King's Lynn to Hunstanton in 1968

John Betjeman travelled on this line in 1962.

This colour footage of it was shot six years later - a year before it closed.

Click on the picture to view it on the BFI site.

Did the rise of the SNP really spook Lib Dem voters in England?

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Last July I began a post like this:

A myth is growing up about the Liberal Democrat debacle at the last general election. It holds that we lost almost all of our seats because the Conservatives ruthlessly targeted them and won over former Liberal Democrat voters. 

So they did, but there is little sign that our lost voters went to the Conservatives instead.

My assurance was based on my reading of an article by Seth Thévoz and Lewis Baston on the Social Liberal Forum site.

Here are a couple of the paragraphs I quoted back in July:

The Conservative-facing seats showed a remarkably consistent pattern; the main factor at play was Lib Dem collapse rather than Conservative recovery. In each of the 27 seats lost to the Conservatives, the collapse in Lib Dem votes was sizably larger than any increase in Tory votes, by a factor of anything up to 29.

And:

This means that although the Lib Dem position in many Tory-facing seats is dire following a collapse of the party’s vote, the Conservative position is not necessarily ‘safe’ or stable; the Conservatives have won many of these seats on relatively small popular votes, and there still exists in these constituencies a reasonably large non-Conservative vote which could potentially be mobilised around a clear anti-Conservative candidate with a more appealing pitch than that of the 2015 Lib Dem campaign. 

Nor is the Conservative vote appreciably growing much in such areas. In seats like Lewes, Portsmouth South, St Ives, Sutton and Cheam, and Torbay, the increase in Conservative votes was negligible, and Lib Dem defeat can be laid down entirely to so much of the Lib Dem vote having vanished.

I thought of this article when I read the review of David Laws' new book Coalition that Nick Thornsby has written for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Or, to be more accurate, when I read the comments on that review.

In one of them Nick himself says:

The conclusion he [Laws] comes to is that the coalition was probably worst for the party in terms of 2015 results, but that whatever route we took was always going to result in a fairly significant loss of seats, either in a later election in 2010, or in 2014/5. 

The particularly big factor in that is Scotland, and the SNP’s rise there would almost certainly been as drastic whatever we did, which had the double-edged effect of denying us seats in Scotland and scaring our voters in the south-west into voting Tory.

In reply Glenn says:

The Lib Dem vote was not scared by the SNP or Miliband or The Greens or frankly even UKIP. Many more former Lib Dem voters voted for these parties than for the Conservatives. The vote simply split enough in enough seats to give Cameron an edge. This is a government formed on a small majority, not a landslide victory or masses of popular support.

And, Adrian Sanders - the defeated Liberal Democrat MP in Torbay - agrees:

“our voters in the south-west into voting Tory.” No, no, no, this is not what happened. Firstly there was no great swing to the Tories – 500 votes in my seat while I lost over 7,000. Our voters mostly stayed loyal. It was tactical voters who deserted us for Ukip, Labour and the Greens, not the Tories.

This debate matters, because our analysis of what went wrong at the last election must be central to our attempts at recovery.

Are we trying to soothe people who voted Conservative last time and praying for something to change in Scotland? Or are we trying to reassemble the coalition of anti-Conservatives that returned us in these seats between 1997 and 2015?

My feeling, backed by the original article by Thévoz and Baston, is that we should adopt the latter approach,

Roy C: Shotgun Wedding

This reached number 6 in the UK singles chart in 1966 and number 8 when it was re-released in 1972 (which is when I remember it from).

In view of the turn 2016 has taken, I better point out that Roy C - Roy Charles Hammond - is still with us.

Read more about his career on his own website.

Leicester Oral History Trail 4: Leicester Market

The fourth of these videos cover Leicester Market - described these days as "the largest covered market in Europe," though I don't know who measures such things.

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Andrew Hickey says the Liberal Democrats should support Basic Income: "The person receiving the benefits will always know better than some Whitehall bureaucrat who earns a hundred grand a year what they most need to spend money on at any given time."

Internet voting is a terrible idea. In a video, Andrew Appel explains why.

"Having first placed Eliot in his historical and literary context, then having pointed to what is unique in him, Obama ends by showing how he speaks to any individual reader who pauses to listen. This is what the finest literary criticism has always done." Edward Mendelson discovers Barack Obama the literary critic.

Railway Maniac uncovers Ilkeston's forgotten history as a spa town.

"The last time I had seen Panesar at Wantage Road the club shop was fully stocked with Monty merchandise – “I Love Monty” and “Sikh of Tweak” t-shirts, the ill-advised “Monty’s Cricket Madness” DVDs (a compilation of cock-ups, whose cover made him look as though he had just been pulled up for driving a minicab uninsured), those masks." Backwatersman sees Monty Panesar return to play for Northamptonshire.

Curious British Telly on a forgotten (by me at least) comedy starring Rik Mayall - Believe Nothing.

Could Willie Rennie win North East Fife?

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Early this week the Telegraph looked at the prospects for the Holyrood election in North East Fife, which is the seat Ming Campbell used to represent at Westminster.

The Liberal Democrat candidate is Willie Rennie:

Rennie is not prepared to predict victory in the constituency (he is more likely to get in as a regional list MSP), but says the fact the Lib Dems came second in the general election last year by around 4,000 votes is “not insurmountable”. 

He adds: “It’s the right combination of a good team, the right message and the right circumstances locally plus the best candidate you could possibly ever get.” This last comment is accompanied by a trademark chuckle. 

“Because I am from that part of the world I understand the area, I have got a good network of councillors, a good activist base. I would like to do it, but it’s up to the voters and I never take anything for granted.”

St George, the dragon and Danger Mouse in Leicester

Like many other cities, Leicester is keen to develop St George's Day as a folk festival. Quite what it should contain is still up for grabs, but there seems to be a consensus that morris dancers are a central feature.

Today Danger Mouse put in an appearance. I am sure he played a part in the legend of St George, but I forget whether he fought on the saint's side or that of the dragon.

Lost lines: Addiscombe and Woodside to Selsdon

Another video from Londonist. This time there are plenty of interesting remains to seek out.

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"This tells you everything you need to know about the desperate, empty campaign being run by a gang of politicians who’ve stepped beyond mere incompetence, and have ended up somewhere truly nasty, surrounded by supporters who love every bit of it." Rupert Myers is damning about the Brexiteers' assault on President Obama.

Monroe Palmer outlines the improvement to the government's Housing Bill that Liberal Democrat peers have battled to make.

"The premise of Russian foreign policy to the West is that the rule of law is one big joke; the practice of Russian foreign policy is to find prominent people in the West who agree. Moscow has found such people throughout Europe; until the rise of Trump the idea of an American who would volunteer to be a Kremlin client would have seemed unlikely." Timothy Snyder dissects Donald Trump's admiration for Vladimir Putin.

It is good to see Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep End getting a mention alongside the usual suspects in this Steve Rose survey of films about Britain from the 1960s.

Jessica Fielding brings us the Yorkshire Television schedule for Monday 19 April 1971 - Richard Beckinsale, Austin Mitchell and Ena Sharples in unexpected colour.

The defunct Glasgow Central Railway line left behind a trail of stations, tunnels, shafts, cuttings and bridges throughout the west of the city. Alex Cochrane explores its remains.

Denys Watkins-Pitchford ("BB") remembered

There is a pleasant programme about the Northamptonshire writer and illustrator Denys Watkins-Pitchford on the BBC iPlayer at the moment.

The photo above shows his birthplace, Lamport Rectory, and I seem to remember seeing him about Market Harborough in the 1980s.

Deny Watkins-Pitchord also got a mention in my Masters dissertation on Richard Jefferies as one of the many later writers for children who used Bevis as a touchstone.

Spring in a Midland town

Michael Crick and Andrew Neil on Conservative election expenses

"Something has to be done by the beginning of June" @MichaelLCrick tells @afneil on possible #battlebus prosecutions https://t.co/qmwyu9R6Kz

— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) April 21, 2016

Following the new revelations on Channel 4 News last night, Michael Crick appeared on today's Daily Politics.

Undeclared Conservative spending in Liberal Democrat seats

This Michael Crick report, giving the latest revelations in the growing scandal over Conservative spending at the last election, was broadcast by Channel 4 News earlier this evening.

Read more on the Channel 4 website.

Stewart Lee gives a talk on comedy and writing

Stewart Lee discusses the fantasy that stand-up comedy is spontaneous rather than written, and describes the evolution of stand-up over the last few decades.

His talk, given at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, takes in a wide range of subjects from the first app he ever came across to a discussion of the value of culture in society.

MP defends Prime Minister David Cameron after ‘rough sex’ joke

The Horncastle News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Great Central Railway - Nottingham

As I blogged a couple of months ago:

At present the Great Central Railway - Nottingham is a bit of a mystery to those of us in Leicestershire. Rather like the Eastern Roman Empire.

To help dispel that mystery, here is a video shot on that line.

It will be a great day when the bridge over the Midland main line is reinstated at Loughborough and the two halves of the line are joined.

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Vinous Ali has visited the refugee camps of Northern Greece with Tim Farron.

The House of Lords by-election to replace Eric Avebury is ludicrous and should be boycotted, say John Lubbock and Seth Thévoz.

"There will be no incumbents, and few of the ex-MEPs are expected to run ... So, there is every possibility that new names may emerge and end up as Liberal Democrat MEPs." Mark Valladares says the forthcoming selections for Liberal Democrat Euro candidates will be the most open yet.

Kyra Hanson on guerrilla gardening and the battle against concrete paving and private development in London.

"Verification and fact-checking are regularly falling prey to the pressure to bring in the numbers, and if the only result of being caught out is another chance to bring in the clicks, that looks unlikely to change." Kevin Rawlinson on the new plague of fake news stories.

Flickering Lamps visits Brompton Cemetery and returns with tales of soldiers and adventurers - and rumours of a time machine.

Leicester Oral History Trail 3: Simpkin & James

Simpkin & James, a grocers rather than a department store, closed in 1971. There were a number of branches around the county, including Oadby and Stoneygate. They closed the same year.

You can read more about Simpkin & James in an old number of the Leicestershire Historian.

Leicester's Mayor sacks the man supposed to scrutinise him - again

The Leicester Mercury reports:

A number of Labour councillors who have clashed with Leicester mayor Sir Peter Soulsby have lost key posts within the city council's ruling Labour group. 

The party has held its annual general meeting and elections for a series of positions this week including those heading committees that scrutinise the policies of Sir Peter and his team of assistant mayors. 

Former city council leader Ross Willmott is one of the casualties.

This story has a familiar ring. Sure enough, when searching the archives of this blog I find that much the same thing happened in 2012.

So let me repeat what I wrote then:

And who did the ousting? Step forward the dominant figure in the Leicester Labour Party, Sir Peter Soulsby. 

If an elected mayor can remove the chair of the committee meant to keep an eye on him, then the mayoral system become farcical. 

The enjoyable personal animosity between Willmott and Soulsby has been just about the only thing keeping democracy alive in a city with a Labour elected Mayor and 52 out of 54 Labour councillors. As a Labour insider quoted by the Mercury says: 

"Ross has been a thorn in the side of the city's leadership for the past year. His efforts were partly fuelled by their mutual dislike and the fact that Ross really wanted the mayor's job. Nonetheless, his efforts were good for democracy." 

Quite. And his removal is bad for democracy. 

As I have long argued, the situation in Leicester shows that if we are to have elected city mayors then the councils must be elected by a proportional system to prevented their being dominated by the mayor's own party. 

At the very least councils must be barred from holding the mayoral and all-out elections at the same time, as happened in Leicester last May.

The last time I made this argument, Sir Peter Soulsby's deputy told me on Twitter that is was absurd even to think of changing the electoral system.

But I stand by what I wrote in 2012.

Dayflower: Heart-shaped Tambourines

Dayflower, says an old article on Leicestershire Press, describe their music as "honey-drenched pop melodies over a collage of fuzzed-up synths, lo-fi beats, and jangly guitars".