"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
"The adversarial trial system has been shown inadequate to deal with complex, and indeed developing, scientific data in Lucy Letby's trials. Procedure has triumphed over the serious search for the truth. Yet there is also the question as to whether existing legal procedures were followed over testing expert witnesses." Timothy Bradshaw claims that Lucy Letby has been betrayed by a legal system that can’t handle scientific evidence.
Ian Martin is not impressed by Boris Johnson's Unleashed: "On the basis of this magnum opus, satirists who’d pointed their lances at some imaginary political giant were in fact tilting at a windbag."
Jamie Stone, who has served at both Holyrood and Westminster, compares the two parliaments: "Having been a Member since its inception in 1999, I happen to know that when they were being trained, the staff were instructed to address the newly elected MSP’s as Mr, Mrs, Ms and so forth… but never by their first name. I also happen to know that this training fell on deaf ears from the very start. I was Jamie on day one, and still am today. I must admit that’s how I’ve always preferred it."
The organisation that became the RSPB was started by Victorian women protesting against the use of feather in millinery, shows Tessa Boase.
"The Lansbury Exhibition of Architecture would show how town planning and scientific building principles would provide a better environment in which to live and work, and how this would be applied to the redevelopment of London and the new towns planned across the country." A London Inheritance finds much of this 1951 event still standing in the East End.
Xan Brooks gives his choice of the best fiction set in the American South.
Chloe Keedy from ITV News filed a report from Yellow Hammer 1, Ed Davey's election battle bus, as it began a final five-day tour of Liberal Democrat prospects from John o' Groats to Land’s End.
John o' Groats is in Jamie Stone's Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross constituency, which is nominally an SNP seat under the new boundaries.
Land's End is in the St Ives constituency, which Andrew George hopes to regain for the Lib Dems.
And there are many promising seats in between.
And the really hot news from Yellow Hammer 1? Keedy writes:
On the campaign trail in Edinburgh on Saturday, Sir Ed Davey was trying out his circus skills.
There may only be a few days to go, but I’m told that the Lib Dems’ stuntman-in-chief still has a couple of big surprises up his sleeve.
The Tories have reached the "invade France" stage of the immigration debacle, and it's only Wednesday.
He was talking about a statement that Giles Watling, the Conservative MP for Clacton, places on his website today:
Giles Watling MP is backing stronger borders and an end to illegal migration. Giles is set to back the Government on the Rwanda Bill again this week to deport illegal entrants but warns that the legislation does not go far enough - and will not ultimately succeed in full. He believes that we must stay focussed on the mission, which is to bring the evil cross-channel trade in human misery to an end.
Mr Watling said:
"It is undeniable that we need to police our borders and strengthen them. Fundamentally, it is perfectly acceptable that those who are not here legally should be deported to have their cases assessed – we cannot reward those who break the rules and I welcome the Government finally getting to grips with this issue.
"However, and despite intense lobbying from colleagues of mine on both sides of the party, I am afraid I simply could not support any amendments to this Bill. This is not because I did not agree with them in principle, but simply because I do not believe that this Bill goes far enough – even with the proposed amendments, should they have passed.
"The Home Office has demonstrated time and again that it is either unwilling or unable to grapple with the scale of the challenge facing it, and to that extent I believe it is time that it is relieved of the responsibility of policing our borders and instead the issue is handed to the Ministry of Defence. This is after all a defence of the realm matter and we need British boots on the ground.
"Our borders must be stronger, and in order to achieve that we must explore negotiating with our continental neighbours, pointing out that they would regain control of their overrun towns from Dunkirk to Boulogne if they allow that, in addition to the people we already have in their command and control centres, we put British boots on the ground in Northern France to assist their efforts.
"This is a relatively small piece of coastline with only a few practical places to launch these boats. We have drone technology and efficient armed forces. We should easily be able to stop the boats from even reaching the beaches and destroy them. In a very short time I believe that the migration route will stop. We will save lives, free up the French ports and stop illegal entry in this manner.
"All it requires is determination and diplomacy of the highest order."
Watling appears an amiable sort - see his recent interview with our own Jamie Stone in the John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier - and if you read beneath the bluster there is an appeal for international cooperation in there somewhere trying to get out.
So what has made him feel he has to sound as though he wants to invade France?
A new poll suggests Nigel Farage could comfortably win a seat in a constituency formerly held by UKIP, beating the incumbent Tory MP for Clacton by ten percentage points.
The 'Honorary President' of Reform UK polled at 37 per cent of the vote in the Essex town, based on a Survation survey of 509 people conducted through the week.
The Tories were only marginally more attractive to voters than Labour, which received 23 per cent. Six per cent would have voted Lib Dem and eight per cent other parties.
Were Mr Farage attempt to unsettle Giles Watling MP from the seat he has held since 2017, it would be his eighth attempt to become an MP.
Poor Watling. Driven mad by Nigel Farage.
There is another possible explanation: have a look at the video above. Because the very Sixties small boy in it is... Giles Watling.
He played John Gregson's younger son in the police series Gideon's Way. And this clip comes from one of the better episodes, The 'V' Men.
The orator the young Watling was listening to was Sir Arthur Vane, leader of a far-right party called The Victory Movement. Could it be that he was more affected by it than anyone realised? 1964, after all, before anyone thought of safeguarding for child actors.
If so, it would be an irony, because Gregson's George Gideon, like his creator John Creasy, was a liberal. He manages to find out who planted a bomb outside Vane's flat, while maintaining the peace between the Movement and left-wing demonstrators.
All this despite having Allan Cuthbertson, whose very looks screamed "ex-colonial police office who believes in crowd control by violence", wished upon him by the top brass.
"There was one document, though, that really galvanised Dickens: in early 1843, parliament was presented with a report on the extent of child labour in the country. It detailed unimaginable horrors: interviews with seven-year-olds who had spent half their lives in mines, smoking eight-year-olds who had been working so long their own fathers didn’t know when they started. Anecdotal evidence that 'young boys are taken down as soon as they can stand on their legs'." The Penguin Books site looks at the political background to A Christmas Carol.
"Difference does not lead us into a meaningless relativism, but rather into a perpetual quest to develop and share knowledge. If we forget the wisdom of Babel, then we think that the knowledge we have found matters more than what others have found in their own quests." We can still have wisdom even without transcendental insights, argues Ayram Alpert.
Carolyne Willow and Ian Dickson reflect on his 70 years in the care system - as child and professional: "He found a child who had run away from a residential school (at that time they were called 'absconders') and drove him back in his car, buying him sweets for the journey, only for the child to be beaten by the headteacher when he stepped through the door. After that, whenever Ian was sent out looking for children, and happened to find them, he would deliberately lose them."
"Both as a book 'about' nature, farming and landscape, and 'about' childhood, Jane’s Country Year then is simultaneously explicitly and consciously of its time, yet also oddly, awkwardly timeless. I’m delighted to have read it this year and to have had the world of Malcolm Saville opened to me." Unpopular discovers my favourite author when I was a child.
Jamie Stone, Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, talks to Andy Boddington about being a pantomime dame.
Willie Rennie, leader of the Scottish Liberals Democrats, has said the party is set to gain the Cathiness, Sutherland and Ross seat in next month's Holyrood election.
The John O'Groat Journal and Caithness Courier quotes "party polling" from the Lib Dems that shows their candidate Molly Nolan is just three points behind the sitting SNP member. The figures are SCP 37.2 per cent, Lib Dems 34.2 per cent.
Rennie told the paper:
"We know we can win this, we can take out a Scottish Government minister – who I don’t think has served the community particularly well on the list – and we can bring in Molly Nolan."
Caithness, Sutherland and Ross covers much the same territory as the Westminster seat held for the Lib Dems by Jamie Stone.
The photo above shows Thurso Castle. Now ruined, it was the boyhood home of Sir Archibald Sinclair, who led the Liberal Party between 1935 and 1945.
Putting my life back in order will be more of an undertaking, but I can at least start returning Liberal England to normality. So let's begin by looking at what Lord Bonkers got up to last year.
Congratulations to the Duke of Sussex for making it over the wall and quitting the Royal Family, together with his delightful wife and child.
In my experience his family are a ghastly crew – in my young day it was common knowledge that the Jack the Ripper murders had been committed by Queen Victoria – and he is well shot of them.
April
By now the coronavirus was affecting life on the Bonkers Hall Estate:
Meadowcroft has taken this damned virus badly, locking himself in his potting shed and morning, noon and night. You may very well feel he is Going A Bit Far, but he is determined not to pass the virus on to his beloved geraniums. As I gaze out of the window I see Cook pushing slices of cheese on toast under the door. What a fine woman she is!
June
This month saw some characteristically forthright comments on the leading lights of the Liberal Democrats in the Coalition years:
Whenever I questioned their actions, Clegg and Alexander assured me they were making Britain a better place to live. Yet now I find that the former has upped sticks to Seattle and the latter has fled to China.
Jamie Stone telephones, full of his plans for his new spaceport in Sutherland; no wonder they call him the Wernher von Braun of the Flow Country.
August
I made a personal donation to the Bonkers Home for Well-Behaved Orphans after publishing an inaccurate post about Sir Nicholas Clegg.
September
Readers were treated to my employer's recollections of the the Stilton strike of 1919 when the miners came out demanding better pay and Lloyd George sent the troops in:
I recall telling LG at the time that this was Going A Bit Far, but by then he only had ears for his new Conservative friends and the trade with Japan never recovered. Really, I wonder what they teach in school History classes nowadays.
October
Most scholars now accept the theory that the model for Bonkers Hall is Nevill Holt Hall near Medbourne in Leicestershire.
So Liberal England was interested in the news that the 17-year-old son of the owner of Nevill Holt has received a garnt of £85,000 from the Culture Recovery Fund.
Lunch with the High King of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, who tells me of their plans to help during the new lockdown: "We like to think of ourselves as putting the 'elf' into 'welfare'." ...
In the afternoon I call on the Wise Woman of Wing and purchase some of her herbal remedies as a precaution against the virus. "I’m much cheaper than those elves, dearie" she tells me, "and what’s more my shit works."
December
At the end of the year I took to reprinting Lord Bonkers' thoughts from 30 years ago, as his diaries have been appearing there that long.
I presented myself bright and early at the committee rooms and was asked to drive some pensioners to the polls. A menial task for a man of my experience, you might think, but we Liberals are nothing if not democratic and I went about it with a will.
Fortunately, I had brought with me my collapsible travelling horsewhip and this eased matters considerably. the elderly voters made a terrible fuss and were constantly tripping over each other's Zimmer frames, but I got them all into the booths eventually.
Molly Nolan has been chosen to contest the Caithness, Sutherland and Ross seat for the Liberal Democrats in next May's Holyrood elections. This is largely the seat Jamie Stone represents at Westminster.
There you will read that she was a pupil at Dingwall Academy and Plockton Music School before going to Harvard University and that Jamie Stones regards her as a "shining example of the next generation of Highlanders".
Molly tells the paper:
"With the coronavirus crisis leaving so many Highland residents facing financial hardship, it is more important than ever to address the inequalities in our communities. We must ensure no-one is left behind.
"I know that challenges in the Highlands have never been more acute, from the fragility of our tourism industry to increased cuts in local services. These issues are not being addressed by the SNP government, which for the past 13 years has prioritised the centralisation of powers in Edinburgh over dealing with everyday concerns.
"I am determined to listen to as many people as possible and stand up for what matters. Liberal Democrats will protect jobs and services, safeguard our natural environment and ensure every young person across the Highlands has the opportunity to get on in life.”
Jamie Stone is fast becoming a cult figure. If Lord Bonkers can talk him into being the first Liberal Democrat MP on Mars his fame will only grow.
Friday
Jamie Stone telephones, full of his plans for his new spaceport in Sutherland; no wonder they call him the Wernher von Braun of the Flow Country.
I wish him well with his scheme and am then reminded of the days, shortly after our triumph in 1997, when we Liberal Democrats had our own spacecraft. The Bird of Liberty was piloted by David Chidgey, then the MP for Eastleigh, and funded by a group of donors who believed that if there were alien civilisations orbiting nearby stars then they would inevitably hold by-elections and that these might offer the party a chance of increasing its number of elected representatives.
For a time all went well, but the Bird was brought down by an errant Russian satellite and Chidgey was located only after a thorough search of the less frequented Pacific islands.
Inspired by these recollections, I set to searching the outbuildings here at the Hall until I locate the old girl. She is clearly in need of some TLC, but after a day of cleaning and polishing she looks more her old self. When I fire up the engine the Well-Behaved Orphans who were responsible for the cleaning and polishing declare that I should call her "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". I'm sure you will agree this is a damn fool idea.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Some lovely footage of the line north from Dingwall to Wick and Thurso in 1964.
And I commend the reopening of Salzcraggie station to the excellent Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) as a vote-winning campaign.
Note the post bus at Lairg. An article on Messy Nessy tells you about this lost means of rural transport.
I'm feeling a lot better this Monday after a weekend of recuperation. Here's what I had to say earlier this month when the TV crew from #Unspun came to my office. They asked me what was the most trouble I'd even gotten into. pic.twitter.com/uHiHZwsCwD
Jamie Stone, the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, has just tweeted this clip from 2018.
If I know Lord Bonkers, he will immediately call for Jamie to be made leader on the grounds that this is just the sort of experience you need in a hard-fought by-election.
MoneyWeek has an article about the betting market on the forthcoming Liberal Democrat leadership election.
Ladbrokes are offering the following odds:
Jo Swinson Evens
Layla Moran 11/8
Ed Davey 8/1
Tom Brake 20/1
Norman Lamb 33/1
Alistair Carmichael 50/1
Jamie Stone 50/1
Tim Farron 100/1
The author, Dr Matthew Partridge, suggests that Layla Moran represents the value bet - particularly at the slightly more generous odds being offered by Betfair
Our week at Bonkers Hall draws to a close as the old boy proves that he still has his finger on the pulse when it comes to the Liberal Democrats (as far as we have one these days).
Sunday
There are those (it is hard to credit) to whom not every Liberal Democrat MP is a household name, so let me give you a few notes upon the slightly less famous ones.
Wera Hobhouse is heir to the family fortune, which is founded on sales of her uncle L.T.’s Liberalism.
Christine Jardine I have found to be a fierce competitor. She once took over the captaincy of my XI when Mike Brearley was called away to conduct an urgent session of psychoanalysis, whereupon she packed the legside field and ordered our fastest bowler to let the batsmen have a barrage of snoot-high deliveries.
Jamie Stone is believed to be well thought of in Golspie.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Vince Cable is standing for the Liberal Democrat leadership and, as far as we know, he is the only one of our MPs who is. Jim Waterson from BuzzFeed News reckons there are still four Lib Dem MPs who have not formally ruled themselves out. So he set out to discover their intentions.
Stephen Lloyd was clear:
He immediately ruled himself out: "I'm for the wisdom and sagacity of Vince Cable."
So was Jamie Stone:
"Absolutely not. I'm lucky to here at all in the first place and I'm a strong support of Vince's."
And so was Christine Jardine:
"No," she explained. "It would have been good to have a contest but on the other hand I'm perfectly happy."
The only slight mystery surrounds Layla Moran's intentions:
Moran, the new MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, had written a piece offering to nominate any MP who wanted to prompt a leadership contest but had not formally ruled herself out.
So is she running? "Not as far as I'm aware," said the person manning the phone in her office.
I'm with Christine Jardine. It would have been good to have a contest.
But what we really need is a frank debate about the recent past and the future of the Liberal Democrats, and it is quite possible to have a leadership contest without having that. Stephen Bush has discussed this in the New Statesman.
Besides, a leadership contest, by my calculation, requires a minimum of two candidates and we do not seem to have that luxury.
Layla Moran would make an attractive candidate, even if - inevitably - we do not know a great deal about her views. But I suspect she would be wise not to stand this time.
So we are left with Jim Waterson's conclusion that we should declare Vince Cable our leader and go on holiday.
