Judge Judge is a poor judge of the internet

"The Lord Chief Justice made an outspoken attack on "modern technology" yesterday," starts a report by Ian Burrell in the Independent this morning, recalling the glories days of the bench. Those were the days when judges had not heard of television and had to be woken regularly after lunch to be reminded what it was.

More seriously, the report goes on to say:

Lord Judge called on society to bring "under control" those "who in effect peddle lies about others" online.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the current dispute, it is a fact that people are using the net to tell the truth about others. What the Lord Chief Justice (Judge Judge, as he used - gloriously - to be called) is demanding is that the law should prevent them from doing so.

He is not alone among lawyers in making impossible demands. The report also quotes Nick Armstrong of Charles Russell LLP as complaining that social media "has (sic) of late been used as a vehicle for gossip..."

If he wants to see legislation against gossip then he really is demanding the impossible.

Mr Justice Cocklecarrot is 124.

Labour MPs: Pray you outlive Gerald Kaufman

Robert Litherland, who was Labour MP for Manchester Central from 1979 to 1997, died last week. The Guardian carried an obituary by Julia Langdon, to which Gerald Kaufman was invited to contribute a few paragraphs.

Here are a couple of them:

In parliament, Bob did not mince his words. He denounced Michael Howard, Conservative employment secretary from 1990 to 1992: "The right honourable and learned gentleman is Dr Goebbels incarnate. This is a squalid statement by a squalid minister."

He supported Michael Foot as Labour leader in the period up to the 1983 election. At the traditional rally at Trafford Park, he asked me: "Do you believe the opinion polls?" Those polls were terrible, and my one-word answer, "Yes", left him crestfallen.

So two anecdotes, both of which make Litherland look silly and one of which is intended to make us marvel at Kaufman's sagacity.

Clearly, he is not the sort of man you want allowed anywhere near your obituary.

Hitch-22: A memoir by Christopher Hitchens

My review from today's Liberal Democrat News.

Hitch-22: A memoir
Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Books, 2011, £9.99

This is the story of a journey. Christopher Hitchens began his working life on the fringes of London left-wing journalism and became a New York intellectual who toured American television studios to support the Iraq war.

You can make a case that this was not a simple shift to the right: traditionally, it has been British Conservatives who have been sceptical of foreign entaglements when no direct national interests are involved and the left that has been more likely to urge internvetion. And Hitchens’ willingness to criticise sacred cows from Mother Teresa to Bill Clinton is thoroughly healthy and was a necessary part of making his way as a contrarian. But his support for George W. Bush and Paul Wolfowitz does feels like conformity to the opinions of his new hosts.

Indeed, the book as whole has a very American feel. It’s not just the spelling, which is an irritant to the British reader which could surely have been corrected: the readers he has in mind are American too, judging by the references he does and does not explain.

New York is an intoxicating city, but in some ways it is surprising that Hitchens has landed there. While his friend Martin Amis’s literary heroes were always American to begin with, Hitchens is a far more consciously English, even if his great hero P.G. Wodehouse did end his days on Long Island.

Hitch-22 came out last year, but a reading of the paperback edition takes place in the shadow of a discovery that he made after writing it. In the words of Hitchens’ new preface: “I suffer from Stage Four esophageal cancer. There is no Stage Five.”

In many ways the early chapters of this book are the most interesting; certainly they are the best written. As well as being one of the last men of letters able to describe the experience of being subjected to the miseries of a traditional prep school education, Hitchens paints sympathetic portraits of his parents. His father was a disappointed former Naval officer who embraced a rather cheerless variety of Conservatism. His mother, the beautiful and brilliant Yvonne, committed suicide in a pact with her new lover in an Athens hotel room when Hitchens was in his early twenties. By contrast, his brother, the journalist Peter Hitchens, barely features at all.

Hitchens’ days at university were torn between a desire to be a social and sexual success and a burgeoning career as a Trotskyite agitator. Ironically for someone who was later to become a very public atheist, his induction into the International Socialists resembles nothing so much as a religious conversion.

Then it is on to Hitchens’ New Statesman days. These chapters are dominated by his accounts of the wit and wisdom of his Martin Amis and James Fenton and, from an older generation, Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest. Some of the stories are good, but there is no surer way of killing an anecdote than introducing it with “I heard a really funny story the other day...” and that is the cumulative effect of Hitchens’ lavish praise for his friends here.

The British reader may find Hitchens’ account of his time in America, which dominates the second half of the book less interesting. While his concern from human rights in Iraq goes back a long way – much longer than it does with most his later allies on the American right – some of the writing is mawkish. And his claim that he knows that weapons of mass destruction were discovered there is not credible.

In all honesty, much of Hitch-22 does not show him at his best. For that you have to turn to his journalism – witty, angry and wonderfully well read. But I did like the story here about the mother who bought Hitchens’ book Letters to a Young Contrarian for her son in the hope that he would become a contrarian himself. He refused to do so.http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitch-22-Memoir-Christopher-Hitchens/dp/1843549212

From Bonkers Hall to the sea

Ed Stafford and Charlotte Thompson from Hallaton in Leicestershire are taking part in a 24-hour non-stop 103-mile run today, reports the Harborough Mail:

They are taking part in the insane challenge from Nevill Holt to Brancaster Staithe on the Norfolk coast ... along with four other runners in a bid to raise cash for four charities.

Nevill Holt, as you may recall, is widely believed to be the model for Bonkers Hall.

You can sponsor the runners online at Rampant Run Two.

Kenneth Clarke, rape and the paucity of political debate in Britain

The row over Kenneth Clarke's comments on rape exemplifies what is wrong with our politics: the obsession with identifying gaffes and comparative lack of interest in the substantial interests involved.
Of course, Clarke's comments were crass: there is no such thing as a rape that is not serious. And the argument that it is somehow better to be raped by someone you know is a very questionable one.

But no one believes that Clarke really believes that rape is not serious. He spoke in a clumsy and thoughtless way, which is regrettable but is hardly a reason for resignation. It is no surprise that the right-wing press is after his moderate blood, but the way Ed Miliband has joined the clamour must be a great disappointment to those who believed he was a Labour moderniser.

And his point that looking at the average sentence for rape does not tell us very much is a valid one. Indeed, the variation in sentences for rape suggests that we do regard some rapes as more deserving of punishment than others.

The more important point at stake has hardly been discussed. Clarke was talking about rape in the first place because of his intention to halve the sentences of offenders who plead guilty. It is this we should be talking about.

I am not a supporter of plea bargaining at the best of times. It risks raising the interests of administrative convenience above those of individual justice. And if the differential in punishment is great enough, it can put pressure on the innocent to plead guilty.

Plea bargaining seems particularly inappropriate in the case of rape. Firstly because it is such a serious crime. And secondly because of the low conviction rate. Will it even work, if offenders do not believe they will be convicted?

Six of the Best 160

Some words of wisdom of Kenneth Clarke's travails from Welcome to Spiderplant Land.

Liberal Landslide writes on the consolations of losing elections: "Since the polls closed on the 5th of May, I’ve carried with me a sense of overwhelming liberation."

Writing on the Daily Telegraph site, Ed West pays tribute to the former taoiseach Dr Garret FitzGerald,: "Generally regarded as the nicest man in Irish politics, FitzGerald was often outfoxed by his more cunning rival Charlie Haughey, but was all the more loved for it. FitzGerald had a vision of a more liberal, wealthy and outward-looking Ireland that came to pass, and part of this vision was a non-sectarian society at ease with its neighbour. This he helped achieve, and it is strangely fitting that he passes away during its symbolic reconciliation."

The Philosophy Shop is and educational charity set up to introduce primary and secondary school-age children to philosophy. Read all about it on journalism.co.uk.

"The Middle East's restive countries are experiencing everything from measured success to incipient civil war." Foreign Policy has a country-by-country guide to the progress of the Arab Spring.

Enjoy a wonderful 360° panorama of Wilton's Music Hall in Tower Hamlets, thanks to Spherical Images.

NHS to sue contractors over delays on St Luke's Hospital site, Market Harborough

Work has ceased on the new day case unit at the St Luke's Hospital site in Market Harborough and NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland is suing the contactors over the delays with the project.

This adds to the sense of mystery that has surrounded the construction of the new unit. Why, in particular, did it have to be shipped all the way from the United Arab Emirates?

Liberal Democrat councillor Phil Knowles was live on the BBC East Midlands new programme this evening talking about this latest development.

He has also been speaking to the Harborough Mail:

"This is deeply concerning. This whole project has lumbered and lurched from one problem to another. This will lead to a considerable delays."

Edward Hardwicke in Colditz

Edward Hardwicke, who died on Monday, will be best remembered for playing Dr Watson to Jeremy Brett's Sherlock Holmes. But I remember him better from the BBC series Colditz which was made in the early 1970s.

Here is a glimpse of him from that series. Remarkably, the other actor turns out to be a young, pre-Taggart  Mark McManus.

The Queen in Dublin

Before the Ireland vs England rugby union international at Croke Park, Dublin, in 2007 there was widespread trepidation. How would God Save the Queen be received in a ground that was very much part of the Irish struggle for Independence?

In the event it was received with perfect courtesy - so much so that all that worry seemed rather foolish after the event. Ireland is a modern European nation: why should we have expected there to be any trouble?

The Queen's visit to Ireland is passing off in much the same spirit. Though historic, it is essentially ordinary and a little dull, as such visits tend to be.

It leaves the Republican dissidents looking foolish and stuck in a 19th-century variety of nationalism. France and Germany are allies, Poland has cordial relations with both Russia and Germany. Are we really meant to believe that Ireland has been so uniquely wronged that it cannot enjoy a sensible relationship with the United Kingdom?

Meanwhile, the way that God Save the Queen and English kickers are booed in Cardiff and at Murrayfield is surely a sign of an inferiority complex rather than of a confident, modern nationalism.

Fox blasts British overseas aid plan

Lord Bonkers replies exclusively for Liberal England:

It was clearly set out in the Coalition agreement. Now clear off down the garden and leave our dustbins alone.

David Lloyd George giving a speech in 1932

GUEST POST Towards a Liberal Democrat ideology

Simon Beard is a philosophy student at the LSE and blogs regularly for ResPublica.

Liberal ideology appears a mass of contradictions. To outsiders we are centrist, however we view ourselves as radicals, we believe in freedom but often propose new laws and regulations rather than opposing them. We are home to some of the strongest supporters of privatisation and nationalisation.

Given these differences it is perhaps natural that we hide behind the notion of being a moderate voice in a conservative government. However this is not good enough. Both because nobody votes for moderation, people vote for what they agree with, and because it isn't actually true, there are many areas where the government is being decidedly middle of the road and we are pushing for it to be radical.

As a party we need to remember both where we occupy the centre ground between frankly insane ideological extremes, and where we remain the true voice of radicalism in this country.

Three areas where we are radical
Constitutionalism – Unlike the other parties Liberals believe in constitutional reform (the disestablishment of the Church, the separation of powers, strengthening local government and electoral reform). This is because we care about the way things are done, not just what is achieved, and because we realise that when the ends justify the means the only winners are those with the power to select the ends.

Internationalism – Liberals have always taken a global view and have stood up for globalisation. In the 19th century it was free trade and anti-colonialism that concerned us, in the 20th century peace and
nuclear disarmament and now it is migration and international environmental problems such as climate change. We have consistently opposed short term protectionism and stand up for our longer-term interest, which is global.

Individualism – Whilst Liberals have, rightly, acted to reduce personal freedom, such as the freedom to participate in cruel blood sports, we continue to stand out in supporting the individual as the fundamental unit of society. Both Labour and the Tories are coming increasingly under the control of their communitarian 'blue' and 'red' wings respectively, however for Lib Dems there is no community, be it church, trades union, business or neighbourhood, that is more important than its members.

Three areas where we are centrists
Markets – Liberals support markets, but only those very small number of markets that are actually competitive, work with good information and are open to new entrants. Most government created markets are not up to this standard and fail as a result. Nevertheless Lib Dems are divided over the extent to which the risks of market failure can outweigh the potential market efficiency.

The role of the state – Liberals have long realised that individuals sometimes require state support if they are to achieve their full potential. However, we also realise that the state can trap people into dependency and believe that people's lives are not lived to the full if they cannot find a productive place in society. We therefore favour social spending that builds peoples assets, and oppose that which either limits their choices or turns them into clients of the state.

Regulation and planning – Liberals love regulation, but only because it is a necessary corrective. Nobody is more opposed to the free market then large corporations who wish to stifle competition and socialise as many public costs and risks as possible. Protecting our market economy from corporations that seek protection, monopoly and unfair advantage requires careful planning and regulation. However, this should never be a solution in search of a problem.

It is right that in these three areas, where we fall between the two main parties and that our policy reflects the views of experts. It is also right that in these areas we act as a moderating influence in government.

However, it is entirely wrong to lose sight of just how radical we are, and how when we get beyond these areas we remain radically opposed to the mainstream political opinion of our country.

And it is precisely because our position on the constitution, our place in the world and the importance of the individual are unpopular that we should not lose the opportunity we have in government to put some of them into practice. These are the things we most care about, and this is the way to enjoy our time in government.

Now read Simon Beard's first guest post for Liberal England: In praise of slow government.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

Don't forget that Liberal England is now accepting guest posts. So far 14 have appeared:

• In praise of slow government - Simon Beard
• Children and the surveillance state: Will the Coalition keep its word? - Terri Dowty
• Standards matter in higher education, not just participation rates - Anonymous
• A Woking class hero is something to be - Lisa Harding
• The campaign for a Robin Hood Tax - Ian Sullivan
• The limits of the Big Society - Martin Veart
• Can hyperlocal news sites be the future of journalism? - Niall Sullivan
• How Edward Stourton misunderstood The Orange Book - Simon Titley
• Why I caged my son: The Love Outdoor Play campaign - Daniel Raven-Ellison
• Against the Comment is Free view of politics - Jonathan King
• A beginner's guide to anarchism - Ruth Kinna
• The other side of suicide - Elinor O'Neill
• AV, politicians and the wasted vote - Chris Slowe
• Creative Perambulations: Marking the boundaries of Sherwood Forest - Dave Wood

If you would like to write one yourself, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea. I am chiefly interested in political posts, but if you are a regular reader you will know that this blog is noted for its eclectic range of interests...

The Barwell meteorite of Christmas 1965

It is Christmas Eve 1965. You are in the large Leicestershire village of Barwell. You see a bright light in the sky. Is it a star showing the birthplace of our Lord?

No, it is the largest meteorite ever to fall to earth in Britain.

As the BBC Inside Out pages tell it:

The village of Barwell near Leicester, was showered in thousands of pieces of what became known as the Christmas meteorite.

From fragments to large chunks Barwell became the target, yet amazingly no-one was injured.

Had the meteorite landed elsewhere, it could easily have been a different story as another Barwell local, Roger Platts explains.

"If it had hit a few seconds later and gone into Leicester at 4.15pm Christmas eve, it would have been a disaster."

At least the meteorite turned out to be something of a goldmine for the village:

As soon as the news broke, Barwell was inundated with meteorite hunters from around the world.

With museums offering money for every piece, the search was on - although not everyone was cashing in.

"Huge sums of money were being paid for fragments of this meteorite," remembers Annie Platts.

"Had we realised we could have been very rich people because we were stumbling around it all on our carol singing trip."

Annie wasn't the only one refraining exchanging meteorite for money.

Astronomer Patrick Moore arrived in Barwell as soon as he heard the news and on finding a lump of the meteorite took it promptly to the local museum.

You can see part of the meteorite that fell on Barwell in the video above. Lembit Opik is 46.

Jacob's Ladder by Sheena Porter

You may recall that I rather fell in love with Bridgnorth last summer, spending more than four hours doing the town trail. I even went back late that evening to see the town's two churches. Yes, I had dined well, but they are remarkable. As I wrote at the time:

St Leonard's (medieval but practically rebuilt in the 19th century) is placed in something close to a cathedral close. Thomas Telford's St Mary Magdalene closes off a fine Georgian street - and was aligned North-South to achieve this.

I found the other day that I have had an old children's book set in the town sitting unread on my shelves all this time. Jacob's Ladder by Sheena Porter is set in "Castlebridge" but the town it is based upon is unmistakable:

They came to the bottom of the Cartway and turned towards the long flight of steps which led up again to High Town, but Nicola pulled out her purse with a flourish and turned back towards the cliff railway, where a thick cable on a wheel hauled one car up the track as the other car went down.

"I'll give you a special Sunday treat," she said grandly, and bought two tickets at the tiny booking office.

The empty car bounced and swayed a little as they stepped into it, and the attendant reluctantly closed the door after waiting hopefully for a little while for more passengers. they slid into movement and the second car detached itself from the station at the top of the cable and came to meet them. When they passed, the saw that it was empty. Business was bad on wintry Sundays.

Jacob's Ladder was published in 1963 and one point of interest is that it was illustrated by Victor Ambrus, who today makes the drawings for Channel 4's Time Team.

Sheena Porter, who lives in Ludlow, worked as a librarian who in Leicestershire and Shropshire. In the 1960s she published several notable books for children. Featuring children working out family problems whilst solving historical mysteries, they rather recall the work of William Mayne.

Let us pause a moment too to mourn our loss of innocence: a couple of years after Jacob's Ladder she was able to publish another book called The Knockers. Its setting in the Shrophire hills was very Malcolm Saville, but the scratchy relationships between the children certainly were not. The knockers, incidentally, were the spirits that the lead miners could hear in their workings under the Stiperstones.

Finally, I hope the quotation above will not put anyone off bidding for the Bridgnorth cliff railway.

Stephen Williams' plan to give away bank shares may go ahead

In March Stephen Williams wrote a pamphlet for CentreForum endorsing a plan drawn up Portman Capital partners, under which each UK citizen would receive about 1450 shares in RBS and 440 in Lloyds. These would be worth more than £900 at current market prices.

A story on the CNBC site today suggests that the government is also attracted to the plan:

Government ministers and civil servants have been concerned by the possible effect a mass sell-off of the state's shares would have on the overall market and in particular on the banks in question.

Two concepts of children's rights and the boy in a skirt

Later. The video I originally posted here has disappeared from Youtube, but you can still find it on the BBC News site.

In my contribution to the 2006 booklet Liberalism - Something to Shout About I examined this paradox: the more rights we give children the less freedom they have. On those rights I observed:

The last time there was a significant children's rights movement in Britain was during the late 1960s and 1970s, when polical radicalism was in the air more generally. That movement was largely run by children and teenagers themselves and has as its targets abuses like corporal punishment, petty uniform regulations and the keeping of secret records by schools. The youngsters taking part were clear that their rights were to be asserted against the state and the schools that it ran.

In today's children's rights movement, there is no place for children themselves and no challenging schools - indeed the keeping of confidential records is central to the movement. Instead it is parents who are seen as the threat to children's rights and the state as the body that upholds them.

This odd view explains how a commitment to those rights can coexist comfortably with the remarkably restrictive policies with which we now surround children - curfews, ASBOs and the like. If the 1960s movement was an attempt at Kids' Liberation (as it would undoubtedly have been called in those days), the our present-day version has more in common with the child-saving efforts of the nineteenth century.

All of which explains why I was pleased to see Chris Whitehead's protest. His understanding of children's rights is clearly of the 1960s' variety, even if in those days 12-year-olds would probably have been demanding the right not to wear shorts.

The humiliation of Stacy Solomon

If you don't live in the region then you probably will not have seen East Midlands Trains' television commercials designed to encourage us to book our tickets through their website. Those commercials feature Stacy Solomon and her image has starting appearing at the company's railway stations too.

Given that the idea behind them must be "If Stacy Solomon can use our website then anyone can," I feel rather sorry for her

When Lord Bonkers drove Chris Huhne's car

Last January Lord Bonkers remarked upon his fondness for Eastleigh:

So when the town’s MP, our own Chris Huhne, invited me to tour his constituency I was happy to accept.

As we drive through the Hampshire countryside this morning he is full of the virtues of his Toyata Prius (apparently no polar bears are harmed in its manufacture), but as we near a crossroads he begins to panic: “It’s the brakes, your lordship, they just aren’t...”

At this point I am obliged to lean across and take command of the steering. As I explain after I have brought us to a halt by using a ploughed field with an appreciable slope, it is a peculiarity of the Rutland Highway Code that the landowner has right of way at any junction. Thus I am well used to driving without brakes.

Now I think we know who was on the other end of the phone call.

Stevie Wonder: Never Had a Dream Come True

The trouble with choosing tracks that you happen to hear in cafes is that you do not always know what you have been listening to. As I found after hearing this in the station buffet at Leicester, googling "Stevie Wonder doo doo doo doo doo doo doo" gets you nowhere.

Luckily I work with someone who recognised the song from my humming. Never Had a Dream Come True, written towards the end of Stevie Wonder's first period with Motown, reached no. 6 in the UK singles charts in 1970.

Old Newspaper Story of the Day

From the Daily Telegraph, 27 March 2008:

A New Zealand man who claimed he was raped by a wombat and that the experience left him speaking with an Australian accent has been found guilty of wasting police time.

Six of the Best 159

"Vince Cable, it seems, has notched his Tory-baiting down from 11 to about 8." |Pete Hoskin describes the Busincess Secretary's appearance at a Fabian meeting today on the Spectator's Coffee House blog.

Andy Strange - on Strange Thoughts - complains that he has become the poster boy for Liberal Democrat misery. Look, there he is again!

Living on Words Alone has a novel explanation for the Liberal Democrats' unpopularity: "If parents have two children - one usually well behaved and one usually naughty - they will always come down harder on the well behaved one if they misbehave than they will with the naughty one, because of the shock. That seems to me a perfect analogy for the respective coalition partners."

The Lib Dems are not the only ones in trouble. An Independence Minded Liberal says: "Ed Miliband is facing growing criticism from party members in Scotland over the type of inquiry he has ordered into the reasons for last week’s disastrous Holyrood election defeat."

You know how I am always going on about the Stiperstones? The Shropshire Wildlife Trust is organising a walk on 11 June that will show you these hills too.

Unmitigated England looks at the Pavilion at Aylestone Road - Leicestershire's former county cricket ground.

Leicester's one-party state

Last Thursday Sir Peter Soulsby, the Labour Party candidate, was elected as Leicester's first executive mayor. At the the same time Labour won 52 of the 54 seats on the city council, which is the body charged with scrutinising his running of the city.

This was a remarkable achievement for Labour, but it does present the city and the executive mayor model of government with some problems.

I have never been a great fan of elected mayors. Their introduction was born out of a Blairite impatience with the compromises and coalition building of traditional local government. The idea of a strong figure who will bang heads together and get things done has a faintly totalitarian air to it.

Nor has the system done much to increase public involvement or interest in local government. As find I (a little fancifully) observed in my old New Statesman column:

leading GLC councillors were public figures whose reputations reached far beyond London. So much so that councillor-spotting became a popular hobby with schoolboys. They thronged the approaches to County Hall with their notebooks, squealing with excitement when a Tony Banks or a Dave Wetzel came into view.

You won’t find them at the new City Hall. London politics has not produced a figure of substance for years. Some people mention Nicky Gavron, but I never worked out who he or she was.

And having a Labour Mayor and a near one-party council accentuates these difficulties.

There is certainly a strong case for using a proportional system for electing councils in city's with mayors. The Leicester Mercury's political correspondent has pointed out that under a proportional system Labour would have won 35 seats, the Tories 11 and the Lib Dems 8 - still a thumping majority, but a far healthier balance for politics in the city.

Or if that is beyond the pale after another recent result, then at least for electing the mayor and the councillors in different years.

Labour certainly saw the advantages of bringing in the new executive mayor regime and electing the council in a year when the government was unpopular. Uniquely, that regime was brought in without a referendum and pressure was put on Labour councillors to support the move.

I have already heard Labour people crowing that the two opposition councillors (one Tory, one Lib Dem who used to be a Tory) hate each other and will not second each other's motions, so there will be no opposition at all. But Labour's brand of local politics is anti-pluralist enough as it is I doubt this set up will do them much good in the long run. As the Mercury correspondent has also pointed out, in 1968 the Conservatives held every seat on the city council but they soon lost their position of hegemony.

After the result I tweeted that it was a good thing Labour was so faction ridden in Leicester, otherwise there would be no opposition at all. The editor of the Leicester Mercury tweeted back that he did not see it that way.

And, of course, the Mercury does now has an even more important role in scrutinising the government of the city. That is a role, incidentally, that I am more confident it will fulfil than I would have been a few years ago.

Meanwhile, maybe we bloggers have a role to play too?

Trivial Fact of the Day with Olivia Newton-John

We all know that Albert Einstein said: "God does not play dice with the universe." What is not so widely known is that he said it in a letter to his fellow physicist Max Born and that Born was Olivia Newton-John's grandfather.

There is another piece of Olivia Newton-John trivia all over the net: this is the claim that her father Brinley took Rudolf Hess into custody after his landing in Scotland.

I cannot find an authoritative source to confirm this, but it may well be true. Brinley Newton-John was an MI5 officer and a Royal Society paper about Max Born's family records:

Brin’s German was so perfect that the Royal Air Force put him as a fake-German among the Germans in prisoner-of-war camps to gather intelligence: this was clearly a dangerous job, but fortunately he was never found out.

The powerless of the individual in the face of the internet giants

Blogger was down for a whole day. I can, as you will no doubt be aware, post here again, but some posts are still missing. Blogger Buzz says these "should" be restored soon. I would find it more reassuring if it said that "will" be restored.

And when I finally got home from work Twitter was down too.

All of which brings home to me how little power the individual citizen on the net. I have no idea where my posts are held or what to do if they suddenly stop appearing.

I am reminded of an article John Harris wrote in the Guardian recently:

The computer industry came of age in the 1990s, that giddy phase of American and European history when authoritarianism was assumed to be on the wane. For sure, it's still nice to live in a liberal democracy, but given that the world has since moved in no end of sinister directions, isn't our unthinking embrace of the cloud (and just to recap: our medical records could soon be up there) an ill-advised throwback? 

And what of the long view: looking ahead 50 years, how certain are we that the surveillance state will not have extended its tentacles; that nasty, illiberal politics will not be all the rage; or that Google, Microsoft et al. will not have learned dangerous new tricks?

I fear there may be something in this - and not just because of today's frustrations.

If you went on a social media training course even a couple of years ago you would be told that ideas like "privacy" were hopelessly old-fashioned. Young people today put their whole lives online. We dinosaurs were going to have to catch up.

This was nonsense, of course. As those young people probably discovered when they started applying for jobs.

I do put a calculated version of my life online here on this blog. If anything, writing it has made me more active because I want to have something interesting to write about.

But we all need our privacy - whether from government or from Google. One of the notable things about commerce of the web is that is has not given rise to near perfect competition but to thumping great monopolies that it is hard to love.

Later. My missing posts are back. Thank you, Blogger.

Broxtowe ballot blunder sees wrong member of Lib Dem couple elected

From the Nottingham Evening Post:

Red-faced election officials declared the wrong member of a husband and wife team the winner at the ballot box.

Bob Charlesworth should have been announced as a successful candidate in the Broxtowe Borough Council elections last week.

But instead his wife Hazel Charlesworth – who was also running for office but polled 21 fewer votes – was elected to the seat in the Eastwood North and Greasley (Beauvale) ward.

The couple say they can see the funny side of the situation – but the council will now have to go to court to rectify the mistake.

Both husband and wife were standing as Lib Dem candidates on May 5.

Thanks to Martin Brookes.

Muscular Liberalism: "Five years ago I was a four-stone apology - today I am two separate gorillas"

Eeyore is only 90 years old

A couple of days ago I questioned the claim of a Guardian writer that Eeyore had just celebrated his 140th birthday.

Looking through the comments on the Guardian article, though the writer makes an attempt to defend his position, the discussion confirms that the original Eeyore toy was given to Christopher Robin Milne as a Christmas present in 1921. So he is certainly not 140 years old.

And another comments alerts us to this Soviet version of Winnie-the-Pooh. I don't know if this was intended as a Marxist allegory - Christopher Robin as the forces of capital, Piglet as the proletariat - but it is rather sweet.

The Educational Maintenance Allowance and trusting teenagers

Yesterday I wrote about the way the left does not parents. I am not sure they trust teenagers that much either.

Take this Polly Toynbee article from last November, defending the Educational Maintenance Allowance:

EMA ought to sit comfortably with Conservative thinking. Pupils who miss a class, are late or don't do homework lose EMA for the whole week.

This might sit comfortably with Conservative thinking, but it ought to worry anyone who is not a Conservative. It seems extraordinary to boast that the policy you are defending imposes severe sanctions on teenagers from less affluent homes and those teenagers alone.

You could say it is better to receive an allowance with those conditions than not to receive one at all. But that is not the choice that less affluent teenagers should be faced with.

I hope that a more reasonable approach will be taken when the more tightly focused replacement for the EMA is unveiled.

GUEST POST Creative Perambulations: Marking the boundaries of Sherwood Forest

Nottinghamshire poet Dave Wood describes his plans to walk and celebrate Sherwood Forest's ancient boundaries.

The Creative Perambulations have become a whirlwind of hopes for the best, fears for the worst and a long awaited dream that I should be paid appropriately for a large and exciting project leading to an intense body of imaginative and professional work. It brings together my being-ness of writing, my career in community arts and my love of dandering through the woods and the cityscape.

As with all billowing ideas, it started with a passing reference or utterance; let me explain. I'd been to a talk at a county library. The representative of Nottinghamshire Archives had come to speak about Mediaeval Nottinghamshire and had mentioned the Perambulations; a way of the current King making sure that the land wasn't being used or taken without permission. Another theory was that it was a marking of the seasons. Although never too late for further research, it’s too late to say I’m going back. This is the hero’s point of no return and I still have that childlike judder in the heart.

The last Perambulation was undertaken in 1662 and only written about (retrospectively) in the 1800s.

So now, after the initial talk late(ish) last year, I’ve put the project together, sent out the press release, made contacts (and this list, I promise, is never ending) and applied to the Arts Council for the funding. The form went in at 1 a.m. I went to bed at 1.30 and fell down the stairs sometime later that night.

So here’s the project

I follow the last Sherwood Forest Perambulations route as closely as possible; there may be (actually there are) busy roads, fences to traverse and farmers’ lands to be negotiated (that’s to be expected). On the way, I run public workshops, record thoughts, take notes and (if appropriate) give performances based around the area I’m currently in. Any information which can be used from the public or myself will be; ideas will be smithy’d in to poetry, story and/or imaginative reminiscence.

Members of the public, bearing in mind some areas will no longer live in a forested area, will be interviewed and invited to contribute as widely and as wildly as possible about their locality, culture and environment.

A large majority off the creative output will be blogged. There will also be postings on Facebook and Twitter. Again, all encouraging noises will be made for the public to engage with these new ways of communication as well as the old ones of course..

There will also be a one off broadsheet; A3 in size, it will be copyright free to enable quick and further dissemination of the resulting creativity.

I’m gathering support, left and centre. Sherwood Forest Trust are on board with their Special Trees Project; looking at the old trees of Sherwood and supplying new ones to plant on the Perambulatory way, the Woodland Trust, Experience Nottinghamshire, Broxtowe Green Party, Save Sherwood Forest, the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, the Friends of Bestwood Country Park and lots of locals have sent letters of positivity and gung-ho.

I’m exhausted thinking about it; I’ll sleep better once I’d out there and doing it. Anyone wishing to be kept in touch can follow my blog. If you’d like to contribute or join in, then please email me: davewrite2002[{@}]yahoo.com.

Be excited. Be very excited.

Opera at Bonkers Hall

Most literary scholars now accept that Nevill Holt is the model for Lord Bonkers' ancestral home. Look closely at this video and you may see Meadowcroft in the background or a Well-Behaved Orphan making a run for it.

How do you tell whether the kids are alright?

Last week the Guardian printed a short piece by Max Benato about a new report from Save the Children:

The UK came a woeful 23rd out of 43 countries for child wellbeing according to three main factors: pre-primary enrolment (81% in the UK compared to 100% in France, Germany, Netherlands and some others); secondary school enrolment (99%); and under-five mortality rate (six per 1,000 live births, the joint 23rd lowest score out of the 43 countries – the lowest rates were three per 1,000).

"Read the report and weep," says Benato.

Well, you can download the report from this Guardian page and judge for yourself. But if anything makes me want to weep here it is Benato's reasoning.

Clearly, the under-five mortality rate is a vital figure and I wish ours were lower. And I am all in favour of enrolment in secondary school, though there is a debate to be had about what the leaving age should be.

But pre-primary enrolment? Is it really the case that children in a country with a 100 per cent enrolment rate will have the best time of all? Doesn't it depend upon the nature and quality of the institutions they are in? I am sure the Soviet Union and its satellites had a very high rate in this category, but I am far from convinced that they were the best place in Europe to be a child.

I went to a Save the Children event earlier this year, and they are good people. But when I heard that the charity's founder Eglantyne Jebb had been a leading light of the Charity Organisation Society, I had Doubts. The COS was breeding ground of many Fabian socialists, who are the ancestral enemies of good Liberals.

And I do sense a touch of the Beatrice Webbs here. Isn't putting such an emphasis on pre-primary enrolment effectively saying that you do not trust the lower orders to raise their children properly so the state must take a hand?

There are all sorts of ways of having a good childhood. To reduce them to ticking three boxes seems a very blinkered approach.

Leicester City Council finds alternative site for Aylestone Meadows football pitches

Today's Leicester Mercury carries the less than startling news that an alternative to siting football pitches and their accompanying development on the city's most important nature reserve has been identified:

Leicester City Council is planning to split the development between two areas either side of the meadows – Riverside College, in Braunstone Lane East, and Aylestone Playing Fields, off Narborough Road South, where there are already a number of disused pitches.

The paper also quotes Herbert Eppel (Hello, Herbert) from the Aylestone Meadows Appreciation Society:

"As a group we had suggested this site probably about a year ago."

In last week's elections Labour won all but two of the seats on the council - more on that another day. Interestingly, one of the two seats they failed to win was in the Aylestone ward, where the Liberal Democrats gained one of the seats.

I hope that this was because of Labour's earlier enthusiasm for building on Aylestone Meadows.

Six of the Best 158

David Willetts' scheme to allow universities to create extra places unsupported by state finance, for which could charge the full international student fee, was an interesting idea but almost certainly a very bad one. So Free Radical argued earlier today, before the plan was disowned by David Cameron.

Stephen Glenn, on Liberal Democrats in Northern Ireland, pays tribute to David Cairns, the Labour MP for Inverclyde, who died earlier today.

Political Valley is pleased that all Birmingham's travel-tracking spy cameras are to be taken down.

"The SNP today faces the same problem as the PQ did – running a government while making uncompromised choices that risk party splits. Nine years after his initial triumph, René Lévesque was forced to resign as PQ leader and Quebec Premier because of party divisions over sovereignty and the economy. Like Salmond now, Lévesque then was grappling with a recession." Writing on British Politics and Policy at LSE, Françoise Boucek argues that Alex Salmond must learn from the failure of the Parti Québécois in Canada.

On Liberal Conspiracy, Lucy James asks why Anjem Choudary has been invited to speak at the Hay philosophy festival.

"For people of a certain age Jack Warner was ... a figure of probity in British national life.  His cheery, 'Evening all' as we turned on to Dixon of Dock Green spoke of a Britain of close knit communities, and low level scampiness with little in the way of murders ... or corruption," writes Love and Garbage. So he is dismayed at today's revelations about corruption in international football. Lord Bonkers writes: Are you sure he has got this right?

UKIP recriminations over Leicester South result

A thread on Bloggers4UKIP makes interesting reading.

The full Leicester South result is here.

When boys are not youths

In recent days I have discussed the Newspaper English word "youth", showing that a youth can be 11 or 20 but is always up to no good.

In the first of those posts I made the observation:

There have always been double standards here - a 14-year-old offender is a "youth"; a 14-year-old victim is a "schoolboy".

The truth of this was pretty much borne out today by another Leicester Mercury story:

Two teenage boys were assaulted by a gang of youths in Abbey Park, Leicester.

The victims, both aged 14, were assaulted by the gang after the pair had refused to hand over their property. The victims received minor injuries.

The attackers made off empty-handed towards the fun fair and then possibly Abbey Park Road and Belgrave Road. They are described as black and Asian youths who were aged between 15 to 19.

Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy

My review from Friday's Liberal Democrat News.


WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy
David Leigh and Luke Harding
Guardian Books, 2011, £9.99

Leigh and Harding tell the story of Wikileaks and its release of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. Their own paper, the Guardian, was one of the newspapers that was given this material, and they dissect its often fraught relationship with Wikileaks’ moving spirit Julian Assange.

This is very much the Guardian’s side of the story, but it is clear that Assange, by turns charming and impossible, is difficult to deal with. The book has obviously been written in a hurry and each chapter carries a subheading like “Emergency Operating Station Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, Iraq, November 2009,” as though the authors half imagine they are writing a screenplay. Perhaps they have never got over seeing Paddy Considine play a Guardian journalist in The Bourne Ultimatum?

Julian Assange’s childhood was spent in hippy communes and as a teenager he entered the world of hacking – gaining unauthorised access to government and commercial computer systems just for the fun of it. Like many pioneers in the world of computing, he dropped out of formal education before completing his first degree.

His hacking soon came to have a political edge, and he dreamed up the idea of Wikileaks – a way of allowing people to leak documents while being sure they would remain anonymous. Such a system, incidentally, would have been useful to Sarah Tisdall, who was gaoled in the 1980s for leaking details of cruise missile deployment to the Guardian after the newspaper revealed her identity to the authorities.

Assange was an idealist, believing that he need only lay bare the workings of international diplomacy and power politics for the world to rise up in anger. But things turned out to be more complex than that: material needs to be analysed and put into context before the public can understand it. So when an extraordinary collection of American cables and files came into his possession he put together a consortium of newspapers to publish them.

Even when this trove was published, Assange was probably disappointed at the reaction. The idea that US foreign policy is wicked is taken for granted by most Guardian readers. When they read of civilian casualties, corruption and arm twisting it confirmed their prejudices rather than roused them to action.

It was in the Third World that the revelations had more effect, with local journalists begging for the material on their own countries. The recent uprising in Tunisia has been called “the first Wikileaks revolution”. The Wikileaks website continues to make the most astonishing revelations, most recently revealing the files on numerous prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

Meanwhile in Britain, the drama of Assange’s remand and then bailing of allegations of sexual assault in Sweden has taken centre stage. While this does look very convenient for the Americans, no evidence of their interference in the process has emerged. Leigh and Harding suggest Assange has displayed rather Antipodean attitudes to women in the past, and the argument “I disapprove of American foreign policy therefore he must be innocent” is a pretty thumping non sequitur.

The real victim in this book is not Assange but Bradley Manning, the former pupil of Tasker Milward School in Haverfordwest, who leaked the material on Iraq and Afghanistan that made Wikileaks famous. It is easy to sympathise with a thoughtful young man, stationed in the heat and boredom of Iraq, who saw these secrets and horrors every day on his screen every day and wanted the world to know what was really going on. If nothing else, the Americans’ cavalier attitude towards cyber security is astounding.

Today Manning is being held under oppressive conditions in America – some believe the authorities want to force him to implicate Assange more deeply and give them a pretext to seek the extradition. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this, there is a support site for him.

In which the Guardian makes a Very Silly Mistake about Eeyore's age

You may not know it, but today is Eeyore's birthday. And if there's one thing that upsets Eeyore more than anything, it's people forgetting his birthday. Traditionally Eeyore might receive a popped balloon from Piglet, or an empty honey jar from Pooh. But since AA Milne's gloomy donkey turns 140 today – which is Very Old Indeed – I think we should surprise him by celebrating his status as a truly great literary character.

announces Chris Cox on the Guardian's Books Blog today.

Eeyore born in 1871? That cannot possibly be right.

The anhedonic donkey first appeared in Winnie-the-Pooh, which was published in 1926. Even his creator A.A. Milne was not born until 1872.

I am afraid we have to conclude that Cox has made a Very Silly Mistake.

Week of the Week

23-29 May 2011 is Rabbit Awareness Week.

Market Harborough had a tin tabernacle

This is St Hugh's in Northampton Road, Market Harborough, which was opened in 1940. The new parish was carved out of Little Bowden in 1920 to serve the housing that had appeared south of the River Welland since the late Victorian period. (The two parishes were reunited some years ago.)

On Saturday I bought a pamphlet about this church's history:

Following a meeting in November 1892 it was agreed to acquire the necessary land and build a Mission Room. The building was opened on 16th August 1893. The building is still in use as the Church Hall ...

The Mission Room rapidly proved too small and in 1895 a temporary church was built using corrugated iron and referred to either as the Iron Church or as the Tin Tabernacle.

Soon after the Iron Church was opened the parishoners started to think about a "permanent church". Their dreams were realised when the present building was consecrated on 10th February 1940.

So there was a Tin Tabernacle in Market Harborough for 45 years. The odd thing is that I have always knows that St Hugh's was the "Iron Church", but had wrongly assumed that was because iron was somehow used in the construction of the 1940 church. Instead it seems that the old nickname attached itself to the new building.

The pamphlet - "St Hugh's Church Market Harborough, 1940-1990" by C.G. Medley - is not enthusiastic about Tin Tabernacles, quoting a report about the one at St Hugh's from 1913:

"There are many reasons why we must make an effort to find the money required as soon as possible. Among them: the heat in summer and the cold in winter are both intensified in a building of iron. Again, we are very crowded together, it is a difficulty to kneel in comfort. Ventilation without draught is an impossibility, in one part of the building people are calling out for windows to be open and somewhere else they are suffering from draught. There is no spaciousness which is so necessary not only for health but also for dignity."

Pete Townshend & Paul Weller: So Sad About Us

This isn't just dad rock it is granddad rock. But I do like Paul Weller's sweater.

So Sad About Us is a Townshend song, written for The Who. There is a great version by them recorded live at The Marquee in the 1960s. And The Jam used to play it too. So here they are together.

BBC: Kirsty Williams has not ruled out working with Labour in Wales

BBC News reports that talks are taking place to explore the possibility of a coalition government in Wales after Labour fell just short of winning a majority last week:

Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams told BBC Wales she has not ruled out working with Labour.

"Welsh Liberal Democrats want there to be a stable government over the next five years and we want to concentrate on the issues we've been campaigning on, how can we strengthen the Welsh economy, how can we improve education results for our children and how can we cut waiting times.

"Whether that's part of government or opposition these will continue to be the main thrust of the work of the Welsh Liberal Democrats," she said.

Interesting, but a minority Labour administration or a deal between Labour and Plaid Cymru both look more likely.

Stevenage in 1971

One of the discs I have from LoveFilm at the moment is Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush. Released in 1968 and featuring a distinctly superior soundtrack, the film was shot around the new town of Stevenage.

This documentary on the town is one of the extras on the DVD. It is rather nostalgic for me as at the time I was growing up in another Hertfordshire new town, Hemel Hempstead.

Indeed, Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush is also nostalgic for me because it features exactly the same model of bus that we had in Hemel, right down to the slot where the conductor kept his clipboard.

Does anyone here remember bus conductors?

The Liberal Democrats need fewer policies and more ideology

In my final House Points column for the party newspaper, I urged my fellow Liberal Democrats to enjoy being in government. But my impression is that most are still not that happy about it.

Why is this?

According to an email from Nick Clegg sent to party members yesterday:

The BBC estimates that we are implementing 75% of the policies of in our manifesto, compared to just 60% of the Conservative manifesto.

(Matthew Harris has reproduced the whole message - and I hope that whoever sent it out will note that "thank you" is two words.)

So why aren't we more happy?

A look at the party document from March of this year, Liberal Democrats: Our manifesto in practice, may give us an idea. This goes through our manifesto from the last general election and lists all the points on which progress has been made.

Some examples of those points:

• Lib Dem Manifesto p.17 – “Better IT procurement, investigating the potential of different approaches such as cloud computing and open-source software.”
• Lib Dem Manifesto p.18 - “We will give people control over their pension by scrapping the rule that compels you to buy an annuity when you reach age 75.”
• Lib Dem Manifesto p.40 – “We will end Train to Gain funding for large companies,restricting the funds to the small and medium-sized firms that need the support.”
• Lib Dem Manifesto p.72 – “Reform the police, with a full review of the very restrictive terms and conditions for police officer employment.”

Of course, there are some more substantial achievements in the document, such as the scrapping of identity cards. But these examples give a fair idea of the sort of Liberal Democrat policies that are being implemented.

I suspect that we are not happy at this success because of the way Liberal Democrat policy is developed. As I and others have argued in the past, the problem is that it is essentially written for us be experts with little political input. So we end up proposing a raft of sensible reforms that would make Britain a better place, but do not make an emotional commitment to them. This also means that we struggle to establish a clear identity with the voters and to differentiate ourselves from moderate opinion in other parties.

Being a philosopher at heart, I want to call for a firmer Liberal Democrat ideology at this point, but the reality is that we are an exceedingly broad church, including as it does both libertarians and unreconstituted social democrats.

I am reminded of my experience of the prickly relations between the Liberals and the SDP during the 1983 election campaign. We could all support the slightly dull package of reforms that constituted our joint manifesto, but if we had dinner together and the discussion turned to political philosophy then it could soon become surprisingly heated.

So what we need are fewer policies and more ideology, but getting everyone to sign up to that ideology will not be easy.

Liberal Democrats retain control of two Leicestershire councils

There was some consolation here in Leicestershire among the gloom of Thursday's local elections. The Liberal Democats retained control of both Hinckley & Bosworth and Oadby & Wigston district councils.

In Hinckley & Bosworth we lost one seat, as did Labour, and the Conservatives gained two. This means the make up of the new council is: Lib Dem 18, Conservative 15, Labour 1.

In Oadby & Wigston we gained two seats from the Conservatives making the balance of the new council: Liberal Democrats 23, Conservatives 3.

It is also worth noting that the BNP lost their two seats on North West Leicestershire.

Lib Dems hold on to second place in Leicester South by-election

Here is the result from the Leicester South by-election, which was declared earlier this evening. The count took so long because there were also the City council and Mayoral elections and the AV referendum to count in the city.

Jon Ashworth (Labour) 19,771
Zuffar Haq (Lib Dems) 7,693
Jane Hunt (Conservative) 5,169
Abhijit Pandya (UKIP) 994
Howling Laud Hope (Official Monster Raving Loony) 553

In the context of yesterday's other results, Zuffar Haq did well to hold on to second place. It is also good to see UKIP's candidate doing almost as badly as he deserved. I am reliably informed that Mr Pandya's fellow party members were less than impressed by his antics.

Later. I was tired last night and forgot to make this point. If Zuffar Haq had been our candidate in the 2004 by-election he would still be MP for Leicester South today.

Six of the Best 157

I have just got back from Glasgow. Rather than attempt to offer my own analysis of the election, I thought I would offer a selection of comment from within the party...

Let's start with the cheerful Stephen Tall on Liberal Democrat Voice: "I think we can now more or less officially say: these results are a disaster for the Lib Dems, worse than most of us had feared they could be."

Splash Blog! won't like my choice of graphic: "As Churchillian as ‘keep calm and carry on’ might sound, that would be simply the wrong approach to this debacle."

"I still see this Coalition Government as a great improvement on the government of Gordon Brown. I still see it as being good for Britain and good for the Liberal Democrats that we are in government. I remain convinced that, between now and May 2015, people can be persuaded of the merits of what has been achieved by the Liberal Democrats in government. " Matthew Harris strikes a more optimistic note.

More comfort comes from Strategem XXXVIII: "The alternative vote system would have been a disaster for the Liberal Democrats."

Mark Cole analyses the results in Wales in general and Ceredigion in particular.

And Disgruntled Radical puts it simply: "Time now to show that we are different. Coalition -yes, Cosmetic for the Tories - No.

Measuring national well-being

I have been snatched away from Market Harborough and Leicester politics for a couple of days to work in the press office at my employer's annual conference.

One of the consolations has been a session which I helped to organise and have just attended. This covered the Office of National Statistics' project looking into the possibility of measuring national well-being and the speakers were Stephen Hicks from the ONS and Peter Kinderman, who is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, who has also done work in this area for the BBC.

Stephen Hicks outlined the project, discussing why governments are seeking to measure national well-being how they might succeed in doing so. Peter Kinderman argued that psychologists should engage with the project and help shape the measures that are used.

There was an interesting selection of questions afterwards, with some discussion of concepts like "happiness" and "well-being". Interestingly, Peter Kinderman favoured the term "well-being", because it brought with it the idea of living a moral life, whereas "happiness" can sometimes convey a more cavalier attitude towards one's responsibilities.

To put it another way, he favoured Mill's more sophisticated account of Utilitarianism to Bentham's version of it.

The (admittedly small) room was full to overflowing, so I got the promotion about right. One thing I did do was invite a blogger to attend. It was Ellen Arnison, who writes In A Bun Dance - chosen at the recommendation of Caron Lindsay - so look out for a fuller account of the event there.

Later. I wrote this in haste yesterday, so forgot to add this point. It is easy to be cynical about this project: indeed, it sounds very like the one in Michael Frayn's satirical novel A Landing on the Sun. But for years Liberals have been arguing that there is more to life than economics, so it is encouraging to see that view being more widely shared. Stephen Hicks said that the British project is one of many similar ones across the world.

Dirty tricks in the Leicester South by-election

Poltical Scrapbook reports:

The Leicester South by-election has turned dirty. A leaflet purporting to be from the Liberal Democrats and featuring a picture of two men kissing has been distributed in an Asian area of the city. The materials, which campaign organisers have confirmed as fake, are clearly an attempt to inflame anti-gay sentiment in the largely Muslim Spinney Hills area.

The leaflet [full size] features a version of the party’s equality policies as channelled by the Daily Mail. If the lack of an imprint (text required by electoral law) or contact details doesn’t raise suspicions, the text erroneously describe former Treasury Secretary David Laws and Simon Hughes as front benchers:

“We will force all schools to teach homosexuality as normal … Our front bench team Simon Hughes and David Laws are committed homosexuals, while Nick Clegg was recently voted by readers of Pink Times as the sexiest party leader.”

Political Scrapbook, which reproduces the whole leaflet, reminds us that a similiar dirty trick was played in the 2004 Leicester South by-election, which was won by the Liberal Democrats.

Never mind Eddie Izzard and Stephen Fry: Where are the politicians?

Reading Twitter this morning you get the impression that the Yes2AV campaign is being run by Eddie Izzard, Armando Iannucci and Stephen Fry.

What has happened to the politicians?

Ed Miliband, for instance, has been next to invisible. He has declined to risk his authority as leader by trying to persuade unwilling Labour MPs to support AV. He has only begun to sound impassioned on the subject when the campaign has already been won and lost.

It wasn't always like this. Back in 1975 the European referendum campaign featured major politicians on both sides of the debate.

It wasn't left to Eric Sykes, Anita Harris and Dickie Henderson.

The Severn Railway Bridge

The film above shows the demolition of the Severn Railway Bridge, which took place between 1967 and 1970.

There is much more about the disaster which led to the loss of the bridge, including an hour-long documentary, on the BBC Gloucestershire site.

Why Osama bin Laden's death will make little difference

David Cameron told MPs that Osama bin Laden's assassination was "a strike at the heart" of international terrorism.

The BBC's Laura Kuenssberg has tweeted about British government sources expressing the hope that his death may speed up our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But is either of these true?

Think about it: bin Laden has been living in a house with no telephone and no internet connection for anything up to six years. He can hardly have had any leadership role in Al Qaeda over that period.

When you add in his move to a garrison town, he sounds more like a retired colonel than anything else. You cannot entirely rule out the possibility that he has spent his time writing angry letters to the local paper. Disgusted of Abbottabad.

Certainly, the idea of bin Laden as a sort of Bond villain, directing operations from a cave at Tora Bora has never convinced. Al Qaeda is a much looser organisation than that, if it is a single organisation at all.

And, as I once wrote in a House Points column:

What Islamist terror we have seen in Britain has been homegrown – almost homemade, in fact, though no less deadly for that.

If bin Laden's death does hasten the departure of British troops from Afghanistan, that will be extremely welcome. But it will strengthen the case of those who believe that our presence there has always had more to do with the dictates of our relationship with the USA than it has with fighting global terrorism.

UKIP's Leicester South candidate talks to himself

We have seen how Abhijit Pandya, UKIP's candidate in this week's Leicester South by-election, wrote about the city's Muslim community on his blog earlier in this campaign:

A removal of multi-culturalism and assimilation of these people needs to done to save them from the abyss of exclusion and welfare. Above all, one should not shy away of contemplating forced repatriation, or threatening it to further assimilation, as a result of their lack of economic contribution to the UK.

And then issued a statement apologising for the use of the phrase "forced repatriation":

This does not accurately convey the point I was trying to make and is not in any way part of UKIP policy.

Having seen enough of Pandya in action, the Leicester Mercury wrote an editorial calling on people not to vote UKIP under the headline UKIP shows itself as silly and nasty.

Cue outrage from Pandya, who turned up at the Mercury's office demanding to talk to the paper's editor or political editor. Unfortunately he turned up there on Sunday morning when, predictably, there was no one there.

So Pandaya recorded the video above, which features him making his case to... no one.

Before you dismiss Pandaya as a booby or rogue candidate, remember that he claims to be UKIP's "Head of Research".

Election Poster of the Day

With thanks to Slugger O'Toole.

Six of the Best 156

Caron's Musings attended the BBC debate between the leaders of the parties in the Scottish general election.

The possible outcome of that election is discussed by The View from the Hills. He offers an intereresting parallel between the prospect of a Scottish parliament dominated by Labour and the SNP and the Fine Gael/Fianna Fail duopoly in Ireland: "Two very similar parties offering plenty of bluster but short on ideas."

Why are there so few street parties in Haringey? Richard Wilson explains: "As well as the charge going up to £80, the Council had changed their street party application form to demand that residents get £5,000,000 worth of public liability insurance, and to say they had to have a signature from every household in the street."

Mark Cole pays tribute to the snooker commentator Ted Lowe and includes a video of Joe Davis making the first even televised century break in 1962.

London Reconnections looks at proposals for further extensions to the Dockland Light Railway.

There is a survey of some Ladybird illustrators on the Stella & Rose's Books site.

Six good reasons to vote Liberal Democrat in Harborough

From our latest leaflet:

Harborough District Council under our control would...

• Immediately investigate the possible reopening of closed public toilets.
• Ensure that everything possible is done to tackle the impact of Airfield Farm should it proceed - why should existing communities have to suffer?
• End grand schemes to build new council offices and buy land, use council reserves instead to invest in front-line services.
• Investigate the removal of car park charges on Bank Holidays to encourage visitors.
• Seek to move from the current Executive system at the council, replacing it with the more accessible and accountable committee system. People are fed up with decisions being made behind closed doors rather than in public. We would make the council more open.
• Introduce kerbside plastic recycling collection and further increase recycling.

The fifth reason is a particularly strong one.

Ironically, the "modernised" Executive system, brought in with encouragement from Blair's Labour government, took the council back to the ethos that I caught the very end of when I was first elected in 1986. Then, too, a small clique of Tory councillors from one party took all the important decisions with limited scrutiny from other councillors or the public.

Nick Clegg encounters the British birther movement

James Kirkup has just written on his Telegraph blog:

Say what you like about Chris Huhne, his remarks on AV are never dull.

Not content with his historical denunciation of the Conservative Party on Sky News, he’s just used a Radio Four interview to accuse opponents of AV of “made-up facts” similar to the ones which, he said, are common in US politics.

I didn't hear Chris, but it according to Kirkup he said:

"I don’t want to see us import bad practice from the American system where the Republican right has gleefully made up facts which then turn up to be complete nonsense, like President Obama not being born in America and all this short of rubbish."

Kirkup's comment on this is:

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and call the Cabinet Office and ask for a copy of the Nick Clegg’s birth certificate…*

* – Health-warning for for the sarcasm-impaired: that was a joke.

No doubt that was meant to be a wounding attack on Chris Huhne, but I suspect Kirkup has forgotten an article about Clegg that appeared in the Daily Mail during the general election campaign. Its introduction ran:

His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?

Strangely, that article has disappeared from the Mail's website, but you can still read a discussion of it on Lib Dem Voice.

The moral is clear: when it comes to right-wing nutjobbery, we British can still show the Yanks a thing or two.

Graham Nash and David Crosby: Marrakesh Express

After this week's terrorist outrage in Marrakesh it is tempting to look back to more innocent days.

This appears to come from a television special made in about 1970. Stills and Young must have been busy elsewhere, so this is just The Hollies meets The Byrds.

Lembit Opik filming reality show with Michael Barrymore

Quite how this will help him win the Liberal Democrat nomination for Mayor of London escapes me.