"Ahaarrrr!" A voiceover session from hell

One of my favourite podcasts is the Chelsea Fancast, which has kept me informed and entertained through my club's recent travails. Its two regular presenters are Stamford Chidge and JK.

Stamford Chidge, I worked out eventually after putting the clues together, is David Chidgey. He's a former television producer, a psychotherapist and the son of the late David Chidgey, who was Liberal Democrat MP for Eastleigh from 1994 to 2005, and the pilot of the Liberal Democrat spacecraft Bird of Liberty in the early years of Lord Bonkers' Diary.

JK is not such a mystery. He is Jonathan Kydd, son of the once-ubiquitous British film actor Sam Kydd and an actor, writer and voiceover artist in his own right.

In this short film, which has won many festival awards, he plays both the actor and the director in a voiceover session from hell.

And to prove that all rabbit holes join up eventually, he writes on his website that, when he was a boy, Alexander Mackendrick saw him several times for the title role in Sammy Going South.

The Joy of Six 1528

Tom Williams reports from Southampton: "The demonstration descended into rioting as protesters clashed with police. Out-of-towners, including Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox, merged with locals outside Southampton police station to form a crowd of several hundred. They marched to Belmont Road, where Nowak was killed. Riot police prevented them reaching Digwa’s family home."

"I had expected to meet a former MP with the usual recollections and political anecdotes. What I encountered instead was something rarer: a political thinker who remained genuinely concerned with ideas, and who was determined to dispel the myths that had accumulated around Liberal history like barnacles on a ship's hull." Andrew Page pays tribute to Michael Meadowcroft.

Matthew Pennell analyses last month's local election results and looks forward to future conquests: "What are the key battlegrounds in England? In 2027 we’ll see if we can build on long term gains in North Yorkshire and East Riding, whether we can retake Bedford and if there’s a chance of completing jigsaw in the far West of England by flipping the status of Herefordshire."

Ellie Davies talks to three Bristol academics about the impact that villages – both literal and metaphorical – have on our health and happiness.

"She wanted to do all that men could do, painting nudes at a time when female art students weren’t allowed to do so. She treated her subjects with seriousness and commitment, but also with enormous sensuous energy and a feel for the pleasures of looking, whether it’s the naked women on Cornish beaches, the garish clowns in her 1930s circus pictures, or even the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force commanders of the 1940s, surrounded by the meticulously rendered paraphernalia of their working lives." Lara Feigel salutes the continuing relevance of Laura Knight.

"There is an unavoidable ethical dimension to all this: though Payne’s deeply-considered and expert work on the sketches was clearly much more than the 'tinkering' Elgar was worried about, we have to acknowledge that the composer’s wish needs to be more-or-less disregarded if we are to perform or listen to the completed work." Jeremy Benson on Elgar's unfinished third symphony.

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"The costed tax rises at £26bn are remarkably similar to the £27bn tax increases proposed in the Lib Dems manifesto last year. ... This would suggest that the macro management of the economy is broadly going in the direction we would want, although the methods aren’t necessarily of our choosing (insert gag about Morecambe & Wise and André Previn here)." Matthew Pennell gives a Liberal verdict on the budget.

Diane Ray reveals the chronic miseducation of working-class children: 'As one Head of English in an academy told me in 2023: “if you are working class and in the lower sets for English you have no access to books, novels, poetry or plays, but rather a daily grind of basic literacy worksheets'."

Waterlooville was labelled a "dystopian zombie drama" in 2024, but the Liberal Democrats have turned it around, says the Local Government Association Lib Dem group.

"Researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology are tracing the history of human habitation on the banks of the River Thames through strategic trial pits and boreholes. As evidenced by the flints, the land today occupied by the Palace of Westminster was once a gravelly island called Thorney Island that prehistoric communities used to fish, hunt, and gather food." Richard Whiddington reports from beneath the Palace of Westminster.

Tim Pelan on John Huston's 1975 film The Man Who Would be King: "The pleasure of the film is the old-fashioned exotic-seeming sensibility of the setting, harking back to classic old adventures like Lives of the Bengal Lancers and Gunga Din, but with the acerbic undercutting of white colonial arrogance."

Oxford Clarion presents an invaluable guide to the university's college cats. (I like cats because they don't use unnecessary commas or award themselves unearned MAs.)

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Adam Barnett itemises Nigel Farage's long history of support for Vladimir Putin: "On the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion, Nigel Farage ... argued for ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine – an odd time to do that – and when the war started he called it 'a consequence of EU and NATO expansion'. Last year he called on the west to negotiate with Putin, adding that 'the relentless insistence on continued war is worrying. Whose insistence, Nigel?" 

"There are few fundamental political differences between Corbyn and Sultana. There is a clash instead of style, but this could well be used to their advantage. The conflicts are many when it comes to the wider group involved, however." Sienna Rodgers takes us the power struggles attending the birth of the proposed new left-wing party.

Francis FitzGibbon on the threat to jury trials: "Juries decide​ the outcome of about 1 per cent of criminal cases in England and Wales, and yet the jury system is permanently under threat. The latest threat comes in Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts."

"The problem has always been where to place him. Unlike Monsarrat he wasn’t published in the 1930s, so can’t be ranked alongside early social realists like Graham Greene and George Orwell. Two decades later he was older than the proto-Angry Young Man writers John Wain and Kingsley Amis. Nor did he write about life outside London, like William Cooper, John Braine and others." Simon Matthews explores the life and works of novelist and TV dramatist Alexander Baron

"As luck would have it, the club had arranged Mick Channon’s testimonial match for 3 May, and so two days after the cup triumph, fans were still in a celebratory mood as they packed into the Dell to see their heroes. The FA Cup was paraded in front of an official attendance of 29,508 that night, although those who were there would probably tell you there were a few more than that. Spare a thought for the hundreds outside who could not get a ticket." Historic Southampton tells the story of The Dell.

Andrew Nette watches a favourite political thriller. "The Day of the Jackal spends a hell of a lot of time just showing things being done and the minutia involved. For Jackal this includes creating and sourcing a false identity and designing, ordering and learning how to use a bespoke lightweight sniper rifle. ... The mechanics of the police investigation into Jackal’s identity and whereabouts is also painstakingly rendered and I love every minute of it."

Those Lib Dem targets for the next general election in full

Embed from Getty Images

Michael Mullaney, who was our candidate in Hinckley and Bosworth on Thursday, has tweeted a list of the Liberal Democrat near misses at this election. They form a handy list of targets for the next election.

The second column gives the number votes we were adrift of the winner, and the third the percentage swing needed to win it next time. It is this latter figure that determines a seat's ranking in the list.

All these seats are held by the Conservatives except Burnley, which is held by Labour.

                                                                         %

Godalming and Ash                         891         0.81

Farnham and Bordon                     1349        1.27

Hampshire East                              1275        1.27

Shropshire South                            1624        1.57

Dorset North                                   1589        1.60

Romsey and Southampton North   2191        2.19

Cotswold North                               3357        3.34

Torridge and Tavistock                    3950        3.89

Burnley                                            3420        4.31

Hamble Valley                                 4802        4.35

Hertfordshire South West                4456        4.62

Salisbury                                          5285        5.27

Buckinghamshire Mid                      5872        5.44

Sevenoaks                                       5440       5.45

Hinckley and Bosworth                    5408       5.66

When I blogged about Gordon Birtwistle, who was our candidate in Burnley having been MP for the town between 2005 and 2010, I wondered about his claim that the contest was between him and Labour, But he turned out to be quite right.

Labour is diverting its activists away from Lib Dem target seats

Conservative fears of an electoral wipe out next Thursday will be deepened by analysis in the Financial Times suggesting that Labour is diverting its activists from Liberal Democrat targets in the South of England:

In the Lib Dems’ traditional west country heartland, Labour activists in Bridgwater, north Somerset, are being sent to Plymouth, an 83-mile journey that means passing at least four other constituencies.

Labour is also asking activists from nine seats across Surrey and Hampshire to campaign in the strong Tory seat of Aldershot. If the army town in Hampshire had the same boundaries back in 2019, the Conservatives would have won 57 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 22 per cent. The seat is not on the Lib Dem target list.

As the article says, there is no need for a formal pact between Labour and the Lib Dems, because there are so few seats where they are competing with one another.

Enlightened self-interest has been enough to ensure that anti-Tory votes are distributed as efficiently as possible.

Mason Crane, England's forgotten man, on how to encourage spin bowling in the County Championship

It's a podcast with young men, so there's lots of top bantz, but in between Mason Crane - England, Hampshire, Sussex and now Glamorgan - has some interesting things to say about how we can encourage spin bowling in the County Championship.

Big Chum? More on Danny Chambers and Bobi the world's oldest ever dog that wasn't

Remember my post about Danny Chambers and the world's oldest ever dog that wasn't?

It concerned a press story about Bobi, a Portuguese mastiff who died last year, supposedly at the age 31 years and five months. Bobi was briefly listed as the world's oldest ever dog by the Guinness World Records, but it has now withdrawn that recognition.

Danny, who is a vet and a council member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, was quoted as saying he didn't believe the claim about Bobi and he didn't know any vet who did.

Well, the story has made the new Fortean Times:

Bobi's owner Leonel Costa, 38, blamed the withdrawal of his records on "a veterinary elite with a vested interest in the dog food industry" who are in denial about the virtues of Bobi's diet of natural food".

Our Danny in the pay of Big Chum? I refuse to believe it.

This story does give me the chance of positing another video involving Danny, who is one of a roster of impressive Liberal Democrat candidates who will be standing in winnable seats at the next election. In his case it's Winchester.

Here he talks to James O'Brien about the roots of people's resistance to having their children vaccinated.

Danny Chambers and Bobi, the world's oldest ever dog that wasn't

Danny Chambers is the Liberal Democrat PPC for Winchester, where we finished less than a thousand votes behind the winning Conservative at the last election.

He turns up in today's Guardian in a story about Bobi, a Portuguese mastiff who died last year, supposedly at the age 31 years and five months. He was briefly listed as the world's oldest ever dog, but Guinness World Records has now withdrawn its recognition.

As the Guardian story reveals, some people always had their doubts:

Just days after Bobi's demise, Danny Chambers, a vet and council member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, suggested that claims the dog had lived more than three decades were false.

Chambers said that, of the 18,000 members of the Veterinary Voices group he runs, "not a single one" of his colleagues believed Bobi was actually 31 years old.

"This is the equivalent of a human living to over 200 years old which, given our current medical capabilities, is completely implausible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and no concrete evidence has been provided to prove his age," he said.

I'm not convinced this story will have an impact on the contest in Winchester, but it does give me the chance to post this notably green campaign video from Danny.