Showing posts with label Floella Benjamin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Floella Benjamin. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

The Joy of Six 1162

Floella Benjamin asks why young people are hung out to dry after they leave the care system: "Increasing the number of care leavers in higher education is something we should all get behind: it would save the taxpayer money, increase the number of bright young people being trained for the jobs we’ll need to build a stronger future, and increase opportunities for many who deserve them."

"Laura Kuenssberg’s tenure as the BBC’s political editor, beginning in July 2015 and ending in the coming weeks, was a catastrophe. On her watch, lies were not just permitted, they were amplified and given credibility by Britain’s state broadcaster. At least partly as a result of this, the UK Government now routinely lies with impunity." Patrick Howse on the consequences of the BBC's political editor.

Josh Self sees signs of a revival of one-nation Conservatism.

Brian Domitrovic reviews a new book on the 19th-century political economist Henry George: "George sold millions of copies of his books and pamphlets, spawned scores of activist reading groups among marginally literate groups of working people, inspired the building of model communities on the basis of the single tax, motivated innumerable “Georgists” successfully to seek elected office, influenced world-historical leaders such as the Mexican Revolution’s Venustiano Carranza and modern China’s founder Sun Yat-Sen, and all but reoriented the agenda of taxation and public works globally as the twentieth century dawned."

"Equally as important as the music in this case was that distinctive and much-discussed You Can All Join In sleeve.  Snapped from above on a stepladder by the Hipgnosis photographer, the front cover shows a rag tag collection of 29 musicians.  Fashionably unsmiling with collars turned up against the wind and hands thrust deep into the pockets of army greatcoats, leather jackets and (real) fur coats on a cold winter’s morning, no one looked too happy to be there at that hour of the day." Stuart Penney looks back at Island Records' first UK sampler disc.

Which pub is the oldest in Nottingham? James Wright weighs up the contenders for this hotly disputed title.

Sunday, June 04, 2023

Floella Benjamin and Kenneth Williams

A typical diary entry from Kenneth Williams, which was tweeted today because it describes what the great man was doing exactly 47 years ago.

What intrigued me was that the person retweeting it added a note saying that 'Flo' here is Floella Benjamin.

Is this right? Was the Liberal Democrat peer a friend of Ken?

It seems she was, as here she is remembering him in 2018:

And the day after Floella sent that tweet, someone posted the programme of the production in which they both appeared:

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Pretending to be in a rowing boat

We end our week at Bonkers Hall with the old boy paying tribute to one of his peers. Of course, all his peers are peers.

Sunday

The heartiest of congratulations to our own Baroness Benjamin as she becomes the first member of the original London cast of Hair! to hold the Order of Merit since Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. 

I was perhaps a little too old to be a regular viewer of Play School, though if I had no pressing business then pretending to be in a rowing boat or whatever was a pleasant enough way of passing the time, and I was impressed that she always knew which window the film clip could be seen through. 

Certainly, the show made for better viewing than a crew of “celebrities” one has never heard of eating the nether parts of animals in a jungle.

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

Earlier this week...