"His glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice": On being the monarch's second son

Embed from Getty Images

Being the second son of a monarch is a difficult career, because you cease to be of use to the family firm – assuming your older brother has healthy children – when you are still young.

Here's Jonathan Parry writing about Victoria's second son in the London Review of Books in 2020:

The monarch’s younger sons in each generation are fated to follow the same trajectory. Few now remember Prince Alfred – except tourists visiting the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town who assume that its name is a misprint for ‘Albert’. 

In the 1860s Alfred, Victoria’s second son, named after the founder of the English monarchy and, as a naval cadet, the first official imperial tourist, became a global superstar. Aged 14 he visited the Holy Land, a year later he conquered South Africa, and before he was 20 he was seriously proposed as king of Greece. Polkas were written for him. At 23 he toured Australia and survived an Irish assassination attempt; soon afterwards he was fêted in New Zealand, Hong Kong and India. 

But his glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice, he married a haughty Russian princess, and he ended in forced exile presiding over his father’s German duchy.

Discuss with relation to the careers of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Prince Harry (as indeed Parry does).

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.

The Joy of Six 1521

"Look at our responses to three of Labour’s flag ship pieces of legislation: the Employment Rights Bill, Great British Energy and taking the railways into public ownership. On each of these pieces of legislation, the Liberal Democrats in the House of Commons abstained on them. Why? I gather we attempted to amend each of them, but how? I could not tell any voter whether the Lib Dems supported or opposed Labour’s landmark legislation on employment, energy or transport, because I genuinely have no idea." Paul Hindley convicts the Lib Dems of timidity.

Sacha Hilhorst has interviewed Reform voters and she found them much more progressive than you think: "While it is true that Reform is building its base in former mining and manufacturing areas, the local people who can be won over to progressive politics will only be convinced by being less like Reform, not more. Winning in post-industrial England requires connecting with its popular radicalism."

"MPs who support the change have called for the bill to be brought back in the new parliamentary session, which begins on May 13. They have reportedly been joined in their demands by almost 200 peers in the Lords." Daniel Gover looks at the plans to reintroduce the assisted dying bill at Westminster.

Mark Urban on the effect decades of cuts have had on the BBC and its workforce.

Joy O'Toole introduces the work of Ngaio Marsh, one of the four Queens of Crime: "While she followed many of the same rules of the Golden Age-mystery genre, Marsh focused more on characterization and literary technique than plot. Inspector Alleyn is from an aristocratic family and well educated, like Sayers' Peter Wimsey and Allingham's Campion, but he’s a professional policeman and more down to earth."

"I think you have to decide for yourself whether both the Sufi and the Catholic aspects of Burton are equally represented; the freethinker is not. The outside of the it carries very clear Christian and Islamic symbolism in the shape of the cross and the crescents and stars. Inside the story is more complex." Mathew Lyons takes us inside the explorer Sir Richard Burton's mausoleum in Mortlake.

The Joy of Six 1304

Peter Oborne reviews Sayeeda Warsi's memoirs: "For many years, Warsi devoted her life to the UK Conservative party. When she joined it two decades ago, it seemed to embody everything she believed in: family values, decency, tolerance, fairness, the rule of law. Slowly, the UK's first female Muslim cabinet minister's eyes opened. She came to realise that it wasn’t like that at all. In Muslims Don't Matter, she records the betrayals, the bullying, the abuse, the insults." 

"The nation’s bank clerks showed their gratitude for their extra days of rest by subscribing to a testimonial for Lubbock, who used their gift to fund two school scholarships." Kathryn Rix introduces us to Sir John Lubbock, father of modern bank holidays.

Will Young talks to Byline Times about the pressures of fame and the stories he believes are still to come to light about reality TV music shows. Me? I voted for Darius.

A London Inheritance reads London After Dark by Fabian of the Yard.

"Ellis’s torch could not illuminate the railway bridge, but he feared the worst. The railway line was about fifty metres from where he had stopped, so, leaping a barbed wire fence, he sprinted to the track and ran towards the locomotive, waving his torch." André Brett tells the story of New Zealand's worst every trailway disaster, which took place on Christmas Eve 1953.

"Homes would be adorned with ivy, holly and mistletoe, as well as laurel, conifers and bay. Yule logs burned and tapers were lit. Carolling was a popular activity that involved dancing as well as singing. Gifts would be exchanged during the festive season, but more typically at New Year rather than on Christmas day." Diane Watt on Christmas in the middle ages.

The Joy of Six 1254

"Easy though it is to mock the quality of the Tory leadership hopefuls, enabling and encouraging the worst impulses of the far-right carries dangers for our country and our democracy, as we have seen just this week. We need a serious government, but we also need a serious opposition. Right now the Tories cannot and will not fulfil the latter role." Alistair Carmichael says the Tory leadership contest is revealing that the party’s lurch to far-right is terrifyingly real.

Lauren Crosby Medlicott on what life's like inside a UK women's prison and the need to find other ways of dealing with female offenders.

"To be happy and healthy, children need a decent amount of everyday, sociable play and physical activity. To grow into independent, capable, resilient young adults, they need a chance to experience real life, explore and take risks. To develop a sense of belonging and responsibility for others, they need to be seen and heard in their communities." Alice Ferguson presents a manifesto for restoring children’s freedom and outdoor play.

Corinne Segal takes us to four cities - New York, Baltimore, Auckland, Istanbul - that are bringing buried rivers back into the light of day.

"Detoxification" is a popular concept in wellness but, says Adrienne Matei, it's just another lie.

Rohan Amanda Maitzen understands what it is that makes T.H. White's The Once and Future King great: "The novel’s most ridiculous, delicious flights of fancy (the thwarted romance of the Questing Beast, for instance) are narrated in the same down-to-earth way as the most extreme moments of betrayal or grief or psychic torment ... and so we experience them both as part of the same world of people who may transform into animals, trap unicorns, and perform miracles, but are somehow, bizarrely, wonderfully, just like us."

England beat the All Blacks away from home in 1973

I'm fond of quoting the Irish hooker Ken Kennedy on English rugby in the amateur era: 

"England have the players. What they've got to do is find the selectors who will pick them."

Some evidence he was right comes in the shape of this victory against the All Blacks in New Zealand. Such wins are rare today: they were almost unthinkable in 1973.

England chopped and changed their team throughout the Seventies, yet three of the pack playing here - Fran Cotton, Roger Uttley, Tony Neary - were in the Bill Beaumont's grand slam XV almost seven years later. What might they have achieved if they had been selected consistently?

Similarly, Jan Webster and Alan Old had been the England half backs when, almost as unexpectedly, they had won in South Africa the year before. It's quite possible that they never played together again.

As you can see, 50 years ago rugby union was almost a different game. Not every player was a giant, there was no resetting of scrums, there was no lifting in the line out (or if there was it couldn't be too obvious) and it was the wingers who threw the ball in.

I wish England well tomorrow and shall watch the game, But I don't enjoy rugby union on television as much as t used to.

How much of that is down to the style of rugby Eddie Jones's teams came to produce, I may find out.

The Mutton Birds: The Falls

Another New Zealand band. Is New Zealand music the new New Zealand wine? It seems to share some of its virtues: approachable yet sophisticated.

It turns out that The Mutton Birds flourished in the 1990s and were based in Britain for a while.

A New Zealand review of their valedictory greatest hits album said:

The Mutton Birds created something that hadn't quite existed in New Zealand for some time - a pop-rock band for grown-ups, people who thought that lyrics mattered, but were happy to hoof around like the students they once were ...

That, of course, meant that to survive the Mutton Birds had to fly the coop, picking up an enthusiastic fan base especially in Britain and Europe - and, oddly, among Scottish thriller writers: Christopher Brookmyre's Not the End of the World had a character who raved about While You Sleep; Ian Rankin named one of his Rebus novels The Falls, after a song from final album Rain, Steam and Speed. 

And it was hearing an interview with Ian Rankin on BBC Radio 6 Music that put me on to them.

Now listen to a present-day New Zealand band, The Beths.

The Beths: Expert in a Dying Field

The Beths are a band from New Zealand and this is the tile track from their third studio album, which dropped (hem hem) last year.

Stereogum describes it as 

chilled-out and wistful, as Elizabeth Stokes murmurs on how to pick up the pieces when someone who was a part of your life is gone forever.

And the website quotes a "statement" from Stokes:

"I really do believe that love is learned over time. In the course of knowing a person you accumulate so much information: their favourite movies, how they take their tea, how to make them laugh, how that makes you feel. And when relationships between people change, or end, all that knowledge doesn’t just disappear. 

The phrase 'Expert in a Dying Field' had been floating around my head for a few years, I was glad to finally capture it when writing this tune."

The video shows The Beths playing live at Prospect Park, Brooklyn, in July. I don't know if it's a compliment to say a live performance sounds exactly like the version on the album, but this one does and I like it.

Former Lib Dem MP stranded in New Zealand

Embed from Getty Images

The Eastbourne Herald reports:

Ex-Eastbourne MP Stephen Lloyd, who is stranded in New Zealand due to the coronavirus outbreak, is leading the call for all holidaymakers there to be repatriated. 

Mr Lloyd and his partner Cherine arrived in Auckland at the beginning of March on the first stop of a holiday in New Zealand and Australia. 

They toured the North Island and headed to the South Island staying with friends and family but were then told their route home via Sydney in Australia on April 2 would have to be brought forward. 

But then Australia closed its borders and when Singapore closed as a transfer airport, the couple said they realised they were stranded in New Zealand.

Lloyd tells the paper that he has discovered that hundreds of other UK residents are also stuck in New Zealand.

David Boyle on curbing house price inflation

A piece of wisdom from my favourite Liberal Democrat thinker.

David Boyle writes on the Radix website:

Politicians of all parties have colluded in the idea that house price inflation has been caused by our failure to build enough homes. All the evidence suggests that it was actually too much money pumping into the housing market which caused the ruinous leaps that are excluding middle classes and working classes alike from home ownership. 

However many homes we build, we will not keep up with the almost infinite demand for housing investment from the Far East.

His remedy?

Follow New Zealand’s lead and exclude foreign buyers from the housing market. And quickly.

Read more about the New Zealand experience.

Former Lib Dem parliamentary candidate forces the resignation of Australia's deputy prime minister

Embed from Getty Images

Barnaby Joyce is the leader of National Party, the junior party in Australia's ruling coalition. But his election to the Australian parliament has been ruled invalid because he also holds New Zealand citizenship.

Under Australian law, those holding dual nationality are not eligible to stand for parliament.

Joyce is one of four Australian politicians whose election to parliament has been declared invalid on these grounds.

He can stand in the resultant by-election in his sear as he has now renounced his New Zealand citizenship. But in the mean time the coalition government, which has a majority of one, faces a difficult time.

The fact that Joyce had broken electoral law was a Melbourne-based blogger by the name of William Summers.

His blog seems to be down, but you can find him on Twitter.

He told BBC News:

"I was never out to get the deputy prime minister. I've always said he shouldn't lose his seat. But, if you are going to have this rule, you have got to treat everyone the same."

In earlier life Summers was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Norfolk North West at the 2010 general election, when he beat Labour into third place. Between 2005 and 2008 he worked in Norman Lamb's parliamentary office.

Brexiteers think Australia is still moored off the Kent coast

Embed from Getty Images

One of the dreams of older Brexiters is to see Britain regain a closer relationship with former British Dominions like Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

True, it was said of Sir Robert Menzies, Australia's prime minister from 1939 to 1941 and again from 1949 to 1966, that he governed the country as though it were moored off the coast of Kent.

But those days are long gone. The Independent reports what Steve Ciobo, Australian trade minister, told the European parliament today. He said that Australia’s "historical" relationship with Britain was "n many respects a relationship of yesteryear":

He added that negotiating a free trade deal with Britain would be "at a minimum … two and half a years away", and said talks with the EU were significantly more advanced. 

"I see the European Union FTA as certainly commencing formal negotiations well and truly prior to anything that might happen with the UK," he told MEPs. 

"The UK and Australia of course do have a historical relationship, but it's in many respects a relationship of yesteryear."

I fear the Brexiteers' dream, born of a mixture of nostalgia and racism, is over.

Search Google News for 'Steve Ciobo' and you will find he spends his time talking to India and China. Both are a lot closer to Australia than Kent is.

Doug Bracewell blames killing of pet cockatoo by dogs for drink-driving

The Guardian wins Headline of the Day.

Doug Bracewell is a New Zealand cricketer. Readers of my generation will think of him as the son of the fast bowler Brendan Bracewell (who toured England in 1978 but soon faded because of injury) and the nephew of the spinner John Bracewell.

New Zealand garden gnome thefts 'fund meth trade'

Thanks to BBC News, we have our Headline of the Day.

Thanks to my county councillor for tweeting this story.

Six of the Best 618

"The Brexit camp, as represented by The Spectator magazine, which proclaimed “Out—and into the World” when it endorsed the Leave campaign, seems to have absolutely no understanding of international trade or Britain’s dependency on Europe," says. Henry Porter.

"It’s been accused of evading reporting guidelines on suicide, of reckless journalism, and of acting as a left-wing clickbait factory." Marie Le Conte on the success of The Canary.

Wayne Arnold looks at New Zealand's experience of abolishing farming subsidies.

Sarah Barns examines the legacy of Jane Jacobs, who changed our understanding of cities.

Will Alsop discusses Leighton House, and what its architecture says about the artist Frederick Leighton who commissioned it.

"One of the most imaginative children’s movies we’ve ever seen was made in 1981 by the king of the bizarre, the grand maester of visual storytelling, the American odd man out in the Monty Python British lineup—the one and only, Terry Gilliam." Cinephilia & Beyond champions the everlasting importance of Time Bandits.

Avocado shortage triggers crime wave in New Zealand

An avocado yesterday

The Evening Standard wins Headline of the Day.