The Joy of Six 1576

Anna Sabine, Liberal Democrat MP for Frome and East Somerset, has discovered what happens when a politician loses her voice: "There’s a thing about: do I seem weak now? Like, does this make me seem weaker? Which is another reason to be really clear: I will do national media, and I will carry on campaigning."

"The council’s constitution, which sets out how it is run, says it must have a cabinet and a leader at the top and this is required by UK law. The local authority is also required to have an elected member overseeing children’s services. The absence of this and the length of time the council has had no one in charge is what has led officers to make the highly unusual declaration the council is breaking the law." Edward Barnes reports from Oldham, where the elected councillors have failed to agree who should run the borough council after May's elections.

Alazne Mountjoy says women suffer because of the systemic misogyny in medical research and practice: "Women undergoing surgery are significantly more likely to experience complications, and even die, when the surgeon is a man as opposed to a woman. This is in conjunction with the fact that surgeons are overwhelmingly male, with fewer than a fifth of surgeons being female."

Anna Verhamme and John Britton, in a report for the Higher Education Policy Institute, say universities are their professional and support staff and then paying consultants more to provide these services.

"From Browne’s first instalment, featuring the character Sam Weller, sales for Pickwick rose and kept rising. Browne would go on to become Dickens’s principal illustrator, and Pickwick – helped enormously by his comic illustrations – became a literary sensation that revolutionised Victorian book publishing." Michael John Goodman looks at the relationship between Charles Dickens and his illustrator Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz') and reminds us how strange it is that we now publish Victorian novels without their illustrations.

"Chris Isaak has carved out a singular career doing one thing so hauntingly well, it’s become his signature. He’s built a cathedral from heartbreak and despair, lit by the flickering neon of 3 a.m. regrets, and its served him well for over four decades." James Kenney on Chris Isaak and the art of staying sad.

Geoff Marshall asks: What are Britain's least served stations?

Geoff Marshall says in his YouTube blurb:

So we quite often talk about Least Used Stations ... but what about the Least SERVED - the stations the get the fewest services with just a small number of trains per week?

Since it's been 10 years since I rode Stockport/Stalybridge with Karl, we headed out to Lincolnshire to ride the line to Skegness to tick off three Least Served stations, and find out what the least served stations in the country are.

I'm so old that I can remember when Stockport to Stalybridge had a proper service and was a useful route. And when I rode the line to Skegness, it was on a Jolly Fisherman excursion train behind a pair of Class 20s.

The Joy of Six 1566

"Our promise should be: We don’t want power so we can run your life. We want power in order to give it back to you." Roz Savage asks what has happened to Liberalism and what would make it relevant again.

Simon Pearson rightly says that the online left has lost sight of issues like class, ownership and material power: "The left needs to recover the harder ambition that once defined it: taking people divided by culture, race, sex, nationality and countless other experiences and building a common politics around material interests without pretending those differences do not exist. That requires organisation rather than recognition, explanation rather than denunciation and a serious account of ownership and power."

Nathan Ley explains why our streets may flood this winter, and why it won't be because of the council's 'blocked drains': "Dry clay shrinks, cracks, and forms a crust that sheds water instead of taking it in. Soil hydrophobicity is the technical term. The first heavy rain after a long drought doesn't soak away. It runs, quickly, and reaches the drainage network all at once rather than seeping through over several hours."

"A rash wartime policy ordered the detention of hundreds of Manchester Italians in a prison camp in Bury, and sent many to their deaths on a camouflaged military vessel in the Atlantic. Amongst them were ice-cream sellers, bakers, shopkeepers and a priest. Why were they there at all?" Ethan Penny uncovers a forgotten wartime injustice.

"Nuts In May was an accurate and excruciating reflection of the human condition when it was first broadcast in 1976, was still relevant to us students in the 90s, and even today in 2026, has lost none of its power over the viewer. This is a film with tension, outrage and tragedy. That so much perfectly fits into 81 minutes is a tribute to the brilliance of its director, the taut script structure and flawless cast." Adelle Stripe revisit Mike Leigh's 1976 cult classic.

Mike Nevell takes us to Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, the world’s first iron-framed building (built 1796-7), and thus the forerunner to the modern-day skyscraper.

Right to Roam plans mass trespass in Andy Burnham's Makerfield

The Right to Roam campaign is panning a mass trespass in the prime minister's Makerfield constituency to publicise its call for a public right to access the countryside on our doorsteps and roam responsibly over England’s land and water. 

The trespass will take place on Sunday 13 December. Its location will be revealed nearer the date. You can sign up for more information on Eventbrite.

Right to Roam says:

There’s a right to roam over just 1 per cent of the constituency. Despite big swathes of Makerfield being Green Belt land, local residents are shut out of the countryside that’s on their doorstep. 

Working with locals and the North West Right to Roam local group, we want to draw attention to this unfairness and to highlight Andy Burnham's golden opportunity to introduce a Right to Roam Bill in the next King’s Speech.

The campaign is holding two public events before the trespass that members of the public are welcome to join.

An evening event in neighbouring Wigan on Thursday 27 August, 7pm, at The Old Courts. Organised with the Right to Roam North West local group, and joined by Nadia and Guy from the national campaign, it will see discussion about increasing land access, who owns the North West and what access reform could look like. 

On Saturday 12th September, Right to Roam will have a stall at the annual Wigan Diggers Festival that celebrates the life and legacy of Gerrard Winstanley, the 17th-century land reformer who argued that "the Earth is a Common Treasury for All". Winstanley was born in the parish of Wigan, which includes much of present-day Makerfield.

GUEST POST Why has the HS2 project been such a disaster?

Peter Chambers goes in search of enlightenment about the ironic low-speed train crash that is HS2.

Most people I meet have an opinion on HS2. Different opinions. It has been expensive. It goes to Euston. It was a plot by Labour or the Tories. It goes too fast. Or not fast enough. It was a sop to the North or a scheme to divert economic activity to London.

What are the most useful points? Was it anything but a muddle? Some acquaintances have advised me to use these new GPT-LLM-RAG machines to produce a summary (AI). However, I know too much about how they work, so will politely decline. Instead I might read a human-written review of a human-written book that has been deemed somewhat informed. 

So off to the Literary Review for some opinion. Transport expert David Leeder reviews Off the Rails: The Inside Story of HS2 by Sally Gimson. I was looking for something with lots of numbers, geography, requirements, political objectives, strategy, analysis, risk-management, expertise and national benefit. Who am I kidding? It was Oxbridge debating with itself and Natural England being paid off one change at a time.

Leeder tells us that at least 40 per cent of the population (of what ?) lives in a quadrangle formed by London, Bristol, Liverpool and Leeds. The distance between London and Birmingham is only around 160km while London and Manchester are around 260km apart. It is proposed to operate HS2 at 320 kph. Forty-nine  minutes. Barely time to scan the Guardian, and tell the buffet assistant twice that there is no milk in Americano. There never was. 

We can skip the bits about Blair and Adonis (who?) and the aspersions about Roy Jenkins and claret. You might as well take Avanti West Coast from Euston and find a good forward-facing seat in Coach C. They have USB and the Project Reach cellular upgrade should be working in 2028, even at Piccadilly and Euston. It would take most of 49 minutes to get Teams working and find that the AI sent you the wrong meeting minutes document. Was that £38bn or £80bn? At least the No.1 circular bus at Manchester Piccadilly is both free and powered by electricity.

Much of the rest of the review takes on a tour of the group-think of the rotating cast of London-based decision-makers. Leeder describes them as "Britain’s political class, which comprises a narrow pool of upper-middle-class types who share many of the same vague assumptions." 

This seems plausible as the stated requirements used vague language and rotated with administrations. The very basic cost-benefit analysis that would link national growth with having a high-speed railway at all seems missing. The two most dynamic nations do not encourage us: the US does not bother with high-speed rail, the PRC has long distances between major cities and poor legacy transport networks. We do not compare with either.

Perhaps the most concise criticism is that the low productivity of most of the UK outside London and the Home Counties may well be due to factors having nothing to do with transport. A high pound, managed decline, class struggle, City bias, disdain for STEM, and the privilege of the Oxford Union will be suggested by a quick-lazy search engine. 

HS2 functions as a 'shiny' and could be useful as a distraction from unpalatable political action. It is rather expensive for that though.

Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire.

Eddie Waring's "Dark Satanic Mills End" was at Hilton Park, Leigh

Embed from Getty Images

I've a memory of Eddie Waring, the BBC's rugby league commentator between 1949 and 1981, referring to the "Dark Satanic Mills End" at one ground. I thought it was Leigh's and, having found the picture above, I think I was right.

The photo was published in Picture Post in 1949, and the caption on Getty Images says:

A group of young supporters accompany Rugby League players Bill Kingdon and Cec Ryan across allotments to the Kirkhall Lane rugby ground in Leigh, Lancashire. In the background is the Parsonage Pit.

In 1947 Leigh Rugby League Club started playing their home games at the town's Hilton Park stadium, which is indeed in Kirkhall Lane. It can't have been a bad ground: three internationals were played there between 1954 and 1964.

Leigh added Centurions to its name for the 1995–96 season and, as part of this rebranding, the stadium was renamed the Coliseum. The club moved to Leigh Sports Village for the 2009–10 season and Hilton Park was demolished to allow housing development on the site.

I don't remember seeing pit winding gear at Waring's Dark Satanic Mills End, but I do remember a forest of mill chimneys.

Under the Influence? A new report on alcohol at Westminster

When the newly elected Hannah Spencer – the Green victor in this year's Gorton and Denton by-election – voiced her shock at the role alcohol played at Westminster, other MPs and social media users queued up to patronise her and assure us that everything was fine there.

But perhaps they will pay more attention to a new report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies entitled Under the influence? Perspectives of alcohol in the parliamentary workplace among UK MPs and staff. 

You can read a media release on the institute's website and download the report from there too.

The release says:

Westminster is a unique workplace where alcohol is woven into the working environment. Staff members based in constituency offices were far less likely to report being offered alcohol at work meetings or events compared to staff based in Westminster and MPs, and participants also drew stark comparisons with the presence of alcohol in other workplaces.

The foreword is written by Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before she won Worthing West for Labour in 2024. She says:

Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in ten respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work, and 70 per cent either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking. 

That combination – real, measurable harm, and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address. While social and networking elements are important in a healthy workplace, colleagues describing how the drinking culture plays a distinct role in career progression raises significant concerns about wellbeing, inclusion, and professionalism. 

The Guardian story on Under the Influence? emphasises its tales of excess and the claim by one MP that other members have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital.

I am reminded of another British institution that has seen better days: cricket.

This is from a blog post I wrote in 2017:

In the course of my day job I went to an event on the psychology and wellbeing of military personnel.

A session on mental health saw general agreement that the biggest issue facing the Forces in that field was alcohol misuse. ...

Cricket shares many features with military life – slightly awkward male camaraderie, periods of boredom followed by periods of nerve-shredding excitement, public school officers – and alcohol seems to play the same central role in it.

Alcohol is used as a reward and a consolation, to oil the wheels of socialisation and quite possibly to ease the nerves of the battle-scarred too.

One of the attractions of political activism for me, I will admit, was that after delivering, canvassing or committee meetings generally ended in the pub. In fact, there was a theory that political meetings all ended an hour before "Last orders", no matter when they began.

These days pubs are open later but no one can afford the beer prices, so I suppose everything has changed. By the sound of it, the only place where nothing has changed is Westminster.

You don't have to be a Puritan to think it has the wrong attitude to alcohol.

The Joy of Six 1554

"The idea that England has always been governed from a single political centre is surprisingly recent. Westminster may now appear almost inseparable from the state, but for much of English history, government was far more mobile." Stephanie Brown says Andy Burnham’s No 10 North has a precedent in medieval York.

Nafeez Ahmed examines the links between George Cottrell’s Reform UK network in Montenegro and sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

"When social workers become involved with a family, the focus is often on parenting, safeguarding concerns or family relationships. But new research suggests that one of the strongest drivers of repeated involvement with children’s services is something more basic: whether families have enough money to live on." Rick Hood explains the findings of his research.

Jennifer Rubin Grandis confronts the systemic bias in academic publishing: "I’ve been studying sexism in academic medicine since 2019, and I’ve learned from countless interviewees that my experience as a woman in medicine is common. Women are rarely mentored well—in fact, when they ask for advice from senior faculty, they’re often discouraged from submitting their papers to high-impact journals, despite making just as many scientific discoveries as men."

Boak & Bailey recommend pub crawling as a way of practising psychogeography.

"Few science fiction relationships stick in my mind better than the love/hate between Dr. Zachary Smith and Robot in the original 1960s version of Lost in Space." J.G. Follansbee on one of television SF's great double acts.

The Joy of Six 1545

"Progressive politicians must see social media as a means to an end. If they’re swallowed by social media, they’ll lose their moral core. What’s more – and much worse – making social media the training school of modern politics risks giving a megaphone to fascists and racists who are able to preach their gospel of hate to millions without interruption." Sam Bright on the curse of influencer-politicians.

Jack Dyson reports on the consequences of falling school rolls. One in three councils expect more than a fifth of primary school places will be unfilled next year. 

"We used to think AI-generated fiction would always be obvious, and we were not prepared. Over the coming years, agents, editors, and slush readers at every level are going to need to educate themselves on how AI writes." Bona Books inadvertently bought a short story written by Artificial Intelligence for an anthology of queer speculative fiction.

Jennifer Davey offers a short round up of football-related contributions to Hansard over the years.

Malcolm Pein, the English Chess Federation’s delegate to the game's governing body FIDE and a candidate for its next deputy president, is interviewed about the long fight to break Russia's political grip on chess: "Russia has basically hijacked FIDE – just go to the FIDE website and look at where the employees come from: Russian head of PR, Russian head of legal and so on."

"This is as much a novel of working class intellectualism (Hamer deploys a quotation from Macbeth without ostentation) as it is about the compromises of electoral politics. Shawcross and his children want comfort and security and health, but they also want the fruits of the knowledge and experience held by this culture that has turned them into marginal drudges of the machine age." With the accession of Andy Burnham imminent, Discontinued Notes looks again at the work of Howard Spring, 'the Dickens of Manchester'.

Violent drunk banned from booze after throwing flapjack at police officer's genitals having missed with Pot Noodle

It wasn't a long judges' meeting: the Manchester Evening News has won our Headline of the Day Award.

Incidentally, when I worked at Golden Wonder many years ago I was a member of the Pot Noodle tasting panel. I'd rather have been on a flapjack tasting panel.

The Joy of Six 1541

"Former MI6, counterterror, and police officials expressed disbelief at the refusal by the British authorities to countenance a full murder investigation into Perepilichnyy's death. 'It's so obvious that it’s an assassination,' said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office. 'There’s no way it wasn’t a hit. It’s ridiculous.'" In 2017, Heidi Blake and her BuzzFeed investigations team published a seven-part investigation of suspected assassinations on British soil by the Russians government.

Richard Kemp reposts a Byline Times article that condemns SLAPPs – strategic litigation against public participation – as a shocking abuse of the legal system where the rich try to bully the weak and poor into submission.

Guy Shrubsole argues that Andy Burnham's Manchesterism is ultimately a politics of land: "Burnham’s keen interest in regaining public control of housing and key utilities leads very quickly to questions of who owns land, and how the public sector might reverse decades of asset sales begun under Margaret Thatcher’s governments."

"For much of the 18th century, even though Number 10 (actually Number 5 for much of its early existence) remained the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, it was by no means always occupied by the Prime Minister." Robin Eagles finds that prime ministers once preferred to live in their own houses.

Adam Scovell goes to look for the London locations used in A Hard Day's Night, the first film featuring those lovable mop-tops The Beatles.

"Her national standing was confirmed with a damehood in 2000, an honour which she prized, though it didn’t make her decorous. She was shortlisted for the Booker five times without ever winning (no one forgets this). She remains a figure who is hard to place – widely appreciated, but not a member of any acknowledged group of writers, and without much discernible influence on those who came after." Dinah Birch on the work of the novelist Beryl Bainbridge.

The Joy of Six 1537

David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour’s next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth."

A deliberate strategy to push the British right – from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – into a radicalising auction over the mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens is being underwritten by the owner of 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"The party holds one seat in a chamber that has grown from 60 to 96 members, meaning their proportional presence is smaller now than at any point since devolution began." Elsie Jones asks why the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperformed in last month's Senedd elections.

Andy Bull looks back on Brendon McCullum's career in New Zealand: "All of which may, or may not, be a timely reminder that McCullum's dressing rooms have not always been the sort of free-and-easy open-to-all environments they seem to be when the team are winning. That, expert as he is handling his players, he is also a pretty ruthless dressing-room politician, a man who knows how to instruct a media team and even deploy his lawyers during a crisis."

Wayne Gooderham explores the influence of Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn on popular music and on the gender sensibilities of The Smiths, Van Morrison and The Velvet Underground in particular. 

"I had never been so far below sea level, it was difficult to comprehend, the layers of rock, millions of years old above us." Neala shows that being an archives volunteer at Manchester Central Library is more exciting that you might expect.

GUEST POST Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections?

Lib Dem HQ has decided to stop making an effort in unpromising Westminster by-elections. Regular guest poster Augustus Carp argues that they've got it wrong.

Today I want us to think about a rather unusual chap called Ian Stuart – he was the "area manager" or whatever it was called of the Liberal Party in the Home Counties in the 1980s. On our rare meetings I found him to be a rather genial cove, although I gather he was not always popular with the party hierarchy. Anyway, it was his lot to be the Liberal Party candidate in the long-forgotten Uxbridge by election of 1972.

Long forgotten because, on the very same day (7 December) the Liberal Party won a Famous Victory in Sutton and Cheam. Graham Tope triumphed, Liberal hearts were gladdened, and progress suddenly seemed a little bit more inevitable. 

Ian Stuart told me that the only instructions he received from party HQ regarding his campaign were given to him by Jeremy Thorpe himself: 

"Go to Uxbridge and make a nuisance of yourself. You are going to fight a futile campaign, but in a good cause. You are a diversionary tactic from the main battle in Sutton & Cheam. If you don’t come back with at least two writs issued against you, then you haven’t been doing your job!"

I don’t think any writs were issued, but Ian certainly did his job. As he was the Convenor of Shop Stewards at Heathrow Airport at the time he was fully acquainted with the intricacies of the largest employer in the area, and was indeed able to stir up mischief. He certainly generated enough press releases, silly stunts and outrageous quotes to distract from Sutton and Cheam and keep Conservative and Labour activists away from the target seat. And he went down to a heroic defeat.

Bit here’s the thing – at least he tried. He knew what was needed of him – to fight as good a good campaign as he possibly could, with no money, half a dozen members, and no prospect of any external help. 

Now compare that with the situation today. The Liberal Democrats are infinitely richer in terms of money, activists, experience, MPs and councillors – but the national party seems to have given up on the idea of fighting elections, even as diversionary tactics. 

Why has the national party made so little effort recently, in Rochdale, Gorton, Makerfield, South Aberdeen? No doubt we could name others as well. I have no doubt that the candidates and local parties were doing their best, but where was the support for those campaigns? There wasn’t even an email asking for money. 

My local party is amazing. There’s perhaps only a dozen or so of them, but they are always coaxing me to deliver a few more leaflets, come out canvassing, give them some idea for Focuses etc. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I am happy to help them – so much so that I probably don’t even qualify as an armchair member anymore. They deserve all the support I can give them. 

But why do I continue to pay my subscriptions to the national party (index-linked since the merger!) when I see so little bang for my buck? Why doesn’t the national party seem to want to put up a fight any more? I wouldn’t want to join a football club that wasn’t particularly interested in playing (or winning) football matches. As a member of a political party, I want to see it – and help it - fight elections. 

I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit. That might make economic sense, but it doesn’t make political sense anymore. Getting 2 per cent in a parliamentary by election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant, even to voters in places where we are successful. 

The current political environment needs us to spend the £50,000 just to make sure that we retain some sort of credibility – not just in the relevant constituency, but nationally as well. We might at least try to come third, assuming that the first two places are out of reach – that might get us an honourable mention in news broadcasts. 

If that’s too much to ask, at least we might try to save our deposit. We cannot choose where by elections will fall, so we just have to make the best of a bad job. At least when they do happen, we should fight the good fight, and do the best we can.

Ian Stuart's other great observation to me was that every member of the Liberal Party, with the obvious exception of the two of us, was too bloody clever by half – always overanalysing problems and reinventing the wheel, rather than just getting on with the basics. Perhaps that’s the problem we have in the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

The Joy of Six 1527

"In the Wigan constituency, which has always been Labour-held but where Reform picked up 24 out of 25 seats in last month’s local elections, the governing party’s by-election message is focused squarely on Burnham. It is a cartoon of his face emblazoned across leaflets and Correx boards, along with the words “ANDY FOR US”. Labour branding is limited, pretty much, to what is legally required." Sienna Rodgers takes us inside the Labour campaign in the Makerfield by-election.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley interviews Gisèle Pelicot, whose courage transformed the debate around abuse, about survival, reclaiming confidence – and shutting down the tools of sexual exploitation.

Flip Chart Fairy Tales notes the end of the right's state-shrinking dream: "Far from Brexit being the cue for the Thatcher revolution’s last phase, it may mark the end of it altogether. ... It’s no wonder the small-staters are so exercised. They have now realised that tomorrow belongs to someone else."

"When you launch a product that's designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn't that you haven't told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them." Brian Phillips nominates the 40 most rage-inducing problems in tech.

JacquiWine praises Rumer Godden's novel The Battle of the Villa Fiorita: "I loved this evocative, immersive read, a psychologically astute exploration of the impact of a woman’s adulterous affair and subsequent divorce on her two adolescent children, fourteen-year-old Hugh Clavering and his younger sister Caddie, who is almost twelve."

"Born in 1918, Denys Fisher was raised in a railway carriage in a field in Leeds in a family full of inventors, free thinkers, and social reformists with connections to women's suffrage." Eleanor Tait talks to Duncan Fisher about his father, the man who invented Spirograph.

The Joy of Six 1523

Niamh McIntyre had been investigating the spike in racist AI videos aimed at British surfers: "It is often young, entrepreneurial men from south Asia. They tend to have zero interest in UK politics, but the content they create often boosts far-right talking points in Britain and contributes to the increasingly hostile atmosphere for immigrants and British Muslims. They’re part of a booming cottage industry producing commercial AI slop."

Joshi Hermann advises us to stop looking for "Burnhamism". He's bee reporting the mayor of Greater Manchester for six years and has never been able to locate it.

"The culls were not only cruel: they were ineffective. Thousands of badgers died, yet bTB [bovine tuberculosis] rates in cattle remained high. But rather than end the cull or re-evaluate the policy, the government decided to roll it out to even more parts of the country." The Hunt Saboteurs Association welcomes the end of England's badger cull, which has seen nearly 250,000 animals, shot or trapped.

"It is not often I get angry, but a recent encounter with a standing stone has really annoyed – and shocked me." The Urban Prehistorian condemns the treatment of the Bogleys Stone of Fife.

Melanie Williams has been researching Muriel Box, Muriel Sly and British women scriptwriters in general. "Medical comedy was all the rage in the fifties – from Doctor in the House to Carry On Nurse – but it seems an honest comedic look at pregnancy and childbirth may have been a little too far beyond British cinema’s comfort zone at the time."

The long career of E.J. "Tiger" Smith as Warwickshire and England's wicketkeeper, test umpire and batting guru is considered by Giles Wilcock.

The Joy of Six 1522

"Why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?" Noel Titheradge investigates a continuing scandal.

James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."

Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.

"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.

Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.

"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.

The Reform councillor who wants to turn Eccles into the "UK's Dubai"

The Manchester Evening News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

"Ambition? I had ambition once," remarked one of the judges.

Frank reaction today to the Lib Dem election performance

"Am I alone in thinking our response to the local election results is a little too self-congratulatory?" asked David Vigar on Liberal Democrat Voice this morning. We can safely say he is not alone, judging by comment on that blog and further afield.

Next up on Lib Dem Voice was Shaun Ennis:

No one has ever asked me to devise an idea for Ed Davey’s next stunt. But if I was approached from on high, I might suggest having him wade through a river of treacle.

That’s how it feels trying to spread the Liberal Democrat message in the North of England these days.

It’s been an underwhelming set of elections in our part of the country. Despite some notable and very important exceptions such as Stockport, Preston and Sefton, the Liberal Democrats have failed to cut through with what has been a predominantly nationally motivated electorate.

And Johan Prinsloo saw a similar pattern in London:

We saw major success stories in Brent and Ealing, with the local parties there making significant gains on Labour. Our ground game all across London was a marvel to watch, and the establishment of a 100 per cent majority in Richmond, as well as maintaining/improving large majorities in Kingston and Sutton is something to champion going forward. 

These are emblematic of our strong ground game resonating well, when there was a record of results behind them. 

However, it is also important to accept the reality of the situation that we have underperformed in many areas, even just in London. Our major target of Merton has fallen flat with only two councillors gained. 

Also, in Lambeth, Southwark, Islington and my home borough of Croydon, expected gains have somehow evaporated and in some areas, paper candidate Greens in areas like Newham, Barking and Enfield have won without ever campaigning!

While Tara Foster detected a malaise than goes beyond disappointing election results:

In my view, from 2024, we've been electorally and politically stagnant, and the Party has forgotten how to be an effective campaigning machine. Many MPs are well-educated, but their expertise is being wasted. 

For example, we don’t have the tax experts working on treasury matters, and as a result we had Daisy Cooper come out with the politically-weightless idea of a Trumpian "Department of Growth" with a tagline of "Get Britain Growing Again."

James Graham, a fellow survivor of the golden age of Lib Dem blogging, has also gone deeper on his own Quaequam Blog!:

The party continues to do well in places where it has been doing well in recent years, and continues to decline in areas where it took a knock during the coalition years. The areas it does well tend to be rural, formerly Conservative dominated areas and it continues to decline in areas that historically were dominated by Labour. In the latter areas, the Greens have completely eclipsed the party.

Even in places where the party was doing well in recent history, such as Hornsey and Friern Barnet (most of which represented by Lynne Featherstone until 2015) and Manchester Withington (most of which was represented by John Leech), the Greens have replaced the Lib Dems as the main challengers to Labour. Wales, with the exception of a single MS in the form of Jane Dodds and a smattering of councillors, is now a no-go area for the party. ...

As some have pointed out, the extent to which the Lib Dems now represent the richest parts of the UK is quite striking; at the top end, Lib Dem MPs represent even wealthier areas than the Conservatives. No wonder Ed Davey has been quite as hostile to any suggestion of redistributing wealth as he has been over the last couple of years.

And this is my worry too. If we are increasingly drawn to campaigning on the grievances of these comfortably off constituents, then our policies are going to seem at best irrelevant to much of the country.

Let me end with an observation on Keir Starmer and Ed Davey from the Commentary in the current issue of Liberator:

There are worrying similarities in the predicaments of the leaders of what are traditionally the two main centre-left parties as they try to contend with both the Greens and Reform.

Both became leader by replacing an extremely unsuccessful predecessor, both conveyed an “adults are back in charge” air of calm competence and both won bigger than they can have dared hope in 2024.

Since then they have both shown little sign of knowing what to do with that success, both have struggled to manage a larger than expected parliamentary party and both have been unable to clearly articulate in public any narrative about what their party is for and what it wants to do.

While Starmer has made a series of u-turns Davey has made a series of diversion side turnings while not really getting anywhere. British missiles? A new Magna Carta? Splitting the Treasury? Defence bonds? Some of these ideas may have merits but nothing links them and they get the public no nearer to knowing what sort of country they would be living in were the Lib Dems in power.

That issue is no. 434 and you can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. You can also sign up to a mailing list there so you are informed each time a new issue appears.

The Joy of Six 1516

"The scale of the beating handed to Labour in these local elections is difficult to convey just in words. You need to see numbers and maps, showing seas of red replaced by turquoise and green and yellow; you perhaps need to see the tears and feel the desolation longtime servants of the party are feeling this evening. That this defeat has been suffered in the heartland of the modern Labour Party – the stronghold atop which names like Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell have built their reputations – is all the more harrowing." Lucy McLaughlin and Joshi Herrmann witness the fall of Labour Manchester.

Jonathan M. Winer warns us that Donald Trump is planning to use emergency powers to take control of this year's midterm elections.

Emily Enns on the campaign to deny the abuse of native Canadian children in residential schools. "Even now... there’s not a Facebook post that goes out about Indigenous events in Kamloops where there’s not at least one person in a comment section on a shared post saying something about how our experiences as Indigenous people are fabricated."

"The latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: 'Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.'" Alex Nguyen explains why.

"History, in Mad Men, shapes the air around the characters, occasionally intrudes to seize control of the story, and nevertheless slowly changes each person. History is also experienced as something beyond the characters’ control and understanding. Like real human beings, they respond with a mix of bewilderment, accommodation, grumpiness, opportunism, and, occasionally, a full embrace of change." Joseph Stieb looks at the way Mad Men shows history reshaping people’s lives, perspectives and interactions, often without them fully realising that things have changed.

James Warren considers the unexpected evolution of the progressive band Stackridge into the poptastic The Korgis.

Exploring the disused railway tunnels at Standedge

Britain's longest canal tunnel is Standedge Tunnel on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. It runs for three and a quarter miles, taking boats from Marsden in West Yorkshire and Diggle in Greater Manchester.  Before local government reorganisation in 1974, both ends of the tunnel were in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

The canal tunnel opened in 1811, and by the end of the 19th century three railway tunnels had been built more or less in parallel to it. Two of them have long been disused, and it is these that the video explores.

As you will see, the four tunnels are still linked underground and contain many surprises. Don't have nightmares.