CocoRosie: Smokey Taboo

CocoRosie's new LP Grey Oceans has evoked mixed reactions.

The Line of Best Fit says:

Evidently there is something slightly magic going on. CocoRosie were good before, but now their exotic, unique charm is tempered with songwriting maturity. Grey Oceans gathers influences and instruments – nursery rhymes, electronica, choral music, hip hop, Indian strings, even a sample of their mother singing in Cherokee on the mournful, mumbled ‘Undertaker’ – into well-crafted, intensely evocative songs.

Drowned in Sound says:

For all their faults, the world is undoubtedly a richer place to have a group like CocoRosie out there doing what they do and getting modest attention for it.

While Eric Grandy in the Portland Mercury says:

It's not damning that they engage with hiphop or affect old-timey mannerisms, it's that the results are so facile and fallow and precious. It's that their songs somehow manage to be both grating and yet so flimsy that they're barely even there.

Well, I like this live performance of a track from the LP. The vocals are poised between Lisa Hennigan wholesomeness and Bjorkian kookiness.

More about CocoRosie on Wikipedia.

Harborough Town 0 Port Vale 3

Port Vale 4 Ever has some photographs of this pre-season friendly -a notable day in the town's football history.

Harborough Town used to be known as Market Harborough Town Imperials. Any spectator shouting "Give us an M" was banned for life.

Abbey Park, Leicester

When Cardinal Wolsey fell from favour with Henry VIII over his failure to persuade the Vatican to annul the king's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, he lost all his titles accept Archbishop of York. Then he was accused of treason and summoned back to London. He died at the Abbey of Saint Mary de Pratis (also known as St Mary of the Meadows) outside Leicester on the journey south and was buried there.

Today the abbey ruins give their name to Leicester's Abbey Park. Wolsey is commemorated by a statue (given by the Wolsey knitwear people), though he looks bemused to find himself outside the rather tawdry pavilion and cafe there.

The Abbey ruins are a disappointment. They were lost for centuries after the dissolution of the monasteries and no original remains are to be found above ground level. What you see today are foot-high walls put up after excavation in the 1920s to show the abbey's original footprint, complete with a tomb for Wolsey. Given the rudimentary state of the discipline in those days, it is possible to wonder how much worth this recreation has.

Nearby you will find the more substantial remains of Cavendish House, the main part of which has been ruinous since the Civil War. And the park also contains a picturesque stretch of the River Soar and a miniature railway. The latter is worth a posting of its own.

What Rothbury tells us about modern Britain

Two thoughts about the drama in Rothbury last night.

The first is the ridiculousness of the rolling news coverage from Sky and the BBC. They had little to report once it was known that had been found and was threatening to shoot himself. After that they were in the way, both metaphorically and literally. The parallel Stephen Tall draws between their coverage and The Day Today is instructive.

I also have a lot of sympathy for Johann Hari's view that this level of coverage increases the risk of copycat killings. Every violent, inadequate individual now knows how to become a celebrity.

Still, I did watch some of the coverage, so I suppose I was complicit in this folly.

Secondly, and more encouragingly, I was impressed by the lengths the police went to in an attempt to stop Moat killing himself. Here was a man who had murdered one person and tried to kill two more, one of them a police officer. Yet they tried to talk him out of shooting himself.

I have always been struck by the contrast between two hostage events that took place in my younger day. In 1975 four IRA men were cornered in a flat in Balcombe Street in Marylebone and took its two occupants as hostages.

The siege lasted six days and eventually the men gave themselves up and nobody was harmed. This, we liked to think in 1975, is how we did things in Britain. We were not trigger-happy like the Americans.

Fast forward to 1980 and things looked rather different. Then the siege of the Iranian Embassy was ended by an SAS assault in which one of the hostages and five of the six Iranian gunmen were killed. Two more hostages were injured in the cross-fire.

These two hostage incidents were perhaps not comparable, but the way the SAS were lauded in the subsequent days suggested that the British were starting to see themselves in a very different way. This reaction was symptomatic of the coarsening of our national life that took place over the Thatcher years.

The Iranian Embassy siege may also marked the start of rolling news coverage - they even interrupted the snooker (no small step in 1980) to show us the conclusion.

If events at Rothbury suggests that there is still validity in the Balcombe Street view of how we do things in Britain, then I am encouraged.

The problem with "fairness"

Is it fair that people should be allowed to get on by making the most of their talents?

A lot of people would agree that it is.

Is it fair if the gap between rich and poor in a society is not too great?

A lot of people would agree that it is.

And that is the trouble with fairness. It's not just that different people have conflicting ideas of what constitutes fairness. It's that most of us individually hold these conflicting ideas at the same time.

So while focus groups will enthusiastically support the idea of a political party standing for fairness, that support gives parties little clue as to which policies they should adopt to give fairness concrete form.

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Birkdale Focus reports on Andrew Stunell's meeting with Liberal Democrat councillors at the Local Government Association Conference: "It was interesting that although few doubted the way ahead was going to be rough the number who thought we had made the wrong call was incredibly small." I like his concept of "headless chickens" too.

Alex Massie, on the Spectator website, suggests the Liberal Democrat vote could well be more resilient than most pundits suggest. Not only that: "The Tories are supposed to be a pragmatic party: that means they need to take care of the Lib Dems because in helping them they're also helping their own medium and long-term prospects."

It has been a good day for libel reform at Westminster, says consider, evaluate, act.

Jack of Kent complains of the "disgraceful and improper" conduct of Hackney Council towards the Conservatives' mayoral candidate Andrew Boff.

Don't tinker with the vetting rules, scrap them, says Josie Appleton on Spiked, responding to Nick Clegg’s call for suggestions for laws and regulations that should be scrapped.

Eugene Goodheart, writing for Dissent Magazine, defends Barack Obama against attacks on him by what has been his liberal constituency.

Jonathan Meades on Cragside House

News that Cragside House in Northumberland has been closed as part of the hunt for the elusive Raoul Moat is a good excuse for watching this Jonathan Meades programme again.

House Points: Sharon Hodgson shows the wrong route for Labour

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News.

I wanted to say something about the way that Labour talks all the time about "child poverty" and defines it as living in a household with less than 60 per cent of median income.

In doing so they are dodging or disguising the debate about equality that we should be having. And they are sentimentalising the issue. Whatever definition of poverty we accept, it is not children who are poor but their parents.

But the space ran out.

Hodgson inanities

It’s worth paying Sharon Hodgson some attention, and not just because she sounds exactly like Catherine Tate’s character Geordie Georgie, the inveterate fundraiser. ("Let's say no more about it because I wouldn't want it to come between us, pet.")

For the Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland North has been everywhere since the general election. Here she is taking part in a Westminster Hall debate on free school meals: ““The Lib Dems are taking the food out of the mouths of children in poverty, and this is what they have actually come into politics for."

She also turned up in the public gallery when the the Speaker's committee for Ipsa (the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority) considered that body’s budget. The Guardian reported that she was one of several MPs who “sat in the audience of yesterday's committee meeting heckling the three most senior Ipsa figures”.

Now she is promoting a private member’s bill that would make it illegal to resell tickets for concerts or sporting events in any public place or online.

“I think it’s a matter of social justice that if you want to go to an event it shouldn’t just be down to how much money you have, “Hodgson told the Evening Chonicle. “I know youngsters in my constituency who save up their pocket money or their wages for weeks on end ... but are then left disappointed when they sell out and they can’t afford the inflated prices.”

As a map of the route Labour should not take over the next few years, it would be hard to better Hodgson’s views. There is the ludicrous partisanship, the bovine opposition to reform and the determination to keep the poor as a client class for the Labour movement.

Take the question of free school meals. Every child who receives them now will continue to do so under the coalition government. What has been scrapped is a loosely costed Labour plan to extend them further.

And how will the youngsters she cares about be any better placed if they miss out on buying a ticket for a concert and then find it is illegal to buy one anywhere else?

When we hear less of Sharon Hodgson, it will be a sign that Labour is prepared to provide grown-up opposition.

1947: Drought on the Leicestershire/Rutland border

The long, hot summer of 1947 is remembered for the batting feats of the Middlesex and England batsmen Denis Compton and Bill Edrich.

Compton scored 3816 runs at an average of 90.85 with 18 centuries. Edrich scored 3539 runs at an average of 80.43 with 12 centuries. These are the highest and second highest aggregates for an English season. Not surprisingly, Middlesex won the county championship.

The summer of 1947 was remembered in a famous passage by Neville Cardus:

Never have I been so deeply touched on a cricket ground, as I was in this heavenly summer of 1947 when I went to Lord's to see a pale-faced crowd, existing on rations, the rocket-bomb still in the ears of most folks - and see this worn, dowdy crowd raptly watching Compton.

The strain of long years of anxiety and affliction passed from all heads and shoulders at the sight of Compton in full sail, sending the ball here, there, and everywhere, each stroke a flick of delight, a propulsion of happy, sane, healthy life. There were no rations in an innings by Compton.

But that glorious summer was not good news for everyone, as this newsreel (just click on the photo) of a farm on the Leicestershire and Rutland border shows.

You must bear in mind that, just as nothing on television is true, these newsreels may not be showing us the world as it was so much as its viewers wished it to be.

Still it's hard to resist this footage of a boy and his dog and the marvelous characterful face of the farmer.

Leicestershire babies' DNA taken for database police can consult

There was a shocking front page on today's Leicester Mercury:

More than 10,000 babies in Leicestershire had their DNA stored on an NHS database last year without the proper consent of their parents, it has been claimed.

Blood samples are taken from newborn infants around the country in routine heel prick tests to screen for serious health problems.

But it has emerged they are banked in databases for years by hospitals, and could be accessed by police looking to identify criminal suspects.

As the newspaper goes on to say, this looks very like the creation of a national DNA database via the back door.

The defence of the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, as quoted by the Mercury, is that mothers were give a leaflet about the procedure.

But as Dr Helen Wallace from GeneWatch says:

"Giving mothers a leaflet does not amount to informed consent. No one who has just given birth is in a state to understand the full implications of how their baby's genome might be used in future."

MPs and peers in public row

For the second year running the Commons has beaten the Lords in the annual parliamentary boat race.

The victorious crew was captained by Don Foster and also included Duncan Hames.

A refusal to mourn the death of Building Schools for the Future

Michael Gove made an awful mess of the announcement that some the construction of some new schools under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) scheme would not go ahead, but I find it hard to get indignant about the substance of his decision.

And the fact that some of the less bright Tory MPs are up in arms does nothing to convince me I am wrong.

Private Eye has long been a convincing critic of this programme. Its current issue says that Gove's department

has finally acknowledged what the Eye has been saying for several years: that BSF is far too complicated and costly for its own good.

Deals signed under the programme since 2005, along with other PFI schools, already cost the education budget more than £700m a year (enough to run 70 large secondary schools), and that's without the tens of millions in fees charged by consultants.

The Eye goes on to say that this "£700m annual millstone" will mean that thousands of schools will forgo crucial maintenance while the few to have benefited from BSF "enjoy their shiny overpriced facilities".

In a sane world decisions about new schools would be taken by city and county councils. That it is now a matter for central government is a symptom of the vast overcentralisation of Britain.

BSF also serves as a symbol for Gordon Brown's love of overcomplicated and apparently ingenious (but actually rather stupid) methods of financing public works.

Add into this Labour's tendency to value buildings over human values (step forward Polly Toynbee) and it is no wonder that BSF has produced such a toxic brew.

Ming Campbell's Olympic blazer and vest on show at Westminster

The Great Britain Olympic team blazer and running vest worn by Sir Menzies Campbell when he competed in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games have gone on display in a new exhibition at the House of Commons.

Sir Menzies ran in the 200m and the 4×100m relay final at the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games. He also held the British 100 metres record between 1967 and 1974.

Ming Campbell comments on his own website:

“Seeing my running vest in a historical exhibition made me feel every one of the 46 years since I’d worn it, but I felt a lot happier when I found I could still fit into my blazer!"

I still maintain that Ming should have challenged those who mocked him for his elderly appearance when he was Lib Dem leader to a race.

Quentin Letts, for instance, would have gone down with a stitch within 10 yards.

Harborough Museum puts photographs online

As part of Renaissance East Midlands’ ‘MuBu’ project, Harborough Museum is putting hundreds of its 10,000 strong collection of photographs online. The pictures can be viewed on Flickr.

Usefully, the pictures have been tagged so that you can see where the pictures were taken. So I can be sure that the Bricky Tip shown in this photograph of Little Bowden is now the wilderness called Windy Ridge that we are trying to save from development.

MuBu is a new scheme designed to connect museums and audiences through digital projects. To see some of the projects being run across the East Midlands.

The Leicestershire Oilfield

The British Pathé website holds many treasures.

This newsreel from 1954 (just click on the photo) shows men drilling for oil at Plungar in Leicestershire.

The well does not seem to be open today, although the book Twentieth Century Industrial Archaeology, which was published in 2000, says that a "nodding donkey" could be seen at Plungar.

Oil is, however, still extracted in Leicesterhire. Earlier this year the Leicester Mercury reported that Star Energy Oil & Gas has been given permission to continue operating the county's only two wells. They are in the Stilton country at Long Clawson, near Melton Mowbray.

The newspaper quoted the chairman of the parish council as saying:

"The wells aren't in the village. I've lived here 17 years and the only activity is when they carry out maintenance. 

"It's very well screened and if you asked 90% of people in the village where the oil well was they wouldn't know, it's so unobtrusive."

You can find a picture of one of the Long Clawson wells on Geograph.

It is interesting that whoever wrote the newsreel did not know about the Nottinghamshire oilfield that flourished during World War II. It had been a secret then and was probably not widely discussed 10 years later.

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Paul Crossley calls on his readers to oppose plans for a vast factory farm for cows in Lincolnshire: "There are so many reasons why this kind of cow factory farming is a disaster. It relies on huge quantities of imported feed. To grow this feed, rainforest is chopped down, destroying wildlife and increasing climate change. Keeping cows indoors all year round can increase the risk of disease. Industrial milk production also threatens smaller, traditional dairy farms."

There are now 18 Liberal Democrat blogs in the top 100 UK political blogs, according to the Wikio rankings. Mark Pack has the list.

Craig Murray offers a guarded welcome to the announcement of an inquiry into the British government's complicity in torture: "Unlike the Chilcott Inquiry, the personnel of this inquiry are not obviously packed with supporters of the government view."

Fixed-term parliaments should be for years, not five, argues Mark Reckons.

Singing my Song has made a personal pilgrimage to Walshingham: "It meant a lot to me to be able to take in the traditional starting-point of the route at the Red Mount Chapel in King's Lynn, and then the Anglican shrine by way of being the closest we could manage to the traditional end-point (the Priory ruins having closed for the day by the time we arrived)."

York Stories looks at the refurbished York Central Library. I used to study their occasionally when I was a student. The downside was the mewing of the peacocks in the gardens of the Yorkshire Museum next door.

Seen in the backstreets of Kirby Muxloe

You can find this sign on a building in the Victorian industrial part of Kirby Muxloe. Presumably it was once an off-licence, though the building is large enough for it to have been a pub.

It reminds me of the backstreets of York when I was a student. There seemed to be an off-licence with a "John Smith's Magnet Ales" sign on every corner.

Are Liberal Democrat backbench policy committees the answer?

I know a Liberal Democrat MP (now a government minister, as it happens) who claimed to discourage the circulation of party policy documents in his constituency. ("They only upset people.")

But then our MPs have rarely been in the forefront of policy development. When I was on the Federal Policy Committee we used to get a little frustrated that the parliamentary party did not play a more enthusiastic role in our affairs.

For this reason I am not convinced that the committees announced by Nick Clegg (Lib Dem Voice has the list of chairs, which was released earlier today) are the answer to keeping Liberal Democrat thinking and a separate identity alive while we are in coalition.

Those are certainly two important jobs, but it is easy to see these committees descending into grumbling shops for MPs and peers who are disaffected from the coalition. To avoid this they need to involve thinkers from elsewhere in the party and beyond the party.

Smeeton Westerby by night

Smeeton Westerby is a village near Market Harborough that has so far escaped the attention of this blog. But it does feature in today's Leicester Mercury:

People in a village where the street lights have been turned off to save cash say they have not really noticed the change.

Leicestershire County Council's highways engineers have adapted 39 of the 44 lamps in Smeeton Westerby, near Market Harborough, so they are unlit from midnight to 5.30am ...

Kelvin Capell, of the King's Head pub, said: "I can't say that I notice the difference."

I would like to see such a policy implemented widely.

It would save money - the Mercury says that by cutting night-time lighting in seven villages and along 50 rural roads the county council will save up to £700,000 a year.

And it would also enable more people to experience the night sky as their grandparents did. Back in 2005 I quoted Timothy Ferris of NASA, who said:

"The loss of the night sky is most troubling for children. Whole generations of kids in cities and suburbs are growing up seldom if ever having seen the Milky Way and what a sky full of thousands of stars might look like."

"People often describe to me in glowing terms their experience in viewing the night time sky as if they'd seen something extraordinarily exotic ... something akin to observing Victoria Falls or the south pole. And I'm afraid that's the case for many people ... that they can count on the fingers of one hand the times they've seen a good night's sky."

Others will regard the policy as a way of reducing carbon emissions, but I prefer environmental politics that are based upon a reverence for the natural world rather than a fear of it.

What would the constituency boundaries look like with 600 MPs?

UK Polling Report thinks it knows the answer.