The straight and narrow path to Marzipan Tunnel

Our History Underfoot takes us to the site of the once-massive Steveley Ironworks. He searches for a railway footbridge, because legend persists that the path crossing it leads to Marzipan Tunnel.

Jane Dodds to stand down as leader of Welsh Lib Dems

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Jane Dodds has announced she is standing down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, saying the work to increase its presence in Wales's parliament "should be led by a new generation", reports BBC News.

She will remain as the party's only Member of the Senedd.

BBC News goes on to say:

"Leading the Welsh Liberal Democrats has been the honour of my life," she said in a statement on Tuesday, adding "now is the right time" to hand over the role.

Only Welsh Lib Dem MP David Chadwick is eligible to seek nomination to replace Dodds at this stage, the party said.

The Liberal Democrats have been represented by just one member in Cardiff Bay since 2016, initially by former Welsh Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams and later by Dodds since 2021.

The Joy of Six 1594

"Trump’s early business ventures reveal ties to individuals with connections to Soviet intelligence. In 1976, Soviet immigrants Tamir Sapir and Sam Kislin sold televisions on credit for Trump’s Commodore Hotel. Tamir Sapir had previously studied at the Ministry of  Internal Affairs in the USSR, while Kislin's electronics business served as a cover for KGB operations, according to former KGB spy Yuri Shvets." Zarina Zabrisky reveals the long history of Donald Trump's connections to Moscow's intelligence operations.

Leilani Farha argues that the housing crisis shows democracies have ceded too much power to the financial sector.

Restraint can leave mental health patients traumatised, and Nutmeg Hallett and John Baker have researched what can help them recover: "A frightening experience cannot be undone. But being ignored or dismissed afterwards can deepen the harm, while compassionate support may help patients begin to rebuild their trust in the people caring for them."

"An area gentrifies and catches the eye of developers. Developers then build upmarket flats to attract upwardly mobile incomers, with their proximity to nearby vibrant hubs, pubs and clubs being a major selling point. Then, a few years down the line, some of those incomers decide they'd now like the vibrancy turned down to suit their increasingly conservative lifestyles." Mike Urban on the pressure on Brixton's night economy.

Harry Sword reads Arthur Machen: "The London Adventure is also a (perhaps, the) foundational work of early psychogeography, less working guidebook in the mode of, say, The London Nobody Knows by Geoffrey Fletcher (1962) or Len Deighton’s London Dossier (1967) and more akin to the playful, verbose, cog twisting world of Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital (2002) (and on which Machen’s London Adventure was a firm influence).

Paula Hotti takes the first train from Finland to Sweden in 38 years.

Oh! What a Lovely War: An interview with Murray Melvin

Back to Stratford East. Murray Melvin, who died in 2023, shares his memories of the original Theatre Workshop production of Oh! What a Lovely War and describes Joan Littlewood’s working methods.

The Mere puts the mere in Ellesmere

The Mere at Ellesmere is the largest of nine glacial lakes in the north of Shropshire. Follow the canal south from the town and you will come across some of the smaller ones.

When you find The Mere on the edge of town, it is set in a park complete with a cafe and ice cream kiosk. The walk round the whole lake is a little over two miles. Me? I just had a cup of tea.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Have you thought of writing one yourself?

It could be on Liberal politics or culture or… anything really.  Why not an article about a local campaign or quirky piece of history? Perhaps you have a book to promote?

Please drop me an email if you'd like to discuss your idea first. I'd hate you to spend time on a piece I really wouldn’t want to publish.

Here are the last 10 guest posts on this blog:

• Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day – Augustus Carp
• Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections? – Augustus Carp
• In praise of outgrounds: How cricket in small towns made a roaring comeback – Matthew Pennell
• Why has the HS2 project been such a disaster? – Peter Chambers
• Doctor Who: The most golden era? – Peter Chambers
• Like a challenging computer game? Try the Government Digital Service – Mark Valentine
• Why Liberals must take power away from the media billionaires – Donnachadh McCarthy
• Reform and Labour are losing councillors fast – Augustus Carp
• Is Isaac Asimov's psychohistory fiction or reality? – Peter Chambers
• Stalling an Ambush and protecting more than the countryside – Emma Lee

The Joy of Six 1593

"Reform’s problems today, reflected in its diminished polling, stem in large part from the difficulties and limits of professionalisation. The attempt to derive discipline from insurgency has exposed, rather than resolved, the tensions at the heart of the Reform project. And the fallout risks turning latent vulnerabilities into permanent liabilities for the party’s brand." Josh Self asks if the Reform project is unravelling.

"Just as David Tennant’s character bemoans the lack of training or education for young men in custody, so do prison staff across the country. They know what is blindingly obvious: angry people don’t come out of prison less angry if they’ve been banged up for 23 hours a day." Former prison officer Alex South watches the TV drama Time.

Geoff Mulgan makes the case for cognitive rearmament: "That process of developing robust critical thinking skills needs to start early, in primary school. Finland is a trailblazer and has for several years ensured that young people learn about disinformation. Denmark has done the same. But education is just as important for the adult population and should become a primary duty of public broadcasters."

Emma Brookes says Donald Trump seems to be losing his battle with the BBC.

"Like American films of the 1930s and 40s who had to make gangsters pay for their crimes to justify the preceding hour of swagger and violence, British ones of the late 1960s had to make sure the swingers suffered for their pleasure." Ray Newman examines how sickness, sex and death got tangled up in British films 1968-72.

Paul Rees tells the story of the making of Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Wood, though I loved it then because its songs featured poachers as well as sprites.

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band: Autumn's Child

Issued in 1967, Safe as Milk was Captain Beefheart's first album. It features a 20-year-old Ry Cooder on guitar – he also wrote some of the arrangements – and this seasonal track closes the album.

An anonymous contributor writes on Reddit:

Probably my favourite from Safe as Milk. Very normal for a Beefheart song but weird in its own way. Evokes strong feelings of nostalgia. Theramin is used fantastically, vocals are amazing.

And Hit the North says:

Even the closing track Autumn’s Child seemed unpredictable – it appeared to sputter to a halt, petering out like an exhausted toddler who’s cried their last after too much sugar, recklessness and skinned knees – which is exactly how you feel after experiencing this glorious album for the first time. It’s a helluva trip: he was a game changer.

The sugar rush is a myth, but I hope it's not a myth that the Captain and Frank Zappa were in the same class at school – "Van Vliet and Zappa. I might have known."

Stalling an Ambush and protecting more than the countryside

The Rutland Panther and the Blair government's abandoned plan to build an eco-town in the Harborough District both feature in a new novel, Stalling an Ambush. In a guest post, its author, Emma Lee, introduces the book.

My novel Stalling an Ambush is set in and around the village of Stoughton in Leicestershire, where, in 2009, an eco-town of at least 15,000 houses, called Pennbury, was proposed. 

Pennbury met with strong local opposition. It was on the wrong side of Leicester city for motorway access, would have put extra cars on already congested roads and wasn’t even on a bus route. Not only that, it was going to be built on farmland at a time of growing concerns about food security, and would have closed Leicester Aero Club as the site included the airport the club use. 

Perhaps then it seems a minor thing to also raise concerns about the so-called Rutland Panther, a large black cat whose territory stretches from the Harborough District in Leicestershire to Rutland. There’s no definitive evidence of the cat, but many sightings have been reported, including one from a surprised motorcyclist in Kings Norton, near Stoughton. Periodically, BBC Wildlife and Big Cat Conversations podcast report on sightings nationwide.

Generally, countryside residents tolerate these mythical cats. If they are real, they are unlikely to impinge on humans. The panther in Stalling an Ambush observes:

She knew two things about humans. They weren’t edible but they were dangerous.

So, in the novel, when radio programme researcher Frances Winter is despatched to interview a Stoughton resident about another sighting, she runs through the interview on autopilot. The interviewee doesn’t have any evidence. Frances drives out to the airfield to take a photo. The novel imagines Pennbury got the go ahead, but was stalled as the economy stalled in the Credit Crunch, and the aero club had abandoned their home. 

Frances discovers something that shouldn’t be there – observing waiting, adapting – and now has the unlooked for responsibility of deciding how much the world needs to know and what the cost of knowing can be. Stalling an Ambush is described as an uncomfortable, tense novel of observation, responsibility and the consequences of the wild not being in secluded places. Her manager observes,  "You know, when you get over the fact that these are serious killing machines, they’re actually quite attractive."

The novel is firmly rooted in the eastern Leicestershire countryside, drawing on both real and fictional locations. Previously I had a short story, Snowena, printed in an anthology, Gentle Footprints which included what turned out to be Richard Adams' last published short story. His story Leopard Aware was written from the viewpoint of a leopard. 

That prompted the idea of exploring some of the story of Stalling an Ambush from the panther’s viewpoint:

"There were old traces of fox, badger and pheasant. No recent scents. No other cats. No recent smell of human either. She slid into the undergrowth. This was her territory now.”

Stalling an Ambush is available from most online bookshops, including Bookshop.org.

Emma Lee was born in South Gloucestershire and now lives in Leicestershire. Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many anthologies and magazines in Britain and abroad.

Mozart died in 1791. Neil Young believes one 1960s songwriter has the same immortality

Far Out Magazine wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges are currently soothing their brains by listening to this...

An article for Lion & Unicorn: Malcolm Saville and the children’s holiday adventure

I'm back on Lion & Unicorn today with an article on the children's writer Malcolm Saville. I look at adventure stories in general and at his first two books, Mystery at Witchend and Seven White Gates, in particular:

Having clearly read adventure stories themselves, the five set up a secret society, signing its rules in their own blood. Rule 5 says the club is for "exploring and watching birds and animals and tracking strangers," and it gradually becomes clear that the strangers they duly track are German spies and fifth columnists intent on blowing up the reservoir’s dam.

There are unexpected mentions for the Bloody Sunday inquiry and Dr Beeching.

Many thanks to Lion & Unicorn for publishing it.

Jago Hazzard on the planned West London Orbital rail service

Transport for London says:

We're making plans for a new rail service on existing, underused rail lines in west London - this would become part of the London Overground network. The West London Orbital rail service would run between Hendon in north London towards Hounslow in southwest London.

And Jago Hazzard shows us the lines that would be combined to provide this new service. One of the attractions of the scheme is that the track is already in place.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Local Liberal Democrats, says the Richmond & Twickenham Times, are pressing for the service to be extended from Hounslow to serve Whitton and Twickenham. It quotes Lib Dem London Assembly member Gareth Roberts speaking at a City Hall meeting on 15 October:

"I rarely use the word literally, but on this time I will. It literally does not go far enough. Just two more stops, and it could join to Twickenham."

And reports:

Later, Mr Roberts said extending the line to Twickenham would allow people from Teddington, Norbiton, Raynes Park, New Malden, Wimbledon and Hampton Wick to travel into north London with just one train change.

He said: "At the moment they've got to go into Central London, they've got to go to Clapham, they've got to mess around, they've got to do all sorts of things.

"This would be a single interchange which would open up north west London for hundreds of thousands of residents in the south west."

However, the TfL view appears to be that the line between Hounslow and Twickenham is too busy to accommodate more trains.

The Joy of Six 1592

Thom Hartmann says Trump is teaching America what every dictator knows: "When we think of strongman dictatorships we often imagine tanks in the streets, but those usually come in the later stages of repression (think Tienanmen Square) and often are never even needed (think today;s Russia). Instead, as every dictator on Earth can tell you, you don’t have to silence the entire country; all you have to do is shut up a few strategically selected people visibly and publicly enough and the rest of the country will get the message and back away." 

Zack Polanski did not handle the Green conference motion on Zionism well. But, asks Sangita Myska, why did his own party put him in the hold where he now finds himself?

"Her IHT policy would give older people who wanted to avoid inheritance tax a massive incentive to overinvest in property as a tax shield – to upsize or upvalue as far as they could so their heirs could benefit. It would put the top end of the housing market into a deep freeze. Moreover, it would divert spare cash away from investment that could help the British economy grow, into unproductive housing assets." Jill Rutter argues that Kemi Badenoch’s inheritance tax proposals represent myth-based policy making at its worst.

Municipal Dreams looks at how the London Borough of Hackney came to embrace high-rise housing.

Mark Kermode talks to Nick Newman about the restoration of Ken Russell's 1971 film: The Devils: "I always knew that there was something wrong with it because the first time I ever spoke to Ken about it, he said to me, 'It’s damaged goods.' That was the phrase that he used. He said, because they just took this stuff out of it, that left it with a hole. Something is damaged about it, and then you put it back in and go, 'No, that is better. That is what it always should have looked like.'"

"What works so well here is the author’s ability to look at this world objectively through Fanny’s eyes while also satirising this eccentric, privileged milieu with humanity and wit – Mitford is acutely aware of the absurdities of the system she is dissecting here." JacquiWine celebrates Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a man falling off a paddleboard – for ever

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So what went on in that meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs on Tuesday evening?

The fury with critics of Ed Davey we were told about beforehand seems to have evaporated overnight, as everyone has told us how positive it was.

Zoe Crowther and Harriet Symonds say on PoliticsHome:

Supportive MPs described Davey as having been “in listening mode” at the meeting, with most MPs keen to join in a discussion on how the party can grow ahead of the next general election and build on its record number of MPs. 

PoliticsHome understands that only three MPs spoke out with criticisms of Davey’s leadership approach in the meeting, and the party has not sent out any communication to party members about the internal rows.

Maybe not everyone has got the message about listening. Here's Lisa Smart on Times Radio, as quoted by Josh Self on Politics.co.uk:

Smart said the party had gone "from having 11 MPs elected in 2019 to 72 at the last general election". She said she had heard a colleague describe that as going "from a startup to a scale-up".

She said: "There are organisational things that come through that. Just think about the meeting that you have when you’re a team of 11 versus the meeting you’ve had when you’re a team of 72. If everybody contributes for two minutes, that goes on for hours and hours and hours." 

Asked about the stunts that characterised Davey’s 2024 general election campaign, Smart said she thought he would “continue to do things that are visually interesting that get across our message”.

I've said many times that the media - local television in particular - want good video and images, and that Remain's inability to offer much beyond George Osborne in suit threatening to put your taxes up was a major weakness of its referendum campaign.

But there is a danger that if we just offer them Ed Davey falling off a paddleboard again they will tire of it, quite possibly on Day 1 of the campaign. We need to offer them something fresh,

Added to that, Ed seems to have ambitions to promote himself as the most experienced political leader, so his advisers need to think how they blend his stunts with looking prime ministerial.

My own view is that the lack of an obvious alternative means Ed will lead the party into the next general election.

Lord Bonkers 30 years ago: David Chidgey in the Bird of Liberty

It's high time (it says here) we saw again what Lord Bonkers was up to 30 years ago. So here's an extract from the diary he contributed to Liberator 239, which was dated September 1996 and available from our stall at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Brighton.

The late David Chidgey, I should explain, as well as being MP for Eastleigh from 1994 to 2005, was in 1996 the pilot of the Liberal Democrats' own spacecraft Bird of Liberty. He was eventually rescued from a tropical island paradise after being downed in a collision with a Russian (or Commonwealth of Independent States) satellite.

His son, also called David Chidgey, is the chief presenter of one of my favourite podcasts, Chelsea Fancast.

Friday

As evening falls the Bird of Liberty appears once again above the chimney pots and pinnacles of Bonkers Hall. “Young Ashport want you to go to Mars,” I call up to the gallant Chidgey, “it seems they've found life up there.” “The engines will never take it, your lordship” he replies. “Nonsense man,” I return, “there could be votes in it. You'll just have to pedal faster.” 

Perhaps my admonition has some effect, for the wings do seem to be flapping a little more vigorously as the craft disappears over the horizon. 

Whether it is possible to adapt conventional polling day organisation to weightless conditions remains a moot point, but anyone who has seen the film Independence Day will be only too aware of the need for liberal values to be introduced to the less enlightened parts of the Galaxy.

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

Gophers! – The strange strange show that no one remembers

As I have long been convinced that I am the only person who remembers Gophers!, a bizarre comedy series screened by Channel 4 in 1990, I'm pleased to see that some of it has reappeared on YouTube recently. You can see the whole of the second episode above.

Wikipedia does its best to explain what the series was about:

Gophers! is a Channel 4 children's programme about a family of American gophers who move into a new neighbourhood, called Sycamore Heights, living next door to a family of uptight but well-intentioned rabbits, The Burrows.

There were many recurring jokes within this short-lived show such as Arthur Burrows' vegetables planning a rebellion to escape his garden, a mad scientist ferret called Dr Wince, whose ambition was to conquer the world by obtaining a crystal buried in the Gophers' garden with the help of his reptilian servant Sly, and an alien in love with a zucchini determined to get home. 

Also there were stereotypical "Mexican" cockroaches (dressed in costumes of Mexican peasant revolutionaries of the Mexican Revolution of 1910) who lived in the Gophers' house or trailer park mobile home always trying to steal their food.

I'm pleased but surprised to see that Gophers! was sold to 67 countries and won the 1990 WorldFest Houston Gold Award for Outstanding Comedy Series.

"A little heaven here on earth": Launde Abbey in Leicestershire

Remember Thomas Cromwell's final words in the wonderful Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light?

"There is an abbey, Launde, in the heart of England. The air is always sweet there and it's quiet. A little heaven here on earth. And I think to myself: 'I'll live here one day, when all my work is done.'"

Launde Abbey is in Leicestershire – in Harborough District, indeed – and though Cromwell didn't get to live there, his son did and is buried in the chapel. Today it is a Church of England retreat and conference centre.

The BBC Radio Leicester's Secret Leicestershire series has two short programmes on Launde:

• History in the making
• The Cromwell connection

Paul Simon: That's Why God Made the Movies

I've long had a fondness for one of Paul Simon's more obscure albums, One Trick Pony.

This is a track from it.

The Joy of Six 1591

"Conservatives have called Burnham’s intervention 'dangerous and divisive', which could be interpreted as a denial that interference happened or just as a preference that it not be mentioned to protect delicate pro-Brexit sensibilities. Farage’s feelings were certainly hurt. He called the prime minister a liar and described the whole thing as a 'Russia hoax' – the formula Donald Trump applied to well-substantiated allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign got a helping hand from Moscow." Rafael Behr says Brexiters can't cope with the fact that Putin cheered them on.

Jack Dyson reveals how academy trusts try to justify the enormous salaries paid to some chief executives: "In July, the Department for Education named and shamed 56 trusts for high executive pay, ordering them to explain how the salaries were 'defensible' and represented 'good value for money'."

Rebekah Gear introduces her research on messy, risky outdoor play for children – and how adults stop them enjoying it. "Children expressed things such as 'I might fall', 'I don't want to get wet', and 'My teacher doesn’t let me'. These were not spontaneous fears; they were reflections of the messages the children had repeatedly heard from adults."

Wheat, apples and carrots are half as nutritious as they were in the 1960s, reports Rebecca Whittaker.

Malin Hay reviews a book on century of Hollywood flops: "The 1990s were the era of the swashbuckling action movie, but as well as The Mask of Zorro and The Mummy there were Cutthroat Island and The 13th Warrior (at a loss of around $133 million, possibly the biggest flop in movie history).

"Unlike many such cases which happen behind closed doors, Jeffrey Archer’s exclusion from the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's Cricket Ground was well documented." Seth Thévoz on Lord Archer and the MCC.

The abandoned platforms of South Kensington

Geoff Marshall is our guide to a tube station that has three (count 'em) abandoned platforms.

The exciting news is that one of them will soon to be brought back into use.

The only Tory MP to gain a seat at the last election is under threat

The only Conservative to gain seat for the party at the last general election is in danger of deselection, reports BBC News:

Leicester East MP Shivani Raja has faced an attempt to block her standing as a candidate in the next general election.

The Leicester Conservative Federation met at the end of September to vote on whether Raja would be selected to defend the seat she won in 2024.

The BBC understand she narrowly lost the secret ballot and was not readopted.

However, party officials have subsequently declared the meeting null and void, saying it was not properly constituted.

So the drama isn't over yet. 

I do recall gossip before the election that the Tories had "chosen the wrong candidate", and I think it's fair to say that Raja hasn't made a huge impact since her victory.

If she were to be deselected and stand as an independent next time, she would only be following the best traditions of the constituency.

Leicester East was won by the Tories last time largely because two former Labour MPs for the seat, Claudia Webbe and Keith Vaz, stood against the official Labour candidate.

The full result is here: note the creditable third place for the Liberal Democrat Zuffar Haq in a constituency without a single branch of Gail's.

‘They were casting out demons’: Scottish manager recalls attending exorcism with Gordon Brown to sign a player

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"This one's a doozy. The lads have really given it 110 per cent today," remarked the clerk who brought me the judges' decision.

And she was right. Congratulations to The Athletic on winning our Headline of the Day Award.

Crash! (1971): An experimental television film with J.G. Ballard and Gabrielle Drake

This film, made for BBC2 and broadcast in 1971, features J.G. Ballard and Gabrielle Drake. 

It must have been inspired by one of the linked stories – also called Crash! – from Ballard's novel The Atrocity Exhibition, which was published in 1970.

Ballard's novel Crash did not appear until 1973. It was adapted by David Cronenberg for a 1996 film that caused great controversy when it was released.

Roz Savage and her Liberal vision for a flourishing Britain

Roz Savage has written a paper called Liberalism Alive: A Liberal Vision for a Flourishing Britain for Compass. It was published last month and touches upon questions that Liberal Democrats are currently wrestling with, such as leadership and defining what we stand for.

It's well worth a read. You can download it from the Compass website.

Here's a little of what Roz writes:

Britain does not need another political saviour. It needs direction: leadership capable of describing that direction, institutions capable of learning, a state strong enough to protect the public interest, and millions of people with enough security, ownership and freedom to shape their own futures.

I see that possibility every week. It is there in the volunteer running a food pantry, in the farmer bringing a wetland back to life, in the councillor who spends three patient years campaigning to make one dangerous junction safe, and in the people quietly getting on with running community energy schemes and repair cafés and flood groups.

Most will never describe what they are doing as Liberalism, but that scarcely matters. They are demonstrating something Liberals have always believed, which is that the future is not handed down from above, but built by people.

The Joy of Six 1590

Jonathan Wilson explains why we're stuck with a Premier League in the clutches of the global mega-rich: "Clubs represent their communities and for fans support becomes an aspect of identity, a link to family and place and past, a role that has only become more significant as the influence of traditional institutions – the church, the workplace, the social club – has faded. Yet fans in England have almost never owned their clubs, which in part underlies the present crisis."

"While investors get richer, the dysfunctional market inflicts a huge cost on children in care. Young people removed from their families are scattered across the country to homes that don't even meet the most basic standards set by Ofsted. Increasingly, children are sent to homes that are not registered with Ofsted. These homes are not subject to regulatory scrutiny or external oversight. Vulnerable children are put at great risk of further harm." Martin Barrow on the government's failure to make good its pledge to end profiteering in children’s social care.

"In the debates that surrounded the bill that would go on to become the Representation of the People Act 1918, an amendment was tabled to introduce proportional representation, which was narrowly defeated." Jennifer Davey surveys the long history of debates about how MPs should be elected.

Dan Falk says eugenics is rearing its ugly head again in today’s crucible of politics and culture: "Much like its original incarnation from the late 19th century through the aftermath of World War II, its current rise is tangled up in politics, ideology, and an insidious desire to divide rather than unite people. And, as in the old days, on the unfounded notion that biology is the be-all and end-all of a person's character and worth."

"It could be the strip of dirt by some train tracks or a gravel-filled schoolyard or sometimes even guerrilla gardening on abandoned lots – a kind of living patchwork with the potential to transform an entire neighbourhood." Anna Rogers celebrates the giant power of tiny parks.

Discontinued Notes walks through a townscape of canals, flyovers and ruin porn beneath Spaghetti Junction.

Ellesmere Yard: A living relic of the canal age

Ellesmere's canal basin is at the end of a short branch off the Llangollen Canal, which used to be called the Shropshire Union Canal, but was rebranded in the 1980s in the hope that would bring more visitors.

At the point where this branch joins the main line stands an attraction I didn't know much about: Ellesmere Yard. 

The Canal & River Trust describes it:

Established in 1806, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, Ellesmere Yard is steeped in history. Originally the headquarters of Ellesmere Canal Company, it played a critical role in the golden era of canal building, helping to maintain the Llangollen and Montgomery canals, and providing a base for engineering luminaries, Thomas Telford and William Jessop.

The site has been in operation ever since, retaining much of its original charm and infrastructure, from its blacksmith’s forge and pattern room to its dry dock and workshops. Indeed, some areas have barely changed in over half a century, as if frozen in time.

The Trust is restoring the yard buildings, not only for its own use but also as spaces for other artisan crafts. This is somewhere to visit properly next time I'm in Ellesmere.

Here the first couple of photos relate to the yard, and the rest of the arm that runs to Ellesmere basin. Note to the arid cricket ground – very August 2026.

The Lib Dem leadership should listen to our MPs

Peter Black blogged this morning about the reaction to Charlie Maynard call for the Liberal Democrats to elect a new leader:

The reaction has been predictable, with the leadership recruiting the usual suspects to go public in support of Ed Davey. Their social media posts are all suspiciously similar., and also slightly ridiculous, but ... what is really interesting is how few of them have gone public in this way.

The politics.co.uk website lists just 17 out of 72 prepared to pin their support of Davey to a public mast. The rest appear to be keeping their powder dry.

There are currently 71 Lib Dem MPs, and the 17 has gone up to 18, but this is still a significant point. There are few signs that "the vast majority of our MPs ... are furious at this distraction" as some of those 18 claim.

The feeling that the Lib Dem leadership has "lost the dressing room" is widespread at Westminster. As someone said on Bluesky yesterday, wise supporters of Ed Davey continuing as leader will listen to our MPs to understand why this has happened and what can be done to put it right.

So far there have been few signs of this happening.

Dean Friedman: Ariel

I remember this so clearly from 1977 that it was a shock to find that it hadn't been a hit in the UK. It was a hit in the US and also controversial. 

How, you are asking, could such a sweet, bubble-gum pop song be controversial? Dean Friedman explains:

My first label insisted that I edit and change the second verse to Ariel, in which I refer to her as "a Jewish girl". They were convinced that radio stations in the south would use it as an excuse not to play the record. (In fact, many stations in the south insisted on  playing the full length version which included "Jewish girl".) Also, the entire third verse was edited out of the single version to make it shorter for radio. 

I fought to keep the original version  intact on the album which is why the single version is different than the album. One of my biggest record biz regrets is that I let them do it. (Not that I had a lot of say over the matter as this was my very first release.)  

In fact, when the single was released my management company received threats from the JDL (Jewish Defense League) protesting the edit. While I was never a fan of Mayer Kahane, now deceased leader of the JDL, in this instance, they were 100 per cent correct.

The video I've posted has three verses, and I remember the third verse from 1977, so I suspect the full song was released as a single over here.

And if you are thinking of the Half Man Half Biscuit song The Bastard Son of Dean Friedman, it's only fair to point out that he wrote a witty reply to it: A Baker's Tale.