The Joy of Six 1480

"The memoir shows that for Mandelson the cast of people who matter is very narrow, he is always the betrayed rather than the betrayer, his press critics are always acting in bad faith, and he is never adequately rewarded or appreciated." James Butler on the fall of Peter Mandelson.

"'At the moment, you’ve got Reform, who are weaponising concerns around net-zero', she says, and 'the Conservatives recklessly rowing back on the very infrastructure they created to tackle climate change, which is the Climate Change Act;". Noah Vickers talks to Pippa Heylings, the Lib Dem spokesperson on energy security and Net Zero.

Gemma Motion makes the case for raising England's age of criminal responsibility: "Internationally, the UK’s position is becoming isolated. Article 40(3) of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child obliges states to establish a minimum age of criminal responsibility. While no specific age is prescribed, 14 is the most common minimum across Europe. Several other countries set it higher still. Even our devolved neighbour Scotland, which historically had a lower threshold at eight years of age, has now raised it to 12."

Tourettes Hero discusses the fallout from the BAFTA awards ceremony.

"The central strategic question is not whether non-host counties will survive. They will. The question is whether they will retain any meaningful competitive agency within the professional game. On the evidence available, the answer is no. Not under the current framework." Gary Mason and Simon Aldis argue that the future is bleak for most of cricket's first-class counties.

Discontinued Notes has been to Oxford to see the exhibition at the Bodleian about John Le Carré.

Change of government means Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire is free to continue with its four-day week

The Labour government is not going to continue the Conservatives' harassment of Liberal Democrat South Cambridgeshire for introducing a four-day working week for its staff.

South Cambridgeshire's trial of the scheme with around 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors, says the Guardian, found:

• staff turnover fell by 39 per cent, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs;
• regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier;
• approximately 15 per cent more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale.
• The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell.

Yet the last Conservative government issued the council with a best value notice in November 2023 and March 2024. This warned it the government had concerns it was failing to comply with its legal duty to provide a continuously improving service for taxpayers and forced it to submit about 200 pieces of raw data to government every week.

Now the new government has wisely said that, while it's not government policy to support a general move to a four-day working week, councils are "rightly responsible for the management and organisation of their own workforces".

At the base of this affair lies the Tories' inbred distrust of workers - public-sector workers in particular.

It reminds me of may days when Harborough District Council. When I was first elected, the council offices closed at lunchtime, which was obviously the time when many people would have found it easiest to go there if they had a query.

A change to more flexible working, to allow the offices to open all day, was put through the following year, despite the opposition of the Tory group. They thought it would somehow involve our staff being allowed to get away with something.

The council was balanced - we even shared the chairs between all the parties - and the new policy was piloted through the council by a dissident Tory, who worked in personnel and knew what he was talking about, with the votes of the Liberal, Independent and Labour members.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The maintenance of the Rutland Union Canal

"This stuff about the beavers is Dragging On A Bit," Lord Bonkers said to me. "Who wrote it?"

"That was you, sir. This is your diary."

"Humph. Should've told 'em something about Mr Asquith and Venetia Stanley. You could turn that story into a novel."

Thursday

The delightful Pippa arrives at the Hall and wastes no time in getting down to business. After listening to my concerns, she goes to talk to the beavers and is away simply hours. She comes back with the bones of an agreement, the long and short of which is that the beavers will agree to take on the maintenance of the Rutland Union Canal, but their lodge and lake will stay. Oh, and I can use their jacuzzi whenever I wish. 

Well, it’s not ideal, but it’s a good sight more than I achieved off my own bat, so I am minded to sign.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• The only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills
• My hereditary peer peers
• In case they get peckish during Lent

Lord Bonkers' Diary: In case they get peckish during Lent

Jonathan Meades says beaver tastes "like spaniel dipped in cod liver oil", so I don't see selling off the whole colony to a fishmonger as the way out of Lord Bonkers' troubles. You will say that he doesn't mention that possibility in this entry, but I know how the old brute's mind works.

Wednesday

What to do about the beavers? Back in the Sixties I might have asked Violent Bonham Carter’s boys to have a quiet word with them: “Nice dam you’ve got here. Pity if anything happened to it” – you know the sort of thing. But those days are gone, so I have instead been asking around to see who might be able to help. 

This morning I struck gold. It transpires that one of our new MPs from Cambridgeshire, Pippa Heylings, is expert at smoothing over the tensions that arise in communities when beavers are reintroduced, so I feel sure she will make them see reason. 

When I was picking the Revd Hughes’s brains the other day, he mentioned that our Roman Catholic friends count beavers as fish in case they get peckish during Lent. It sounded Rather Far Fetched, but when I phoned my old friend Father Alton he confirmed that it is the case.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• The only estate in England with a breeding population of corkindrills
• My hereditary peer peers

Pippa Heylings and the reintroduction of beavers

Politics Home has an article on Pippa Heylings, the newly elected Liberal Democrat MP for South Cambridgeshire:

Heylings was recognised on the first ever ENDS Power List of political environmental champions earlier this year, alongside London Mayor Sadiq Khan and former Green Party MP Caroline Lucas. 

The Power List recognised her career negotiating between national and local governments on climate issues, attending UN Climate and Nature summits, and spearheading the creation of the Galapagos Islands Marine Reserve. She also acted as a key mediator in the successful reintroduction of beavers to the UK.

This confirms my impression that our new parliamentary party is now positively dripping with talent. And my eye was, of course, caught by her role in the reintroduction of beavers.

To learn about that, go to the website of Pippa's company Talking Transformation:

Beavers became extinct in England 400 years ago as a result of overhunting for meat, fur and making perfume.

Re-introducing the beaver into areas of the English countryside after all this time is now possible but controversial. Is it possible for co-existence between beavers and humans in a much altered landscape? ...

Talking Transformation was contracted by Natural England to design and facilitate workshops to understand the conflicting perspectives and find ways to enable reintroduction in a way that maximises the benefits but minimises the risks, and to give stakeholders a voice in decision-making for a national framework for beaver reintroduction.  

It's worth reading the whole article, which is a reminder that rewilding and the reintroduction of species require widespread support if they are to work, not just a romantic impulse.