Goodbye to "Gary": The death of a Christian name

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When I was at primary school in the 1960s (jumpers for goalposts, isn't it?), the most popular Christian name among my fellow pupils (at least the boys) was Gary.

At least that is what I recall. The truth may be different, even accounting for regional differences. (I went to primary school in the Hertfordshire new town of Hemel Hempstead.

For the Independent tells us that Gary peaked in popularity in Britain in1964, when it was only the 16th most common name.

It also tells us that only 28 British-born boys were named Gary in 2013.

The reason for this rapid decline? The Indy suggests we look no further than the fall of the glam rock star Gary Glitter. We certainly don't want to be in his gang any more.

There remain two mysteries.

The first is that some point in the recent past, a sort of orthographical inflation took place. "Gary" turned into "Garry" and "Denis" turned into "Dennis".

It may be that the Independent has overestimated the decline of "Gary" by failing to search for "Garry" too.

The second mystery involves another Christian name. When I was at primary school, not only were there a lot of Garys: there were a lot of Darrens too.

But today you hardly meet a Darren. Why is this?

A friend and I once agreed, in a pub conversation, that they had all killed themselves in their Ford Escorts when they were 18, but there may be more to it than that.

Angry badger shuts down luxury Stockholm hotel after scaring guests with 'crazy' behaviour

The Independent takes us to Sweden for our Headline of the Day.

Is this badger, Liberal England wonders, any relation of the giant badger that caused hysteria at Folkestone School for Girls?

Sir Peter Soulsby and Leicester's children's services: Deputy heads must roll

One was a tyrant under whose reign no child was safe. The other was a much-loved monarch
tragically slain... You can see where this is going.

From BBC News:

A former children's services boss has been sacked after a "botched review" caused the department to "fall apart". 

Vulnerable youngsters in Leicester were left at risk after half its front line children's social workers quit during the review, the city's mayor said. 

Sir Peter Soulsby said there was a "complete failure" to inform the council's leaders about the crisis. Former head of department Elaine McHale has been dismissed, while assistant mayor Vi Dempster has stood down.

I have considerable sympathy for the words of Ross Grant, the only Conservative member of the city council, as quoted by the Leicester Mercury:

"The fact there is a damning Ofsted report is extremely worrying, but it raises lots of questions about how the city mayor runs our city, and whether he is the right person to try and fix the problems. ... 

"It is incredible that he claims he was not aware of these problems and that they were hidden from him. 

"It was well known that there were problems in children's social care. 

"There were changes in senior staff in the department last year. ... 

"The sackings are part of a pattern where the city mayor, far from taking responsibility for failings in his administration, claims he alone is the person who can fix things."

And once again we find that a Labour one-party state and poor services for children go hand in hand.

Disused railway stations in East Sussex

After Devon, Bedfordshire and North Lincolnshire, naturally comes East Sussex.

The BBC, Jimmy Savile and other child abusers

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In his Observer column today Nick Cohen writes about the scandal of the BBC's sacking of Meirion Jones and Liz MacKean, the two journalists who made the Panorama programme about Newsnight's abandonment of its investigation into Jimmy Savile.

Not only that, writes Cohen:

BBC managers have shifted Tom Giles, the editor of Panorama, out of news. Peter Horrocks, an executive who insisted throughout the scandal that the BBC must behave ethically, announced last September that he was resigning to “find new challenges”. 

Clive Edwards, who as commissioning editor for current affairs oversaw the Panorama documentary, was demoted. The television trade press reported recently that his future is “not yet clear” (which doesn’t sound as if he has much of a future at all).

I doubt the BBC is worse than any other great hierarchy, but Cohen's conclusion is right:

The power of hierarchies is hard to break. But if you want to fight fraud in the City or the rape of children, it has to be broken. A start can be made by insisting that everyone from John Humphrys in the morning to Evan Davis at night tells the truth about the purge of the BBC’s truth tellers.

And the BBC does have previous.

In an extraordinary London Review of Books article from 2012 Andrew O'Hagan looked at the corporation's long entanglement with the subject.

Take the case of Derek McCulloch, 'Uncle Mac', the man in charge of Children’s Hour, and the voice of Larry the Lamb in Toytown.

O'Hagan writes:

In his book Strange Places, Questionable People, published in 1998, John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor, writes about his early days there. In 1967, he was given the task of preparing the obituary of a famous children’s presenter. He calls him "Uncle Dick". In 1998, and still today, Simpson felt he shouldn't name McCulloch directly: but it is now clear that Uncle Dick is Uncle Mac. 

In preparing the obituary, Simpson rang ‘Auntie Gladys’, who had worked with him, to get a few quotes. 'Week after week,’ Auntie Gladys told him, ‘children from all over the country would win competitions to visit the BBC and meet Uncle Dick. He would welcome them, show them round, give them lunch, then take them to the gents and interfere with them. If their parents complained, she said, the director-general’s office would write and say the nation wouldn't understand such an accusation against a much loved figure.' ... 

When Simpson reported her remarks to his boss, the man rounded on him and told him he was an ‘ignorant, destructive young idiot’. The boss then rewrote Simpson’s copy; McCulloch, the obituary now said, ‘had a wonderful way with children’. The Corporation turned a blind eye to what was being said about McCulloch just as it later would with Savile and some of the others. 

Yet people knew. The Times obituary of McCulloch was written by the poet Geoffrey Dearmer. ‘Children of all ages were always comfortable in his unseen company,’ Dearmer wrote. ‘There was something of Larry the Lamb in him, and Larry could get away with murder.’

To end on a slightly lighter note, O'Hagan mentions meeting Dan Davies, Jimmy Savile's biographer:

He always said the story was seedy and strange and that when the book was published he would call it 'Apocalypse Now Then'.

Norman Lamb's friends have persuaded him he should be the next Liberal Democrat leader

From the final episode of Yes Minister (before it metamorphosed into Yes Prime Minister):

SIR HUMPHREY: Well, Minister, it's not my place, but on previous occasions the generally acceptable answer has been: "While one does not seek the office, one has pledged oneself to the service of one's country, and if one's friends were to persuade one that that was the best way one could serve, one might reluctantly have to accept the responsibility whatever one's own private wishes might be. 

HACKER [Hurriedly scribbling in his notebook]: "...private wishes might be". Yes, I think I've got that!

It is hard not to think of that exchange when reading the opening sentence of a report in today's Indpendent:

Liberal Democrat MPs and peers have approached Norman Lamb to stand for party leader, the Health minister has revealed.

And Norman's quote in the article suggests he has been listening closely to Sir Humphrey:

“When people raise this with me it inevitably makes you think, in the circumstances envisaged, what would I do? I have to answer the question. I’m fiercely loyal to Nick. I always have been, but at some point there will be a further [leadership election] and I will consider the position. I am open-minded about it. My view is if people think well of the job that I’ve done [as Health minister] and people then, as a result, conclude they want me to have a go for the top job, then I will consider it.”

John Betjeman: A Shropshire Lad

Late in his life, John Betjeman recorded four albums of his poetry with musical accompaniment. The first of these, Banana Blush, was released in 1974.

Roy Wilkinson wrote about it back in 2006:

On its release, Banana Blush was well received, with critics praising its "sumptuous musical accompaniments". Over the four albums, Parker deployed subtly distinctive instrumentation - viols, euphonium, cornet and multi-tracked vari-tuned piano. 

On Late Flowering Love, the rock session guitarists took Betjeman into new realms - the intro to The Licorice Fields at Pontefract sounds just like the Velvet Underground. 

So perhaps it's not surprising that, when the track A Shropshire Lad was released as a 45, it was made single of the week in the NME. A subsequent interview found the NME reporter popping round to Betjeman's Chelsea flat. 

"It's awfully nice of you to visit me," Betjeman says in the interview. "I've bought some splendid cakes for the occasion. Would you like tea or whisky?" Throughout, Betjeman proffers Bourbon biscuits and booze. 

Soon the interviewer admits he is "sliding under the table", but Betjeman is not to be deterred. "Have the rest of the Scotch and the shortbread," he says. "I've got lots more bottles."

It has to be said that the great man had an odd idea of the Shropshire accent. Around Dawley and Lawley, Oakengates and Coalbrookdale - all part of Telford today - it is very much of the West Midlands.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Norman Scott and Rinka in space

On the radio this morning Danny Baker suggested that Rinka had been the first dog in space. Sadly, she was famous for quite another reason.

I was laughing about this with Lord Bonkers over tea in the Library, when he showed me what he had just written in his diary.

Saturday

One of the disappointments of my long career in public service has been my inability to persuade Parliament that it should build upon the lead we gained in interplanetary travel when, in Coronation year, Raymond Baxter blasted off from Woomera to become the first Briton in space.

For a time Jeremy Thorpe shared my enthusiasm, but we never could agree upon the identity of the next British astronaut. I favoured a fellow called William Woollard, who appeared to have the Right Stuff, while Thorpe was all for a groom called Norman Scott. (He was also a model - as so many grooms are.)

Later it became all too clear why he was keen to have Scott sent into space, but our argument over personnel was rendered otiose when the International Monetary Fund insisted that the British space programme be abandoned as one of the conditions of its loan.

Video smuggled out of Nick Clegg's private office

Thanks to Miranda Green on Twitter and, I presume, Iain Dale in the first place.

A moment of comic genius from Alan Bennett and Thora Hird

From Bennett's 1982 television play Intensive Care.

The representation of women in parliaments around the world

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To celebrate International Women's Day, the editors of Parliamentary Affairs have drawn together a virtual examining the representation of women in parliamentary democracies around the world.

Page 94: The new podcast from Private Eye

Private Eye has launched a podcast.

The first Page 94 begins with Ian Hislop laughing at his own jokes, but gets better after that. There is good coverage of the magazine's own Paul Foot Awards for investigative journalism and a tribute to the cartoonist Martin Honeysett, who died recently.

It will never replace those flimsy records they used to stick to the cover of the magazine though.

Shropshire flying club member Harrison Ford injured in plane crash

For finding a local angle, the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Six of the Best 497

Colin Talbot gets it right on the imposition of a new mayor on Greater Manchester: "The proposed changes ... have all the hall marks of a policy being made on-the-hoof, behind closed doors, by small groups of like-minded people – just the sort of ingredients identified by King and Crewe which lead to monumental blunders."

Wages are decided by the market? Nonsense, says Stumbling and Mumbling: they are social constructs.

" One of the problems about getting economic policy-makers in a room together is that you sink immediately into acronym hell." David Boyle reports on a seminar he organised at the Treasury.

"The Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian epochs are awash with visionaries who have helped sculpture landscape sensibilities ever since. Titans for whom a surname is all that is required: Blake, Dickens and Darwin; Turner and Constable; Tennyson, Wordsworth and Keats; the Bronte's and Hardy; Kipling, Conan-Doyle and Buchan; Ruskin and Morris; Emerson, Muir and Thoreau." Eddie Procter looks towards a new landscape aesthetic.

The East End on Britain's worst civilian disaster of World War II. A total of 173 men, women and children lost their lives in a crush on the stairs at Bethnal Green tube station.

The Sound of Music premiered to horrific reviews in 1965. Now it’s the most beloved and popular movie musical ever. Kevin Fallon looks at how it climbed a mountain.

Lord Bonkers on Harvey Proctor

Thursday 

A quiet day on the Bonkers Hall Estate.

In particular, I don’t have the police turning over the cottage of one of my employees – unlike another Rutland aristocrat I could mention.

Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh my! Oh my!

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

Disused railway stations in North Lincolnshire

After Devon and Bedfordshire, I am getting a taste for these slideshows.

Particularly interesting here is New Holland Pier, which I visited while it was still in use. It was where the ferry to Hull left from before the Humber Bridge opened.

Animal Countdown by Norman Baker and Friends

Embedding of the video has been disabled (why?) so hurry over to Youtube to hear Norman Baker sing about the plight of endangered species.

He has also written an article on the subject to Politics Home:

The facts are stark. Tiger numbers have fallen from 100,000 a hundred years ago, to a situation where there are now more in zoos than in the wild. Central Africa has lost 64% of its elephants in just ten years. 50,000 were slaughtered in 2013 alone. In the oceans, 73 million sharks are killed every year for their fins. Clearly this is all hopelessly unsustainable.

Norman had a Commons adjournment debate on the subject, You can read the transcript on They Work for You.

Oh, and ignore the cruel suggestion by the Spectator that the Liberal Democrats are themselves an endangered species.

Let Westminster fall to ruin and send Parliament to Arkwright's Mill

The Palace of Westminster is in a bad way. Generation Rent wants to turn the old pile into flats and send Parliament to Hull.

I have a better idea.

Just let the place gently fall into decay. Imagine how much more attractive it would be as a ruin alive with feral cats, buddleias and fragments of Gothic tracery.

It could be a first glimpse of the future Ian Martin imagined for the whole city the other day:

Poor London, the ancient and forgotten metropolis, crumbling slowly into an enchanted urban forest.

Parliament would still have to go somewhere, of course, and I have a better candidate than Hull.

Arkwright's Mill at Cromford is really a collection of buildings. Between them the ranges could house all the debating chambers, MPs' offices, spin doctors, dining rooms and bars your heart could desire.

There is a railway station nearby, and just down the hill in the inland resort of Matlock Bath you will find plenty of hotels.

And I expect the whips could use the weirs and sluices in my photograph of Arkwright's Mill to torture backbenchers who refuse to toe the line.

If this solution is too radical for you, then close the Palace of Westminster for five years so it can be properly restored and send Parliament somewhere far from London.

If not Cromford, then York would be a good choice.

Wellington to Craven Arms disused railway 3

The third and final part of this walk takes us from Much Wenlock to Craven Arms and is by far the most scenic.

I once did much of this walk myself, coming down from the Edge short of Craven Arms and reaching the Traveller's Rest at Upper Affcott via the lanes.

"I either have to spend the night here or go on to Craven Arms," I told the landlord.

"Are you trying to make us feel guilty?" he replied.

But he did have a room for the night, so I stayed there.

I heard that the Traveller's Rest had closed, but today it seems to be open under a new name: Affcott Lodge.

Building the UK’s Stonehenge in 1954

Building the UK’s Stonehenge in 1954 pic.twitter.com/UT2eBXzt8V
— Old Pics Archive (@oldpicsarchive) March 3, 2015

Old Pics Archive wins Tweet of the Day.