The Housemartins: Over There

Hull is the UK City of Culture for 2017, which gives me an excuse to choose another track by one of my favourite bands.

Incidentally, Hull beat Leicester in the contest for this accolade. The judges said the Leicester bid "lacked slightly in ambition and innovation".

Remembering Graham Taylor

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The Spiked website has far too much reflex contrarianism, but there are still good articles there if you look.

Here is Tim Black on Graham Taylor and his hounding by the media:

Taylor’s time in charge of the national team coincided with football’s post-1990 explosion as the National Game. Long a passionate pastime for many, football, by the time of the formation of the lucrative BSkyB-backed Premiership in 1992, had become the cultural centrepiece of national life. Those who may once have ignored it descended from the cultural heights to embrace it. 

Classical musicians wore club scarves; middle-class authors wrote up their teams; politicians spoke about international matches in parliament. It was no longer simply a beautiful game played on half-mud pitches; it was treated as art, prefaced by opera songs, and colonised by sections of society who once treated it with disdain. Football was undergoing Hornby-isation; it was hipsterising; it was being valorised by the right-on and progressive. 

And then there was Taylor. The haircut was straight, the accent East Midlands-ish, the overall impression a bit naff. Football’s new fans wanted polish and sophistication, innovation and Europeaness. What they got was spit and archaic, long-ball and patriotism. 

To football’s newest fans, Taylor appeared an unwelcome throwback, a return of football’s unreconstructed working-class, an obstacle in the way of progress.

Stella Creasy: If you don't get Mrs Brown's Boys you don't connect with real society

Except Stella Creasy tells me she did not say this. See the footnote.

The moderate wing of Labour plots its path back to power.

At #Fab17 @stellacreasy says if you don't get Mrs Brown's Boys and, in US, Duck Hunters, you don't connect with real society. pic.twitter.com/a7Lh9MMpDN

— Rob Shepherd (@robshepherd) January 14, 2017

I have my doubts.

Or as Mrs Brown would put it...

Footnote. After I tweeted the link to this post I received a reply from Stella Creasy:

I expressly didn't say this ... Which is ironic when you see what I actually said about echo chambers..

I have asked her to send me what she did say so I can quote it accurately. I hope she will, as there is a debate to be had about the danger of liberalism becoming a patrician concern.

Later. You can read Stella Creasy's speech on Huffington Post. The relevant passage is:

This fatal flaw in our collective identity has also made us presume we know what other people want and need - and that it’s all about money. That has meant we’ve focused on economic difference, without recognising the cultural division that cripples any shared progress too. And that is not about Brexit, but a nation that is becoming ships that pass in the night. 

Who here watches Mrs Brown’s Boys? It’s the number one-viewed television programme in this country. It beat the Queen’s Speech at Christmas. It won the best comedy of the 21st Century. And, yes, the intelligentsia were horrified. We don’t get the joke. If you want to understand why Donald Trump won, look at who watches Duck Dynasty in America.

Paul Robeson sings to Scottish miners in 1949

This is wonderful.

Museum dedicated to hot chocolate opens in Sudbury

Ladies and gentlemen, we have our Headline of the Day.

Well done to the East Anglian Daily Times.

Snow in Wensleydale, 1981

A topical photo, but it was taken on the same day as I shot the milepost at Redmire: 25 April 1981.

After getting to Redmire, a couple of university friends and I walked back down the valley through the village of Wensley to Leyburn.

There we were allowed to thaw out in the railwaymen's mess room while we waited for the train back to York.

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Nick Tyrone says ALDE made a historic mistake by not allowing Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement to join. I think he may be on to something.

"The President-elect really is very 'well-connected,' with an extensive network of unsavory global underground connections that may well be unprecedented in White House history." James S. Henry examines Donald Trump’s Russian connections.

Elizabeth King on the concept of the 'tomboy' and what it tells us about the history of race and gender in America.

"In recent years, almost without anyone noticing, a great deal of broadcast drama has put art or entertainment second to propaganda." Dan Atkinson has had enough of preachy television.

"Ancient oaks are often hollow – a fungus attacks the core of the tree, causing the wood to rot away, but the tree does not die and unless felled by the wind, an oak can live for centuries with a hollow trunk." Flickering Lamps visits Sherwood Forest and the Major Oak.

D.J. Taylor reviews Alan Bennett's Keeping On Keeping On.

Labour group leader quits party over Corbyn's leadership

Sue McKendrick, leader of the 10-strong Labour group on North West Leicestershire District Council, has resigned from the party and will now sit as an Independent.

She told the Leicester Mercury:

"I have been finding that as leader of the Labour group on the council, I was finding it hard to maintain the national party line. 

"I feel Jeremy Corbyn has not been clear about what he has been asking of us. 

"On Brexit, I and others were out campaigning hard to remain, but it was hard to relay that to the voter when Jeremy Corbyn's position on the issue was unclear. 

"He did have quite a lot of support on the doorstep, but many people were saying while he was leader they simply wouldn't vote Labour and that saddened me."

Rebecca Hanson chosen as Lib Dem candidate for Copeland

From the News & Star:

A west Cumbrian councillor who has been fighting to save maternity services in Whitehaven has been chosen as the Liberal Democrats candidate for Copeland MP. 

Rebecca Hanson was last night selected to stand in the upcoming by-election, which was called following the shock resignation of current Copeland MP Jamie Reed. 

Mrs Hanson, a Cockermouth councillor, has strongly opposed Success Regime plans to remove services, and particularly consultant-led maternity, from the West Cumberland Hospital.

The paper quotes her as saying:

"This by-election is a chance for people to send a strong message against a hard Brexit that damages local jobs by pulling Britain out of the Single Market." 

It's also an opportunity to reject this Conservative government's underfunding of our NHS and say no to plans to move vital services like maternity and A&E from West Cumberland Hospital to Carlisle. 

"I am passionate about standing up for west Cumbria, and recognise the vital role that the nuclear industry plays in our local economy. 

"I'm proud to be have been selected as the candidate for the Liberal Democrats, the only party fighting to protect the economy by staying in the Single Market and calling for a long-term solution to the crisis facing the NHS."

The Wye Valley in 1948

This lovely colour film follows the river upstream from Chepstow to its source.

Click on the still of the Monnow Bridge in Monmouth above to view it on the British Film Institute site.

The film was produced by The National Savings Committee, so we get a lecture on the importance of thrift when we reach the confluence of Wye and Elan.

Tim Farron responds to Jeremy Corbyn's speech

I'm just a party loyalist, me.

Could the Conservtives win the Copeland by-election?

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Last week, in the person of Harry Phibbs, Conservative Home was playing down Tory chances in the Copeland by-election:

Victory will surely be a challenge. Labour starts out with a lead among local councillors – and the grassroots network of support that goes with them.

Now Andrew Gimson has been to the constituency, sniffed the wind, talked to a few voters and come to a different conclusion:

Perhaps by the time the by-election is held, this favourable estimate [of Theresa May] will have worn off, and there will be a reversion to traditional voting patterns. But it is striking that just now, these profoundly traditional Labour voters respect May more than they respect their own leader. 

It is possible to imagine a by-election in which Labour voters abstain in such numbers that they let the Conservative in. If Corbyn fails to raise his game, he could find himself humiliated by the very people who until recently were his party’s core working-class supporters.

Meanwhile, this is a good point to recommend again the post by Mark Pack on what the Lib Dem strategy should be in Copeland.

Jeremy Corbyn is stuck up the Wrekin

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The most endearing thing I have ever heard about Jeremy Corbyn was a story told to the Shropshire Star by his teenage friend Peter Harrison:

We were drinking and it was May Day the following day, and asking what we were going to do to celebrate, and next thing you know one said, 'Why not go up The Wrekin and plant the red flag?' 

"If I remember correctly one of them made the red flag and we took it to the top of The Wrekin and tied it to the trig point and we all sang the Red Flag and came down, and went to the Raven and had a few more pints."

But there was something Mr Harrison added that has stayed with me too:

"I knew him when we were 18 or 19, and his views have not changed. We are talking about the thick end of 50 years ago."

In other words, what Jeremy Corbyn is offering the British people is unreformed 1970s left-wing Labourism.

Some have been outraged today that Corbyn has "changed his mind" on Europe and now supports Brexit.

But I suspect that was his view all along. Left-wing opinion in the Labour Party in the 1970s was deeply suspicious of the European Economic Community.

Jeremy Corbyn's politics are still stuck up the Wrekin.

The cast and crew talk about The Night of the Hunter

Released in 1955, The Night of the Hunter was the only film directed by the great British actor Charles Laughton. And it is a masterpiece.

Here, many years on, members of the cast and crew reminisce about its making.

The Night of the Hunter was based on a novel of the same name by the American author Davis Grubb. The shining gothic mood of the film comes straight from it.

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Timothy Garton Ash asks if Europe is disintegrating.

"We are two weeks away from Trump’s Inauguration, and American intelligence agencies, flawed as they are, have declared, publicly and clearly, that they have convincing evidence that Russia, at its President’s direction, interfered in a Presidential election." David Remnick on Putin's big hack.

"It was not until I started to work more closely with homeless people and began to learn their stories that I have come to realise that each and every one of us is at risk of being homeless." Callum Hunter warns it could be you.

Amia Srinivasan remembers the philosopher Derek Parfit, who died this week.

Curious British Telly remembers the BBC2 adaptation of Angus Wilson's The Old Men at the Zoo.

Urchins playing cricket immortalised in stained glass? It has to be Spitalfields Life.

Colchester MP criticises the Guardian newspaper for ‘demeaning’ crossword clue

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the East Anglian Daily Times.

The spirit of Bob Russell lives on. He once wrote a letter of complaint to Liberal Democrat News when I invented some Essex** MP jokes in a House Points column.

* "Why do Essex MPs support VAT? Because they can spell it." That sort of thing.

** I am allowed to: my mother's mother's family all came from Tollesbury.

Paul Simon: That's Why God Made the Movies

Two LPs remind me of the summer that I moved into my own house.

The first is No Secrets by Carly Simon. The second is One Trick Pony by Paul Simon.

One Trick Pony was the soundtrack LP from a film starring Paul Simon that came out in 1980.

David Swanson writes that it is:

a movie about a once popular rock and roll singer trying to come to terms with his life in a new decade while his life, personal and professional, keep throwing roadblocks in his way — was entirely his project. 

Simon’s character, Jonah Levin, is the once-famous rocker trying to find his footing at the dawn of the ’80s. He wants to record a new album, but a less-than sympathetic record company and producer (played by Lou Reed), aren’t making things easy for him. At the same time, Levin is trying to resolve issues with his wife and child.

There are certainly autobiographical echoes here: Simon and Garfunkel had long split, and Paul Simon's run of wonderful singles from the early 1970s had dried up too.

Swanson continues:

Famed movie critic Roger Ebert liked the movie, but felt it was “being sold in all the wrong ways to Paul Simon fans,” even asking in his original review, “Does Paul Simon have fans anymore? He has lots of admirers, people who follow his music, but they’re not necessarily prepared to race out into the night to see this movie.” 

The film performed very modestly at the box office and didn’t stick around too long. The soundtrack LP, released at the same time as the movie, had a much better fate. With all songs written and performed by Simon, the album broke into the U.S. Top 20, selling over a half a million copies. The single, “Late in the Evening,” made the Top 10 and was nominated for a Grammy.

Late in the Evening is the stand-out song on the LP, but I was always drawn to this more reflective one.

Peacock Inn, Market Harborough, in 1984

This building is now occupied by Pizza Express, but when I photographed it in 1984 it was still the Peacock Inn.

And back in 1979 I worked there as a barman during the summer vacation. One of the regulars was a proper, red-faced Major who taught me how to make him a pink gin.

In defence of British Rail

A letter in today's Guardian is worth attention:

Rafael Behr mentions false memory regarding the old British Rail (Rail chiefs and unions: can passengers trust either, 4 January), a condition he appears to suffer from himself. 

He writes that BR was synonymous with shabbiness. Really? In 1993, InterCity, the flagship, was rated by passengers at 95% in this regard (The InterCity Story, 1994). 

Customer satisfaction at service levels was at 98%, and the company made a profit for the six years to 1994, when it was privatised, despite the huge distractions of that process. Which privatised rail company has since delivered these levels of success? To equate BR with Southern Rail is a calumny. 

Dr John Carlisle
Sheffield

Dr Carlisle is right, but as increasing numbers of journalists have no memory of the 1990s, there is a danger that the myth of British Rail as a basket case will become the accepted truth.

By the 1990s British Rail had finally overcome the rivalries between the Big Four railway companies from which it was formed and organised itself by sector as a national organisation.

The network was short of investment, as money was directed to the building of the Channel Tunnel and the associated high-speed line, but the Beeching era was over and stations were being reopened.

Since privatisation the railways have seen a boom in the number of passengers, but that is largely due to the economy performing better.

We should also note two paradoxes:

• more public money goes into Britain's railways today than when they were nationalised;
• the railways are controlled by government far more closely than they were under British Rail,

Longcross: The least used station in Surrey

This Londonist video takes us to the Waterloo and Reading line and the least used station in Surrey.

There used to be a Ministry of Defence tank test track nearby, but that closed in 2006 and there are now film studios right by it instead.

Read more about Longcross station on Diamond Geezer.