Sarah Teather goes one better

I have been known to poke gentle fun at the tendency of Liberal Democrat education spokesmen to complain about "a two-tier service". (Try Wednesday, Monday, Sunday or Tuesday.)

Tonight I can reveal a worrying development: Sarah Teather has sighted the first three-tier service.

Church conversion

We all know that Britain is becoming a more secular society. Churches are being converted into nightclubs.

But not in Shropshire:

Nightclub converted into church

For some reason this reminds me of Cows - a situation comedy written by Eddie Izzard. The cows in question lived in a barn conversion. It used to be a cottage and they converted it into a barn.

Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2006

The BBC reports:

Iain Hollingshead has won the Literary Review's Bad Sex in Fiction Award 2006 with his first novel Twenty Something.

Fisking Central has an extract.

White House aide "ashamed" at treatment of Blair

Powerful stuff on the front page of tomorrow's Times:

In a devastating verdict on Tony Blair’s decision to back war in Iraq and his “totally one-sided” relationship with President Bush, a senior US State Department official has said that Britain’s role as a bridge between America and Europe is now “disappearing before our eyes”.

Kendall Myers, a State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business”.

He added that he felt “a little ashamed” at Mr Bush’s treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

The story quotes Ming Campbell:

“These remarks reflect a real sense of distaste among thinking Americans for Mr Blair’s apparent slavish support for President Bush . . . The special relationship needs to be rebalanced, rethought and renewed.”

Look too for Denis MacShane making a fool of himself.

Arthur Marshall and Monty Python

There is nothing new under the sun, not least in comedy. I once had a letter published in the London Review of Books pointing out that Christopher Isherwood had exploited the comic potential of the name "Darling" long before the writers of Blackadder.

I thought I had discovered a similar example the other day. In his Whimpering in the Rhododendrons - a lighthearted social history of the English prep school - Arthur Marshall recalled that:

Another headmaster had a rich voice with a trace of a Yorkshire accent and was unable to pronounce the letter "r", the boys naturally looking keenly forward to the Passiontide lesson in Chapel, "... and Bawabbas was a wobber".

I wondered if the Monty Python people had read Marshall's book before writing The Life of Brian. Probably not, given that the film came out in 1979 and the book was published in 1982. So it is just a coincidence.

Another headmaster Marshall mentions was in the habit of beginning prayers with: "Dear Lord, doubtless Thou knowest that in the Daily Telegraph this morning..."

Who's the tosser now?

The Sun puts it nicely:

In the same month the Tories launched a website to try and teach us about debt problems, figures revealed today show the party owed £35million in unpaid loans.

The Conservatives have the biggest debt burden of a major political party, according to statastics released by the Electoral Commission, which is monitoring how many loans are paid.

It just goes to show that inside all of us lives a conniving, dirty little parasite, the tosser within. He wants you to spend, spend and keep spending until you’re in terrible debt.

Graham Roope

Graham Roope, the former England batsman and notable slip fielder, has died at the age of 60.

When I was young, he was one those batsman (Peter Parfitt, John Hampshire, Frank Hayes) who would regularly be picked for a couple of tests and then be dropped, only to reappear again a couple of series later.

A few years after that, Matthew Engel suggested that there were three rules for new selectors:

• Never interrupt the Chairman of Selectors;
• Don't have more than two glasses of port after dinner;
• If in doubt, drop Randall.

Roope suffered from a similar attitude on the part of the selectors.

Cricinfo, as ever, has the best obituary. It records that he was batting at the other end when Geoff Boycott completed his 100th century during the Headlingley test in 1977. What it doesn't say (and the story in confirmed by the Craven Herald) is that he was also batting with John Edrich when the Surrey opener reached the same landmark that season.

Uncanny, wasn't it?

Save Our Waterways

As well as the Liberal Democrats' Canal Cuts Are Nuts campaign, there is a Save Our Waterways site. Both exist to protest against the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs's cuts in funding for the inland waterways.

The real political issue behind this, as I have argued before, is the way that money for "rural affairs" goes overwhelmingly to subsidise the farming interest, even though the rural economy takes in much more than just agriculture.

Narrow boat wars

Britain's canal users took to the water yesterday to protest about cuts in the funding of British Waterways. The navigation was blocked by boats in many places, including Foxton in Leicestershire and Market Drayton in Shropshire.

Chris Huhne and the Liberal Democrats have launched their own campaign on the subject: Canal Cuts Are Nuts.

Photograph borrowed from the Malcolm Saville Society site. (Well, I was on that walk.)

Nick Clegg: Why we need a Freedom Bill

The Liberal Democrat shadow home secretary has an article on the eGov monitor site:

The current Labour government is addicted to legislating; this has led to the curtailment of freedoms, confusion in business and crisis in our public services. In less than a decade in power the Blair government has clocked up over 50 Home Office Bills and created more than three thousand new criminal offences. They have added over a hundred thousand new pages of legislation to the statue book; the equivalent of more than two hundred copies of ‘War and Peace.’

A cricket-loving cat

Matthew Turner points us to the Virtual Stoa and Chris Brooke's cat Enkidu.

Who is helping Alan Johnson's campaign?

The Daily thinks it knows.

Labour disarray in Rochdale

Interesting news from a seat the Lib Dems won from Labour at the last election.

LabourHome reports:

Labour's parliamentary selection process in Rochdale is in disarray. The constituency party's general committee was due to draw up shortlist last Saturday (November 18). However, things came to a halt when the local party passed a motion of no confidence in the selection process.

Local members were unhappy about the number of people allowed on the shortlist. It had been understood this would consist of six names. However, regional Labour Party officials ruled that, as only two women had applied, there should be a shortlist of five: two women and three men.

Local members were concerned that the shortlist was deliberately being manipulated in order to exclude Afzal Khan, a Manchester councillor, who had received the highest number of nominations.

English footballers' nicknames

My theory is that the historic underachievement of the England football team is inextricably linked to the poor quality of our footballers’ nicknames.

So writes Duleep Allirajah on Spiked. Hear him out:

It’s just as well Ferenc Puskás defected to Spain rather than England, otherwise he’d have ended up being called Fezza.

David Cameron's great-great-great-great-great-granddad

As Britannia.com tells it:

William succeeded his brother, George IV, and was welcomed with open arms by the British public, who had grown weary of the excesses of the fourth George. William possessed an unassuming character, exemplary private life and disdain for pomp and ceremony. Court life became somewhat lackluster, adding to the generally low opinion that had formed concerning the monarchy. William did little to counteract such feelings, but never generated the embarrassment and scandal of his Hanoverian predecessors.

Information on Cameron's descent from the Sailor King here.

Tories are tossers says Vince Cable

Go, Vince, go:

"This new Conservatives web site is an insult to hard working people who through rising house prices, and pressure on family budgets have no alternative but to borrow.

"It is also an attack on almost all British students who are being forced into debt by top-up and tuition fees, as well as living costs.

"This is the kind of insensitive crass nonsense one might expect from a party led by rich young men, who have never had to balance a budget in their lives.

"To describe people in debt as tossers shows just how out of touch the Tory party still is.

"Given that the Conservatives themselves are in £26m of debt, and that the last Conservative Government were responsible for the highest level of repossessions on record, as well as plunging thousands of families into negative equity, maybe they should get their own house in order before criticising others.

Editor's note: David Cameron is the great-great-great-great-great-grandson of William IV (from the Scotsman via Recess Monkey).

Assembled with spare parts from other politicians

It's Friday, so it must be time for my House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

Centrist compulsion

Somehow the different parts of Ruth Kelly do not fit together. The deep voice and the urchin haircut. Her humble background and the expensive private schools she attended - Millfield’s prep school and Westminster. Her rapid rise to cabinet rank while having four children. She is a minister assembled with spare parts from other politicians.

An Australian heckler once called out to the England spinner: “Lend us your brain, Tufnell, I’m building an idiot.” On Monday, opening that day’s debate on the Queen’s speech. Kelly had been given the brain of the most uncritical Labour loyalist. She unfolded a tale of how, in 1997, the government had inherited a country mired in misery. Today, we are all basking on the sunlit uplands of prosperity and peerless public services.

Kelly’s portfolio - ‘Communities and local government’ - is also made up of parings from other ministers’ responsibilities. Which is why the ensuing discussion ranged so widely. Joan Ruddock talked about Palestine: Charles Hendry talked about young offenders. Andrew Smith was concerned about unitary local government and climate change: Elliot Morley was concerned about reusable nappies.

For the Liberal Democrats, Andrew Stunell called for a revival of local democracy: “Public participation in elections is at its lowest level ever. The scope for independence for local councils to meet the needs of their communities has been more restricted by this government than by any previous government.” Andrew’s remedies for this were to return the national business rate to the control of local councils and also the “huge sums of money being spent by quangos in each local authority area”.

Ruth Kelly’s approach was very different. Talking about the need to isolate Mulsim extremists, she said: “It is … important that we build up the government office network and work with local authorities.” This look forward to a growth in quangos - a shadow local government run from Whitehall. At best, elected local councillors would be offered the change to work with this government apparatus.

This urge to centralise should not be a surprise coming from New Labour. Last week, Beverley Hughes, the children's minister, suggested parents would be taught nursery rhymes by the new ‘national parenting academy’.

Unlike Ruth Kelly, Labour policy fits together only too well.

Friends of Statewatch

The excellent Statewatch site wants you to be its friend:

Your support is crucial. By becoming a Friend of Statewatch and donating just £10 a month or more you can support future monitoring of the state and civil liberties. As a Friend of Statewatch you will receive all Statewatch publications (the quarterly bulletin, planned yearbook and research findings) as well as access to Statewatch's subscriber websites (SEMDOC and the Statewatch database).

"But what is Statewatch?" I hear you ask:

Statewatch is not a “lobby group”, it is an independent research and education trust operated by a registered charity. Statewatch is not aligned to any political party or political agenda, it is dedicated to the preservation of civil liberties and democratic standards in Europe.

Polly puts the Tories off

Not everyone in the Conservative Party wants to see its philosophy bought in from La Toynbee. British Politics has the quotes.

The sty's the limit

The BBC reports:

Norfolk MP Richard Bacon has called for pig farmers to get a bigger role in providing school meals.