Funeral held at Leicestershire school while lessons in progress

There has been a lot of clamour against church schools in Lib Dem circles - see the recent discussion on Lib Dem Voice in particular.

I am not usually one to worry about such schools unduly. The idea that the average Church of England primary school is engaged in a dangerous programme of religious indoctrination seems daft to me. And I am inclined to think that critics of church schools should ask themselves why they are often so much more popular than the council-run alternatives.

All that said, this story from today's Leicester Mercury strikes me as barking mad:

A head teacher today defended a decision to hold a funeral in her school while children were in lessons.

A service at the Samworth Enterprise Academy on Friday is believed to be the first time a funeral in England has been held in a school.

Some parents said it was upsetting for children to see the funeral while others said they believed it was "undignified" for the grieving family.

However, principal Pat Dubas said bosses at the Saffron Lane academy had decided to incorporate a fully-functioning Anglican church in the school building and that meant it could not "pick and choose" which services to offer.

The church and school share the main entrance but a door allows access to St Christopher's without visitors entering the school reception.

Nigel Smith, whose nine-year-old son, Ashley, attends the school, and who is related to the deceased's family, said: "Funerals do not have a place in schools, it's disgusting.

"We knew the church was there when the school was built but we thought it would be for educational purposes ..."

The academy, which is backed by the Church of England and Leicester businessman David Samworth, opened in September and St Christopher's Parish Church relocated to a section of the building. The academy takes pupils from three to 12 years and will eventually include 16-year-olds, with the roll set to reach 1,050 pupils by 2011.

The Samworth Enterprise Academy is not a church school in the conventional. but one of the government's new academies. And these do tend to attract Evangelical Christian businessmen - a breed I always find rather creepy. What the Church of England thinks it is doing getting involved in such a set up, I cannot begin to understand.

But do think carefully before you call for the the disestablishment of the C of E. It is the only thing that keeps the happy clappy brigade in check. America has no established church, but religion is infinitely more influential there than here.

Nick Clegg changes his position

Tomorrow Nick Clegg makes his debut as Lib Dem leader at prime minister's questions. All our good wishes go with him, even if the media will give the occasion far more prominence than it really deserves.

Adam Boulton reveals that Nick has a plan to help him come over better on television:

the Lib Dem leader ... lacks a stature-building dispatch box to lean on. In fact a tall man (which Clegg is) can look somewhat lonely looming over his colleagues as he stands next to the gangway.

The Clegg camp have a cunning plan to make their man look more loved. Instead of sitting at the end of the front bench, he will sit 3 places in. That way when he stands he'll be surrounded by supportive MPs. The technical term for this is "doughnutting".

Peter Hain still in breach of political donation rules

George Parker writes in the Financial Times:

Peter Hain, the minister in charge of Whitehall’s biggest budget, is still in breach of the rules on political donations, five weeks after he admitted failing to declare fully who backed his bid for Labour’s deputy leadership.

More than six months after his campaign ended, Mr Hain has yet to give a full statement on who funded his run to be Labour’s number two. He should have made the declaration within 30 days of accepting a cheque.

Lib Dems up to 19 per cent in new Times poll

That's more like it. The first Populus poll for The Times in 2008 has just been published:

The poll, undertaken over the weekend, shows that the election of Nick Clegg as Liberal Democrat leader three weeks ago has given his party a three point boost to 19 per cent, all at the expense of the Tories, down three points to 37 per cent. Labour has remained almost unchanged, up a point at 33 per cent.

Later: See Peter Riddell's analysis too:

Despite the rise in Lib Dem support, the key finding for Mr Clegg is that about two fifths of voters do not yet know enough about him to take a clear view (compared with only 9 per cent for Mr Cameron and 5 per cent for Mr Brown). That is why not too much should be read into his initial leader index of 4.40, fractionally above the last one for Sir Menzies Campbell. But Mr Clegg’s rating among Lib Dem supporters of 6.5 is well above his precedessor’s last one of 5.63 in July.

BritBlog Roundup 151

The roundup visits Amused Cynicism for the first time (though it has displayed that quality before).

How will the Lib Dems do in the South West at the next election?

Sean Fear has an article on politicalbetting.com looking at the likely results in this vital (for us, at least) region at the next general election.

He pays particular attention to the impact of constituency boundary changes.

Strangelove: Time for the Rest of Your Life

I am aware that most of my Sunday video choices have fallen into the oldies but goldies category. So here is one from as recently as the 1990s.

There is an entry on Strangelove and some links on Wikipedia.

Great Tew, Oxfordshire

Philip Wilkinson at English Buildings celebrates the Oxfordshire village of Great Tew:

The village is actually the creation of the early-19th century, when the estate was remodelled and the village became a star feature in the landscape. Thatched roofs were fitted or repaired, Gothic details added to the cottages, trees and hedges planted. The result is an uncanny combination of model estate village and old England.

But there is more to the village's story than that. I visited Great Tew nearly 30 years ago and many of the cottages were derelict; some even had trees growing up through their decaying roofs. This beautiful photograph, taken from TrekEarth, captures the eerie atmosphere Great Tew had in those days.

Today, by all accounts, the cottages have been restored and sold to the weekending classes.

Nick Clegg's first speech drives Labour councillor out of politics

I suppose this has to count as a result of a sort.

The News & Star reports that a leading member of Carlisle City Council’s Labour group is to quit the party and stand down as a councillor because he has become disenchanted with mainstream politics.

John Reardon, who was the Labour candidate when Tim Farron gained Westmorland & Lonsdale at the last election, told the paper:

“The defining moment for me was when I read a transcript of Nick Clegg’s speech [when elected leader of the Liberal Democrats].

“It was indistinguishable from the speech Tony Blair gave when he became Labour leader and that of David Cameron when he became leader of the Conservatives.

“Verbless sentences and vacuous sentiments totally dominate British politics now. No one is prepared to challenge society’s self-destructive and materialist ethos.

What Nick has to do now is prove Reardon wrong.

The return of Foyle's War

It’s April 1944 and something big is about to happen. Everyone on the South Coast can just feel it. Troops and Forces vehicles are on the move in vast quantities and the Allies have stepped up their bombing campaign over Germany and it would seem the end of the war is in sight.

Foyle is at home, having resigned as Detective Chief Superintendent at Hastings Police. No longer needed as a police driver, Sam has had to find a new job too...

Last time I got excited about the return of Foyle's War, it disappeared after one episode. But a site dedicated to the show assures us that series 6 begins on Sunday and that there are three shows in it.

Norman Baker and the Uckfield to Lewes line

A friend of mine once attended a meeting addressed by the late David Penhaligon in the days when he Liberal transport spokesman. Someone asked what Liberal transport policy was and Penhaligon replied: "1. Keep the Truro-Falmouth branch open."

These days we have wider horizons and grander job titles, but our shadow transport secretary Norman Baker also has a constituency railway project close to his heart: the reopening of the line between Uckfield and Lewes.

The Argus reports that Network Rail has signed a contract with East Sussex County Council agreeing to carry out an investigation into whether the line could be reopened. Norman Baker is quoted as saying:

"I've campaigned for more than 20 years to reopen this line. To me it's a no-brainer.

"At the moment the Lewes to London line is at maximum capacity every rush hour. This would create an alternative route that might remove some of the pressure."

There is more about the line and its prospects of revival on the Wealden Line site, from which I borrowed this photograph of the disused trackbed at Barcombe Mills.

Introducing the Dirty Dozen

I am sure you all know and love the Golden Dozen feature on Liberal Democrat Voice. This is a weekly selection of the most popular postings from the Lib Dem blogosphere - based on click throughs from the Lib Dem Blogs aggregator - plus a few others of the compiler's choosing.

Well, the nice people who run Lib Dem Voice have asked me to edit a new feature called The Dirty Dozen.

This will appear on Lib Dem Voice towards the end of each month and consist of a dozen postings from Labour and Conservative blogs. There will be no objective criteria, as there are with the Golden Dozen: the editor's prejudices will be all.

I aim to keep a balance between pointing to interesting postings that we Lib Dems may have missed and laughing at the folly of our opponents. If you see any suitable posts on Labour or Tory blogs, please send me the link.

David Heath interviewed by Pink News

As Lib Dem spokesperson on Justice, David Heath is a comforting contrast to the Cleggs and Huhnes of the party.

Big, bearded, thoughtful yet jocular, the 53-year-old is a substantial politician in more ways than one, and in his present role he shadows one of the remaining big beasts of the Labour
party, Jack Straw.

This interview with the gay news website begins with Heath's views on the new incitement to homophobic hatred law. But it also takes in wider Lib Dem policy and prospects.

Well worth a look.

The Market Harborough helmet

From the Leicester Mercury:

Archaeologists have begun a four-year restoration of a piece of history that could unravel Leicestershire's Roman past.

A 2,000-year-old ceremonial cavalry helmet unearthed near Market Harborough has been described by experts as "the most important find in Britain for a generation".

It is believed the helmet may have been a reward given by Romans to an ancient British tribe, or was perhaps looted when Queen Boudicca led her bloody but doomed revolt against Roman rule in 60 or 61AD.

The theory I have heard is that this is a ceremonial helmet which would have been given to a British noble who fought as a mercenary for the Romans before Julius Caesar landed in Kent. Which suggests there was a lot more to Britano-Roman relations than a simple invasion in 55 BC.

Attlee, Lloyd George and Macmillan on YouTube

Omar's Blog points out that there is some fascinating archive footage on 10 Downing Street's YouTube channel:

• Attlee in the United States for talks, November 1945;
• Lloyd George's first visit to Chequers;
• Harold Macmillan meets President Kennedy at the White House.

The old Tory Party is alive and well

Don't believe all you read about the new green, liberal, decenteralised Conservative Party. The headbangers are still with us.

The evidence?

First, Nadine Dorries (known as "Mad Nad" by her many admirers) has written to Ofcom to complain about Catherine Tate's Christmas show. Her reasons?

It was offensive and violated the expression 'family viewing'.

And:

On what is, whether you are religious or not, a day which is special to all, her own version of the Christmas special was astoundingly inappropriate.

This link comes via Iain Dale, who points out that the programme was transmitted at 10.30 p.m. and was preceded by a warning that the programme contained extreme language right from the start.

Surely the Tories believe that it is parents' duty to see that young children are in bed by then or do not watch such programmes? Or are they saying that there should be nothing screened that is unsuitable for children?

My own view is that we have seen quite enough of Catherine Tate already and that the addition of the words "Christmas Special" renders the best comedies instantly unfunny, but that is beside the point.

And there is a second example.

On 27 December the Daily Mail published an article under the headline: Smart school uniforms linked to academic success of UK's schools.

It reported that the Tories had published figures showing that successful secondary schools tend to have a traditional uniform policy. That is not a great surprise and I am old enough to believe that there may be a connection that cannot wholly be explained away.

But what is remarkable is what the story went on to say:

Mr Gove, the Shadow Schools Secretary, has called for all state schools to copy the ethos of the best.

A Tory government under David Cameron would encourage state schools to introduce the blazer as a key element of their dress code.

They would not be forced to do so, but Ofsted inspectors would mark schools which have blazers as the "gold standard".

The Tories would also monitor the price of blazers - often the most expensive item on the uniform shopping list - to make sure poorer parents were not excluded from dressing their children properly.

Not only do the Tories want every school to have a uniform, an incoming Conservative government would stop only just short of specifying the items of clothing that should make up that uniform.

And what will they do when they have monitored the price of blazers? Bring in subsidies or price controls? Nationalise Trutex?

When you add this to the Tory obsession with synthetic phonics, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Conservatives believe that the trouble with this Labour government is that it has not centralised education enough.

But then anyone who remembers the Thatcher years will know that the Conservatives are instinctive centralisers.

Hugh Massingberd and Daily Telegraph obituaries

By common consent the finest obituaries are those that appear in the Daily Telegraph. And the man who made the paper's obituaries what they are today was Hugh Massingberd.

He died on Christmas Day aged only 60, so the Telegraph carried his own obituary:

Before his arrival at the Telegraph, obituaries had been regarded as an inferior branch of News, and afforded minimal space.

As far back as 1969, however, Massingberd had discerned the immense potential that lay in this disregarded cranny of journalism.

The moment of illumination had come when he went to see Roy Dotrice's rendering of John Aubrey's Brief Lives at the Criterion Theatre.

Picking up a dusty tome, Dotrice/Aubrey read out a dreary entry about a barrister (Recorder of this, Bencher of that, and so on). Suddenly he snapped shut the volume with a "Tchah!" and turned to the audience: "He got more by his prick than his practice."

There and then, Massingberd later wrote, "I determined to dedicate myself to chronicling what people were really like through informal anecdote, description and character sketch." Laughter, he added, would be by no means out of place.

Sian Lloyd gets married in Portmeirion

The BBC reports:

ITV weather presenter Sian Lloyd, 49, has married her fiancé 10 months after they met. 

She wed motor racing entrepreneur Jonathan Ashman, 59, in the Gwynedd village of Portmeirion, the setting for the cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner. 

She had been engaged to Welsh Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik before they separated in December 2006.

Not only that:

Also reportedly there was former Prime Minister Tony Blair's son Euan, who is dating Mr Ashman's 19-year-old daughter Suzanne.

RSPCA finally takes on the battery chicken issue

I am pleased to see that the RSPCA is running a high-profile campaign on the welfare of battery chickens.

In recent years, judging by their presence at Lib Dem Conferences, they have not emphasised farming issues. Instead they have talked about hunting, which raises great passions, but is a tiny matter beside factory farming.

After that it was the welfare of domestic pets. Again, being worried about goldfish being given as fairground prizes seems pretty petty when set against the suffering of many industrially farmed animals. That didn't stop the Liberal Democrats adopting their proposals en bloc, mind you.

So well done to the RSPCA for finally taking on the most important animal welfare issue we face. Duncan Borrowman has more on this.

Giant knickers put out house fire

It's nice to read a good news story for a change.

The BBC reports:

A family home was saved from burning down when a pair of giant knickers were used to put out a fire.

Jenny Marsey's size 18-20 cotton pants were a lifesaver when they were grabbed to cover a frying pan fire at her home in Meryl Gardens, Hartlepool, Teesside.

Her son and nephew were trying to fry some bread when the blaze broke out.

But the quick-thinking pair used the Marks & Spencer underwear from a pile of washing, doused them in water, and threw them over the fire.

Follow the link to see the knickers on video.