Lord Bonkers' Diary: Nick Clegg unveils his winning tactic

Wednesday

Down to Brighton at the Spring Conference of the Liberal Democrats the other day, I ran into Clegg. “How do you propose winning this vote on secret courts?” I asked him. “The party is dead set against them – rightly so, I might add,” I added.

“Oh that’s easy,” he returned. “I am going to get Tom McNally to insult everybody.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Monday: Digging up the Bonkers' Arms car park
• Tuesday: Why Welsh education is the finest in the world

Six of the Best 341

Cllr James Baker is speaking against the 'snoopers' charter' at an Open Rights Group meeting in Manchester on Saturday.

Chuka Umunna does not impress Mark Pack: "Someone with real leadership ability, and not just a Wikipedia entry talking about it, would have behaved very differently."

David Hencke argues the Association of Chief Police Officers' proposed ban on announcing arrests will be an own goal for justice.

"Vets from the British Veterinary Zoological Society who work with wild and exotic animals have publicly questioned the government's badger culling policy and the British Veterinary Association's support for badger culling," reports Farming Online.

Brick Fetish outlines the history of interlocking building bricks for children.

"Located in the sunny (That's a lie) south UK, and hidden in the precision manicured grounds of lakes and gardens in Cricket St Thomas is a forgotten childhood relic being left to crumble. All those familiar with the Noel Edmonds Houseparty show running in the 1990's will remember Mr Blobby as the shows ridiculous mascot. Mr Blobby's house was an attraction some children may have been lucky enough to visit in the short time it was open. The park closed in 1999 and since then has been left to the elements." 28 Days Later has photos of the ruins -  "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

DSM-5: Medicalising grief?

One of the live debates in mental health at the moment concerns the new edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

Many argue that its multiplication of the number of psychiatric disorders represents a medicalising of normal human emotions such as grief.

This BBC Radio 4 programme gives a good introduction to the debate.

Rotten Borough: Grantham in the 1930s

Having argued the other day that we are in danger of overestimating the role of Margaret Thatcher in the changes of the 1980s, I am becoming increasingly irritated by the overblown plans to mark her death.

As a corrective, let me recall the book Rotten Borough by Oliver Anderson.

Anderson's Independent obituary tells the story:

Oliver Anderson was at the centre of a considerable furore when, in 1937, he wrote a satire on provincial life under the pen-name Julian Pine. 

The book, Rotten Borough, was withdrawn by the publisher after just three weeks under threat of a string of libel writs, instigated by, among others, the then Lord Brownlow, a close friend of the Duke of Windsor. 

The Rotten Borough affair, which achieved national status, with Anderson being pursued around the country by the pride of Fleet Street, would have passed into history, were it not for the fact that the town at the centre of the excitement was Grantham, birthplace of Margaret Thatcher, and that a leading character in the novel was a local grocer and town councillor, identified by many in the 1980s with the benefit of hindsight as the then Prime Minister's late father. 

As a result Rotten Borough was republished in 1989 under the author's true name and created considerable interest.

The obituary goes on to say that Anderson always denied that Alderman Roberts was one of the targets of his satire. And I bought Rotten Borough when it was reissued and was sad to find it was near unreadable.

But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

A psychological perspective on obesity

I live-tweeted several session at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference today. One was based around the Society's report Obesity in the UK: A Psychological Perspective, which can be downloaded free of charge.

One interesting point from the discussion was a veiled criticism of commercial weight-loss programmes. Anyone can lose weight in the short term: the difficult part is keeping it off after that. But such a pattern of yo-yo dieting suits commercial providers rather nicely.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Why Welsh education is the finest in the world

Tuesday

In my day, if your son or, indeed, daughter was a bit on the slow side, it was necessary to slip the school a cheque to ensure good examination results. If the child was particularly dense then you might find yourself obliged to stump up for a whole swimming pool or chemistry laboratory.

Things are handled more sympathetically in Wales. There, if you are dissatisfied with your children’s examination results, you simply write to their education minster, one Leighton Andrews (whom I am sure I once met somewhere), and he awards them a higher grade.No money changes hands.

It is an excellent system and no doubt one of the reasons why Wales has the highest educational standards in the world.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Monday: Digging up the Bonkers' Arms car park

Police hunt flasher dressed in high heels, stockings and suspenders

I suppose it makes a change from those ubiquitous high-visibility jackets, but I can't help thinking that old-fashioned tunics, helmets and boots would be more practical across rough country.

Anyway, the Leicester Mercury wins our Headline of the Day award.

Jersey: Blood, Sweat and Fears

In 2008 I blogged:

I still remember an article in the first ever issue of the New Statesman that I ever bought - it must have been in 1977 or even 1976. 

It was headed "John Bull's Other Islands" and dealt with the cliquey and undemocratic nature of local politics in the Channel Islands.

These videos of a television documentary from 1993 - featuring a young Stuart Syvret - are not that old, but they do confirm that concern about the governance of the Channel Islands goes back a long way.

Cleo Rocos, David Steel and Bill Crane

On Saturday, while blogging about the death of David Penhaligon, I mentioned my favourite Tory from my days on Harborough District Council - Bill Crane from Lutterworth.

Bill was the best chairman we had on my days on the council. If two members had fallen out during a meeting he made it his business to buy them both a drink in the pub afterwards and make the peace.

Another example of his wisdom arose after a long-forgotten incident in which David Steel, then the Liberal leader, was wrestled to the ground by Cleo Rocos.

One evening before a meeting Bill came over to describe the encounter. Being originally a Sufflok man, he found it natural to add: "You could see her nellies."

He then thought for a moment and said of Steel: "I think that will do him a lot of good."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Digging up the Bonkers' Arms car park

Yesterday Lord Bonkers gave his reaction to the death of Margaret Thatcher on Liberator's blog. Today it is time for us to begin another week in his company.

Monday

I rise early to superintend the excavations in the car park of the Bonkers’ Arms. Having seen how well Leicester is doing out of Richard III, I have decided that we need to find a body of a king here in Rutland too. So far, our dig has not come up with the goods: all we have turned up are a few shards of medieval pottery, a Victorian penny, some pieces of clay pipe (which I suspect belonged to Meadowcroft – or was it his grandfather?) and two skeletons with blue rosettes – we have a tradition of robust electioneering here in the Bonkers Hall ward.

I am saddened by this lack of progress, and a complicating factor is that we have to have everything put back by Friday because that is the day the Smithson & Greaves lorry comes. If it cannot make its deliveries, we shall all be reduced to drinking the dreadful gassy Dahrendorf lager.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Parenting programmes must be inclusive to work

I am currently working at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society (BPS) - follow #bps2013 on Twitter if you are interested.

Today we had a symposium on parenting support programmes based on the BPS report Technique Is Not Enough (TINE). I did make belated attempts to invite a blogger to come and report it. Having failed, I am writing this short report myself as a penance.

The best introduction to TINE is an article its lead author, Dr Fabian Davis, wrote for the Guardian when it was published last year:

TINE describes how the programmes can become "services as usual" in education and social care. Genuine co-production between programme developers and local parents, working alongside teachers, health and social care professionals, can drive effective inclusion. The framework challenges developers to identify the essential ingredients of their current parenting programmes and to clarify what can be adapted to meet local parents' sociocultural needs.

And if that whets your appetite, then you can download TINE from the BPS website. If you do so you can read its idea in more detail:

Parenting programmes should: 

1. Maximise the recruitment of low-income, black and minority ethnic families that are traditionally considered to be ‘hard to reach’ and reduce the drop-out rates of disadvantaged and socially excluded families.

2. Empower local voices by implementing new programmes in co-production with local programme service user parents so they become culturally congruent, and through working in partnerships with local professionals in health, education and social care. 

3. Build social capital in local communities during the assessment process to determine which parenting programme will be used, by modelling mutually respectful relationships with parents and with health, mental health, education and social care professionals; and then support programme delivery structures that span home life, school and the wider community to both deliver information and build relationships within and across families. 

4. Plan for sustainability from the outset by facilitating local ownership through actively developing local parents’ and practitioners’ capacity to learn about, plan, adapt, implement and evaluate their local parenting programme and maintain quality assurance structures whilst engaging effectively with local service systems to become services as usual.

Fabian Davis was not able to take part, so another of the authors of the report, Dr Lynn McDonald from Middlesex University, presented its ideas.

Also on the panel was Martin Swain, the Welsh Government's deputy director, children, young people and families. He was keen to promote the policies of that government, which rather made him Leighton Andrews' representative on Earth.

And the third speaker was Dr Susan Elmer from Leeds Trinity University, who spoke of her experiences researching domestic violence by talking to women from excluded families. I was struck by her observation that such women would much rather to talk to representatives of bodies from the independent sector than the statutory authorities.

I am a bit of a sceptic on parenting education - I was not aware of "parent" as a verb before the early 1990s. But I do find TINE'S emphasis on involving parents from poor families in devising and delivering such programmes valuable.

Besides, I am always happy to cite professional opinions when they are in line with my own prejudices.

Thoughts on the death of Margaret Thatcher

My Liberalism grew out of a distaste for East Midland small-town Toryism, so I was not delighted when that creed took over the country in 1979. Yet today I find myself rather sad at the death of Margaret Thatcher.
Perhaps it is because it has made me aware of the passing of time. My own activist years took place mainly while she was prime minister and it all seems a long time ago now.

And in part it must be because Margaret Thatcher – our first woman prime minister and liberator of the Falklands from Fascism – wrote herself into history in a way that only Churchill and Lloyd George also managed in the 20 century.

Besides, two of the beliefs held by those who are crowing at Thatcher’s death are quite mistaken.
The first is the idea that Britain in the 1970s was an Eden of neighbourliness and public spirit which her policies trashed. I don’t remember it quite like that. In particular, one of the reasons that she won in 1979 was because many British voters had come to see the Labour movement as selfish. What came next may have been worse, but we should not rewrite history because of it.

The second false belief is that the changes of the 1980s were wholly the product of Margaret Thatcher’s wickedness. Yet as time passes we see more clearly that many of those changes were inevitable and happened in countries with very different leaders.

To argue that the post-war economy of steel and coal would still be thriving but for Thatcher is nonsense. Coal mining could have been run down more humanely, though Arthur Scargill bears a share of the responsibility for the conflict that ensued, but it would still have run down under any government.
Incidentally, those who were most angry at the run down of coal tend to be the same people who are now most exercised by global warming. Yet that run down of coal is the only reason Britain is anywhere meeting its carbon reduction targets, and that is an irony with which these people have yet to come to terms.

Of course there was much to deplore in the Thatcher years – the rise of Rupert Murdoch, the more partisan tone of public life. Yet those are precisely the elements of her legacy that Labour was happy to keep in place.

Countryfile in Northamptonshire

This week's Countryfile, shown earlier this evening, looked at three subject that have already been written about here.

The first was Rushton Triangular Lodge, which I visited back in June 2009 on one of my first days out with one of those digital cameras they have nowadays.

The second was the new distillery at Harrington, where they make Warner Edwards gin, though this blog's chief interest in the village has generally been that nuclear missiles were once based there.

Finally, the programme showed the start of the 1951 film There Go the Boats, which has been posted here.

To save clicking all those links, you can see a picture of the Triangular Lodge above and the film below.

Loony joins the Conservatives

From the Croydon Guardian:

Croydon Conservatives have welcomed a Loony to their ranks this week. John Cartwright, known as John Loony, changed his allegiances to the Conservative Party this week after 17 years at the Monster Raving Loony Party. 

On Tuesday, the Croydon Conservatives tweeted: “It is with great pleasure that we welcome John Loony, latterly of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party (OMRLP) to the conservatives in Croydon.” 

Mr Cartwright, who received 110 votes in the recent Croydon North by-election when he stood for the Monster Raving Loony Party, joined the Monster Raving Loony Party in 1996 after a spell with the Chocolate Fudge Cake Party.

Six of the Best 340

"Last month, I wrote to Nick Clegg ... asking for the Liberal Democrats to stop the government’s proposals to curtail benefits for immigrants. Not only did I not receive a reply, but I witnessed the Liberal Democrats’ leader espouse the same xenophobic rhetoric." Blunt & Disorderly on leaving the party.

Les Bonner reports Catherine Bearder's demand for a ban on pesticides that can harm bees.

Politics in Tower Hamlets is no cleaner than ever it was, according to Left Futures.

The History of Emotions Blog on five years of the NHS Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme.

"While it struggles to keep hold of creative arts, the state has monopoly control over key material assets, such as the television and radio waves, newspaper distribution system, cinemas, concert halls, and education system. It has the police and special military forces at its disposal, and has shown repeatedly that it is not afraid to deploy them." Open Democracy on the battle for cultural expression in Belarus.

The poet Tom Chivers chooses five secret London spots for Now. Here. This.

David Bowie: Let's Dance

The best viewing of the week was Cracked Actor, the BBC documentary on David Bowie filmed in 1974. You have until Thursday evening (11 April) to catch it on BBC iPlayer.

Another great documentary from this week (sadly available only until Monday evening) was Nile Rodgers: The Hitmaker, about the co-producer of this classic Bowie track.

Iain Duncan Smith's finances: fantasy and reality

The Fantasy

"The honest truth is I don’t need any lessons from these people. I have worked hard all my life for what I’ve achieved and nobody has given me a damn penny. My earnings are what I live on."
Daily Mail, 3 April 2013

The Reality

The cabinet minister lives rent-free in the mansion at Swanbourne after he was ­allowed to move in by the previous owner, his father-in-law Baron Cottesloe.
Metro, 7 April 2013

Susan Penhaligon leaves the Liberal Democrats

The Western Morning News reports that the actress Susan Penhaligon has left the Liberal Democrats:

"I feel slightly betrayed by the Lib Dems by going along with the 'bedroom tax'. And the NHS reforms seem like a step towards privatisation. More competition in the NHS would be a disaster."

She also reveals that she is the second cousin of the Liberal MP David Penhaligon, who died in 1986:

"The Liberal Democrats are not the old Liberal Party. I think David Penhaligon would be turning in his grave at some of the things that are happening. I don't like the Lib Dems being with the Conservatives, and I think other Lib Dem voters think the same."

David can't answer for himself. But one of the ironies of West Country politics is that the region's Liberals have always been fierce enemies of the Conservative localy while appearing rather right wing to Liberals in the wider party. How this plays out at the next election, we shall see.

David Penhaligon died just before Christmas when his car skidded on an icy road after he had got up early to visit local postal workers.

As my favourite Harborough Tory councillor, Bill Crane from Lutterworth, said to me at the time: "If he had given his wife a squeeze, turned over and gone back to sleep, he would still be here now."

I realise that David Penhaligon will be little more than a name to many younger Liberal Democrats. You can get an idea of the man from the Desert Island Discs programme he recorded a few weeks before he died.

The remains of Greyfriars, Leicester

Across the road from the social services car park (which was firmly locked today) is a private car park. And in it, next to the attendant's hut, you can find the wall above.

It is of interest because it is all that remains above ground of Greyfriars monastery, in the choir of whose church the body of Richard III was found.

The attendant seemed pleased by my interest. He told me who owned the car park and that the owner had declined to sell it to the city council because it is such a good earner.

He also said that the University of Leicester archaeologists who found Richard had carried out some geophysical investigations here too.

2 Savoy Place - where the BBC began

Back to 2 Savoy Place, the venue for the Candidates chess tournament in London.

It was opened in 1889 as an examination hall for the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Surgeons. It was taken over by the Institution of Electrical Engineers and is still occupied by its successor, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET).

More than that, the building was the first home of the BBC when radio broadcasts began in 1923. A page on the BBC's own site records:

Early radio contributors in Savoy Hill included HG Wells and George Bernard Shaw, who were offered whisky and soda as they relaxed in the atmosphere of a gentlemen’s club. Here, radio drama flourished, weather forecasts and Big Ben chimes were introduced, and listeners could even follow cricket coverage. 

However, broadcasting developed exponentially – two studios quickly became nine, and the cramped but cosy environment of Savoy Hill was abandoned when the BBC moved to its first purpose-built centre, Broadcasting House in Regent St. The BBC left the site in May 1932.

And the IET site records adds:

In 1922 a meeting of 200 companies held in our Lecture Theatre resulted in the formation of the British Broadcasting Company.

That lecture theatre is where the Candidates tournament was played.

Later. @langrabbie suggests that the BBC was housed in Savoy Hill House, which stands behind Savoy Place and is also owned by the IET.