Six of the Best 804

The death of local democracy is the national calamity we don’t hear about, says John Harris.

Jurgen Habermas, the eminent German sociologist and philosopher, discusses the future of Europe: "Today, national populations are overwhelmed by the politically uncontrollable functional imperatives of a global capitalism that is being driven by unregulated financial markets. The frightened retreat behind national borders cannot be the correct response to that challenge."

"My first London Pride, meant to be an inclusive event, was being hijacked by people telling me I shouldn’t be there. I chair one of the main LGBT charities, and I was being made unwelcome, as were other trans people, by a handful of people who were apparently getting special treatment from the organisers." Helen Belcher on last Saturday's event.

"Most of the one million visitors who visit Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain every year believe they are looking at untouched 4,000-year-old remains. But virtually every stone was re-erected, straightened or embedded in concrete between 1901 and 1964, says a British doctoral student." Emma Young reports on a controversy in archaeology.

Chris Schurke goes on a hunt for a graveyard of military aircraft.

Clerk of Oxford has a tale of St Thomas Beckett and a lost village.

Advent Calendar 20: Whitstable Harbour

Andrew Newton was told to look for Norman Scott in Barnstaple, but went to Dunstable instead.

I don't suppose he ever got to Whitstable.

A 1955 railway poster for Whitley Bay

View image | gettyimages.com

Go to my recent post on Whitstable and scroll down to the penultimate photograph.

You will see the same young lady, or at least a close cousin, urging you to visit that resort too, The reason she gives may be less then compelling to modern eyes.

In a Whitstable condition

One revelation from the trial of Jeremy Thorpe was that Andrew Newton, the man who shot Norman Scott's dog Rinka, had misheard when he was told to seek Scott in Barnstaple and gone to Dunstable instead.

He might have gone to Whitstable, as I did today.

Whitstable protesters see off Network Rail

Congratulations to the protesters who have persuaded Network Rail to suspend work on clearing trees from an embankment near Whitstable in Kent.

As I discovered in 2003 when I researched and wrote an article for the Guardian about the clearance of the Wigston Triangle near Leicester, there is a good deal of local disquiet about the company's stewardship of the natural environment of railway land.

Nature is very forgiving: in the years since I wrote that article the Wigston Triangle has largely regenerated. But as this video from N21.net shows, Network Rail's approach can be brutal.

Headline of the Day visits Whitstable

The award goes to This is Kent for its:

Whitstable mum in custard shortage