The Joy of Six 1600

"In a sacred ceremony dating back to time immemorial, a researcher from a poverty charity or housing campaign group raises their mournful head from the Budget small print and confirms to their line manager that no, there is no money assigned to raising Local Housing Allowance in line with rents and yes, that means housing benefit for private sector tenants in all but the cheapest homes is being cut. Again." Chaminda Jayanetti says John Healey's "breathing space" Budget has ensured the noose around the neck of the poorest private renters gets ever tighter.

Daniella Shreir reports on the unrest in France: "Despite three weeks of blockades and protests that had already led to more than six thousand arrests (most of them of minors), Macron claimed to have been surprised by the scale of the protests on 17 October."

Shem Law argues that the BBC's decision to close Radio 4 Extra is a terrible mistake.

"Illich’s censure of industrialized society originated in his criticisms of the Catholic Church. As a young priest of formidable intellect, Illich was known in the Vatican and seemed clearly destined to become a prince of the church. But his experience of missionary attitudes, first in Puerto Rico and then in Brazil and Mexico, turned him into a vociferous critic of what he saw as a corporate-religious developmentalism that paved over Indigenous customs and encouraged dependency." Justin McGuirk looks at the ideas of Ivan Illich in his centenary year.

Malin Hay visits the Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends exhibition at the Young V&A: "Of late, a note of techno-optimism has crept into the Aardman canon. The most recent Wallace and Gromit film, Vengeance Most Fowl, feints towards a Luddite message, as Wallace’s obsession with gadgets threatens Gromit’s peace and the simplicity of their lives."

"The history of an organisation's change programmes can tell you a lot about what is behind its current initiatives. Sometimes they are a reaction to what went before, other times they are an attempt to do the same again, only with different language. Often, there is little understanding of why the last change attempt failed. People want to bury the embarrassment of previous projects and move on." Flip Chart Fairy Tales undertakes some workplace archaeology among the ruins of past change programmes.

The Ethiopians: Everything Crash

A site devoted to the band says:

The Ethiopians (originally The Ethiopian Children) were one of Jamaica’s most influential vocal groups during their heyday. Not only did the original quartet (Leonard Dillon, Wally Booker, Harold Bishop & Neville Duncan) spearhead the transition between Ska and Rocksteady, Dillon’s heavily Rastafarian lyrics also paved the way for the socially conscious roots reggae era that was to come.

The Reggae Museum adds that they were among the first Jamaican groups to tour widely in Britain.

This single from 1969 records a wave of public-sector strikes – a sort of Jamaican winter of discontent.

Bishop's Castle Town Council sees the importance of supporting residents during a food crisis

Bishop's Castle has always had a strong sense of community. Here's a contemporary account of how it responded to the Civil War:

Out of Shropshire we hear that there are above a thousand in armes about Clun and Bishop's Castle, standing out against both sides: neither for the King nor for the Parliament, but stand only upon their own guard for the preservation of their lives and fortunes.

So it's no surprise to learn from the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser – it's that paper again – that Bishop's Castle Town Council's new food resilience strategy aims to "improve local food access and support residents during potential future crises".

I've bought my tins of soup and baked beans, but we don't all have lots of storage space. If you privatise responsibility for getting through a crisis entirely, you end up with a senior government minister urging people to anticipate a strike of fuel tanker drivers by storing petrol at home. (It would be invidious to mention Francis Maude in this context.)

Assembly Rooms toilet row – Ludlow council "not a bottomless pit"

Now here's a decision that didn't take the judges long: the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser is the clear winner of our Headline of the Day Award.

The Joy of Six 1599

James Graham reads Roz Savage's pamphlet for Compass, Liberalism Alive: "Whether you are the biggest Ed Davey fan or not, the fact is that the hard work to develop a post-Davey vision for the Liberal Democrats needs to begin. Whether he stands aside on this side of the election or not, he will not go on forever."

"What is unfolding before us at national government level, reminds me of what has happened to local government over the past decades. For different reasons, the obligations – the things local govt had to do – became more and more onerous, precisely at the same time as their spending power was hammered. As a result, the political complexion of any given council mattered less and less. They had fewer and fewer discretionary decisions they could take, whatever their political desires might have been." Lewis Goodall explains why budget day was boring.

"There is a response to the housing crisis hiding in plain sight. Back in 2020, a National Acquisitions Programme or Conversion Fund was recommended by the Affordable Housing Commission. This fund would provide grants to social landlords and community housing providers to purchase existing private rented homes and convert them into social and affordable tenures." Helen Dennis says buying back ex-private rentals is often cheaper and faster for councils than building homes from scratch, but they need funding to do more of it.

Ben Curtis on how the Senghenydd colliery disaster revealed the true price of coal: "The blast on October 14 1913 killed 439 men and boys, with another dying during rescue operations. It was, and remains, the worst coal mining disaster in British history and also the sixth worst in the world."

"Each stage was specially designed to accommodate a different era or style of drama; Greek, Elizabethan and Modern on the Olivier, 18th, 19th and early 20th century on the Lyttleton and experimental productions on the Cottesloe. The Olivier theatre has a thrust stage, pushing forward into the audience. The Lyttleton is more traditional, with a proscenium arch, and seating into two tiers. The Cottesloe, (now called the Dorfman), is the most basic and flexible of the three, with three tiers of seating, with a gallery level looking down on the stage in a courtyard style." Modernist London marks 50 years of the National Theatre.

Olivia Rutigliano recommends 17 films with sinister pagan festivals, cultish locals and witchy witches. We're talking folk horror.

Europe’s coffin-makers warn Chinese imports could be death knell for industry

Embed from Getty Images

Thanks to a sharp-eyed Liberal England reader, Politico wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Reform leader of Leicestershire County Council under pressure

Discontent with the Reform UK leader of Leicestershire County Council, Dan Harrison, is growing within his own party, reports the Harborough Mail.

Reform councillors met on Tuesday to discuss the council's direction under Harrison and, the Mail says, a vote  on whether they were happy with his leadership saw a majority of one in his favour:

It is understood that, according to one source, discontent has been forming within Reform due to what is being called a "lack of direction" under Cllr Harrison. Recent by-election results have increased pressure on the party leader too.

The paper quotes the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the council, Michael Mullaney, who believes the "wheels are falling off the Reform bandwagon":

"They’ve gone down from 30 per cent in the polls, now down to only just 20 per cent.

"Clearly they're losing steam, losing support nationally, and obviously that will impact their support in Leicestershire.

"I don't think it’s necessarily a Dan Harrison problem – more of a Nigel Farage problem".

We're also seeing a fault line in Reform opening up. It's the line between those of their councillors who try to do the job conscientiously and those who mistake X for the real world.

Two early screen appearances by Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

The actor Patrick Stewart died yesterday. This story from the Hollywood Reporter concentrates on his appearances in Star Trek and X-Men, while some of us will think first of his appearances in Smiley's People and I, Claudius. In both he was a uniquely powerful presence.

Over the years I have posted a couple of clips of him from even earlier in his career. Here he is in Joby from 1975. 

This was an adaptation of the Stan Barstow's 1964 novel of the same name. It was filmed  in and around Horbury, the village near Wakefield where Barstow himself grew up. We lost so much with the demise of the regional ITV companies.

And from 1969, here he is acting a scene from Hamlet with Ian Richardson and Ronald Lacey. This is an extract from one of the episodes of Kenneth Clark's series Civilisation.

Caroline Voaden "shocked and bloody angry" at Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage claimed he didn't show up to the Budget because he's afraid of another altercation with Lib Dem MPs. I was there at the incident he's referring to. He grabbed my colleague and tried to move her out of the way, trying to barge past to be front of the procession to the King's speech.

[image or embed]

— Alex Brewer MP 🔶 (@alexkbrewer.bsky.social) 29 October 2026 at 15:52

And who that colleague? It was Caroline Voaden:

Caroline Voaden, MP for South Devon, said in a social media post directed at the Reform UK leader that she was “still waiting for the apology you were required to write to me”.

The Reform UK leader claimed he skipped John Healey’s Budget to prevent a possible “physical altercation” inside the House of Commons and added that his parliamentary prayer card, which MPs use to reserve a seat in the chamber, was removed on Wednesday. ...

However, a House of Commons spokesperson later clarified that Mr Farage’s prayer card had been removed because it did not bear a valid time stamp.

I'm sure none of our MPs would dream of assaulting Farage, but I can't speak for Lord Bonkers with such confidence.

Beavers chew down sign warning walkers about beavers in Poland

Euro Weekly News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

A beaver writes exclusively for Liberal England: I says to Reg, I says: "You know what that sign means? No more Kendal Mint Cake, that's what it means." So Reg says "Then it's got to go." And you know Reg: he gnawed right through the post"

How George Santos bet on himself and lost

Embed from Getty Images

Here's the opening of Geoff Mann's essay on prediction markets in the current London Review of Books:

In​ the days leading up to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February, the prediction market Kalshi set up a trade, a wager in all but name, on the Yes/No proposition that the disgraced Republican ex-congressman George Santos would attend. 

The larger the number of people who bet 'Yes' (or, in the language the prediction markets prefer, bought ‘Yes’ contracts), the more the value of the bet would rise; if they bet ‘No’, it would fall. 

Santos saw an opportunity. Privately, he bet 'Yes', then started posting on social media that he was ‘going to be there’ for the speech, speculating about what he might wear and so on. 

As the money piled in, the price of 'Yes' rose. When he thought the time was right, Santos sold his ‘Yes’ contracts, bought 'No’s, and then didn’t show up to the speech. 

This story, which I missed at the time, turned out to have an unhappy ending for Santos:

He made $17,500 on the trade, which he had to return after his actions came to light, in addition to paying a fine of the same amount and being banned from Kalshi for life.

Joe Jackson: Breaking Us in Two

Breaking Us in Two comes from Jackson's 1982 album Night and Day. 

The railway in the video is the Keighley and Worth Valley. And the station is Oakworth, which was the station in Lionel Jeffries' film of The Railway Children.

The Joy of Six 1598

"The world's solar power is crossing a threshold. A decade ago, it barely registered on a global scale, providing just 1 per cent of the world's power. In 2026, it will almost certainly increase to 10 per cent of power, and overtake nuclear, a mainstay of electricity since the late 1970s." Jocelyn Timperley on the reasons for solar's success and where it may go from here.

David Gauke asks: "What were they thinking of? All those British right-of-centre politicians who had wholeheartedly backed the Ukrainians in their brave resistance to Russian aggression, who then declared their support for Donald Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election – Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Jenrick and others."

Bobby Dean, Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington, says Britain must not shut the door on Hongkongers persecuted for defending democracy.

"Britain’s cycle of flooding and drought simply can’t be treated as two separate crises. They are twin symptoms of the exact same underlying condition: that we have systematically broken our landscape’s ability to act as a sponge." Rebecca Wrigley argues that turning our countryside back into a natural sponge is the key to escaping the flood-drought whiplash.

"In October 1969, the artists Gilbert & George celebrated a year of performing their 'singing sculpture' work Underneath The Arches by inviting figures in the art world and East London residents to a special performance in the street." Greg Salter ponders art, homosociality and post-war reconstruction.

Alex Bowden thinks English cricket has become fixated on celebrating the final test matches of long-serving players.

Myth and mystery on the Stiperstones ridge

This video from Britannia Unconsidered has a little Shropshire hillporn and rather more folklore.

It's Wild Edric and his Hunt that Jenny fears she and Peter are seeing in Malcolm Saville's Seven White Gates – see my recent article on Saville for Lion & Unicorn.

David Chadwick set to become next leader of Welsh Lib Dems

David Chadwick, the MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, has announced his bid to become the next leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

He has set out plans to rebuild the party around economic growth, enterprise and opportunities for young people, reports the Pembrokeshire Herald.

Showing a nice appreciation of the Welsh Liberal Democrats' constitution, the paper says:

The 35-year-old ... is the only candidate currently eligible to succeed Ms Dodds, meaning the leadership will not be contested provided he secures the required backing from party members.

Under the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ internal election rules, leadership candidates must gain nominations from at least 50 members, with no more than seven coming from any one local party, before nominations close at midday on Monday, November 16.

The party's previous leader, Jane Dodds, recently stood down after nine years in the role.

David Hemmings film of David Bowie concert tour to be seen at last

Embed from Getty Images

Here's some good news from the Guardian. David Hemmings' film of David Bowie’s 1978 Isolar II tour will be seen next year, thanks to the present-day director Brett Morgen’s painstaking remastering of the footage.

As the paper explains: 

Bowie intended for the footage to be released as a concert film that could, according to his associates, play in nontraditional venues such as concert venues in lieu of him touring himself. After the Isolar II tour, Bowie would not tour again until the 1983 Serious Moonlight run.

But the always fast-evolving musician soon became busy with other projects: recording and releasing Lodger, working with John Cale on music that was never released and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

While an acclaimed live album of the tour, Stage (recorded at US dates that spring), was released in autumn 1978, the footage never saw the light of day. 

"I simply didn't like the way it had been shot," Bowie said in 2000. "Now, of course, it looks pretty good and I would suspect that it would make it out some time in the future."

The photo above shows Hemmings on the set of Just a Gigolo with Kim Novak, Maria Schell and Bowie. This film proved a notorious flop and more or less put an end to his promising career as a director for the big screen.

As Hemmings later said of the Eighties: "People thought I was dead, but I was just directing The A-Team."

What we want now is to see his all-but-lost first film Running Scared (1972), which was shot largely on the Grand Union Canal at Braunston in Northamptonshire.

Talbot Street and Church Street, Ellesmere

On the way to The Mere at Ellesmere – I've got out of sequence already – I came across some interesting buildings in Talbot Street and Church Street.

The church, the Grade I listed St Mary's, was locked, but here are some photographs I took on that walk.

How The Zombies recorded Time of the Season

The Guardian has done one of its 'How we made...' features on The Zombies' 1968 single Time of the Season. It wasn't a hit in the UK, but reached number 3 in the US over a year after it was released. By then the band had split so they weren't able to cash in on this success.

Here the band's singer, Colin Blunstone, recalls the recording of the song:

Rod always has an overview of his songs in his head – he can hear the drum track, what the bass should be playing and what the lead vocal should be doing. He's extremely good at phrasing, so he was in the control room saying: "No, this phrase should be on the beat but the next phrase should be pushed..." Meanwhile, all the time I'm watching the big hand creeping towards five o'clock.

Things got a little bit heated. I was saying, "If you're so bloody good, you come in here and sing it," and he said, "You're the bloody lead singer, you stand in there until you get it right!" The language was probably richer than that. It makes me smile now to think I was breaking off from saying the most terrible things to Rod to sing these angelic lines: “It’s the time of the season for loving..."

You can read too about the fake Zombies who toured America because the real ones were no more.

A new article for Central Bylines: We shouldn’t laugh at Ladybird books but celebrate them

I've a new article on Central Bylines this morning: it's a defence of the much-misunderstood Ladybird Books:

The classic Ladybird Book is no more. The imprint still exists, but it’s based in London – the signs at Loughborough station welcoming people to "The Home of Ladybird Books" were taken down long ago.

There's always an element of nostalgia when writing about old children’s books, but what many of us feel when thinking of Ladybird is not sadness for a lost past so much as sadness for a lost future.

You may also be interested in my recent article on Malcolm Saville for Lion & Unicorn.

The Joy of Six 1597

"More than 260 peers hold multiple, individual shareholdings – stakes in listed companies – worth more than £100,000 apiece. In fact, some Lords held more than 200 individual holdings, each valued in excess of £100,000. Even assuming each asset was only worth £100,000, that would put the combined value of those shareholdings alone at more than £22 million." Huw Macartney finds the House of Lords has gone from aristocracy to assetocracy.

Nathan Levy on the need for politicians to reject short-term thinking: "The people who aren't in the comments are those we need to hear from more often: the 24-year-old renting a room in a shared house, the parent of a toddler who hasn't slept since 2024, the teenager who'll be living with whatever we decide for the next sixty years."

The all-male outcome of this year’s scientific Nobel Prize awards has reignited questions around how the winners are chosen and what it reveals about gender inequities in academia, reports Katharine Sanderson.

"There may be nothing more detrimental to public understanding of complexity than an idiom or analogy that’s elegant, cutely worded, and wrong." When it comes to dealing with Russia, Dmitry Grozoubinski hates the expression "poking the bear".

Ian Penman asks where Anthony Burgess's reputation stands today: "It’s hard to judge Burgess's current standing. He doesn't seem a likely candidate for a revival. I've heard him dismissed as sexist and homophobic, a relic. He is a strange mix of the old-fashioned and the modernist – an old-fashioned modernist – typified by two of the figures he devoted studies to: Joyce and Lawrence."

Elizabeth Rayne considers new research on who sees ghostly apparitions and why.

Bodhana Sivanandan is youngest ever female international master

The 11-year-old English chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan has recorded her greatest achievement yet. She has become the youngest girl ever to qualify for the international master (IM) title, which is one rung below grandmaster.

In doing so she has eclipsed the record of Judit Polgár, generally regarded as the strongest woman player of all time, who was was 12 years and 2 months old when she earned her IM title. Bodhana is 11 years and seven months old.

Chessbase quotes Bodhana's fellow IM, the English Chess Federation’s director of international chess Malcolm Pein:

"I can only describe Bodhana as a generational talent. There is no limit to what she can achieve. It’s remarkable that she is more than matching Judit Polgár's achievements at a similar age and breaking her records, even if we live in different times. It's worth noting that Bodhana is the seventh-youngest player, boy or girl, to become an international master."

Bodhana gained the IM title playing on top board for the English women's team She Plays To Win Lionesses at the European Club Cup in Montenegro.

You can watch one of her victories there in the video above. The game is typical of her mature positional style – I was never sure where Black's queen belonged in such structures.

Lime Garden: Moving Target

Like most of the contemporary singles I like, this is more about melody than rhythm and a bit retro. But then I long ago passed the age when you were meant to stop liking what was in the charts – when there was a meaningful singles chart, that is.

Lime Garden are an all-female indie band from Brighton. To add to the retro feel, this single does not come from their recent second album Maybe Not Tonight.

DIY Mag says of it:

Produced by Charlie Andrew, the track explores the pull of falling for someone you know isn’t right for you. Frontwoman Chloe Howard describes it as being about "falling in love even when you know it’s not going to work out. It’s rare to find people you are magnetically drawn to, but when you do – just dive in and brace yourself for whatever happens. Heartbreak is always worth it."

The Brighton quartet have also unveiled an accompanying video for the track, which sees them take on the roles of cabin crew for Wonk Pop Airways as they search the aisles for a mystery passenger, played by British poet and spoken-word performer Antony Szmierek.

Following the acclaim of Maybe Not Tonight and a summer of festivals, Lime Garden are currently on their biggest tour yet, with UK and European dates alongside a return to the US this autumn.

There's no good news on the restoration of Ludlow's town walls

There's no sign of restoration beginning on the stretch of Ludlow's remaining medieval town walls that collapsed more than 13 years ago.

The latest new comes from the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser:

Seven firms have declined to help the town council replace scaffolding at a partially collapsed section of Ludlow's historic town wall. ...

Last December, Longmynd Consultants produced a report examining whether the scaffolding provided structural support.

The firm concluded it "did not appear to offer any buttressing or structural support" and said it could potentially be removed if loose stonework was taken down or an alternative method of containing debris, such as netting, was installed.

However, members of Ludlow Town Council's policy and finance committee were recently told seven companies approached about replacing the scaffolding with netting had declined to assist.

As I understand it, this stretch of wall bordering the churchyard of St Laurence's collapsed because over the centuries soil (and dead Ludlovians) have been heaped up behind it. 

Responsibility for funding repairs is disputed by the Church of England and Ludlow Town Council.

The Joy of Six 1596

Chris Grey detects "an upsurge of discussion about whether and how the UK could join (or 'rejoin') the EU, whether that would be welcomed by the EU, and, if so, on what terms and in what timescale."

"In place of declared 'diplomats' well known to local counterintelligence officers, operations have been outsourced to disposable proxies recruited for a pittance. These people are often unaware of who their handlers are or their mission’s real goals." Russian sabotage efforts now draw upon the gig economy, explains Elena Grossfeld.

"At GCSE level, when science is compulsory for all students, Franklin is the only woman mentioned. At A level, Lehmann and Tharp appear solely in geology, a subject taken by less than 2 per cent of science students." Stephanie Buttigieg, Gregory Cooke and Skyla White find that women who changed science missing but are missing from school exam syllabuses.

Roger Protz says the planned closure of Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent is like a death in the family: " I have been to the brewery many times and delved deep into its history of pale ale brewing and its commitment to the Burton Union system of fermentation."

"What I’m talking about here is leaving some un-colonised space for a child’s imagination to grow into, rather than rushing in to fill that space with an insatiable desire to flog as much merchandise as possible to a malleable audience of trend-conscious juveniles." Alan Moore gave a discursive interview to The Daily Grail in 2017.

Simon Matthews watches The Runaway Bus, a comedy film from 1954 starring Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford and Petula Clark.

Southwell Minster faces building repair bill of £20m

Southwell Minster is in financial crisis, with more than £20m of building repairs needed and concern over its long-term future, reports West Bridgford Wire:

The Reverend Canon Dr Stephen Evans, who became Dean in April, revealed the scale of the difficulties following a six-week review of the Minster’s accounts. An emergency meeting was held and a report submitted to the Charity Commission.

In a letter to the congregation, the Dean said the repair deficit for the Minster’s buildings exceeded £20 million. Water reportedly poured through the cathedral roof during the Southwell Music Festival, while lighting on the north side of the building had been condemned.

He also warned that, at the end of July, the Minster appeared to have only enough money to cover one more payroll.

Southwell is one of the less-known English cathedrals, but it's also one of the most remarkable. The stone carvings in the chapter house are its glory – you can learn all about them in the video above.

I once wrote after a visit to the town:

One of the great things about the East Midlands is how little the region is known. If Southwell were in the Cotswolds it would be crawling with tourists. Here the town caters for visitors but is not swamped by them. The result is that Southwell is a dignified place without being self-important.

But I sensed the Minster must be hard to keep afloat when I attended evensong ("the atheist's favourite service") there on a later visit. I found I was one of a congregation of only six and we sat in the quire.

I've been to evensong at York Minster a couple of times, and it can feel a little like another tick on the tourist trail – you can tell the choir is used to being photographed. At Southwell it's as though you've chanced upon a miraculous after-school club.

But none of that helps keep the lights on. I feel another trip to Southwell coming on.

Bob Trubshaw revisits the Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire

Between the 1870s and 1970s there were extensive open-cast ironstone quarries in parts of Leicestershire. However few traces of these survive. In this video Bob Trubshaw summarises and updates the extensive research of Eric Tonks, which was published in the 1990s, shortly before his death.

From 33.17 you can see the quarries at Nevill Holt near Market Harborough. Most critics now accept that Nevill Holt Hall was the principal model for Bonkers Hall.

A.E. Housman on books and their authors

John Bayley once began a review of a book about Elizabeth Gaskell with:

To an admirer who wanted to meet him on account of A Shropshire Lad Housman replied discouragingly that while most men might be more interesting than their books his book was definitely more interesting than its man.