Guardian wins Weak Diary Story of the Day

The Guardian Diary used to be one of the best things about the newspaper, breaking and pursuing substantial stories of its own.

Those days are a couple of decades past. Even so, an item Hugh Muir gave us today stands out for its vacuity.

Here it is in full:

Historians, meanwhile, continue to be fascinated by our ruling coalition. And they wonder, what other examples are there of questionable figures going out of their way to propel Tories to power? My man in the archives discovers that in 1899, the aspiring Conservative politician Winston Churchill stood as the Conservative candidate in the Oldham byelection. Posters sprung up around town urging electors to vote for Churchill, who was "top of the card" – and would surely be "top of the poll". And who printed and published those posters? One "WE Clegg". Send for the genealogist.

David Dimbleby and the demise of Nationwide

As I am not a great admirer of David Dimbleby - his career surely owes more to family connections and bladder control than talent - I was intrigued to come across this account of the demise of the popular BBC1 programme Nationwide under the editorship of Roger Bolton.

It was written by Ian Jones in 2002 and a revised version now appears on Off the Telly:

The climax of this, however, and the twist which in hindsight sealed Nationwide’s fate, was the enlistment of David Dimbleby as a new host in January 1982. This was solely Bolton’s doing. Dimbleby had been wooed by former Nationwide producers before, but turned them down; now he made the move, impressed with the expressed intention of Bolton to jettison the frippery and promote hard-nosed investigative journalism. 

“I think it displays rather a narrow vision for a programme like Nationwide not to cover events in, say, Israel or Poland,” Dimbleby sniffed. Regardless of the merits of this perception, what was arguably of far greater importance was whether Nationwide itself, with its very particular character, history and legacy, was and ever could have been the vehicle for such a stern-lipped agenda. 

Viewers certainly didn’t think so. “Nationwide is the only programme that covers matters of interest about Britain which do not necessarily warrant coverage by the national news or even national press. Hands off Nationwide, Mr Dimbleby,” an angry correspondent wrote to Radio Times. “Face the facts,” declared another, “it is all a dreadful mistake. Return the chubby chap to ‘Miserama’ and give us back Frank and Sue and the rest with their everyday stories of real people.” 

There was indeed a perversity in filling up a programme structured to “present the facts, the people, and the background of the country we live in” with a stream of foreign news stories. Dimbleby himself displayed a singular lack of charm and viewer rapport that was a trademark of the programme. He was even billed, controversially, above Frank Bough in Radio Times. 

If that wasn’t enough, his arrival was marked by yet another makeover with a further “new” theme – an acutely irritating synthesiser-heavy concoction with little trace of a tune – plus a title sequence that bizarrely harked back to that first ever “here’s-your-region” effort of 1969. Ratings slipped still further; and though Dimbleby’s “temporary” departure in April ‘82 became a permanent one, the damage was done. Management decreed the programme unsalvageable.

Later. And, thanks to TV Ark, you can hear the theme and even see a little of Dimbleby in Nationwide action. Scroll down to Nationwide 1982.

The Black Beast of Harborough

This is the lead story on the front page of the current Harborough Mail:

A large black panther-like creature was spotted running across a field at Foxton in the latest sighting of the infamous ‘black beast’. 

Schoolgirl Sarah Burdett had a shock when she saw the beast from her bedroom as it moved from the cover of a hedge off North Lane in the village. 

She rushed to the field with her dad’s partner Lora Cannon, but the large cat was no longer anywhere to be seen. 

However the pair found what they believed were its prints and droppings, which they photographed as evidence. 

The incident is the latest in a series of sightings of ‘black beasts’ stalking the Harborough countryside which go back as far as the 1990s.

The Hounds of Baskerville and Saucers Over the Moor

Last night's Sherlock gave us a secret research station on Dartmoor.

A novel idea?

Not quite. Here are trainee journalist Dan Sturt and his mother talking in Malcolm Saville's 1955 children's book Saucers Over the Moor:

Mrs Sturt put down her cup.

"You know as well as I do, Dan, that there's some secret place atop of the Moor. Folk round here all know it but they don't talk about it." 

"That's true enough. It's something to do with atomic stuff, I b'lieve. I asked one of the warders from the Prison in the train once but couldn't get much out of him. Said it was built in the war but that people were still working there . . . Then I asked a chap in the office and he said we'd never be allowed to mention it. I thought I'd told you about it before." 

"You did son. I'm just trying to help you. Seems to me that if a lot of crazy scientists are shut up in that place then there's something interesting going on. Do you know where it is?" 

"Somewhere high above the source of the Swincombe Brook."

You can read a little of the background to Saucers Over the Moor in an earlier post on this blog.

Now Eleanor Burnham is on reality television too

What is it with Welsh Liberal Democrats and reality television?

The other day it was Lembit Opik (again). But Eleanor Burnham, AM for the North Wales regional constituency until May 2011, was also on S4C over Christmas.

She appeared on Dudley: Pryd o Sêr. Cheat by clicking on the English button and you learn:

Over four nights between 27 and 30 December, Dudley: Pryd o Sêr sets a culinary challenge for a group of celebrities that would make the most experienced chef tremble.

Eleanor is quoted as saying:

I am quietly competitive and although the tasks were hard it was nowhere near as hard as working in politics!

U2 and Johnny Cash: The Wanderer

I have long been resistant to the bombast of U2, but I love Johnny Cash and this, the final track from the band's 1993 LP Zooropa, still sounds good.

It reminds me of bombing around the Stiperstones in an open-topped car. The spoil heaps at Snailbeach had been landscaped by then, but the words still fitted the area's strange post-industrial landscape.

And there was cricket on the radio. A youngster called Ben Hollioake was hitting the Australians all round Lord's on his one-day international debut which means I can date this experience precisely to 25 May 1997.

John Arlott: Cricket's Radical Voice

Earlier this evening I listened to this superb documentary on BBC Radio 4.

John Arlott is remembered as a cricket commentator - except that it is more than 30 years since he retired as a commentator and 20 years since his death, so I fear that many followers of the game today have hardly heard of him. Suffice to say, he was the greatest cricket commentator there has ever been.

But there was far more to him than that. He was twice a Liberal candidate and, in the days when the party was at its lowest ebb, he was probably the best known Liberal in the country, thanks to his appearances on Any Questions? He was also one of the foremost British campaigners against Apartheid in South Africa

You can hear John Arlott: Cricket's Radical Voice on BBC iPlayer for the next week. By the time it has finished, the programme has gone a long way to substantiate its claim that he was "one of the great radical liberals of the 20th century".

Tim Farron to benefit from cross-party deal on Cumbrian boundaries

Last year, in the process of paying Tim Farron some backhanded compliments, I commented that he had:

turned Westmorland and Lonsdale into what looked very like a safe Liberal Democrat seat until the Boundary Commission got hold of it.

When I wrote that, it looked as though Tim would have to stand in a very much altered constituency against the Conservatives' Rory Stewart (aka Lawrence of Belgravia).

Tonight, courtesy of Michael Crick on his blog for Channel 4 News, comes news that the major parties appear to have agreed upon alternative proposals that would overturn the Commission's proposals:

The cross-party deal would overturn the boundary commission’s controversial plans to create a new seat which would have joined Windermere with Whitehaven. Most Cumbrians thought the plans were crazy, since the new seat would have been a geographical nightmare in terms of transport links, straddling England’s highest mountain range. 

Under the alternative cross-party plan, two of Cumbria’s five seats would be centred around its biggest urban areas – Carlisle and Barrow. Another would take in the industrial towns of West Cumbria – Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport. A fourth, likely to be Stewart’s seat, would include Penrith, Keswick and Cockermouth. And Tim Farron, the president of the Liberal Democrats (and possible next leader) would be left with a Westmoreland seat around Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside and the southern Lake District.

Crick goes on to note that the Commission is not obliged to accept this alternative plan, but a decision to reject the views of the three main parties, as well as important local groups, would face a strong risk of being overturned in a judicial review.

So it looks as though Tim Farron's faces less of a battle to keep his Westminster seat.

Michael Brown arrested in the Caribbean

From the Guardian website this evening:

The Liberal Democrats' biggest donor, who has been on the run for three years after being convicted of a multimillion pound theft, has been arrested by police in the Dominican Republic, the Guardian can disclose. 

Michael Brown, who bankrolled the party with £2.4m of stolen money, was detained near the resort of Punta Cana on the easternmost tip of the Caribbean island this week. Interpol has been informed.

The report suggests that this development could lead to renewed legal efforts by his victims to seek compensation from the Lib Dems and Brown through the British courts.

The Simpsons: The Monorail Song

Roger Helmer and Rupert Matthews latest

This affair seems to have come down to a Mexican stand off.

Roger Helmer won't resign from the European Parliament until it is confirmed that Rupert Matthews will replace him. And the Conservative Party says it will not consider the selection until he has resigned.

Richard Gadsden, commenting on my most recent post on the subject, suggests that the most highly placed unelected candidate from the same political party as the retiring MEP does not automatically take the seat. It is up to the party.

This provides yet another argument against the list system. But then, when faced with the inevitability of a proportional system, Jack Straw chose the list system precisely because it is was the worst one on offer. He did not want PR to become popular and threaten Labour's power bases.

And Roger Helmer has some trenchant words on the subject:

at a personal level I should be very angry indeed if a loyal, long-term Conservative Party Member and activist, who has worked his socks off for the Party, not least in the 2009 euro-elections, and who has already missed out on a seat in Brussels because of the Party’s positive discrimination policy, should now miss out again because CCHQ can’t quite get its head around the regional list PR system, and seems inclined to set aside a legitimate democratic decision in favour of some modish prejudices. I should be very angry, and so, I suspect, would a great number of East Midlands Conservatives.

Stiperstones School to remain open

Early last year this blog was much concerned with the fate of Stiperstones primary school in my very favourite part of Shropshire.

Now the BBC News pages for the county confirm that the school is to remain open after agreeing to enter a federation with another primary school.

And a big Liberal England hello to Councillor Cecilia Motley, now the cabinet member responsible for schools in Shropshire. She is not quite Aggie Caesar-Homden, but she does confirm that you need a faintly exotic name to land this role at Shropshire Council.

The IRA bombed Leicester station in 1939

Take out your copy of Leicestershire's Stations: An Historical Perspective by Andrew Moore and turn to page 46.

What's that?

Really, if you are not prepared to do the reading there is no point in your coming to these seminars.

Let me try a different tack. I bought Moore's book some years ago and was intrigued by what I found on page 46:

From the [booking] hall, passengers pass the site of the ticket barrier, in use until the station became 'open' on 1 October 1984. At this point a large IRA bomb exploded in July 1939, causing much damage, especially to the show-cases (advertising Leicester's diverse trades) which were once a permanent feature on the adjacent, enclosed bridge that spans the lines.

I tried to research this terrorist attack on the net, but could find nothing about it. The Wikipedia entry on the S-Plan (the IRA campaign of which the Leicester explosion formed a part), for instance, quite wrongly says the attack of 3 July took place in Birmingham.

But I have now found that a full account of the events of that day was published in the Leicester Mercury in 2010.

After detailing the earlier bombings in the campaign, the report says:

Then, early in the morning of Sunday, July 3, the IRA strike here. 

A suitcase had been left in the ticket collector's cabin by a man from Birmingham at 7pm the previous evening, the Mercury reported. 

No-one, despite the IRA's activities, seemed to think too much of it. Until it started smoking. 

A second before the bomb went off, ticket collector Charles Venn was standing nearby, talking to a Mr C Thompson, of Willow Street, said the Mercury account. 

Mr Thompson was awaiting the arrival of an excursion from Brighton. 

He looked down and felt a lurch of shock as he saw his shoe being seared by flames. Puzzlement gave way to panic. This was no stray flicked fag end. It was a fuse sizzling into the suitcase. 

"Neither man had time to do anything but fly for his life," said the Mercury. "As they ducked out of the door, speeding in opposite directions, the cabin became engulfed in smoke and flames. 

"Almost simultaneously, there was the deafening explosion that echoed and re-echoed through the building while fragments of woodwork, slot machines and windows hurtled through the air. 

"Holes gaped in the high ceiling of the hall and whole sections of boarding were torn from the train times and departures board. 

"Windows high in the walls and in the roof in all parts of the booking hall, blown out by the concussion, crashed in fragments on the floor. 

"Of the collector's cabin, where a moment before the two men had stood talking, nothing was left but a pile of debris barely visible through the suffocating clouds of dust and smoke." 

A taxi driver on the rank outside heard the hissing of the bomb and went to investigate. 

"He got no further than the entrance when everything was blotted out by the explosion and glass crashed down from a window above him. 

"Two companions were just behind him and for a second all three stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. "Literally deafened by the terrific noise, which still buzzed in their eardrums, they conquered their panic and ran for help.

"Not knowing whether the whole building was about to collapse or not, someone set about moving the motors out of the yard while one taxi driver drove with all haste to the City Police headquarters."

An IRA bomb in Coventry the following month was to kill five people and wound 50, but casualties in Leicester that day were few:

The blast gouged huge chunks out of the station and its fittings, sending glass, wood and metal flying towards staff and passengers. 

Lucky ticket collector Mr Venn escaped with a severe gash across his back, a cut across the bridge of his noise, and a couple of bad bruises. 

"My cap has gone and I haven't seen it since, so I suppose that must have been blown to shreds," he told the Mercury after being released from hospital. 

Everyone else was walking wounded. 

It could have been worse, much worse, had it not been for a stroke of good fortune. 

The station should have been packed with holidaymakers climbing off the Brighton train. It was 45 minutes late. "Lives saved because it was not on time", said the Mercury. 

Children returning from a trip to Southend had just left the building.

IRA bombs were not to return to Leicester until February 1990. Then, for reasons best known to himself Keith Vaz, still one of the city's Labour MPs today, suggested the bomb may have been planted by the Army at its own recruiting office.

My illustration shows the old bookstall from Leicester station, which would have been in place in 1939. Ticket barriers were restored to their old position some years ago.

Stilton wars

"A row over the ownership of the name of Stilton cheese could end in court," reports BBC News.

As the website goes on to explain, Stilton is made in a handful of dairies in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. And since 1996 the cheese has enjoyed Protected Designation of Origin from the European Union,  so it cannot be made anywhere else.

Which is odd, because the village of Stilton is in none of those counties. It was originally in Huntingdonshire and is now in Cambridgeshire as the smaller county has been abolished.

The conventional wisdom is that the cheese became famous and gained its name in the 18th century because it was sold at the inn in Stilton, which was on the Great North Road (now the A1).

But, says the BBC report, campaigners in Stilton say there is a long history of cheese making in the village, so they should be entitled to use the name too.

You can find more about this on page 8 of the October 2009 Stilton Community Association Newsletter.

It is interesting that they have turned up a reference to the 'famous' Stilton cheese being made in the village. But in those days cheese was being made in every village in England. Whether what was produced in Stilton in the 18th century had much to do with what we know as Stilton today must be doubtful.

And if Stilton did used to come from Stilton, how did the name come to be attached to cheese made 30 miles away?

Headline of the Day

Well done to the Independent for:

Mystery over dead herring

We liberals have our myths too

For years, right-wingers have kept their indignation levels bubbling away at an enjoyable level by inventing myths. Labour councils want to ban Christmas and nursery rhymes; the European Union wants to ban everything else - unless they plan to make them compulsory.

These stories are usually false and liberals often take great pleasure in demonstrating this. But we have our myths too.

I expect you are outraged at the way the Sun ran a countdown to Charlotte Church's 16th birthday - the point being that it would then be legal to have sex with her.

Except that, as a post on Heresy Corner shows, the Sun never did any such thing. Do read the comments too. They will leave you thinking less of the BBC and the Guardian rather than worrying about the Sun.

And then there was the paediatrician who was forced out of her home by a mob that thought she was a paedophile.

Except that, as I discussed back in 2006, no such incident has ever taken place.

Is Euro realism breaking out in the Liberal Democrats?

An article in tomorrow's Guardian will claim that talks are planned between Tory Eurosceptic MPs and centrist Liberal Democrats to see if a common agenda can be formed on Europe.

The newspaper says:

The talks, involving mainstream Eurosceptics opposed to an EU membership referendum, had been planned ahead of David Cameron's decision to wield a UK veto at the EU summit in December, leading to a public split between the two coalition parties. But the Tory sceptics are determined to revive the plan insisting a section of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party are desperate to avoid the label of Europhiles.

Without saying they have been involved, the report goes on to name Alistair Carmichael, Jeremy Browne, David Laws and Nick Harvey as having "warned their own party must not be seen as starry-eyed uncritical supporters of the EU".

And they are right. Support for co-operation at a European level need not decay into uncritical support for the current structures and policies of the European Union. Liberal Democrats should be known for demanding reform in Europe - as we do everywhere else.

It is also worth pointing out that, as Nick Clegg himself has always been something of a Euro realist, they may be pushing at an open door. I also share the suspicion of Eaten by Missionaries that such views are more widely held in the party than is often supposed.

The report also suggests that the Eurosceptic Tories are also hopeful of working with Ed Davey. As an employment minister, he has been pursuing a deregulation agenda in Europe.

 

Six of the Best 214

David Maclean, political correspondent of the Leicester Mercury, explains why the Freedom of Information Act is vital to his work.

Max Atkinson presents 12 video clips that he used last year to illustrate points about the art of making a political speech.

Why are carrots orange? Slugger O'Toole explains.

On ZD Net, Violet Blue looks at the relationship information technology has with depression, suicide and Asperger's syndrome: "My hope is that in reflecting on the losses so many of us have suffered this year, we can take a close look at what makes tech and the startup world a prime environment for incubating and overlooking these issues."

If you have been watching the reruns of Top of the Pops from 1976 with mingled horror and derision, you will be interested in a guest post on Yes It's Number One. There Former Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley offers a limited defence of the year's music - or at least argues that 1975 was worse.

Cinebeats looks at Live It Up! and Be My Guest - the mod musicals of Lance Comfort: "Live It Up! provides viewers with a brief but unforgettable glimpse of a more innocent time just moments before pirate radio, drugs, shorter skirts, Beatlemania and the merseybeat sound would transform the capital city into 'Swinging London.'."

Irrefutable Prediction of the Day

Well done to Jackie Ashley, writing in tomorrow's Guardian:

I don't expect the coalition to fall this year, though we should rule nothing out.

Aloe Blacc: I Need a Dollar

I heard this on Jools Holland's Hootenanny last night and it sounded good. Though, to be honest, another reason for choosing it is that Aloe Blacc's real name turns out to be Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III.