Martha Payne wins Liberal Heroine of the Day

Liberal Heroine of the Day must go to Martha Payne, the nine-year-old blogger who has defeated Argyll & Bute Council. Though to be honest the council's collapse today was a bizarre act of self-immolation and had nothing to do with any action by the indefatigable school dinner reviewer,

Caron Lindsay will give you the background to today's events. Essentially, the council (not the school or headteacher, note) had banned Martha from taking photographs

This morning saw an outcry in the media and on Twitter, to which the council felt obliged to respond. That where its problems really began.

The full statement, remarkably, runs to some 600 words. Stephen's Liberal Journal has the whole thing, but the first two sentences will do:

Argyll and Bute Council wholly refutes the unwarranted attacks on its schools catering service which culminated in national press headlines which have led catering staff to fear for their jobs. The Council has directly avoided any criticism of anyone involved in the ‘never seconds’ blog for obvious reasons despite a strongly held view that the information presented in it misrepresented the options and choices available to pupils however this escalation means we had to act to protect staff from the distress and harm it was causing.

Already we have an ignorant misuse of 'refute', an appeal for our approval for not criticising a nine-year-old child and a laughable claims that she is causing "distress and harm".

A few hours later the council caved in. You can find its second statement in the same post by Stephen.

This new statement was made under the name of the councillor's leader Cllr Roddy McCuish. It began well enough:

There is no place for censorship in this Council and never will be whilst I am leader.

But soon collapsed into farce:

We need to find a united way forward so I am going to bring together our catering staff, the pupils, councillors and council officials - to ensure that the council continues to provide healthy, nutrious  (sic.) and attractive school meals. That "School Meals Summit" will take place later this summer.

If this is the reaction to a nine-year-old writing broadly favourable reviews of her school dinners, God knows what McCuish would do in the face of a real crisis.

The attention that Martha had received even before today ought to have been PR gold for the council. Instead its philosophy seems to be that no one must say anything bad it ever. That is not a PR strategy: it is close to a psychological disorder.

In view of that, it is not such a surprise to find this report from earlier this year on BBC News:

A council employee in Argyll and Bute has been suspended while an investigation is under way into so-called "social media spying". 

It comes after communications chief Jo Smith reportedly told a conference she set up fake social media accounts to monitor what was being said about the council.

Why the taxpayers of rural Scotland should continue to fund any of this nonsense, I cannot begin to see.

On a happier note, I liked this tweet:

You could say the same thing about the otherwise excellent Boxmoor County Primary, where you needed a letter from your parents if you didn't want custard with your pudding.

I am over 50, live in Market Harborough and own a tweed jacket, so I am allowed to think that children should be climbing trees or in bed rather than blogging if I want to. Nevertheless, I have no hesitation in giving Martha Payne this blog's prestigious Liberal Heroine of the Day award.

Finally, Caron's recent meme - see Eight years in eight posts - reminded me of the case of Chris Whitehead, who went to school in a skirt as a protest against not being allowed to wear shorts. A bit of Googling shows that he too has won, and was shortlisted for Liberty's young person of the year award in the process.

So maybe there is hope after all.

Kenneth Clarke and Lord Bonkers on the way newspapers have changed

In his evidence to Lord Leveson's Inquiry, the Guardian reminds us, Kenneth Clarke recalled his days as a student Conservative, when Harold Macmillan was prime minister:

"Everybody in politics, even a minor parliamentary candidate, knew that the then PM's wife had been having a torrid affair with a backbencher for at least 30 previous years. Not a word of this ever appeared in public print."

Funnily enough, Lord Bonkers said much the same thing back in 1992:

In my young day ... it was common knowledge in political circles that Bonar Law maintained a second household with a large white rabbit called Mabel; yet, while my Varsity chums and I would sit in the front row at his meetings, hold up our hands on either side of our heads and wrinkle our noses throughout his speech, not a breath of the affair ever appeared in the Press.

The moral, he tells me, is to read Lord Bonkers first.

Kevan Jones and Charles Walker talk about their mental health problems

I spent this afternoon live tweeting a House of Commons debate on my work Twitter account (follow #mentalhealthdebate to see what everyone was saying about it - and read the whole thing on They Work for You.)

The debate was called by the House's backbench business committee and was remarkable because two MPs had the courage to speak about their own mental health problems.

First, a little hesitantly, it was Kevan Jones:

Now I am going to throw my notes away—I thought long and hard last night about whether to do this—and talk about my own mental health problems. 1n 1996, I suffered quite a deep depression related to work and other things going on in my life. This is the first time I have spoken about this. Indeed, some people in my family do not know about what I am going to talk about today. Like a lot of men, I tried to deal with it myself—you do not talk to people. I hope you realise, Mr Speaker, that what I am saying is very difficult for me. ...

It is hard, because you do not always recognise the symptoms. It creeps up very slowly. Also, we in politics tend to think that if we admit to fault or failure we will be looked on disparagingly by the electorate and our peers. Whether my having made this admission will mean that the possibility of any future ministerial career is blighted for ever for me, I do not know. I was a Minister in the previous Government and I think that most people on both sides of the House thought I did a reasonable job. 

We have to talk about mental health issues in this place, including people in the House who have personal experience of it. As I have said, I thought long and hard last night about doing this and I did not come to a decision until I put my notes down just now. Whether it affects how people view me, I do not know; and frankly I do not care because if it helps other people who have depression or who have suffered from it in the past, then, good. 

Politics is a rough old game, and I have no problem with that. Indeed, I am, perhaps, one of the roughest at times, but having to admit that you need help sometimes is not a sign of weakness.

And then, flamboyantly it was Charles Walker:

It is absolutely fantastic to follow the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). I was a researcher here in the early 1990s and a few Members present were here at that time. They will remember the debates about homosexuality. There were some discriminations, as there still are, in relation to homosexuality, and people were beginning to feel very uncomfortable about that. Many colleagues came to this place to take part in those debates, and they would say, “These discriminations against homosexuals are disgraceful, but I am not gay myself.” They did not want to be perceived as gay because they had an interest in those matters. 

I am delighted to say that I have been a practising fruitcake for 31 years. It was 31 years ago at St John’s Wood tube station—I remember it vividly—that I was visited by obsessive compulsive disorder. Over the past 31 years, it has played a fairly significant part in my life. On occasions it is manageable and on occasions it becomes quite difficult. It takes one to some quite dark places.

He went on, sometimes making his condition sound almost comic:

I operate to the rule of four, so I have to do everything in evens. I have to wash my hands four times and I have to go in and out of a room four times. My wife and children often say I resemble an extra from “Riverdance” as I bounce in and out of a room, switching lights off four times. Woe betide me if I switch off a light five times because then I have to do it another three times. Counting becomes very important. 

I leave crisp and biscuit packets around the house because if I go near a bin, my word, I have to wash my hands on numerous occasions. There has to be an upside to a mental health problem. I thought that the upside would be that I would not get colds, because apparently if you wash your hands a lot, you don’t get colds, but I wash my hands hundreds of times a day and I get extremely cheesed off when I end up with a heavy cold.

And at times making it clear how horrific it can be:

I was on holiday recently and I took a beautiful photograph of my son carrying a fishing rod—hon. Members may know that I love fishing. There was my beautiful son carrying a fishing rod, I was glowing with pride and then the voice started, “If you don’t get rid of that photograph, your child will die.” You fight those voices for a couple or three hours and you know that you really should not give into them because they should not be there and it ain’t going to happen, but in the end, you are ain’t going to risk your child, so one gives into the voices and then feels pretty miserable about life.

The two MPs are to be commended for their courage - the parallel Walker drew with coming out as gay 20 years ago is surely an accurate one.

I am sure that their disclosures will not harm their careers. Indeed, I have a feeling that Charles Walker's remarkable speech today will be the making of him.

Draft Communications Bill violates the Coalition agreement

I decided not to take part in the telephone conference with Julian Huppert this evening. Thanks are due to Helen Duffett for organising it, but I decided that having a curry and going to my writing club would be a better use of my time.

In her account of the conference, Caron Lindsay tells us we have "169 days to help Julian Huppert protect the internet from the prying eyes of the state". Well, I am sure we will all try to help him, but wouldn't it be easier if Nick Clegg had stuck to Liberal Democrat policy (not to mention his past, rather dramatic, statements on civil liberties) and refused to endorse the bill in the first place?

It seems odd that the job of Liberal Democrat activists is now seen to be campaigning against the proposals of a government of which the Liberal Democrats are a part.

And if you think that ignores the reality of coalition politics, let me refer you to the Coalition Agreement:

We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.

It is hard to see how today's bill can be reconciled with that.

The Clouded Yellow

Made in 1950, The Clouded Yellow is two films in one. Partly it is a Freudian drama involving music, with echoes of The Dream of Olwen or The Seventh Veil. Jean Simmons plays Sophie, the troubled daughter of a musical family whose mental problems are clearly being deliberately worsened by her relations. Sonia Dresdel (Mrs Baines in The Fallen Idol) is a welcome presence in these scenes.

And, more prominently, it is a spy thriller after the style of John Buchan. Trevor Howard plays a disgraced spy who joins the household and goes on the run with Sophie when she is wrongly suspected of murder.

It is an uneasy combination and Noir of the Week is a little kind to count it as a film noir at all. Fellow Lib Dem Mark Pack is another blogger to have written about Clouded Yellow.

One of the pleasures of Buchan's Richard Hannay adventures is the very British locations in which they take place. I remember one car chase where the villains are shaken off in the upper Tyne Valley.

But in Clouded Yellow the landscapes in which the action is played out are urban: notably Newcastle and Liverpool. Which is why the film is a gem for transport enthusiasts. There are trolley buses waiting outside Newcastle Central station and in Liverpool there is wonderful footage of the Liverpool Overhead Railway and of the docks line that ran beneath it at ground level.

Towards the end of the film Howard intends to sail from Liverpool with Simmons (by then his love interest) disguised as a boy. Perhaps he was inspired by Dr Crippen? The film ends with Simmons being menaced and then rescued amid a striking industrial cityscape.

I have issues with Kenneth More, but in this early role his bumptiousness is well used. He plays a secret service enforcer who disguises himself as an amiable upper-class wastrel.

There is also an interesting cinematic parallel. These Liverpool locations saw a real boy being menaced at much the same time - it is a wonder that the two film crews did not collide.

In The Magnet, a minor Ealing Comedy, William Fox played a small boy in peril in the city. Today, more than 60 years later, as James Fox - father of Laurence Fox and father-in-law of Billie Piper and Richard Ayoade - he is still acting.

Jeremy Hunt escapes independent investigation

"Despite Nick Clegg's decision that Liberal Democrat MPs would abstain, Conservatives easily saw off the challenge by a majority of 290 to 252," says the Daily Telegraph.

Surely that should read "Because of Nick Clegg's decision..."?

A trip on the Metropolitan Railway (1910)

britishrailways.tv

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The 'Saucy Robin Teverson' at Oakham Quay

And so our Romance of the long-past days of the hated Pasty Tax draws to a close.

The 'Saucy Robin Teverson' at Oakham Quay

And so it was that this morning the driver and I were waved through Cornish customs and took a charabanc laden with pasties over the Tamar into England. We delivered it to a warehouse owned by a fellow called Gregg (who appeared to be doing Terribly Well in the baked goods business) and were given a cheque in return. This, of course, I have already mailed to Squire Rogerson – less my expenses, petrol costs et cetera.

All seems right with the old demesne, despite my absence. The Reverend Hughes Church Lads Table Tennis Club (credited with single-handedly reducing crime in Rutland to a statistically insignificant level) is meeting in St Asquith’s Parish Hall as I write. It is true that Meadowcroft has been complaining about the Elves of Rockingham Forest taking plants from his glasshouses to make their elixirs, but he is prone to grumble and, besides, these elven remedies are the only thing to ease my wound from the Aylesbury by-election of 1938.

The only problem was explaining to Matron what I had done with the Well-Behaved Orphans, but the gift of a bottle of Nicholson’s gin smoothed things over eventually. She will be with me tomorrow morning when the Saucy Robin Teverson ties up at Oakham Quay.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove
• Black George
• "No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

The little church at Newton Harcourt

On the last day of May - and just look at the blue sky in the main photo - I visited St Luke's, Newton Harcourt, and discovered the remarkable grave of eight-year-old Christopher Gardner. Since then I have been looking into the story behind the 'little church' of Newton Harcourt.

A special article on the Newton Harcourt pages of the Leicestershire Villages site tells us how the Gardner family came to the village:

George Gardner, a stone mason by trade, left his family in London to fight in France in WW1. He suffered badly from the effects of gas and on returning to England was sent, by the army, to Wistow Hall to convalesce. He was befriended by Lord Cottesloe, who employed him as a clerk. Lord Cottesloe suggested that George should bring his wife and seven children from London to live in Leicestershire and offered to find them accommodation in Newton Harcourt. George accepted the offer, and the family arrived in 1916. 

On 22 May 1916, six Gardner children were admitted to Newton Harcourt School. The family expanded rapidly and soon outgrew their first home. They moved to two cottages in Long Row, Newton Harcourt, which had been knocked into one. School records for Newton Harcourt School, show that a further eight Gardner children were admitted between 1917 and 1932.

A 2003 article from the Leicestershire Historian takes the story forward. The words in quotation marks come from a Leicester Mercury article dated 8 November 1993:

“The white monument in St Luke’s churchyard, Newton Harcourt, is dedicated to Christopher (Chrissy) Gardner my little brother. He died of Diphtheria when he was eight years old in September 1924”. 

He went on to explain that the unusual monument was fashioned out of a large block of stone by his father Mr George Gardner who before the First World War, had been a stone mason in London. On later moving to Newton Harcourt he worked laying paving stones for Leicester Corporation. 

“The reason for the design of the monument was because one day Chrissy was heard to say that when he was big he would have a church of his own. His father always remembered that remark and it prompted him, following his son’s death, to send away for a large block of stone and he set to work making a miniature church. He worked on it each day when he got home from his job. A true labour of love carried out in the backyard of the family cottage in Long Row, Newton Harcourt. When the miniature church was complete my dad and his workmate took it to the churchyard on a wheelbarrow and erected it.”

The final words go to Arthur Mee in his King's England volume on Leicestershire:

In the shady churchyard is a striking modern monument in the form of a miniature church with spire, porch, windows, and battlements, set up in memory of a boy of eight, a little shrine not unlike a toy building he himself might have tried to fashion with a big box of bricks. We have come upon no other like it in any of our country churchyards.

Who will be impressed by a Lib Dem abstention on Jeremy Hunt?

The answer, I fear, is probably no one.

A story on the Independent website tells us:

Nick Clegg tonight told his MPs not to back the Tories in Parliamentary vote calling for Jeremy Hunt to be referred to the ministerial standards watchdog. 

Labour will tomorrow submit a motion in the House of Commons calling for Mr Hunt to face an investigation by Sir Alex Allen, the Prime Minister’s adviser on ministers’ interests, following criticism over his handling of the BSkyB takeover. 

Mr Clegg’s aides said he had taken the decision not to back his coalition partners after “repeatedly” telling David Cameron that Mr Hunt should face an inquiry by Sir Alex.

That sounds forceful from Nick. But if at the end of it he is ignored and responds by telling his MPs to abstain, he is in danger of looking weak.

I am struggling to see whom this abstention will impress. Certainly not liberal-minder voters who care about the power of News Corp - and you would think they are just the sort of people we would want to vote Liberal Democrat.

At the start of the month I said that we should vote with Labour on this matter, and I still believe that today.

The Independent reports by suggesting:

It is still possible that some Lib Dem MPs might go further and back the Labour motion but senior Liberal Democrats said they were confidence that the majority would obstain.

Some Lib Dem votes for that motion will cheer the party's activists, but now it will do nothing to make our position look coherent.

Women on the railways during World War II

britishrailways.tv

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

"No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

I have fought too many by-election campaigns to be afraid of fisticuffs and am no duffer with an orchard doughty (that sturdy club beloved of Rutland gamekeepers), but I am not accustomed to being quite so ‘tooled up’ – as Violent Bonham-Carter used to put it. Still, I walk up from the harbour, with its smells of tarred rope and rusted chain, armed with pistol, cutlass and so forth as requested. I reach the cliff top and await the arrival of the pastymen.

One by one, figures appear through the chill mist. I recognise the remote cove and also discern a prosperous-looking fellow (who turns out to be Squire Rogerson) and a fellow in clerical garb who, sure enough, is Parson Gilbert.

We spy the lines of a trim brig out at sea – and then those of a second ship that rounds the headland. “It’s the Revenue,” growls Squire Rogerson, “they’ll be no shipping of pasties tonight.” He allows his lantern to flare for a moment and immediately the signal is answered from onboard the brig.

With that we find ourselves rather at a loose end, so we repair to the Jolly Tyler. My new companions turn out to be a friendly bunch. Parson Gilbert, for instance, proves Sound on any number of points of doctrine (though in Cornwall they no longer cleave to the back-foot no ball rule as we do in the Church of Rutland). Even the remote cove begins to unbutton a little.

“The trouble is,” explains Squire Rogerson (a capital fellow at standing his round), “we have twenty bushels of pasties ready to go, but there we shall not be able to load them aboard the Saucy Robin Teverson as long as the Revenue men are watching.

“I may be able to help you,” I reply. “I happen to have one of Rutland Motors’ finest charabancs parked outside the Jamaica Guest House. Why don’t we fill it with pasties? No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law.”

“Wasn’t there a lord in Essex...” begins one, but I fix him with a stern eye and he is quelled.

“The only problem,” I continue, “is what to do with the Well-Behaved Orphans.”

“In my experience,” returns Squire Rogerson, “there is nothing as good for orphans as sea air.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove
• Black George

The Spencer Davis Group honoured in California

Catalina Island off the coast of California is home to the British musician Spencer Davis. And from 30 June until  22 August the island's museum will be host to an exhibition entitled Gimme Some Lovin’: The Spencer Davis Group.

Not only that. On 30 June the island will see a symposium. The Catalina Island Museum Presents The British Invasion Rocks America is billed as "the first of its kind" and will examine the movement of the blues from America to Britain and back to America during the British Invasion.

And it has a remarkable list of participants:

• Spencer Davis himself
• Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees
• Peter Asher from Peter and Gordon (who once left a comment on this blog)
• Emperor Rosko, the famous DJ

Sadly, I don't suppose I shall be on Catalina Island for these events - there will also be a concert from Spencer Davis and the Catalina Island All-Stars and a firework display on 4 July - but I did shake hands with Spencer when he played in Market Harborough.

But thanks are due to Jessica Zumberge from Catalina Island Museum for sending me the photographs used in this post (the two below come from Spencer Davis's own collection) and also its press releases about the exhibition and the symposium.

On the exhibition they say:

The exhibition Gimme Some Lovin': The Spencer Davis Group opens on June 30th at the Catalina Island Museum and is the first exhibition dedicated to the band. The exhibition draws from Spencer Davis’ own archive of photographs, memorabilia and recorded interviews. “Unlike so many groups coming out of Britain in the mid-1960s, the Spencer Davis Group was not a pop band trying to emulate the Beatles,” 

Michael De Marsche, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition recently stated. “They were a band heavily indebted to American blues. They incorporated that sound with greater authenticity than any other band of the time—British or American. My question was: how did a bunch of white guys from England and Wales create music that sounded like it came from rural Mississippi or Alabama?" 

To answer the question De Marsche sought out Spencer Davis, a long-time resident of Catalina Island ... 

“I’ve been interested in the influence of the blues on British rock for a long time. I thought I knew a thing or two until I met Spencer. His knowledge is absolutely encyclopedic, and his interest started when he was a kid. He had exotic tastes for his native Wales, and he developed early an abiding love for black musicians from the American South. The raw emotion of the blues was far different than anything he could hear on BBC radio. The music inspired him to pick up the guitar and sing. After he enrolled in college, he realized that he could make a little money singing and playing the blues in little pubs and coffee shops.” 

It was during Spencer Davis’ earliest days as a musician that a single comment from a pub owner changed his life. 

“He was told that the trend was toward hiring groups like the Beatles, who were now all the rage in Britain,” states De Marsche. “He’s living in Birmingham and begins to search the city for a few musicians who might share his interest in American blues. 

"He finds himself one night in a dark, little back room and hears a boy of 15 who is, in Spencer’s words, playing the piano like Oscar Peterson and singing like Ray Charles. He recognized immediately that Steve Winwood was something special. But, as Spencer is fond of saying, the important thing was that they had similar record collections.” 

Spencer Davis’ discovery of Steve Winwood’s immense talent is a defining moment in rock history. Joined by Steve’s brother Muff on bass and Peter York on drums, the Spencer Davis Group exploded onto the rock scene, releasing within a startling brief period of time a series of hits, including “Somebody Help Me,” “Keep on Running,” “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man.” 

The band rocketed from obscurity into instant stardom. Much of the group’s popularity was based on Winwood’s voice, which seemed to strain plaintively for every note. Few bands incorporated better the emotion of the blues with the driving beat, lilting rhythms and melodic lyricism of the Mersey Sound.

And on the symposium:

On December 10, 1963 the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite introduced the American public to an obscure band from Liverpool that was causing near riots among teenagers in Great Britain. The following day disc jockeys in America were inundated with calls from anxious teens to play the music of The Beatles. When the band played on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 nearly half of all American television sets were tuned to the broadcast. 

Two months later, the “British Invasion” was in full swing, and Beatles songs held the top 5 spots of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, a feat that has never been equaled. During the next three years British groups dominated British and American charts. Groups and individuals like Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Herman’s Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Dave Clark Five, Donovan and the Spencer Davis Group changed the course of American music and the landscape of pop culture forever. 

But just what was it that made these British groups so appealing to American teenagers? In many respects the answer is surprising. This symposium The Catalina Island Museum Presents The British Invasion Rocks America is the first of its kind and will examine the movement of the blues from America to Britain and back to America during the “British Invasion.” ... 

Grounded in the recordings of African-American artists like Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, the roots of the British Invasion were in the poor rural areas of the American South. Labeled the “blues,” it developed from the spirituals of black churches, the chants of workers in cotton fields, and the plaintive songs that filled the long, lonely evenings of Southern prisons. 

Because the blues emanated from the black American South, its artists were condemned to obscurity in the 1950s. Rejected by a predominantly white establishment that related the sound with its African-American roots, the blues was labeled dangerous and a potentially corrupting influence on American youth. But singers like Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Bill Haley, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley discovered popular success by incorporating the blues into a sound that would become known as “rock n’roll.” 

To appeal to a wide audience, the earliest rock n’roll recordings present a more acceptable, “homogenized” version of the blues. Its simple solos laden with melancholy were transformed into a dance music played by four-piece combos that sped up its tempo and underscored its melody with a driving, rhythmic beat. 

In Britain, however, teenagers living in cities like Liverpool were purchasing recordings from sailors who had acquired a taste for the blues while traveling to American port cities like New Orleans. The gritty authenticity of the sound was irresistible and vividly evoked the smoky juke joints and sun-bleached cotton fields of a black America that was far away and, therefore, fairly benign to British tastes. It offered a striking contrast to the soft jazz and classical symphonies that dominated British radio, which was strictly regulated by the BBC.

I shall be very interested to hear or read the conclusions of this symposium, because the way that white, middle-class British youth took to the blues puzzles me too.

The common factors I have noticed amongst British musicians of this era are that they had fathers who were in jazz bands, meaning they grew up familiar with black music, and sang in church choirs as boys, meaning that they had a good musical education.

But that explains why the ground was fertile, not why the blues were the seed that grew so vigorously.

A science 'free school' in East London

An interesting video on the WORLDbytes website:

In this edifying sofa discussion, school teacher David Perks tells us why, with a group of passionate teachers, he is setting up a science ‘free school’ in East London. What is key, he argues, is the need to challenge the pervasive low expectations we have for young people’s ability to learn.

Six of the Best 253

"David Penhaligon is one my heroes. You can’t be a Cornishman and not have a soft spot for the man. He had the passion, humour, grace and humility which all us Cornish like to think typify the best of our county." Liberal Burblings on a great Liberal MP.

Lester Holloway asks what Tony Blair is doing in Africa.

"This summer, the city will become a fortress, protected by the largest aircraft carrier in the British Royal Navy, Eurofighter Typhoon jets, flying marksmen, more than 23,000 security personnel (including 13,500 British soldiers), and an array of new cameras added to a city that was already among the world's most heavily surveilled. As part of a $30.2 million contract, the American security company Rapiscan has delivered over 2,700 scanners to provide airport-level security for up to 200,000 visitors a day to the Olympic Park alone. Administering all of the searches and scans will be private guards hired by the U.K.-based security firm G4S, formerly known as Securicor." Fortune looks at the lock down of London for the Olympics.

Sock Puppets, a new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues that when government funds the lobbying of itself it is subverts democracy and debases the concept of charity.

Local government cuts to archaeology matter to all of us, argues Jo Caruth on History Workshop Online.

In A City Living has a magnificent archive of old photographs of Liverpool.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Black George

Black George

The remote cove’s name turns out to be Black George. He signals to me to come outside, and we wander out into the Cornish countryside until there is no danger of our being overheard. I am told of the suffering of his people and am surprised to learn that even the most respectable of them are involved in the fight against the Pasty Tax.

“Be on yonder cliff tonight with a dark lantern, a pistol and a cutlass and ye shall meet Squire Rogerson and Parson Gilbert.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove

Contempt: Money is a Girl's Best Friend

A posting on the Do You Remember? board captures an experience I had a few weeks ago:

I'm currently watching an episode of Top of the Pops from 1977 on BBC4 and they just had a band called Contempt on singing "Money is a Girl's Best Friend". I feel like I've slipped into a parallel universe as I don't remember this band or this song at all. I was 16 in 1977 and really into music so I don't know how it/they passed me by. I can't find much about them on the Internet - anyone help me out here?

I think I was 17 by the time this came out, but otherwise I could have written that myself. And Money is a Girl's Best Friend - which can best be described as "interesting" - must be obscure, because I can still identify many singles from 1977 by their first few notes.

Follow that thread on Do You Remember? and a later posts puts us in the picture:

I'm pretty much an expert on Contempt as I'm the 21 year old daughter of the then-bass player, Nick Pallett (stripey shirt). I can tell you anything you want to know, I'm in the process of writing a pretty detailed Wikipedia article about them. There's been a sudden revival of interest since their TOTP appearance (not saying that's a good thing - most of the interest is just a kind of bemused distaste!). 

Don't be surprised that they passed you by - my mum was also 16 at the time and didn't remember a thing about them! (They're married now and she still refused to believe he was telling the truth about his performance until she'd seen it with her own eyes!) 

Basically they were invited onto TOTP as an introductory act; their single 'money is a girl's best friend' was due to be released the following Friday morning. If it did well they would have released more singles and an album (which they had already recorded). However, Polydor records didn't distribute the singles properly and the majority of record shops never stocked it, so people forgot about them and it never charted. 

The band were back to square one and returned to playing university gigs; meanwhile my dad lent the master tapes of the entire album to the manager, John Scott, who never returned them. One night a few months later my dad and Howard Paul, the front man, came to blows backstage at a gig over (amongst other things) Howard's repeated boasting about their TOTP appearance.

It's a shit business.

The new issue of Liberator is out

Hurry over to Liberal Democrat Voice for full details.

Liberal Democrats to fight Devon and Cornwall police commissioner election

Good news from the South West - and I don't mean the repeal of the pasty tax.

This is Cornwall reports that the Lib Dems are to contest the Devon and Cornwall police commissioner election in November:

Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, said the party needed to be influencing the debate on cutting crime, but focusing on repeat offenders and involving victims of crime. 

He added: "The Police and Crime Commissioner is going to have a major influence on how our area is policed and how resources are deployed, and that will impact on everyone's lives."

I was critical of the party's decision not to fight these elections when it was announced last October.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The remote cove

The remote cove

After breakfast, I leave the Well-Behaved Orphans on the beach and, stopping only to entreaty them to “Watch the wall, my darlings, while the pastymen go by,” I set off in search of the remote cove.

All morning I stride the cliff tops on my quest and, though I am wearing quite the lightest of tweeds, I have worked up quite a thirst by lunchtime. So I allow my steps to wander towards the Jolly Tyler. Sipping my pint of the local wallop, I see a man sitting at a table. He is staring into the distance and ignoring those around him.

I sit down next to him, saying: “You must be the remote cove”.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"