Don't blame the decade for sexual abuse

"All they wanted me to do was abuse them, sexually, which, of course, I was only too happy to do."

"Girls used to queue up outside oral sex they were particularly keen on, I remember one of my regular customers, as it were, turned out to be 13, though she looked older."

Those two quotations (and they are from John Peel not Jimmy Savile) both describe life in the 1960s. Both are taken from a Julie Burchill article on Peel. She attributes the first to a Guardian interview from 1975 and the second to one he gave the long-forgotten Sunday Correspondent in 1989.

"Well, it was the Sixties," some will say. But people knew better than that in the 1960s - as I once argued in a book chapter, child abuse has been regularly discovered and forgotten over the years.

And I instantly recalled an example of very different behaviour from that decade.

Traffic, who embraced the counterculture with more enthusiasm than most, famously rented a cottage near Aston Tirrold in Berkshire to "get it together in the country".

Q Magazine once published a feature by Johnny Black about this episode - it is reproduced on the Steve Winwood and Traffic Fans site, but they do not have the date.

In it they interviewed some of the people who had been around at the time - both band members and locals. One of them was a girl from the village called Rosie Roper. Here are some of her memories:

"I was 15 when Traffic arrived in the village. Everybody was very worried about it at first. I worked in the village shop where they came every day to collect their letters. They were very strange-looking. Chris Wood had these high-heeled boots painted purple. We'd never seen anything like it. My dad reckoned they were a sweaty, smelly lot, but I got such a crush on Chris. Whenever I saw them coming, I'd take off my glasses and hide them under the counter. My dad warned me to keep away from them because of the sex and drugs and that." 

"One day, Chris came into the shop and said how he really missed home-made apple pie. So me and my sister Marion made two apple pies and took them up to the cottage that Sunday. The next day they came back with the plates and said it had been delicious. I went all red in the face." 

"If there was any drugs around, I never saw it. One day I was offered a cigarette and, quick as a flash, James Capaldi dives into his pocket and insists I have one of his. I always wondered why that was ..." 

"James took care of us girls, always making sure we didn't get into mischief. He would send us away before it got dark, and always got me to phone my dad and tell him where I was."

Perhaps that is why they called him Gentleman Jim Capaldi. And he could sing too.

Lib Dems rubbish cash-for-seats deal story

Yesterday evening I blogged about George Parker's claim in in the FT that "senior Conservatives" are preparing to offer the Liberal Democrats millions in state funding in return for Lib Dem support for their cherished plans for boundary reforms.

Lib Dem HQ has been busy rubbishing the story, pointing us to Nick Clegg's "Nothing will change my mind on that" when answering questions as deputy prime minister last month.

There has been another, more alarming, story going around about the Tories exploring what they could offer to the Nationalists and Norther Ireland MPs to win their support for boundary reforms. Because, mathematically, it would be possible for these to be passed without Lib Dem support.

Still, Grasshopper, that is how you win readers for your blog. Report a speculative story one day and report its denial the next.

Corby railway station

Corby station closed in 1966, reopened between 1987 and 1990 for a shuttle service to Kettering and was rebuilt on an adjacent site in 2009. It now enjoys an hourly service to St Pancras, with occasional trains venturing north to Oakham and Melton Mowbray.

If it had been reopened a few years earlier (or today), Corby might have got no more than a couple of bus shelters. But it had the good fortune to have its station built at a time when there was money to throw at such projects, so it got a substantial building complete with coffee bar.

Because there is no longer a bus from Market Harborough to Corby on a Saturday I had to go to the by-election by train. The connection at Kettering was so good that it was quicker than the bus journey, though I missed the tour of villages along the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire border.

Tories to make cash-for-seats offer to Lib Dems?

So George Parker reckons on the Financial Times site:

Senior Conservatives are plotting an audacious “cash-for-seats” offer to Nick Clegg, where the Liberal Democrat leader would back a Conservative-friendly Commons boundary review in exchange for millions in state funding for his party. 

Grant Shapps, Tory chairman, said on Sunday he had not “given up hope” of winning Mr Clegg’s support for the boundary review, which could give David Cameron 15-20 extra seats at the next election. 

Although Mr Shapps denied on the BBC’s Sunday Politics that talks were under way, senior Tory figures have told the Financial Times that they believe the cash-strapped Lib Dems would be susceptible to the offer.

I think it is better to be a party with MPs and no money than one with money and fewer MPs. And wouldn't such a deal make us look a little shabby?

Still, watch this space.

Later. Olly Grender has expressed deep scepticism about this story on Twitter.

Henry Scott Tuke and Lawrence Street Working Men's Club, York

How about this for a working men's club?

This is - or rather was - Lawrence Street WMC in York, just outside Walmgate Bar. The club occupied these rather grand premises until it moved to a modest new building next door in 2005 or thereabouts. York Stories has a picture of the club in its original home in 2004 and says the building is now on Save Britain's Heritage's 'at risk' register.

This house originally belonged to the Tukes, an important family of York Quakers involved with Rowntree's cocoa works, three Quaker schools (Ackworth, Bootham and The Mount) and the nearby Retreat Mental Hospital.

The Retreat, founded by William Tuke, was opened in 1796 and pioneered the humane treatment of the mentally ill. It is still open as a mental hospital and you can read more about it on Wikipedia.

William's great great grandson Henry Scott Tuke was born in the Lawrence Street house in 1858. He was best know for painting This Sort of Thing...

The reshuffle made the Lib Dems feel less like a party of government

We know Nick Clegg's ambition is for the Liberal Democrats to become "not ... the third party, but ... one of three parties of government".

Yet one of the reasons I was depressed by the summer's reshuffle (as I blogged when discussing John Kampfner's more optimistic take on it) is that we now seem further from fulfilling this ambition.

I share Nick Harvey's disappointment that we no longer have ministers at Defence or the Foreign Office. And I am not convinced by the posts we have taken instead.

Lynne Featherstone will do a good job at Overseas Development if she is allowed. But it may well be that moving Andrew Mitchell away from the department was a prelude to a Cameron decision to drop his pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on overseas aid. There are no signs of it so far, but it would be in line with his strategy of moving right to please his back-benches and core voters.

And, much as I like David Heath, I fear that becoming the public face of the badger cull will do him or his party no favours.

But then Nick came out in favour of a cull as long ago as June 2008. As I blogged at the time, I was puzzled by the politics of this:

I do not know if culling badgers to prevent bovine TB is good science, but I am sure that it is bad politics. It may play well go down well in a few rural constituencies, but it will go down very badly in many more urban and suburban seats. Like Sheffield Hallam, for instance. 

This feels very much like a return to the 1970s, when the old Liberal Party's fortunes depended on clinging on to a handful of seats where the farming interest was strong. I thought we had all moved on since then.

Given that the Liberal Party I joined in the late seventies combined that pragmatic defence of local farming interests with high-minded statements about poverty, the changes in the reshuffle feel very much like a case of back to the future.

Harry Chapin: WOLD

With the revelations about Jimmy Savile and John Peel, life as a 1970s' DJ seems a lot less poptastic than it did even a couple of weeks ago. But Harry Chapin knew that at the time, as he proved in this 1973 song.

WOLD (not "Wold"- that would be a song about Lincolnshire) made no. 36 in the US singles chart that year, but does not seem to have been a hit over here even though I remember it being played at the time by some of Radio One's cooler DJs.

Harry Chapin, who was also an activist for social causes, died in car crash in 1981, aged 38. According to Wikipedia:

One report quotes his widow saying soon after his death - "only with slight exaggeration" - that "Harry was supporting 17 relatives, 14 associations, seven foundations and 82 charities. Harry wasn't interested in saving money. He always said, 'Money is for people,' so he gave it away." 

Despite his success as a musician, he left little money and it was difficult to maintain the causes for which he raised more than $3 million in the last six years of his life. The Harry Chapin Foundation was the result.

The Harry Chapin Foundation is still going, and you can learn more about his career on Harry Chapin Music.

Liberal Democrat workers needed in Corby

I spent today helping at the Corby by-election. Jill Hope's campaign office is on an industrial estate in the south of the town - you can find a map of how to reach it in an earlier post here.

But the town of Corby accounts for only about half the constituency's electorate and I was sent off to Thrapston where I delivered a labyrinthine new estate.

Talking to the insiders, the consensus was that the Conservative vote is unusually soft - an impression confirmed by political journalists who have visited the constituency. It's not just that they have been demoralised by the resignation of Louise Mensch, it is that they have doubts about the direction of their party.

And what is interesting is that these Tory voters are not thinking of voting for UKIP. The people the Conservatives are struggling to hold on to are moderate, decent voters - the sort of people who may have voted for Tony Blair but were attracted by David Cameron last time.

Labour voters are not reported as being that enthused either, all of which points to a low turnout.

And a local issue has emerged that is also working against Labour: the Cube complex, which houses council offices, a library, theatre and register office. This was millions of pounds over budget and built to a wholly unsuitable design.

It was good to meet Jill Hope again. She is a hard-working candidate, as I know from her two general elections campaigns in Harborough, so please do go to Corby to help her.

This is the first by-election in a marginal seat in this parliament, and the Liberal Democrats could do with a reasonable result.

Six of the Best 285

"This by election came about most unexpectedly and the local party needed someone to stand here. The party were aware that although I didn't live in Corby, I had spent six years in the area working with unemployed people, and helping pre-release prisoners to get into self-employment." The Backbencher talks to Jill Hope, Liberal Democrat candidate in the Corby by-election.

Gareth Epps looks at Jo Grimond's approach to employee ownership.

"We have got to get out of this ludicrous role we have been in for the past 20 years, where charities love to be called professional because they think somehow volunteers are amateur, are second-rate. In doing that, we have actually removed the lifeblood and energy that meant those generations of the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s wanted to give and get involved." Rory Stewart questioned the professionalisation of the charity sector during a fringe meeting at the Conservative Conference, reports Third Sector.

Could Eton run a state school? Dan Wilson thinks not.

The Week presents 13 punctuation marks that failed to catch on.

"“I was 13 and they needn't have bothered. It was obviously very, very heavily stage managed to impress a schoolgirl. But as I say I’d had it drummed into me by my father so it was really a bit of a rain dance." Wyn Hymer is interviewed by the Milton Keynes Citizen about growing up at Bletchley Park and being made to sign the Official Secrets Act.

St Denys, York

Here's a mystery: a fine Norman doorway set in what is obviously a later window arch.

The solution is that St Denys in York was once a much larger church. Its website explains:

The church was founded before 1154, on the site of a late Saxon church and an earlier Roman building. A Roman altar and an Anglo-Danish ‘hogsback’ tombstone were found on the site in 1846. Traces of these earlier buildings came to light during trial excavations in 2001 to investigate the church’s foundations (which proved extremely stable). 

The present building dates mainly from the 14th and 15th centuries, but has been much reduced from its original size, due to a series of a historical mishaps – the former spire was damaged by Civil War cannon fire and then struck by lightning, and the transepts and long nave were demolished in 1797. 

So what survives now is only the east end with its flanking chapels, making an unusually square-shaped church entered through a fine Norman doorway (from the demolished nave), set in what was originally the site of a window.

The result of this troubled history is that, unusually, the church is wider than it is long. I couldn't help thinking how good it would be for a political meeting. Even a few people would make it look respectably full, but you could cram many more in if you had to.

Legend has it that Henry Percy, Third Earl of Northumberland, who fell in the Battle of Towton - the "largest and bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil" - in 1461 was buried here.

Jimmy Savile and why senior managers are ignorant

At the start of this week I suggested that the BBC may have a recruitment strategy that manages to select the only people in the country too dense to have heard the rumours about Jimmy Savile and underage girls.

Sure enough, Mark Thompson announced shortly afterwards from his lucrative American exile that:

"I never heard of any rumours nor received any complaints or allegations [about Jimmy Savile] while I was director general at the BBC."

But "dense" people don't get to the top of big organisations like the BBC and it is often more useful to look at what is wrong with systems rather than blame individuals.

Because Mark Thompson is not alone. You can see the same pattern in this Daily Mail report:

Stoke Mandeville – a spinal injuries specialist centre in aid of which Savile frequently ran marathons – insisted it had ‘no record’ of complaints about him. 

But a retired NHS worker poured scorn on this claim, telling the Daily Mail: ‘To my knowledge, the juniors and new staff were advised to be careful in their contact with him. 

'That was not said officially, maybe because he brought in such a lot of publicity and funds. There was no control over his comings and goings, he would just turn up. He had free run of the place.

Once again, low-paid staff knew what was going on while highly paid executives were in ignorance.

And really, this should not surprise us. I wrote a post back in February 2009 under the title "Macho management is irrational and inefficient" and I can do no better than quote much of it here:

Chris Dillow, author of Stumbling and Mumbling, asks:

if centrally planned economies are a bad idea, how come centrally planed companies are a good one?

It's a good question.

Much of my political philosophy comes from Karl Popper - or at least from Bryan Magee's explication of his work. And, in his Fontana Modern Masters monograph, Magee writes of Popper:

Because he regards living as first and foremost a process of problem-solving he wants societies that are conducive to problem-solving. And because problem-solving calls for the bold propounding of trial solutions which are then subject to criticism, he wants forms of society which permit of the untrammelled assertion of differing proposals, followed by criticism, followed by the genuine possibility of change in the light of criticism. 

Regardless of any moral considerations (and it is of the highest importance to grasp this) he believes that a society organised on such lines will be more efficient at solving its problems, and therefore more successful at achieving the aims of its members, than if it were organised on other lines. The common notion that the most efficient form of society, in theory at least, would be some form of dictatorship, is on this view utterly mistaken.

Chris argues that the Royal Bank of Scotland was organised like one of these inefficient dictatorships "complete with the suppression of dissent and cult of personality. And look what happened".

An article in The Times from last month shows just how RBS operated:

Prime suspect among the bankers behind the meltdown is Sir Fred Goodwin, former chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland. Goodwin, nicknamed “Fred the Shred” for his brutal cost-cutting, was an autocratic and fearsomely controlling boss. He even set dress rules for fellow executives that included wearing ties with RBS logos. 

At Goodwin’s “morning prayers”, where he delivered decisions and rarely accepted dissent, he pursued an ambitious expansion strategy.

Or you could try Adam Applegarth at Northern Rock. In his The Crunch (a book I reviewed for Liberal Democrat News) Alex Brummer wrote of Adam Applegarth:

He had a reputation as a martinet who was difficult to challenge. 

An insider said: 'He had an iron grip on the company. Any alternative plan or idea was rejected by those close to him on the basis that "Adam wouldn't like it".' There was no feedback. He surrounded himself with 'yes men' and Northern Rock ended up with people in senior positions who were not fit for purpose. 

The company raced on, brushing aside worries about rising interest rates (which might leave its customers unable to pay their monthly mortgage) and a faltering housing market (which could drop them into negative equity). Applegarth rode roughshod over the bank's board of directors, who lacked the confidence or ability to call a halt to this imprudent expansion.

It follows that the macho view of business propagated in popular television programmes like The Apprentice and Dragons' Den is harmful. Liberals should support the establishment of more cooperative forms of organisation - as indeed we used to do.

And maybe this is true of all centralised organisations, not just "macho management". Simon Carr, the Independent's sketchwriter, once said:

It's not that politicians lie, it's that they don't know if they are telling the truth. They perceive the world through statistics that have been processed by collaborators who are more or less "subconsciously influenced" to manufacture the required facts. Everything from the inflation index to waiting lists is derived from data ontologically perverted by the political process.

And that is equally true of top executives in the BBC and the NHS.

Headline of the Day

A victory for the South East in the shape of kentnews.co.uk:

Medway Council benefits officer guilty of benefit fraud

Preposterous Erections

On the way home from work I called in at Quinns bookshop in Market Harborough for a reception to launch Preposterous Erections, the new book by Peter Ashley of Unmitigated England.

I met a Conservative councillor who enjoys this blog and someone who had known the late Barry Summers, who taught me and was later a Liberal and then Lib Dem councillor alongside me, when they were both in the Labour Party in the 1970s.

Preposterous Erections, says the blurb:

brings together sixty uniquely fascinating towers from all corners of England. From the parkland Brizlee Tower in Northumberland to the coastal Doyden Castle in Cornwall, Peter Ashley tells us their stories through his own very individual photographs and his witty and irreverent commentary. 

Although there is an obvious core of eighteenth and nineteenth-century landowner's eccentricities, the more recent past is not forgotten, including the instantly recognisable Post Office tower in London's Fitzrovia and the more retiring Lewis's department store art deco tower in Leicester.

I shall review the book here one day soon. Incidentally, its title was suggested by Wartime Housewife.

Obama, Romney and Big Bird

Thanks to Living on Words Alone and the Radio 4 Today programme this morning.

Traffic in the Magical Mystery Tour

I have always had a slight problem with the Beatles. I can see they are good, but I can't see why they are better than quite a few other groups that were around at the time. It is very like the problem I have with Mozart in the classical world.

Saturday's screening of Magical Mystery Tour was never going to solve my Beatles problem. I wanted to like it, and in many ways it was likeable (helped by the presence of the Bonzos), but it was also a mess. It wasn't helpful that the preceding documentary chose to mirror the film's chaotic structure in a tricksy way rather than explain it.

Even so, I think I shall be buying the DVD, if only for the extras. As reported by the Sacramento Bee, they include a commentary by Paul McCartney. Better than that, they include this among several outtakes:

Traffic – "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" [1:53] - The filming of Traffic acting out their 1967 hit single "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" was commissioned by The Beatles for possible inclusion in Magical Mystery Tour, but was not included in the final edit.

"Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" was the theme song to the coming-of-age film comedy of the same age. You can read about the film and listen to the song elsewhere on this blog.

Ian Fleming interviews Raymond Chandler

This BBC interview by the creator of James Bond of the creator of Philip Marlowe took place in London in 1958. The introduction claims that it is the only known recording of Chandler's voice.

The interview proper does not start until towards the end of part 1 (embedded here), but there are three more parts to enjoy. Namely:

• part 2
• part 3
• part 4

We should not send people to prison for being offensive

From the Guardian yesterday:

A teenager who posted explicit comments and jokes about April Jones on his Facebook page has been jailed for 12 weeks. 

Matthew Woods, 19, from Chorley, Lancashire, made comments about April and Madeleine McCann, the three-year-old who went missing during a family holiday in Portugal in 2007. 

Woods was arrested for his own safety after about 50 people descended on his home. He pleaded guilty at Chorley magistrates court to sending by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive. The chairman of the bench, Bill Hudson, said Woods's comments were so "abhorrent" he deserved the longest sentence the court could hand down.

As John Kampfner says in the same newspaper today:

Direct incitement to violence is one thing. But we cannot and should not sentence people for bad jokes, poor taste and terrible manners. That is an issue for parents, teachers and, most importantly, peer groups.

And peer pressure is something that social media is very good at. Woods' actions were cruel and silly, but I am sure there are plenty of people who would have told him that. Perhaps the courts should have been more worried by the mob that pursued him?

As UK Human Rights Blog explains, Woods was convicted under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003. (Thanks, Labour.) This prohibits a person sending ”by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character“.

In part this law reflects our masters' unease about social media. The first Guardian article I quoted above goes on to repeat some of Woods' jokes. As far as I know, neither of its authors has been arrested. Nor would you be arrested if you told those jokes to a friend in the pub. Online communication is different, it seems.

But there is something more fundamentally wrong with this law. It is that you can never know whether you have broken it or not.

We all tell black jokes from time to time. They appear after every tragedy or disaster - you could even argue they are part of our way of coping with such events. Certainly, the Forces and the emergency services, who have to deal with this sort of thing far more often than the rest of us, are noted for the dark shade of their humour.

When does it become acceptable to repeat such jokes online? I have no idea and no idea of how to find out.

The result is likely to be a cowing of British society. As Heresy Corner said when Paul Chambers was initially convicted in the Twitter joke trial:

What has been on trial is the possibility of humour itself, the right of a freeborn Englishman to be facetious as and when he feels like it, about any subject whatsoever. 

Against that age-old national instinct to make light of adverse circumstances - the spirit that got us through the Blitz - we now find a new and alien notion that there are some things that are beyond joking, that even an obvious joke must be treated seriously. Because it's no laughing matter. Because you can't be too careful. Because any imagined threat, however patently absurd, must be ritually investigated. 

And the person making the joke must bear the responsibility for the time-consuming and costly process of investigation, even though the possibility of such an investigation never crossed his mind, just to drive the message home that You Cannot Make Jokes About Terrorism.

It seems the list of things about which You Cannot Make Jokes is far wider than that.

But, of course, most people who repeat black jokes on Twitter or Facebook will not be prosecuted and imprisoned. It's just that you will never know that you definitely will not be.

It is an example of Calder's Second Law of Politics. And it also reminds me of a passage in Nick Cohen's You Can't Read This Book.

In that passage Cohen imagines a dictator talking to the chief of his secret police:

"You mean I should kill the leaders of the opposition?" 

"I will happily do so, Excellency, if you command it. But that's not the idea. You need to pick on slights and humiliations that are so small that they seem not to be humiliations at all, and punish them with unreasonable ferocity. Random violence creates the necessary conditions for order. A leader of the opposition expects us to arrest him from time to time, but a writer making a veiled criticism of your rule, or a man who grumbles about you in a shop queue, does not. By randomly attacking a few people who speak sedition, we tell many people that the only safe option is to avoid all talk about politics. The aim is to create a state where everyone knows it is best to say nothing, and the bastards shut up."

Six of the Best 284

Stephen's Liberal Journal has some advice for Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who made a fool of himself on the fringes of the Conservative Party Conference today.

"All of this sound familiar? - a well funded group of free market believers taking over a party" Birkdale Focus draws parallels between the Liberal Party history of the 1950s and the Liberal Democrats today. Note the name check Edward Rushworth - William Wallace's father-in law and three times Liberal candidate for Harborough.

Stephen Williams MP (Lib Dem, Bristol West) pays tribute to the Chartists.

Writing on the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog, Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London, looks at the disjunction between Tory preoccupations in Birmingham and the more fundamental challenges the party actually faces.

Female genital mutilation is child abuse and nothing less, says Alan Wardle from the NSPCC on Huffington Post UK.

Learning from my mistakes: an English teacher's blog does not believe learning can always be fun: "I am not sponsoring a Pepsi Zero approach. A sugarless experience. We need lessons to be ‘fun’ at times to hook students in, but it is the spoon of medicine after the fun that is the most important thing as it is challenging, thought-provoking, demanding, effective and occasionally boring."

The Merchant Adventurers' Hall, York

I must stop beating up my younger self, but I passed the sign for this extraordinary building every time I walked from the university campus into York and never thought to look in.

Read more about The Merchant Adventurers' Hall.

Arguments against ending housing benefit for under 25s

After David Cameron floated the idea of ending housing benefit for people aged under 25 this summer, an article on the Guardian website left it more full of holes than a good Swiss cheese.

That article is worth quoting at length:

David Cameron has announced that he wants to abolish housing benefit for 380,000 people under 25. The prime minister's view is simple: if you can't afford the rent, you must live with your parents. The only exception will be for children who are victims of domestic abuse. 

Let us stop and think about this for a moment. An obligation on "children" to live with their parents is an obligation on parents to house their children until they are 25. What penalty does Cameron propose for parents who refuse to take in their 24-year-old child? If a couple separate when their children are in their 20s, which parent is liable to accommodate the children if necessary? 

Cameron needs to explain what will happen to people whose parents refuse to house them. If a parent refuses to house a 15-year-old child, the child is taken into care. They may be placed in a children's home, fostered or put up for adoption. Is Cameron proposing that the state tries to arrange foster care for 23-year-olds? Place them in children's homes? The mind boggles at the thought of social services interviewing people about their application to adopt a 24-year-old. The cost to the state would be immense. 

Cameron also needs to tell us what happens to married people aged under 25. Is he proposing a legal obligation on parents to house their sons-in-law and daughters-in-law as well as their own children? Or is he proposing that any young married couple should be forced to split up if they can't afford the rent, and return to their own parents? It is hard to imagine that the Tory party really wants to destroy marriages in this way. What happens if the young couple have children? Do parents now have an obligation to house not only their children and their children-in-law, but their grandchildren as well?

It's author? Tim Leunig, recently appointed as an adviser to Michael Gove.

Thanks to @patrickjbutler for reminding me of this.

I am worried about Evan Harris

You may recall that Dr Evan Harris, the former Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, recently took part in the Channel Four programme Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial. As part of the programme he took ecstasy in what was presented as a piece of research into the drug's effects.

In today's Daily Telegraph there was a letter from the psychologist Professor Andy Parrott saying that he had taken part in the programme with the proviso that he would be given time to summarise the scientific evidence on the damaging effects of the drug on the human brain. In the event, this time was not given.

Professor Parrott went on to list some of the evidence he would have quoted:

Professor Leslie Iversen ... was correct in noting more than 60 previous studies on the effects of MDMA on brain activity. At Swansea University we have found reduced brain activity in MDMA users now free from drugs. Memory continues to be impaired for months and years afterwards. In very heavy users, “word recall” can be reduced to 50 per cent of normal levels. 

Researchers at Northumbria University have found reduced social intelligence, along with other mental or cognitive deficits. Other groups have found reduced “problem solving” abilities. 

At the University of East London and Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, its recreational use during pregnancy has been found to impair the development of the emergent babies. 

The mood gains of MDMA are short-lived, and followed by a longer period of negative moods – such as irritability, paranoia and depression. Hence the average weekly moods of MDMA users are significantly worse than non-users. 

At Swansea University we have been researching the damaging effects of recreational MDMA on the stress hormone cortisol. This neurohormone is increased by 800 per cent in dance clubbers, and is also markedly raised in abstinent users, helping to explain why recreational users suffer from impaired sleep and can develop clinical sleep apnoea. 

Finally, MDMA has weak hallucinogenic properties and can cause mental confusion. Hence it is unlikely that it could help resolve complex mental health problems.

I find all this interesting, because ecstasy is often presented as a benign drug. The evidence suggests that this is not so, though that does not prove that prohibition is necessarily the right way to go. Certainly, people had no difficulty of getting hold of ecstasy when it was in vogue, even though it was illegal to possess it.

I wrote a news story about this letter at work today. I wanted to use the headline "Parrott: I wish to register a complaint". However, as the good professor is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, I was dissuaded.

Meanwhile, if you see Evan Harris do make sure he is OK.

Free public lectures on psychology in London and Oxford

In recent days I have come across a couple of free public psychology events that may be of interest to a wider audience.


26 October 2012 (1-2 p.m.) - The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

Spooks and spoofs: psychologists and psychical research in the inter-war years
Professor Elizabeth Valentine

Several physicist fellows of the Royal Society were interested in psychical research in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between the wars, William McDougall FRS and other senior academic psychologists became involved with amateur psychical researcher and author Harry Price. They attended séances at his laboratory and were members of his University of London Council for Psychical Investigation.

Why did reputable psychologists and the University of London cooperate with someone of dubious integrity who lacked scientific credentials? One reason for their mutual attraction may have been their common engagement in a delicate balancing act between courting popular appeal and asserting scientific expertise and authority.

Elizabeth Valentine is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London.

This event is free to attend and open to all. No tickets are required. Doors open at 12:30 p.m. and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.


5 December 2012 (6-8 p.m.) - The Examination Schools, High Street, Oxford

The Case Against Neuroleptics: What history and science reveal about the long-term efficacy of antipsychotics for schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders
Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker is a journalist and author who specialises in medicine and science. In America his articles on psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry have won a George Polk Award for Medical Writing, and a National Association of Science Writers' Award for best magazine article. In 1998 he co-wrote a series on abuses in psychiatric research that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

He is the author of four books. His most recent, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, was described in the New Scientist as an “enthralling and frighteningly persuasive book … one whose astonishing intellectual punch is delivered with the gripping vitality of a novel.”

You can read more about Robert Whitaker on his blog for Psychology Today.

This lecture forms part of the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology. It is open to anyone, whether they have registered for the conference of not. You can just turn up on the day, but it would be a great help if you could register your intention to attend in advance.

A Market Harborough Conservative on Boris Johnson

I thought I would post this to give readers an idea of the quality of opposition we Liberal Democrats face here in Market Harborough.

Many thanks to @solarpilchard, whom anyone with an interest
in the town should follow on Twitter at once.

Leicester's Lord Mayor: I'm being pursued for the crimes of another

Last week I blogged about a lawsuit being brought on behalf of eight teenage boys who say they were sexually abused in India. It is being brought following the conviction of Derek Slade for offences against boys in England.

The claims are against the charity Help a Poor Child, Abdul Osman (the Lord Mayor of Leicester) and Derek Sawyer (the former leader of Islington Borough Council).

In that post I quoted a statement by Help a Poor Child, as quoted by the East Anglian Daily Times:

“The charity has never had any involvement in the ownership or running of Anglo-Kutchi Medium School in India. 

“Furthermore, the charity had no role in the appointment of Derek Slade to a tuition position at that school."

The charity's position was endorsed by the Raving Pikey blog, which has been keeping a close eye on the Slade case and its aftermath.

On Thursday the Leicester Mercury had an article about Abdul Osman, quoting his denial of any culpability:

"We raised money but that was it. I did not appoint Slade and I did not run the school. 

"If the acts are proved to have taken place, I condemn them absolutely. 

"I don't know why they are coming after me. I am being pursued for someone else's crimes.

And the Burton Mail tells us that:

Derek Sawyer’s solicitor issued a statement which said Mr Sawyer ‘had no management responsibilities at the school and did not employ Mr Slade’ and that ‘he had no knowledge of any sexual abuse allegations at the relevant time, and obviously he utterly condemns any such behaviour’.

Missing Believed Wiped

A BBC documentary from 2004.

Those with an interest in lost (and found) television programmes will enjoy Wiped News.

In which I am quoted in the Herald

My unsolicited advice to Willie Rennie is quoted (anonymously, damn him) in the Herald by its "Chief Scottish Political Correspondent". I wonder if that is because mentioning the name of my blog would suggest to his readers that I am not central to rows in the Scottish Liberal Democrats?

Still, Calder is a good Scots name and I am very proud of my Scottish ancestry.

The shorter Esther Rantzen

I founded a child abuse charity that received massive publicity and was married to a senior BBC executive, so there was nothing I could do.

Joni Mitchell: The Last Time I Saw Richard

Having explored sorrow and joy in the aftermath of the last general election, maybe it is time to tackle disillusionment?

And this is the best song about disillusionment that I know, from one of the best albums I know.

Norman Baker welcomes rail fares cap

A new report on the Guardian website says:

Kicking off the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, the prime minister said rises in regulated rail fares and London bus and tube tickets would be capped at the RPI rate of inflation plus 1%, rather than the RPI plus 3% formula that had been set out in the 2010 spending review.

Commenting on this decision, the Liberal Democrat transport minister Norman Baker said:

“My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have been making the case for a fair deal for passengers and I’m delighted that the two parties have come together on this. 

“We have been very clear that as soon as the public finances allow, we should try to bring rail fares down and that we should keep the price rises to a minimum in the mean time."

The shorter Janet Street Porter

We all knew the stories about Jimmy Savile, but I was only the editor of a national newspaper so what could I do?

Holy Trinity, Goodramgate

Holy Trinity, Goodramgate, in York is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. As I commented after visiting another of theirs - St Peter's in Northampton:

At least this stops anyone ripping out the pews and singing "Shine, Jesus, Shine", as Lord Bonkers suspects Tim Farron of wanting to do at St Asquith's

Why an atheist like me should be concerned about this is a subject for another day. Anyway, the Trust's page for Holy Trinity says:

Holy Trinity Goodramgate has the air of a hidden treasure. It stands in a small, secluded, leafy churchyard, with the Minster towering behind, tucked away behind Goodramgate - one of York’s busiest shopping streets. To visit, you pass through an 18th-century archway tacked on to buildings that served as artisans’ workshops in the 14th century. 

The church itself is full of character. The floors and arcades are charmingly uneven. Light filters through the windows, illuminating honey-coloured stone. The east window especially has marvellous stained glass that was donated in the early 1470s by the Reverend John Walker, rector of the church. On sunny days, transient gems of coloured light are scattered on the walls, and various Medieval faces stare out from the windows. 

The building dates chiefly from the 15th century, but has features from its foundation in the 12th century right up to the 19th century. The box pews, unique in York, are exceptionally fine, and an interesting collection of monuments and memorials paint a picture of life in this busy city throughout the ages. 

Two boards, with heads shaped like grandfather clocks, record the names of Lord Mayors of the city, including George Hudson, 'The Railway King’, who made York a major railway centre in the 19th century. 

Outdoor benches make the churchyard the perfect place for reflection, offering a welcome retreat from the hectic world outside.

Perhaps I was not in need of time for reflection in those days, but I never visited Holy Trinity while I was a student in York. But I do remember going into the little supermarket that was then housed in the concrete, egg-box parade on the other side of Goodramgate.

Indeed, I spent more time in a couple of days of holiday looking at the city architectural treasures than I did in three years as a student. I have a more egregious example of that to post shortly.

And for all the quaintness of Holy Trinity, the display about its history there tells us that close study of a photograph of the interior from the 19th century reveals that it had an early from of gas lighting.

Six of the Best 283

Missives from Doktorb does not want to see leaders' debates at the next general election: "There’s enough reality television in politics without our leaders turning into contestants on Million Pound Drop. I’m devoted far more than normal people should be towards accountability, democratic renewal and electoral reform, but putting our political leaders into contrived Q&A sessions where Downton Abbey should be is an experiment I don’t fancy repeating."

"Politics Transformed: The High Tech Battle for Your Vote", says Mashable, is an in-depth look at how digital media is affecting elections - from online ad targeting to Internet voting, from political crowdfunding to massive data mining.

Mark Thompson says small rail suppliers should be compensated over the rail contracts fiasco, not just the big boys like Virgin.

"I had been sitting on my fathers knee and the two of us were pulled under the dingy while Lucy had managed to get ashore pretty quickly. Father and I spluttered to the surface and eventually made it ashore where we waited for a couple of hours. A small fishing boat that happened to going back through the gulf picked us up and took us to a landing spot near Barnhill from which we walked home. With no more than a “where have you been?” followed by “we were shipwrecked” the incident was deemed silly. The point now being that it could have been a tragedy; no Orwell, no 1984." On The Orwell Prize website Richard Blair remembers his time with his adoptive father Eric - better known as George Orwell.

A fascinating book review in The Lancet explores the 1918 influenza pandemic.

On his Shropshire Star blog Phil Gillam celebrates Ditherington bus garage in Shrewsbury.

A Lolcat to help you do your job better

It's a while since I have posted a Lolcat, but I have hurried to put that right.

Because science has proved that they help you perform better at work.

John Sell Cotman at the Dulwich Picture Gallery

One of my favourite artists is the early 19th-century watercolourist John Sell Cotman. His paintings are a world away from the muddy palette we associate with the medium.

An exhibition on Cotman in Normandy is being held at the Dulwich Picture Gallery between 10 October 2012 and 13 January 2013. This video tells you about it.

Willie Rennie as Don Corleone

It is a matter of deep regret for me that you have chosen to show me such disrespect in sharing your views with the media without speaking to me first.

Not the sort of letter you expect to receive from the leader of a Liberal party.

But Willie Rennie has written in those terms to five Scottish Liberal Democrats who signed a letter to The Herald newspaper. In it they questioned the Scottish party's decision not to allow Yes Scotland (the pro-independence campaign) to have a stall at its conference later this month.

Nicola Prigg, one of the five to receive it, has the full text of the letter.

She also gives some of the background to the dispute, as does Andrew Page:

I am not entirely sure who made this decision, but if either conference committee or the leadership feels that the party needs protecting from the evil rhetoric of Yes Scotland it demonstrates an insecurity and fear that is not befitting a party of our history and character. 

Personally, I would welcome Yes Scotland attending - as I would Better Together. There is nothing to suggest that we should agree with the aims of an organisation in order to allow it to exhibit at our conference - after all, at Labour conference this week there is a heavy "no to HS2" campaign presence in spite of HS2 being official Labour policy. If Labour can do it, why can't we?

If Labour can do it, why can't we?

I hesitate to step into a Scottish party row, but Andrew's view sounds very sensible to me.

And even if Willie disagrees, to treat opposition as showing him personal "disrespect" leaves him in danger of sounding pompous - or at least like a Mafia padrone. Time to cool it, Willie.

W.H. Auden's birthplace in York

The Lib Dem Conference has come and gone. People are turning their central heating back on. Soon the clocks will be going back.

There's nothing for it: I shall have to start showing you the photographs from my summer holiday.

Please sit down. You will find I have taken the precaution of locking the doors.

And where better to begin on National Poetry Day than the birthplace of W.H. Auden? I passed it on the say from York railway station to my hotel. I knew it was going to be a good holiday.

York Stories (one of two excellent website about the city that I discovered while staying there) points out that Auden lived there for only a year after his birth in 1907.

Imagine York (which is the other) has a photograph of the house (54 Bootham) during World War II, when it has a 'S' sign showing passersby that it has an air-raid shelter.

Headline of the Day

A win for Powys in the shape of the County Times:

Rogue cow causes chaos in Welshpool as police cordon off street

How should Richard III be remembered in Leicester?

Two ideas have emerged in recent days, one of which I can support and one I can't.

First the good news. Leicester's elected mayor Sir Peter Soulsby is talking about opening a museum and visitor centre to mark the discovery of Richard's bones (if they are Richard's bones) in the city.

According to the Leicester Mercury (though it is not clear on what authority) one of the buildings under consideration is the old Alderman Newton school, which stands right next to the Greyfriars site where the bones were found. It is shown above in a photo I took on one of the open days at the dig.

The archaeologist who took us round remarked, perhaps a little fancifully, on the resemblance between the large window in the end wall of the school and the tracery from the monastery they had just dug up. (Window tracery, being hard to reuse, was one of the few bits of that building that had not been carted away centuries ago.) He speculated that the school's Victorian builders may have unearthed it themselves when digging its foundations.

Anyway, the newspaper quotes Sir Peter as saying:

"We do need to do something to tell the story of Richard, the story of Henry Tudor and the story of Bosworth, because they are part of the story of Leicester. 

"Fortunately, there are a number of buildings that could be used for this purpose. I am not yet in a position to say which one it could be. We are exploring possible uses with owners. 

"We have to be aware these are very difficult financial times, but this is a unique opportunity for Leicester. 

"Some modest investment now will be well worth it in the future."

And I agree with all of that.

But Jon Ashworth (Labour MP for Leicester South) got carried away, again in the Mercury, the other day:

if it does turn out to be Richard, we have to keep him in Leicester – after all he has rested here for 500 years. 

I would argue he should be laid to rest at Leicester Cathedral and enjoy a state funeral. 

State funerals in the past have taken place at Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral but wouldn't it be splendid if Leicester hosted what, I think, would be the first state funeral outside of London? Of course other cities are also laying claim to Richard. 

I had to defend Leicester's claim to an unsympathetic audience on BBC Radio York, but, as always, I strongly fought Leicester's corner.

As a graduate of both York and Leicester Universities I have some claim to objectivity here, and I agree that Richard (if it is Richard) should be reburied in Leicester Cathedral.

But a state funeral? So far the dig has been handled with good taste - there have been no pictures of the skeleton issued, for instance - but this idea is danger of taking things over the top.

Richard would have had a funeral when he was buried at Greyfriars. A dignified short service and interment at the Cathedral is all that is required. Let's not turn the thing into a circus.

Lib Dem attack poster seen at Labour Conference in Manchester

Lord Bonkers comments: "They don't like it up them!"

Six of the Best 282

The Extra Bold Blog has the full text of Ed Miliband's speech. Well, sort of.

Talking to Community Care, former Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow calls for the closure of learning disability hospitals and for a wide-ranging review of social care funding to ensure the sector receives sufficient resources in next spending review.

What is the philosophy of the Liberal Democrats? asks Decline of the Logos.

The police unit that employed Mark Kennedy to infiltrate environmental protest groups has been trying to neuter anti-nuclear campaigners, reports Rob Edwards.

A new documentary from BBC Arena is set to unveil the untold story behind one of The Beatles' most fascinating creations. "Arena: Magical Mystery Tour Revisited" will be broadcast on BBC Four on Saturday 6 October at 9.45.p.m. It will feature contributions from Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Fonda, Martin Scorsese, Terry Gilliam and Neil Innes among others. Read more on Mojo.

The novelist Patrick McGrath writes for the Economist's Intelligent Life magazine about growing up in Broadmoor Hospital.

Lawsuit involving a Lord Mayor, and a former council leader, follows headmaster's conviction

Two years ago Derek Slade was sentenced to a total of 21 years in prison for the sexual and physical abuse of boys in his care.

Yesterday the East Anglian Daily Times reported new developments:

Pannone Solicitors in London has been instructed by the Official Solicitor to pursue compensation claims on behalf of eight teenage boys who say they were sexually abused in Gujarat, India. 

The claims are against Derek Sawyer, former leader of Islington Borough Council and former chairman of the London Regional Courts Board, Abdul Osman, the Lord Mayor of Leicester and the Help a Poor Child charity. 

The eight boys allege that they were sexually abused by Slade their headmaster at the Anglo-Kutchi Medium School where they boarded and supposedly received an English education. 

The claim the Official Solicitor is bringing is to obtain compensation from the three defendants because it is the victims’ case that the defendants between them “ran” the school, and employed Slade. 

The claim is brought on the basis that the three defendants owed the boys a duty of care and that meant keeping them safe from harm. It is alleged that this obligation was breached each time the boys were abused by Slade.

The report goes on to quote a statement from Help a Poor Child:

“The charity has never had any involvement in the ownership or running of Anglo-Kutchi Medium School in India. 

“Furthermore, the charity had no role in the appointment of Derek Slade to a tuition position at that school. 

“All material facts were made known to the police prior to the BBC’s first programme about Mr Slade. It was accepted by the police that the charity had not conducted itself in any manner as to merit the slightest criticism. That remains the position to this day notwithstanding unsubstantiated allegations made by Pannone Solicitors in its quest to recover damages and costs in a civil action it is contemplating on behalf of a client.”

It also says that Mr Sawyer and Mr Osman could not be contacted for comment.

Later. This story is also on the BBC News website.

Even later. I have blogged about this case again, giving the responses from Abdul Osman and Derek Sawyer. You can read more in the original press release from the Indian boys' solicitors Pannone.

Trivial Fact of the Day with Andrew Castle and Annie Besant

As this 2007 Daily Mail article reveals, the television presenter and former top-ranked British tennis player Andrew Castle is the great great grandson of Annie Besant.

Wikipedia has more on Annie Besant.

Thanks to @HiddenAberdeen and @openplaques on Twitter.

Trouble at Townsend

Back in 2008, when choosing Downtown by Petula Clark as a Sunday music video, I wrote:

The second reason for choosing it is that it gives me the chance to retail my anecdote about The Day That Petula Clark Phoned Me. 

It must have been about 10 years ago, when I was acting as press officer for the Malcolm Saville Society. The Society was planning a visit to West End Farm at Wheathampstead, because that was where the film Trouble at Townsend, based on a book by Saville and starring a very young Petula Clark, was made in 1946. Thanks to the Society, incidentally, you can now buy a DVD of the film. 

Anyway, before the visit I drafted a release about it for the local papers and decided it would look better with a quote from Petula Clark. So I found an e-mail address for her agent and dropped him a line. 

A couple of weeks later my mobile went at work and a voice said "Hello, this is Petula Clark." 

I can therefore boast that I have told Petula Clark what a great record I think "Downtown" is - surely one of the things everyone should do before they die? It may not have been the most tactful thing to say - her reply was "I have made other records, you know" - but I am glad I did it.

This clip from Trouble at Townsend has now turned up on Youtube. It is not typical of the whole film, which was an adventure story designed to educate city children about how to behave in the country - I have a feeling it even received some government funding. But I am told that, when a bootleg copy was shown at an annual gathering of the Malcolm Saville Society, this scene brought the house down.

You can now buy a legitimate copy of the film from the society - it comes with Treasure at the Mill on the same disc.

Petula Clark, of course, went on to great things. Her young co-star David Lees was never heard of again, but he could have been huge.

The Jimmy Savile revelations will do the BBC a lot of damage

Or so I fear. Because the BBC's response to this growing scandal has to date been extraordinarily cack-handed.

Take its statement, as quoted on the Guardian website this morning:

"The BBC has conducted extensive searches of its files to establish whether there is any record of misconduct or allegations of misconduct by Sir Jimmy Savile during his time at the BBC. No such evidence has been found."

I can think of only two explanations for these piece of nonsense.

The first - and I wouldn't entirely rule this out - is that the BBC has a recruitment strategy that manages to select the only people in the country too dense to have heard the rumours about Jimmy Savile and underage girls.

The second is that the BBC is lying through its teeth.

Now, again on the Guardian site, come suggestions that the BBC has prevented its own journalists from investigating the allegations against Savile:

Newsnight journalists investigating Sir Jimmy Savile were told in late 2011 by the BBC programme's editor they could not broadcast what they thought was a nearly complete film about the late Jim'll Fix It presenter's alleged abuse of young women. 

The intervention by Peter Rippon, Newsnight's editor, prompted a furious row behind the scenes and led journalists connected with the programme to ask questions in private about what more senior BBC bosses knew about the film and the decision to drop it. 

It is understood that the investigating team had conducted interviews with about 10 people who either say they had been abused by the famous BBC presenter – or were corroborating witnesses. Some were on the record; others were anonymised because those involved were reluctant to give their names.

The parallel with the Catholic Church, another great institution that long denied that its members abused  children, are uncomfortable for anyone who cares about the BBC.

Certainly, we should all be furious at the suffering of Savile's victims. Here is Julie Bindel in the Guardian yesterday:

One spoke of how she was raped by Savile, but that she blamed herself because "no one blamed him." Another was locked in an isolation unit for days at her approved school when she made allegations about Savile in the 1970s, because she was assumed to be lying, as are so many abused children both then and now.

The BBC's senior management are paid colossal salaries. It is time for them to defy that selection process and begin to earn them by responding to Savile's crimes with the seriousness they demand.

Eric Hobsbawm does not deserve the praise he has received today

My Twitter feed today has been full of praise for Eric Hobsbawm, which (given the impeccably Sound people I follow) troubles me. I have not read enough enough of Hobwbawm's work to judge him as an historian, but I know enough about him to judge his politics. And they stink.

My introduction to Hobsbawm was through an exchange he had with Michael Ignatieff on television in 1994. I have often seen it quoted, but today Heresy Corner posted the whole of the relevant passage:

Ignatieff: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist? 

Hobsbawm: ...'Probably not.' 

Ignatieff: Why? 

Hobsbawm: Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing... The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I'm looking back at it now and I'm saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I'm not sure. 

Ignatieff: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified? 

Hobsbawm: Yes.

But Hobsbawm's delinquency goes back long before that. As Ian Buruma wrote in 2002:

In his latest book, a memoir entitled Interesting Times: A Twentieth-Century Life, Hobsbawm tries to explain why. Why he fell in line, in 1939, when Nazi Germany signed a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union; or during the show trials in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and even after 1956, year of the Hungarian uprising.

And an article in The Free Library from the Foundation for Cultural Review provides more of the background. In 1940, with Raymond Williams, Hobsbawm published a defence of the Soviet invasion of Finland. And on 9 November 1956 he had a letter published in Daily Worker defending the Soviet Soviet invasion of Hungary:

"While approving, with a heavy heart, of what is now happening in Hungary, we should therefore also say frankly that we think the USSR should withdraw its troops from the country as soon as this is possible."

And the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968? Oliver Kamm covers that:

Moving to more recent panegyric, Hobsbawm remarks in On History (1997): “Fragile as the communist systems turned out to be, only a limited, even nominal, use of armed coercion was necessary to maintain them from 1957 until 1989.” He means the 27 Soviet divisions, 6,300 tanks and 400,000 troops sent into Czechoslovakia in 1968 to snuff out political reform.

I do not blame Hobsbawm for being part of the generation that he was. I can quite see how the Soviet Union might have seemed a bulwark against Nazism. (Equally, I have sympathy for those in the Baltic states who saw the Nazi Germany as their deliverance from Stalin's Russia.)

But to support Soviet Communism after 1956 and even 1968 was unforgivable. It was not intellectual consistency but a form of vanity - a refusal to admit that he had been wrong.

For that reason I cannot join the chorus of praise for Eric Hobsbawm.

Time to freshen up the Blog of the Year awards

Michael Foot once accused David Steel of having "passed from rising hope to elder statesman without any intervening period whatsoever".

That pretty much describes my relationship with the Liberal Democrat Voice’s Blog of the Year awards. I was around to question the idea when the awards first appeared – but then I have been blogging so long I was around to welcome the founding of Liberal Democrat Voice.

Then, in the early years of the awards, I was regularly shortlisted for Blog of the Year. More recently I have acted as a judge and even been described as “the Lib Dem blogfather”. But I have never won anything.

So I think I am as qualified as anyone to pass the judgement on the awards. And my conclusion is that they are in need of freshening up.

One reason is that the awards are not the event they used to be. Insofar as this means there is not the self-promotion and lobbying there was even two years ago, it is welcome. But it also reflects a decline in the volume and vitality of blogging in the party.

In his speech at this year’s ceremony Stephen Tall gave the figures:

even to talk about blogs now seems almost retro with generating the buzz today. Blogging is bigger than it was all those years ago, but among Lib Dems it’s on the decline. At its peak there were 250+ Lib Dem bloggers. Today there are around 200 active Lib Dem blogs curated at Ryan Cullen’s aggregator.

As Stephen went on to say, technology has moved on. Blogging seems so 2000s and the cutting edge online is probably to be found on Twitter and Facebook. Certainly, ‘The Andrew Reeves award for Best use of social media/e-campaigning by a Liberal Democrat’ has in many ways been the most significant one for a couple of years now.

But the awards have not helped themselves either. I was going to say the categories are the same every year, but it is worse than that. This year, looking through the nominations to confirm that, as is now traditional, I had not been nominated in any categories, I realised that there was only one category that I could have been nominated in. If you are not a councillor or new to blogging, then the Blog of the Year award itself is your only hope.

Because the award for the best posting of the year has disappeared. This was, in many ways, this was the best category of all – in particular because every blogger had some hope of winning it. And also because, until a couple of years ago (which appears to be a developing theme in this post), Alex Wilcock encouraged members of an email to which most prominent Lib Dem bloggers were subscribed to nominate their best posts of the year.

I urge the Lib Dem Voice editors to bring this category back and use their site to encourage all of our bloggers to nominate their favourite posts. This would allow even the newest bloggers to have some involvement with the awards and make it closer to what it should be – a carnival of Liberal Democrat blogging.

It is true, however, that the categories do tend to remain the same from year to year, and that there is a good case for bringing in some new ones to raise interest and widen the field of bloggers with some hope of winning an award. Off the top of my head I would suggest two categories that we had in the first couple of years of the awards – the most humorous Liberal Democrat blog and the best designed Liberal Democrat blog.

There must also be something to be said for having awards for the Lib Dem Facebook page of the year and the Lib Dem tweeter of the year.

But maybe the real problem is with the Blog of the Year category itself. Long ago I identified a curse associated with the Blog of the Year awards whereby winners tended to stop blogging shortly afterwards. And that remains the case today, with most former winners having thrown in their lot with Liberal Democrat Voice, given up blogging or given up on the Liberal Democrats.

Paul Walter explained last year:

There is a reason for this. It actually takes one hell of a lot of hard work and concentration to maintain an active political blog to a sufficient level to get onto the shortlist, let alone win it.

This is right, as is Tim Ireland whom Paul went on to quote: “You cannot ride the wave forever. Eventually something has to give.”

However, I wonder if Paul does not take the fact that the Lib Dems’ leading blog award has a tendency to drive people out of blogging a little too lightly.

Can we do anything about this? I think we can.

What grumblings there have been about the Blog of the Year awards have tended to suggest there is a clique who decide them and win them. I don’t know about the shortlisting procedure, but having acted as a judge I would suggest the problem is almost the reverse of this. It is not that there is a clique: it is that judges have no contact and no idea of the criteria to use in their decision.

How do we balance quality of writing against design, promoting the Liberal Democrats and original idea?s How do we balance engaging with the wider blogosphere with technical innovation and a sense of humour? When you are a judge, there is nothing to tell you.

It is well not to generalise about an award that can be won by someone writing about macroeconomics while pretending to be a stuffed toy, but I suspect the result of this lack of direction is that judges tend to favour blogs whose posts are most like comment articles in broadsheet newspapers. This is, after all, what they have grown up thinking good political writing looks like.

But is this desirable? As Paul emphasises, writing like a professional journalist while holding down a full-time job doing something else is a draining activity that few can keep up for very long. I admire those who can do this, and certainly don’t want to belittle previous winners, but it’s no wonder that the party’s blogging award come with a curse attached.

So I would urge Lib Dem Voice to be a little more open about what they are looking for in their Blog of the Year award and think about how they can encourage blogs that don’t mimic the mainstream media.

Add to this the return of the best posting category and some new, varied categories to widen the pool of potential winners, and Lib Dem Voice will have gone a long way to fulfilling its ambition of making the awards

“a fun way to celebrate the talent in the Lib Dem blogosphere, whilst introducing you to some blogs you might not have read before.”

At present I am not convinced they do that as well as they should.