).

Gordon Brown's new job

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News. Click on the drawing to enlarge it.

Cartoon: Cuts and Britain's credit rating

Howard's cartoon from Friday's Liberal Democrat News.

Cartoon: David Cameron, Big Society and high society

Howard's cartoon from last Friday's Liberal Democrat News.

Cartoon: Labservative leaders

Howard's cartoon from today's Liberal Democrat News.

More from the Labservatives.

Cartoon: Ask the Chancellors

Howard's cartoon from this week's Liberal Democrat News.

I give my own account of the event in the same issue.

Cartoon: Labour and money

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.

Cartoon: George Osborne as Chancellor

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.

Cartoon: David Cameron's policies

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.

Cartoon: Lord Ashcroft and Belize

Howard's cartoon from yesterday's Liberal Democrat News.

Ronald Searle is 90 tomorrow

The Channel 4 News site has a video interview with the creator of St Trinians and St Custards. Because Ronald Searle will be 90 tomorrow:

Ronald Searle was standing in his sitting room - rose champagne bottle (his engine oil, he calls it) at the ready in his one good hand - his writing/drawing left hand.

Monica Searle, in her 80s, greeted us warmly at the top of the stairs, freshly coiffured in tinted glasses. They've been a couple for over half a century (a second marriage for both of them) - "bliss," she tells me.

There's a poignant mutual dependence. She describes herself as "Slave Number 17".

"Why 17?" I asked. "My favourite number," she replied. We go on to spend five delightful hours with the Searles.

Monica Searle doesn't drink. The rest of us - reporter, cameraman, producer and Ronald Searle - valiantly stick to the task, three bottles of champagne (Billecart-Salmon at 50 euros a pop - we checked at duty free on the way home). There've been tougher assignments.

An exhibition devoted to Searle's work opens at The Cartoon Museum in London tomorrow and runs until 4 July.