The Joy of Six 1272

"The Houses of Parliament are sinking into the Thames. Many dozens of offices were condemned upon their vacation by outgoing MPs. There are electrical and water hazards only a few metres underfoot, and the whole thing will cost billions to fix – not least because MPs are insistent they stay in the building while it happens." Steffan Aquarone says the physical state of the Palace of Westminster is a metaphor for the organisational changes that are needed there.

Richard Kemp promised to put the cause of carer leavers at the heart of his work as Lord Mayor of Liverpool. He writes about an event held yesterday that will help him honour this pledge.

"Dr Newman debunked the popular idea of 'Blue Zones' as regions of exceptional longevity and healthy lifestyles. Many, if not most of the centenarians in the ‘Blue Zone’ have turned out to be alive in the government records but deceased in reality." The press people at University College London on work by Saul Justin Newman that revealed fundamental flaws in research on extreme old age.

Pam Fisher has researched Loughborough's first workhouse.

Amy Boucher is intrigued by Shropshire's female ghosts: "Some of our female spirits have strong historical basis, one only has to peel back the layers to uncover a real woman. Other tales are harder to track down historically, but instead can come to symbolise the suffering and experiences of a collective womanhood. Some of their experiences may even be familiar to you, though your stories are separated by the centuries."

"Perhaps 'cooked' is too euphemistic a term. To be quite accurate, they had held the sausages over a smoking fire till completely blackened, and then consumed the charred remains with the utmost relish." Alwyn Turner offers an anthology of sausages in literature." 

Tom Brown and William Brown

I recently came across a review of two of the Just William books, written by Lincoln Allison in 2006:

William Brown first featured in a short story in 1919 and went on to be the central character in thirty-eight collections of stories. 

He shares his surname with Tom Brown and also a place in the great English catalogue of children's (mainly boys') writing which began with Charles Kingsley and Tom Hughes. (I'm not sure when it ended.) But otherwise they are opposites in every way; William is the alternative Brown, the alternative boy. 

Most of the central characters in the vast collection of English children's writing, including thousands of school stories, embody the Victorian idea of virtue to some degree. 

William does not: he does not "do" modesty, humility or unselfishness. His virtues, if you will allow them, are a love of liberty, a zest for life and a kind of honesty. He is more like Falstaff or Bottom than he is like Tom Brown. 

When compared with the Christian Socialism to which the Doctor converts Tom, William's political preferences are a dictatorship with himself as dictator - followed by anarchy if that isn't an option.

He concludes:

I'm tempted by the idea of the universe as a struggle between two eleven-year-old boys called Brown. Tom Brown, I think, stands for something rather sinister, at least potentially. William Brown stands for humour, freedom and the uninhibited enjoyment of both reality and fantasy. ¡Viva la libertad! ¡Viva Guillermo!

Six of the Best 387

Thinking Liberal reports from the Liberal Democrat Conference and concludes: "Lib Dems tend to be very self congratulatory about this supposedly democratic way of adopting party policy by a biannual meeting of self appointed activists. Scepticism is in order, but I think the process is of real value in keeping members and activists involved. But this does not inevitably follow from the constitutional processes. It matters a lot how the party’s various leadership bodies choose to use them."

"Go Home" posters are still on display in UKBA's Glasgow office, reports Caron's Musings.

The Cricket Geek describes his experience of depression.

It's not much of a life being a middling chess grandmaster, says Britain's Danny Gormally on the website of Natalia Pogonina.

"It is Crompton’s style that makes them truly outstanding. She is the most accomplished writer of children’s fiction in the 20th century, not least because she had an intuitive grasp of their psychology." Writing in the THES, De Montfort University's Gary Day argues that it is time the literary critics took the Just William books seriously.

Kilburn History reveals that, with West Hampstead, this part of London has played a significant part in the recording industry, with both Decca and Island Records based there.

Karl Popper on Head to Head

Head to Head is a BBC Radio 4 series in which Edward Stourton revisit broadcast debates from the archives, exploring ideas, the great minds behind them and echoes of the arguments today.

This morning's programme - which will be available on BBC iPlayer for the next week - dealt with an encounter between the philosopher Sir Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist Sir John Eccles.

It was not exactly a debate, as the two were in agreement, but it examined Popper's idea of falsifiability as a criterion for what is or is not science.

As a young man Popper had been greatly impressed by the way that Newton's theories, which seemed the most secure example of scientific knowledge, were shown to be inadequate by the work of Einstein. He contrasted this with the work of Freud, which seemed impossible to refute. From this he concluded that Newton's work was science and Freud's was not.

For a fuller discussion of Popper, which pays attention to his political philosophy, try this edition of In Our Time for 2007.

One good thing about this edition of Head to Head is that Stourton is respectful of both Popper and Eccles. So he does not laugh down his nose at them, as he has a habit of doing in the series.

When he does it, he sounds exactly like Martin Jarvis makes Hubert Lane sound in his readings of the Just William books.

Charles Clarke condemns Just William politics

Charles Clarke has an aricle on the New Statesman website - I assume it will be in Friday's magazine.

If I read it correctly, a shorter version would run: "You don't have to be part of a Blairite plot to think that Gordon Brown is a disaster and to want to get rid of him to save the party."

I suspect he hopes that when Brown does go Labour will turn to an experienced former minister who is not identified closely with either Blair or Brown. And who has large ears.

Just William politics sounds the sort of thing that this blog would approve of. Clarke condemns it thus:

As various commentators consider Labour's prospects, the term "Blairite" is being deployed to characterise the policies and personalities of some who question the party's current direction and urge Labour to face the future. Like "Thatcherite", the word is not used kindly. "Blairite" (even "über-Blairite") is a lazy and inaccurate shorthand. It is intended not to illuminate but to diminish, marginalise and insult. It was, for example, the stock phrase used by the Brown political briefing team to traduce David Miliband's Guardian article in early August.

Moreover, this misleading language damages the vital need for Labour to move on to new, post-Blair ground. Those journalists and politicians who use it are fighting the last political struggle, the War of the Tony Blair Succession, in a way that owes rather more to Just William and the Hubert Laneites than to the challenges of modern British politics.

On this analysis, presumably, Harriet Harman is Violet Elizabeth Bott.