Shropshire Party PPC joins the Lib Dems

News of an unusual political defection today: Robert Jones, who fought North Shropshire constituency for the Shropshire Party at the last general election, has joined the Liberal Democrats.

He will fight Shropshire Council's Ruyton and Baschurch ward in next May's local election.

The North Shropshire Lib Dems site quotes him:

"I want to stand up for, and represent my local community, to help hold the Tory council to account, and to work towards improving the lives of residents and communities across Shropshire.

"I feel particularly strongly about devolving power, empowering local communities and getting their voice heard. Standing for the Liberal Democrats is the best way to achieve that.

"I can’t wait to get to work, win this election and then deliver for the residents of Ruyton & Baschurch division and for Shropshire."

Man charged in Russian sausage tycoon sauna crossbow killing

Last week the killing of the Russian sausage tycoon Vladimir Marugov dominated this blog. 

At least, headline about it won our award on consecutive days.

There was Russia's 'Sausage King' Murdered With Crossbow In Sauna.

And then Russian 'Sausage King' investigators find man handcuffed to bed.

The latest news comes from the Russian Legal Information Agency:

Investigators have charged Alexander Mavridi, a defendant in a case over murdering Myasnaya Imperia and Ozeretskiye Kolbasy companies owner Vladimir Marugov, with extortion and illegal deprivation of freedom, the Investigative Committee’s press service reports.

Charges have been also brought against Mavridi’s alleged accomplice Konstantin Barsky.

Claudia Webbe faces March trial on harassment charge

Claudia Webbe, the Labour MP for Leicester East, pleaded not guilty to one charge of harassment.at Westminster magistrates court yesterday. She will face trial in March.

The Guardian reports:

The court heard it related to numerous unwanted telephone calls and threats on at least two occasions.

The Metropolitan police said the accusation was made on 25 April this year and relates to an alleged offence in London.

It goes on to say that Webbe has accused police in Islington, where she remains a councillor, of conducting a flawed inquiry that has resulted in this case.

The report also says the request of Webbe's counsel that she be allowed to sit in the well of the court for the hearing, rather than in the dock, was declined by the chief magistrate.

Exploring Royal Deeside in 1959

This is a nice find. In a film made in 1959 for the Scottish Educational Film Association, two children follow the River Dee upstream from Aberdeen Harbour to somewhere close to its source in the Cairngorms.

Click on the still above to view it on the British Film Institute site.

The blurb there says:

Visit Aberdeen harbour, crammed with fishing boats, then row up the river Dee to see the fishermen, with crates of salmon and wriggling eels. After Cults station, stop at Peterculter for the Culter paper mill, then at Banchory for A & G Paterson’s saw mill. Steam on to Ballater for a bus to Balmoral Castle and a Highland Games for some right royal revelry.

And after that, visit the Linn of Dee, watch some mountaineers and see are young protagonists Maria and Michael do some scrambling themselves.

The absence of adult supervision is striking and we see other children helping out on a farm. The past is a foreign country.

As we visit Royal Deeside, I suppose I had better mention again that my forebears worked on the Balmoral Estate.

I am particularly proud of Alexander 'Sandy' Campbell, my great great grandmother's brother, who is said to have refused to shave his beard off for Queen Victoria and who may be the subject of a silver statuette on display in the ballroom at Balmoral.

Malcolm Turnbull skewers climate change scepticism

Great stuff from the former Australian prime minister as he takes on The Australian’s editor-at-large, Paul Kelly. The Australian is a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Turnbull sums up the tactics of the right on climate change perfectly:

The company you work for and its friends in politics, like Trump and others, have turned this issue of physics into an issue of values or identity. ... Saying that you believe or disbelieve in global warming is like saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity. 

You've turned something that should be a question of engineering and economics into undiluted ideology and idiocy, and we are paying the price in delayed action to address global warming.

And he is a distant relation of Angela Lansbury too.

Kamala Harris in action

I came across this video of the new US Vice President Kamala Harris in action on Twitter last night. She is mightily impressive.

There is a good short piece on her for the Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi:

Aged 13, she mobilised the neighbourhood children to protest against rules that stopped them playing on the lawn in front of their apartment building. The protest was a success.

A short video about Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft is in the news today because of Maggi Hambling's new memorial to her, which it is fair to say has received a mixed response.

I don't want to pass judgment on it too quickly. I like Hambling's memorial to Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh, but possibly as much for the way she commissioned a small local engineering firm to make it as anything else.

So here is a good short video about Wollstonecraft. It ends at Old St Pancras Church, which is one of my favourite London places.

Six of the Best 974

"The Government has no interest in the well-being of students. Throughout this crisis they've just treated us as the personal piggy banks of private landlords." Aleisha Stansfield says students are being exploited during the Covid-19 crisis.

Who killed soft Brexit? Jill Rutter and Anand Menon suggest a solution along the lines of Murder on the Orient Express.

Kathrin Glösel on a Finnish scheme under which homeless people receive a small apartment and counselling without any preconditions. Four out of five make their way back into a stable life and it all costs less than accepting homelessness.

"There used to be parties in the apartments on the top floors of New York City’s branch libraries. On other nights, when the libraries were closed, the kids who lived there might sit reading alone among the books or roll around on the wooden library carts—if they weren’t dusting the shelves or shovelling coal. Their hopscotch courts were on the roof. A cat might sneak down the stairs to investigate the library patrons." Sarah Laskow tells the story of the flats in New York's Carnegie libraries.

How did  a working-class Scottish actor became a suave English icon? Geoffrey Macnab looks at Sean Connery’s early career in film and television.

Bob Fischer has been reading children's books from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.

These three-legged Armadillo robots are shouting at people in Leicester's Aylestone Meadows

The Leicester Mercury wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges also liked the opening sentence of the report below:

They have three legs, infra-red motion sensors, a camera and, according to some, a booming voice just like the late Rev Ian Paisley.

A walk along the railway from Farnsfield to Southwell

This is a well-made video of a walk along the abandoned railway between Farnsfield and Southwell in Nottinghamshire.

I once visited Farnsfield to photograph the grave of an obscure writer and I have known and loved Southwell and its cathedral for most of my life.

You can see my own photos of Southwell station and the huge mill beside it on this blog.

I caught the bus from Southwell to Farnsfield, but it looks an attractive walk with some relics of the railway left to enjoy.

And I do agree it would make a great heritage railway, ideally running as far as Rolleston to connect with Nottingham to Lincoln trains.

Meanwhile, they question of how to pronounce 'Southwell' remains unanswered.

Warning of Christmas Stilton shortage

Embed from Getty Images

Neal's Yard Dairy has written about the problems that 2020 has caused the makers of blue cheeses -  Joe Schneider, Jo Clarke and Stilton maker Billy Kevan of Leicestershire's Colston Bassett Dairy in particular:

The cut-off for making the Stilton-style blue cheeses produced by Joe, Billy and the Clarkes was roughly the middle of September. “Anything you make after that struggles to be ripe in time for Christmas,” says Joe. 

Yet back in July, when these producers would normally start their Christmas cheese production, predicting what December might hold was akin to gazing into a crystal ball. “It’s a chain of decisions you make based on what things look like at the time, and how you’re feeling,” says Joe. ...

In July, Billy and Joe were cautious – “high class restaurants weren’t open yet, delis had reduced hours, people’s shopping habits had changed,” says Billy – but come August and all of that eating out to help out, rising sales suggested things might be alright after all.   

So, they put their collective feet on the gas. “Towards the end of August, I started to make cheese seven days a week, for three weeks,” says Joe, “which took us up to the end of September. We’ll pierce those cheeses a week early, so I hope they’ll be ready – but there’s no guarantee.” It is, says David, the blessing and the curse of farmhouse cheese. “You can’t just press a button to make more – and that’s part of what makes it special.

If there is enough Stilton at Christmas it will be at the expense of other blue cheeses, as dairies have cut back production of them in the hope of producing enough of their biggest seller.

And if the cheesemakers do make it through Christmas successfully, a new danger threatens:

The other concern looming over both Joe and Billy, who send many of their cheeses to Europe, is Brexit. Come January, when those cheeses which weren’t quite ripe enough in December are ready to be sold, they have no idea what the situation will be with Europe – “or with America!” exclaims Billy. “Our tariffs on cheese sales there might change as a result of the election.  

The Stilton country can be a political powder keg, as Lord Bonkers recently recalled when discussing the Great Stilton Strike of 1919:

when the miners came out demanding better pay and Lloyd George sent the troops in. They were billeted in Cropwell Bishop, and I recall telling LG at the time that this was Going A Bit Far, but by then he only had ears for his new Conservative friends

I hope it doesn't come to that in 2021.

Campaigners concerned at plans for Leicestershire's hospitals

A campaign group - Save Our NHS Leicestershire - has been formed by people concerned at new plans for the county's hospitals.

After taking issue with a Leicester Mercury report about it, the group explains on its website:

A spokesperson for the Clinical Commissioning Group in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland responds to this by saying that “Nowadays, modern patient care is not just about having beds in hospitals; our focus is on providing care closer to where people live.”

But community care is in complete crisis due to a decade of austerity and there is no explanation in the Trust’s plans as to how this alternative will be funded. In fact, on page 6 of the public consultation document, the Trust explicitly states that “This consultation does NOT include community hospitals, GP practices, mental health and other services provided in the community or in people’s homes.”

We are opposed to the dishonesty about the closure of Leicester General Hospital, the loss of public land and its impact on communities in Leicester East and in Leicestershire.

These changes to hospital provision in the county were reported as though they are part of meeting Boris Johnson's pledge to build 40 new hospitals in England by 2030.

It would be entirely typical of this prime minister and this government if the announcement turns out to mean we are actually losing a hospital.

Certainly, Save Our NHS Leicestershire thinks we are:

The CCG spokesperson states: “The General Hospital would not close, but would be retained as a community health campus including some non-acute beds.”

However, the only University Hospital of Leicester services remaining on the site will be the Diabetes Centre, an imaging hub (CT scans etc) for GP referrals, possibly an administrative block, and possibly (subject to consultation and for a trial period) a midwife-led unit.

Do these four services (compared to the 87 currently at the site) make up a hospital? We think not.

Listen to the podcast Nick Clegg recorded with Joe Biden in 2018

Before he went to work for Facebook, Nick Clegg had a go at being a media personality. One effort in this direction was his podcast Anger Management.

And on 12 July 2018 he interviewed former US Vice President Joe Biden.

But westward, look, the land is bright

Joe Biden's victory in the American Presidential election feels like the first bit of good  news in a long while.

For the present, at least, it seems as though its not just Donald Trump who has been defeated and diminished, but whole worldwide far-right populist movement.

Besides this powerful symbolism, the American people will now enjoy better government and the wider world will benefit from the US rejoining the Western mainstream. Biden has already announced that the US will rejoin the Paris climate agreement, for instance..

And we in Britain may be brought to our senses.

The idea that a trade agreement with the US could take the place of our membership of the single market was always a fantasy. Unlike Trump, Biden is likely to tell us that.

He will also make it clear that there will be no agreement of any sort if Britain refuses to fulfil its obligations under the Good Friday Agreement.

Sometimes you need a candid friend and Britain is in that position now. We must hope that Biden will prove such a friend.

Fraud at the Polls: Citizen Kane foretold the fall of Donald Trump

More than one person tweeted this clip yesterday, but I thought I would immortalise it here.

This 'social media' is all very well, but you can't beat old-fashioned blogging.

Simon and Garfunkel: America

I've long been a little ashamed that the first album I bought with my own money was Band on the Run by Wings.

But I have no such feelings about the second, which was Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits.

And as we have all been thinking about America these past few days, this seems a good time to choose one of Paul Simon's greatest songs. 

It has appeared here before, but I've decided that, as this blog has been running so long, repetition is a service to most readers.

John Betjeman visits St Mary the Virgin, Wellingborough

St Mary the Virgin, a 20th-century church near Wellingborough railway station, is famous for the interior by its architect Sir Ninian Comper. I have tried to visit it a couple of times but found it locked.

John Betjeman had more luck when he made this for Shell in 1960, but if ever a film cried out for colour stock...

Click on the still above to watch it on the British Film Institute site.

Six of the Best 973

Peter Geoghegan looks at how a cartel of MPs associated with the European Research Group took over the Conservative Party and broke British politics.

"The story ends with no satisfactory conclusion.  But we have to ask what might have been done to help Graham and the other victims and to bring Smyth to some form of justice. The key person who seems missing in action is of course Justin Welby." Stephen Parsons on the case of John Smyth QC (Mary Whitehouse's favourite lawyer) who used the Church of England to facilitate his sadistic abuse.

"The type of 'placemaking' achieved by global property finance forces out local communities through rising rents and property prices, and airbrushes local culture from existence." Anna Minton argues that 'regeneration' schemes too often result in an unfair fight between local people and global finance.

Marcela Kunova looks at the dilemmas journalists face when asked to delete a story.

British towns and cities that were heavily bombed in the second world war are now likely to have high levels of child deprivation says Sean Coughlan, reporting new research.

Terry Gilliam reveals the secrets of his animations for Monty Python in a 1974 video.

West Clare hotelier loses out in US Presidential election

Our Headline of the Day proves that there is always a local angle.

Congratulations to The Clare Echo and thanks to the reader who nominated it.

If you read the story you will see it refers to the Trump International Golf Links and Hotel Ireland at Doonbeg.

The return of the Belper Moo

The other day I blogged about one Derbyshire town's way of coping with the stresses of the first Covid lockdown: the Belper Moo.

Now lockdown's back, the Moo is too.

BBC News has interviewed its organiser Jasper Ward:

"Once the weather really turns there is every chance that some people behind closed doors won't interact with another person that day or step out the house, so if nothing else, it gives them a reason to open a window and let off some steam or connect with a neighbour for a few seconds."

He adds:

 "You can't see people but last night a man who lives opposite came out. I recognised his moo through the darkness."