Six of the Best 389

"What, in the end, is so marvellous about ‘hardworking people’?" asks Glen Newey on the London Review of Books blog.

Sam Freedman explains why he no longer believes schools in the state sector should be run for profit.

Frank Furedi defends privacy on Spiked: "The separation of the public and private spheres has been essential for the emergence of the modern individual. People’s aspiration to autonomy and identity cannot be entirely resolved in the public sphere. The private sphere not only provides a potential space for reflection, but also for the development of personality. Intimate relationships require privacy if they are not to disintegrate under the pressure of public scrutiny. Whatever problems might exist in the private sphere, having such a sphere is the prerequisite for the exercise of meaningful freedom."

Ed Mayo writes on recent advances for community and co-operative energy initiatives.

"It is the definitive cult film partly down to Alex Cox’s introduction to it in its 1990′s screening on Moviedrome. It’s a genre film which, for some reason, instantly allows it entry into the pen of cult films but its genre is somewhat odd. Of course, down to its bare bones, The Wicker Man is a horror yet it’s not until the final ten minutes of the film that it becomes so." So says Celluloid Wicker Man.

dianajhale celebrates the 400th anniversary of the opening of the New River - an artificial waterway cut to bring fresh drinking water from Hertfordshire to London.

The Junior Whip: Lines 53 to 55

My 10th Whipped column for Ad Lib magazine.

Regular readers will know how that I have long coveted the Chief Whip’s job. Sitting there telling other people how to vote? I I would be good at that.

At least I thought so. After Glasgow I am not so sure…

******

The Chief Whip had been ringing and texting a certain Liberal Democrat MP without success. “Get him in the hall for lines 53 to 55,” he snarled. “I don’t care how you do it, just get him in there.”

So I rushed around the conference centre until I spotted a familiar face.

“It’s lines 53 to 55,” I panted. “You’ve got to go into the hall now and vote for them. Or maybe it’s against them. Or maybe someone wants a separate vote. Anyway, you’ve got to get in there and vote.”

“I’d like to, son, but I’m a bit busy being the catering manager at the moment.”

Then I really did see the MP.

“Lines 53 to 55? I’m meant to be speaking at two fringe meetings now as it is. One’s on human rights in the Southern Sahara and I’ve no idea what the other one’s about. But if you do them for me, I’ll go in and vote.”

******

“…and I can’t be in two places at one time,” I finished triumphantly.

“Nonsense,” said the Chief Whip, “I do it all the time. Go back out and get him to vote.”

******

On reflection it didn’t turn out so badly. I am now a member of the all-party group on Human Rights in the Southern Sahara and, though I have no idea what the second meeting was about, my speech went down well. Keep saying “fairer economy” and “stronger society” (or something like that) and you will go a long way in this party.

Better still, the catering manager voted the right way on lines 53 to 55.

East Anglian Holiday (1954)

The drawbacks of unpaid internships in charities

Earlier this month the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog published a post by Charlotte Gerada on research she has conducted on unpaid internships.

From an online survey she found that these were most common in the charitable sector and advances two arguments suggesting they are a bad idea.

The first, which is familiar but none the less powerful for that, runs:

Socially, a lack of accessibility and equality of opportunity could lead to the sector becoming less diverse and more elitist, further halting social mobility. In terms of wider labour market implications, many interviewed charities admitted that unpaid internships reduced entry-level positions and depressed wages in the sector.

As a result of this elitism and inaccessibility, the voluntary sector is losing out on talented, passionate and committed young people, and runs the risk of becoming a sector reserved for those from wealthy backgrounds.

And the second one, which is new to me, runs:

This research suggests that not paying interns is a vicious cycle: charities that don’t pay generate non-essential tasks, leading charities to believe that interns benefit more from the internship, reinforcing justification to not pay. Thus, charities and interns gain little from the arrangement.

You can read Charlotte Gerada's full report on the Unite website.

Council acted illegally by indemnifying chief executive in libel action against blogger

I suspect a post on the blog written by David Hencke will be studied closely in Rutland.

It begins:

A decision by the Wales Audit Office in the last few days should send shivers down the spines of senior council staff thinking of using taxpayer’s money to silence bloggers. 

The audit office have ruled that Carmarthenshire County Council acted illegally by indemnifying its chief executive, Mark James, in a libel action involving local blogger,Jacqui Thompson.

And it ends:

The consequences of this ruling are two-fold. It must question whether the council should continue to provide an indemnity to Mr James in the current appeal. 

It also sends a much wider warning to senior council officials – that they should think more than twice before using public money to pursue people who are critical of them. I don’t know the rights and wrongs of the issues in her blogs, but I do think a public authority should not use public money to crush them. This is a victory for those who support free speech and unfettered debate on matters of public interest.

I mention Rutland because earlier this year Rutland County Council voted to indemnify its chief executive to take legal action against three of its own members.

You can be prosecuted for saying disobliging things about Rutland County Council, so let me just say that it should abandon this legal action at once. It was clear from the outset to anyone with any sense that it was a doomed idea.

Later. I have just been told that on Monday 7 October BBC East Midlands will be devoting its Inside Out programme to the goings on at Rutland County Council. One to watch on the iPlayer if you do not have the good fortune to live in this part of the world.

Arsonists blamed for 20ft straw teddy fire

Once again, the Shropshire Star walks away with our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges also love the photograph, but they were not sure about that apostrophe.

Later. Good news - the rogue apostrophe has disappeared.

"Now then, Monolulu, what's your little game?"

There were reports on Twitter last night that Don Warrington (who will always be Philip from Rising Damp to those of a certain age) had been stopped by anti-terror police on his way to his flat near the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester. Warrington is currently starring in All My Sons at the city's Royal Exchange theatre.

Perhaps we have not come such a long way from Rigsby after all?

R. Dean Taylor: There's a Ghost in my House

In honour of Paul Mason's documentary earlier this week - you can still catch in on the BBC iPlayer - here is a Northern soul classic.

"There's a Ghost in my House" was originally released in America as a B-side in 1967. Helped by the Norther Soul boom, it reached no. 3 in the British singles chart in 1974.

Mason placed strong emphasis on the affinity between Northern working-class youth and Black American music - something Joe Boyd has also written about.

But R. Dean Taylor, an important figure in Northern soul was white. He was the first white artist to be signed to Motown, and he wrote this song with that company's great songwriting team Holland, Dozier, Holland.

GUEST POST Pubs must help themselves if they are to survive

Pubs must work harder at pleasing their customers says Matt Wright, founder and director of Melton Mowbray based Great Food Club

I was recently at an unassuming Everards pub called The Tudor on the very urban-feeling Tudor Road in Leicester. Tenant landlord Andrew Trickett cooked a tasty pop-up meal to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support using some locally sourced ingredients.

A few months earlier, in association with De Montfort University's Square Mile project, he set up a makeshift cinema in his pub’s barn, near the site of Leicester’s old Tudor Cinema. He showed some movies with Leicestershire links (The Elephant Man being one, naturally!), put on a Polish film night to appeal to the local Eastern European community and even got one of the sons of the original Dambusters to do a talk before screening the film of the same name.

The reason I mention this is because lots of people are crying into their beer at the moment about British pub closures. We must visit and support our pubs, we are told, or we’ll lose them. The trouble is, some pubs that want our custom aren't doing a great deal to encourage us to visit. A few I've visited could do with a good clean and the staff seem more interested in moaning than creating a brilliant customer experience.

I’m not saying it’s easy out there. Supermarkets selling cheap beer, wine and ready meals are making it extremely challenging. But that said pubs (and restaurants) need to fit in with the modern world, not howl at the moon and believe they have a divine right to exist.

To my mind it’s all about being positive, going back to basics (clean toilets are a good start), getting creative and working hard at building your customer base. Much like Andrew with his pop-up cinema and charity meal.

Railway Roundabout: Fishguard Harbour (1958)

The Liberal Democrats and the FDP

I have been thinking for a while that the Liberal Democrats are becoming like the FDP in Germany: centrist, technocratic, without ideology.

This may not be entirely fair on either party, but the collapse of the FDP vote in the recent German election did give me, like any other Lib Dems, pause for thought.

Generally, those who are most in favour of our party becoming more like the FDP were quickest to assure us that this collapse had no lessons for us.

In a post on Lib Dem Voice (" Nicht Schadenfreude, sondern Selbstverteidigung") Gareth Epps was more concerned at the parallels - and did at least display an impressive grasp of the language.

Now I have come across a post on the British Politics and Policy at LSE blog by Akash Paunand Robyn Munro in which they look at how smaller parties - the Lib Dems and the FDP - fare in coalition.

Based on their research, they come up with six conclusions:

• smaller parties can only distance themselves from larger coalition partners to a limited extent;
• smaller parties need to be able to demonstrate their distinct contribution to government to avoid what the former leader of the Irish Green Party called “the narrative of the lost moral compass”;
• small parties’ success rests greatly upon the performance and profile of the party leader;
• parties associated with the premature coalition breakdowns are rarely rewarded by voters;
• smaller parties have a limited influence over whether they remain in government or not.

This last point is an important one, given the emphasis that Nick Clegg has put upon our becoming "a party of government".

It is a point I have made myself, and Raun and Munro go on to flesh it out:

A party may end up in coalition even after a poor election result (as did Democrats 66 in 2003) or may return to opposition even after performing relatively well (as for the German Greens in 2005 or the Scottish Liberal Democrats in 2007).

Raun and Munro suggest the moral is that the Lib Dems should make the most of the rest of this parliament, and seek to achieve as much as possible before 2015.

I would also suggest that we conclude that becoming a party of government is not the result of our achieving some higher political plane but largely the result of an electoral fluke. We should therefore do all we can to maintain a distinct appeal to the electorate and an informed and active membership.

Jeremy Browne enters the global race

Earlier this week I praised an article by Andy Beckett that dissected that new cliché of Conservative ministers' speech, 'the global race. As he wrote:

This race, we are told, is economic. Our opponents are usually specified: the rising countries of Asia and South America such as China, India and Brazil. Yet the prize is vaguely and promiscuously defined: "jobs", "wealth", "growth", "trade", "talent", "technology", "skills", "capital", "competitiveness", "big ideas", "influence", "innovation", "investment", "investment opportunities", "recovery". 

Meanwhile the race is invoked to justify seemingly any government goal or policy: bigger British arms sales abroad and smaller school holidays; tighter immigration controls and looser planning laws; the lavish high-speed rail project HS2 and a leaner Whitehall; harder GCSEs and better childcare; reducing social security and reforming the European Union; promoting the renewable energy industry and the redevelopment of Battersea power station; even dignifying Cameron's recent visit to Kazakhstan.

So I was sorry to see our own Jeremy Browne making free with the concept in a piece for the Spectator website.

Jeremy tells us that "how Britain can best be a contender in the global race, is the biggest fact of life in politics today".

That "everything this government is doing is about making Britain viable contenders in the global race. Our very future depends on it".

And that: "It is not like a school sports day in a Labour-run council where everyone is obliged to go at the pace of the slowest participant. This is the global race."

We need to develop some proper Liberal Democrat clichés for Jeremy to use. Then he won't have to write articles that make him sound indistinguishable from the Conservatives.

Dancing statistics: Explaining the statistical concept of variance through dance

Writing about music may be like dancing about architecture, but it seems you can dance about statistics.

Here is one of a number of rather wonderful videos I came across at work today. More information on the British Psychological Society website.

Six of the Best 388

The implementation of the bedroom tax represents stupidity in action, as Liberal Burblings demonstrates.

Co-producing Digital Mental Health looks at the lessons of the successful campaign against Asda's 'mental patient' costume.

The Criminal Bar Association investigates Chris Grayling and the curious case of the anonymous barrister.

"Philosophy is an inherently social activity that thrives on the collision of viewpoints and rarely emerges from unchallenged interior monologue" says Nigel Warburton on Aeon.

The relentless drilling and hammering as London's super-rich expand their homes spells the end for the Notting Hill that Ed Vulliamy loved - or so he argues in the Guardian.

"The British film industry was only a generation away from having the Coen brothers. Their father grew up in London and their grandmother lived in Hove." Bryan Appleyard interviews the celebrated directors for the Sunday Times.

This charming man: Godfrey Bloom

Lest anyone is feeling sorry for Godfrey Bloom - haven't we all wanted to hit Michael Crick at one time or another? - here is an email he sent after contacted him about proposed improvements to the European Pregnant Workers Directive in 2010.

Thanks to Valuing Maternity.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The spirit of Liberalism

Sir Alan Beith arrives with an old lamp. “It was this quest of yours,” he explains. “I wasn’t sure where to go, so I ended up in an antique shop in Alnwick. I found this. It’s rather battered and the wick needs trimming, but for some reason the flame never goes out.”

“Good heavens man! You’ve found the spirit of Liberalism. I shall have it cleaned and polished at once.”

“I expect you will give it to Clegg when you have done that.”

I consider Beith for a moment and then reply: “No, old fellow. I think you had better look after it.”

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

Earlier this week

• Telling The Truth
• Nick Clegg in the boathouse
• The students are revolting
• A particularly civil civil libertarian
• "I cannot tell a lie"
• Assuming the worst

London Euston in 1957

"Belligerent youths" wins Phrase of the Day

On Liberator's blog Simon Titley suggests some ways of putting life back into the Liberal Democrat Conference and incidentally wins our Phrase of the Day Award:

If any government ministers want to deliver speeches, let them take their chances in the rough and tumble of debate. Or speak at a fringe meeting. Or do a TV interview outside the hall. Anything but clog up the agenda with the sheer tedium of their over-rehearsed speeches. 

The belligerent youths in the leader’s office wouldn't like it, of course.

I have just finished Ferdinand Mount's The New Few: Or a Very British Oligarchy and this patrician Tory and kinsman of David Cameron takes a similar view of the modern party conference. I strongly recommend his book.

Lord Bonkers is mentioned in Rutland County Council's minutes

From a deputation quoted the minutes of the meeting of Rutland County Council held in the Council Chamber, Catmose, Oakham, on Monday 9 September 2013:

Lord Bonkers aka Guardian journalist Jonathan Calder was shocked enough to include an RCC press release in his satirical blog. Since he lives in Market Harborough one wonders if he will be arrested by Leicester Police in the near future.

"Guardian journalist" is a large exaggeration, but you can read my articles for the newspaper and its website if you wish.

I have no fear of being arrested, but to understand the comment you would have to understand a legal case that is currently being heard, so I shall say no more about it at this stage.

Project Wild Thing

More at Project Wild Thing.