Liz Truss pledges to beat the Lib Dems in Cheltenham, but doesn't know which county it's in

Yesterday's Conservative leadership hustings took place in the plum Liberal Democrat target seat of Cheltenham.

During it, Liz Truss pledged she would ensure the Lib Dems did not take the constituency back. (We held it from 1992 to 2010.)

She may have trouble keeping her promise, because she appears to think the town is in Derbyshire. Just watch the video.

Incidentally, she could have saved herself time and embarrassment by dropping that prefabricated answer.

Because it became clear that her honest reponse to any question about what she would do to give immediate help to people hit with colossal fuel bills is "Nothing."

The Joy of Six 1068

"It’s subversive of constitutional democracy. It’s peddled by wealthy and privileged people to discredit reasoned government and distract the disadvantaged. Populism is a powerful poison, with the potential to kill off liberal democracy." William Wallace says we need to work harder to dispel the right-wing myth that Britain has a "liberal elite".

"Outsourcing has ... broken the link between care and local communities, with thousands of children in care sent to live many miles from their families and friends because no local homes are available. Companies maximise returns by locating their business where homes are cheapest - not where children need them." Martin Barrow on the many dangers of allowing private companies to look after children in public care.

Emma John finds that the South Asian Cricket Academy has already shown why it was needed: "The Academy was born out of a conversation between Kabir Ali, the former England all-rounder, and his club teammate Tom Brown, the Birmingham City University researcher whose work revealed that while British Asians make up 30% of the recreational game in England, they constitute only 5% of professional cricketers."

East West Rail, the project to restore direct services between Oxford to Cambridge, is under threat, reports Greg Pitcher.

"The Third Policeman is the perfect philosophical novel and you must read it," says Clare Moriarty.

A London Inheritance tales us on a journey into the city's past: "If you walk past 193 and 195 King’s Cross Road, take a detour into St. Chad’s Place. Walk up to Gray’s Inn Road and you will cross the River Fleet, the original Metropolitan Railway and the site of St. Chad’s Well – not bad for a couple of minutes walk. And with some imagination, perhaps you will also see the waters of St. Chad’s Well still running beneath a small, four hole grating."

Can the lawsuits against Alex Jones help turn the tide of disinformation?

For years Alex Jones spread the lie that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, were a government hoax and the victims' families were paid actors.

This led to online harassment and death threats for the parents of children who died at Sandy Hook.

Last week in Austin, Texas, a jury ordered Jones to pay $4.1m in compensatory damages and $45.2m in punitive damages to the parents of Jesse Lewis, a six-year-old boy killed in the shooting.

Interviewed for Democracy Now, Elizabeth Williamson of the New York Times says:

The reason why the families have brought this suit, [is] that they feel like Sandy Hook - and I agree, and that’s what I wrote in my book - that this was a foundational moment in this decade-long descent into disinformation and false narratives that our society is undergoing. And the families are raising a red flag, that, you know, this is not only impacting us, this is eroding the foundation of our democracy.

You can listen to the interview above or read a transcript at Democracy Now.

Another glimpse of my own personal Thirties poet W.T. Nettlefold

A search of the British Newspaper Archive finds W.T. Nettlefold at a meeting the London Branch of the Left Book Club Poetry Group held in Hampstead in the first week of June 1939.

Bill Nettlefold was a neighbour of my mother's aunt and cousin in Bexleyheath and turned out to have been a minor poet in the 1930s. I blogged about meeting him when I was 17 - think of it as my homage to Hazlitt's My First Acquaintance with Poets.

There were three reading at that 1939 meeting and the other two - Paul Potts and Randall Swingler - were both names in their day.

But Hampstead News liked our man best.

An electrician, who matured into a poet only two years ago, "Bill" Nettlefold was the simplest writer and for that reason he has a direct appeal to the "working classes".

"Combustion" and "Analogy" showed the influence of his industrial environment. "Spring also Stirs," was a moving and curious piece, with market qualities. It has a peculiar thread of unity; "Remembrance Day" is a bitter, vivid verse.

Nettlefold does turn up in books on the period from time to time. The page is not available online, but he gets a mention in Marina MacKay's chapter on Total War in A History of 1930s British Literature, which was edited by Benjamin Kohlmann and Matthew Taunton and published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.

What we can see is the first subheading in MacKay's chapter, "'Purchase the Poppies while You May': the Persistence of the Great War," which includes a quotation from Nettlefold's Remembrance Day. 

You can find the full poem in a comment on my post about meeting Bill Nettlefold.

If there is to be a Nettlefold revival, I am up for it.

Nick Clegg, Roe v. Wade, Facebook, privacy... and Lord Bonkers

Remember when Nick Clegg told us he would defy the law and refuse to register for an identity card? (It was during a Lib Dem leadership election, if that helps narrow it down.)

I thought of him when I read this Guardian story:

When local Nebraska police came knocking in June – before Roe v Wade was officially overturned – Facebook handed the user data of a mother and daughter facing criminal charges for allegedly carrying out an illegal abortion. 

Private messages between the two discussing how to obtain abortion pills were given to police by Facebook, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. The 17-year-old, reports say, was more than 20 weeks pregnant. 

In Nebraska, abortions are banned after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The teenager is now being tried as an adult.

Court documents filed in June and made public on Tuesday show how tech companies including Facebook contribute to criminal prosecutions of abortion cases. 

I've never liked Facebook. I helped run an account at work, but only had a personal account for a few days before I deleted it. I once bought a book on Facebook, and that made me dislike it even more.

Facebook reminds me of the days when corporate social media was a new thing and training courses told you that your ideas about privacy were old fashioned. Young people didn't care about privacy at all: they put their whole lives online.

That bright-eyed approach didn't last long in the real world, but somehow it remains hard-wired into Facebook. Perhaps it's because of its origin in universities. There, making new friends and showing that you have made them, is all.

The Guardian quotes unnamed experts who say this shocking case shows the importance of encryption and minimising the amount of data Facebook stores on its users.

Those experts are right.

As to Nick Clegg and Facebook, I think Lord Bonkers got it right too:

Who should I bump into in London today but our own Nick Clegg? Curious to know what he is doing with himself these days, I treat him to lunch at one of my clubs.

He turns out to be full of his new job, telling me how Satan’s chief operating officer Mephistopheles called him while he was walking in the Alps last summer and invited him to fly to Hell to meet Satan himself. "I said to them, if you're prepared to let me into the inner circle, in the black box, and give me real authority, then I'm interested."

Clegg describes Satan to me as "a shy guy" and "thoughtful", before adding: "The thing that persuaded me to do it is Satan and  Mephistopheles asking the right questions for the right reasons - about things like the barrier between free speech and prohibited content, wellbeing of children, integrity of elections, AI and giving people control over their data."

Let us put churlish thoughts aside and hope that Clegg can do for Satan what he did for the Liberal Democrats.

Former Labour mayor and parliamentary candidate for Shrewsbury joins the Lib Dems

Jon Tandy, a former Labour mayor of Shrewsbury and Labour parliamentary candidate for Shrewsbury and Atcham, has joined the Liberal Democrats.

He told Shropshire Live:

"I'm born and bred in Shrewsbury, I love this town. The Liberal Democrats are providing the community leadership that we need to keep making Shrewsbury a better place to live for everyone. They really care about our town, and I’m going to be backing the Lib Dems all the way to win votes and seats from both the Tories and Labour."

His decision is rooted in disquiet at the left's control of Labour in Shrewsbury, but there is plenty about the Shropshire Lib Dems to attract him at the moment:

Councillor Alex Wagner welcomed Jon Tandy to the party at a meeting in Harlescott yesterday. He said: 

"Having someone with Jon’s experience and talent decide to join the Liberal Democrats is a huge boost to us locally. It is a real honour to welcome him to the party, and I cannot wait to see what he has in store next.

"Jon’s campaigning record is second to none, and I know he’s already getting stuck in, working hard and holding local leadership to account in his local community in Harlescott."

Paul Marsden, who gained Shrewsbury and Atcham for Labour in 1997 and held it in 2001, crossed the floor later that year to sit with the Lib Dems. He remained on our benches until he retired from the Commons in 2005.

Camden Road: Camden's other station

Jago Hazzard chooses Camden Road as his favourite London Overground station. You'll find it on the North London Line and apparently it's a good way of getting to Camden Market without running into huge crowds at the tube station.

When I lived in Kew back in the early 1980s, I brought my bike down to St Pancras on the train from Market Harborough. From there cycled the mile or so north to Camden Road. so I could take it on a North London Line train from there to Kew Gardens.

Anyway, you can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.

The Joy of Six 1067

"One of the most startling statistics in the report is that there are now eight million younger workers who have never experienced an economy that delivers a rising standard of living through wages alone." William Davies reviews Stagnation Nation, a new report from the Resolution Foundation.

For the next six months, 3300 workers in the UK will work just four days a week. This experiment has captured media and public attention as a record 70 companies voluntarily made the promise of working less a reality for their workforce. Robert Magowan looks at the potential broader social impacts of the trial on society and how campaigners are hoping to seize the opportunity to transform the norms that rule our working lives.

Zoë Heller on some new feminist considerations of masculinity.

"The leaked version of the Future Tours programme which reached us last month makes for concerning reading. It provides us with endless contests between the big three of the international game, England, India and Australia, whilst marginalising the rest of the Test playing nations even further than they currently are." Billy Crawford says cricket is destroying itself from within.

"They don't have wolves at London Zoo these days. Were Richard E Grant to perform the 'What piece of work is a man?' monologue in Regent's Park today, it would be to an audience of giant anteaters." Richard Luck finds that Withnail and I has a lot to say about Brexit Britain.

Visit Leicester tells us that more than 175 colourful panels have been installed across the city centre and suburbs to give residents and visitors a glimpse into the hidden histories of Leicester.

Lib Dems get tough with privatised utilities

There are two news stories about the Liberal Democrats and the privatised utilities today.

BBC News reports that we have:

called for October's expected energy price cap rise to be scrapped, with the cost covered by a windfall tax on energy company profits.

Experts expect the energy price cap - the maximum amount suppliers can charge their customers in England, Scotland and Wales - to hit £3,615.

The average bill was £1,400 a year in October 2021.

And the Guardian says:

Water company bosses should be banned from giving themselves bonuses until they fix their leaky pipes, the Liberal Democrats have demanded.

New figures uncovered by the party found that England’s water and sewage company bosses have awarded themselves about £27m in bonuses over the past two years.

Analysis of Companies House records by the party found that executives at England’s water and sewage companies were paid £48m in 2020 and 2021, including £27.6m in bonuses, benefits and incentives.

This is despite reports that they allow 2.4bn litres of water to be leaked in England every day.

I'm pleased to see both these proposals. OFGEM has been ridiculously accommodating to the power companies - any idea that the point of privatisation was that those companies should bear the risks has long been forgotten.

And Ofwat has been no tougher with the water industry. If we hit directors where it hurts - in their pockets - then we may at last see some action on leaks.

We also need to get tough on the pollution of rivers. I suggest we threaten those same directors with prison sentences if they don't clean up their act.

Watch Michael Sandel on the tyranny of merit

From the YouTube blurb:

What accounts for our polarized public life, and how can we begin to heal it? Political philosopher Michael Sandel offers a surprising answer: those who have flourished need to look in the mirror. 

He explores how "meritocratic hubris" leads many to believe their success is their own doing and to look down on those who haven't made it, provoking resentment and inflaming the divide between "winners" and "losers" in the new economy. 

Hear why we need to reconsider the meaning of success and recognize the role of luck in order to create a less rancorous, more generous civic life.

And here is perhaps the key paragraph of the talk (which I've split in two):

Encouraging people to go to college is a good thing. Broadening access for those who can't afford it is even better. But this is not a solution to inequality. 

We should focus less on arming people for meritocratic combat, and focus more on making life better for people who lack a diploma but who make essential contributions to our society.

Liz Truss's leadership campaign is being run from a Westminster house owned by a former private secretary to Enoch Powell

A couple of week's ago the Guardian took us Inside Team Truss.

The one interesting thing I learnt from this article - and thanks to the reader who pointed it out to me - is that Truss's campaign is being run from a Westminster townhouse owned by the Conservative peer Greville Howard, who was private secretary to Enoch Powell between 1968 and 1970.

Beyond that. it's largely gush. 

We're told of one team member:

"She’s as dry as a pancake but got a great policy head," said one Tory source.

And before we've finished wondering why this Tory source thinks a pancake is proverbially dry, we've been told that one of the two people directing "strategic communications" is a former media adviser to Prince Andrew.

But no political journalist is going to slag off the backroom staff of a possible future prime minister. Because these may well turn out to be, for years to come, the very people this journalist needs to take her calls.

Two weeks on, we know that Truss's campaign has been run in a harebrained manner unrivalled in modern times - unless it is by the campaign being fought by her rival Rishi Sunak.

The Mark Five: Baby What's Wrong

The blurb for this on YouTube says:

The old Jimmy Reed blues number vamped up by Scotland's Mark Five. At a time when the big London-based record companies ignored talent over the border, the lads protest-marched from Edinburgh to London which resulted in a Fontana signing. This one 45 sold so poorly they called it a day. Singer Manny Charlton eventually joined Scots rockers Nazareth.

That's one version of the story. I prefer the one I got from the Scotsman:

January 1963 ...

The Mark Five, featuring Manny Charlton who later plays in Nazareth, walk from Edinburgh to London, hitching a ride whenever photographers were not present. The walk is a publicity stunt to protest about the lack of record companies coming to Scotland to see Scottish bands, and a ploy to demand a record deal.

They are met in Market Harborough by a record company executive and offered a contract. The Mark Five release a version of the Isley Brothers' Tango but are soon dropped by the label.

It seems that Tango was the A-side and this was on the reverse. Anyway, it appears today as a tribute to Manny Charlton, who died last month. He enjoyed success with Nazareth in the 1970s.

If you think I'm obsessed with Malcolm Saville...

I made an extraordinary discovery on YouTube the other evening. 

Hinckley's Red River Theatre Group has posted two plays that each show us the current-day lives of the characters from one of Malcolm Saville's lesser-known and gentler series of children's books.

Return to Nettleford catches up with Elizabeth the vicar's daughter, Sally and Paul at the Wise Owl bookshop and the rest of the gang.

But things are not going well in Nettleford. No one goes to church any more and the Wise Owl is on its last legs.

This reminds me of Flip Chart Rick's sobering account of what will have happened to Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley since their television heyday.

I've not finished it yet, but I hope there will be a happy ending. Malcolm Saville would certainly have given us one.

I'm also halfway through Susan and Bill Refreshed.

The Susan and Bill books were set in a new town, but the attempt to be up to date was rather undercut by the illustrations. They were drawn by E.H. Shepherd, Saville's neighbour and walking partner in Guildford, so recall children's classics rather than anything modern.

Again, I am halfway through this and hopeful that things will turn out well.

I've no idea who wrote these plays, but they know their Malcolm Saville. When two characters in Return to Nettleford discuss possible honeymoon destinations, they reel off the locations of the Lone Pine books.

Backstreet fantasy: The Clare Street Drill Hall, Northampton

I should have gone to Braunston yesterday, which is a Northamptonshire canal village that, with some justification, calls itself the "Heart of the Waterways". But the vital bus was cancelled - blame Brexit or Covid - so I spent the day wandering the back streets of Northampton instead.

At one point a slightly Toy Town turret appeared in the distance. Eventually, it turned out to be the Clare Street Drill Hall, though the building looks far grander than that name makes it sound.

Wikipedia tells us the it was designed "in the Fortress Gothic Revival Style" and opened in 1859 as the headquarters of the 1st Northamptonshire Rifle Volunteer Corps.

That entry goes on to detail its varied and diminishing uses since. It's a reminder of both Northampton's importance as a centre and the decline in numbers of the British Army.

Anyway, this sort of backstreet fantasy is just what I enjoy coming across.

Later. It used to be even more fantastic.

Farewell to Judith Durham

Judith Durham, the lead singer of The Seekers, has died in Melbourne at the age of 79.

The Seekers, were an Australian group who played pop tinged with folk, and enjoyed enormous success in Britain in the 1960s.

They won the New Musical Express poll for the best new group of 1964, were heavily played by Radio Caroline and had two UK no. 1 hits and three other top 3 singles before they returned to Australia in 1968. They were also the first Australian group to have major his in the US.

One of their members, Bruce Woodley, co-wrote songs with Paul Simon, who was around on the UK folk scene at the time.

But through it all it was Judith Durham's voice that made them distinctive. This performance is taken from their farewell (to Britain) concert, which I remember watching on television in July 1968.

Roman Leicester wasn't built in a day 1

What with one thing and another, it's been two years since I posted something from this series. So let's carry on the with the first part of its treatment of Roman Leicester.

The blurb from Jim Butler's Hidden Histories channel on YouTube says:

Leicester's transformation from Iron Age settlement to Roman Civitas Capital didn't happen overnight. This film charts the evolution of the Roman Town from its earliest days to the middle of the occupation, using the amazing archaeology discovered to highlight key events and people.

Inside the mind of a former conspiracist

From the blurb for this podcast in the Conspiracy Games & Countergames series:

For 15 years Brent Lee not only believed in conspiracy theories but helped produce and popularize them. Today, he warns others about both the danger and the appeal of conspiratorial world-building.

We have been taught to imagine that people fall into the proverbial "rabbit hole" because of isolation, idiocy and paranoia. But in this interview, Brent explains how he and many others came to it from through critical thinking, scepticism towards the operations of social power and empathy with those who were suffering.

We explore with him why he stayed in the conspiracy world thanks, in part, to the sense of righteous community it provided. And we cover how the right-wing weaponization of conspiracy theories in the mid-2010s triggered Brent’s exit from the community. Today, motivated by contrition for what he helped create and compassion for those who, like him, are taken in, he dedicates his time to helping those inside and outside conspiracy worlds understand and challenge them.

This is a valuable podcast because it brings out that people can be led to belief in conspiracy theories through intellectual curiosity.

The modern left is too prone to believe that anyone who disagrees with it must be stupid.

The Joy of Six 1066

"The Conservatives of today are possessed of a small idea: that they should be able to do whatever they want, whenever they want (to whoever they want), and that the rest of us should not just accept this but facilitate and celebrate them." Alan Finlayson watches the Conservative leadership election.

Andrew Screen says Edge of Darkness owes a tremendous amount to Bob Peck: "On his death from cancer in April 1999, at the age of only fifty three, Edge of Darkness was not only one of the most ambitious British television productions, but also the most critically acclaimed and successful ratings grabbers the BBC ever produced."

"This isn’t a problem of a place lost in the midst of time either — confusion set in barely a day after the event. The report of the defeat near the village of Dadlington that first reached Yorkist loyalists in the North referred to the king’s death at the “Battle of Redemore”. Nowadays, nobody even knows where Redemore was." Fergus Butler-Gallie visits Bosworth Field.

About SE11 travels back to 1971, when The Who and Rod Stewart rocked The Oval.

The Old Oak Estate in Hammersmith was once described as the London County Council’s "finest contribution to the revival of English domestic architecture". Municipal Dreams takes us there.

A London Inheritance finds what used to be the Saville Theatre, where I once sang with Danny La Rue.

Follow the Willow Brook beneath the Midland main line in Leicester

We left the Willow Brook as it disappeared towards the Midland main line after the Cobden Street bridge.

You have to be intrepid and in a group to follow it under the railway, so thanks to the Walk About Wazzock and the rest of the crew.

Because the culvert they take us through is extraordinary. It's much larger than I expected and perhaps and indication that the Willow Brook could be fearsome before it was tamed by flood prevention work.

As the commentary keeps saying, it looks like a railway tunnel. The Great Northern Railway line to Leicester Belgrave Road did cross under the Midland near here, but I have photographed the spot and it is nothing like so impressive as this conduit. Still, I'll post those photos one day.

These explorers start where I left off, at the Cobden Street end of the conduit. The amount of greenery they find there proves that the last photo in my pervious post does not show the conduit's portal.

There are more photos of the culvert, including one of a shaft coming down from above complete with rungs for hands and feet, on the Derelict Places site.

So it's over to me again now and one day soon I shall pick up the Willow Brook as near to the eastern portal of the conduit as I can and see where it takes me.

The Spectator tries to have fun with Liz Truss's Lib Dem past again, but she made more sense in those days

Liz Truss once suggested that "the age of criminal responsibility should come to us with the right to vote" in an article titled "So why can't kids have the vote?"

tweets James Heale, the editor of the Spectator's diary column.

He leads us to another gentle attempt to embarrass Truss over her Liberal Democat past. This time the item is mainly about an article she wrote for Free Radical - then the organ of the party's youth wing.

Maybe it will outrage Spectator readers and Conservative members, but this article (reposted here to annoy the Man) seems to me to make a perfectly arguable case.

Certainly, our current age of criminal responsibility (10) and voting age (18), both of which concern a young person's ability to navigate the adult world, are much too far apart.

Where you set the voting age is not just a reflection of what young people are like, but also of what you think they should be like. And I believe that, for the health of our democracy, young people should be interested in politics by the time they are 16 and that giving them the vote at that age will encourage this.

Meanwhile, we need to look at our age of criminal responsibility, which is high by international standards.

Remember, too, that if a child of 10 or more is charged with a serious crime then they will be tried before a jury in an adult court.

And, yes, at this point I am going to recommend again the BBC  Responsible Child, which looks at this issue. It won an International Emmy, as did its young lead Billy Barratt.

Believing a 10-year-old can understand such proceedings and meaningfully instruct counsel seems to me rather sillier than suggesting they should be given the vote.

Liz Truss's idea of a consistent age of majority at 16 was a creditable attempt to sort out the mess we have made of things and one to which we Lib Dems might return.