North Lancashire Lib Dems call for county police to reveal dealings with Palantir

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Here's a heartening story from the Lancaster Guardian:

The North Lancashire Liberal Democrats are calling for Lancashire Police to reveal the full extent of its dealings with controversial US tech firm Palantir.

It comes after an investigation by Computer Weekly and the Good Law Project revealed the force is one of six across the country testing Palantir’s AI tools in contracts worth a total of £7.8m.

Reportedly, no minutes were kept from Lancashire Police meetings about the procurement of Palantir AI tools.

The newspaper reports comments by Rowan Fitton, a Lib Dem campaigner from Morecambe, who has written to the county's police and crime commissioner Clive Grunshaw, demanding answers over the procurement process:

"In the UK, our right to privacy is sacred and we won’t stand idly by whilst a shady American tech firm could be harvesting our data and making millions in the process. 

"Lancashire Police need to be crystal clear about why Palantir was chosen as a supplier, given the growing number of concerns around privacy and effectiveness. 

"The public also has a right to know what their data may be used for, where it’s being taken from, and why it’s being shared.” "

Alarm bells, says the Lancaster Guardian, were set off when it was reported that no minutes were taken at Lancashire Police meetings about a potential partnership with Palantir.

North Lancashire Lib Dems say this leaves questions around why the decision to work with Palantir was made and whether Lancashire Police is being honest with the public.

The Joy of Six 1568

Tom Perry links to a review of the duty to report child sexual abuse brought in by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. It finds that because of the way the law is framed, this new duty will have little effect.

Anand Kumar is part of the team writing the next edition of psychiatry's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This edition will, for the first time, attempt to draw on findings from neurobiology – a reminder of how little we currently know about the biology of mental health and neurodevelopment.

"In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for 'traditional' Idaho values." But, as Audrey Dutton shows, between the 1880s through the early 1970s it was illegal for parents in in the state to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake."

Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite reviews four books on the General Strike of 1926: "The miners said that if some pits really were uneconomic, they should shut. The owners wanted to make all pits profitable again by squeezing the workers. The president of the owners' association freely acknowledged that in mines producing for export, wages would fall to levels that he did not shrink from describing as miserable'."

"Eaton was keen on a different director and format for each film. It meant each had its own reference points. I thought about Chinatown a lot with 1974. The design and costumes were all smoky and brown, like the 70s. The cast went for the material big time. David Morrissey really did his research and Sean Harris is nothing if not method. It’s a very masculine story but we wanted strong female characters too – we had Maxine Peake and Rebecca Hall. I kept the most horrendous violence off-screen. Violence you imagine is much worse than anything you’ll see. Your mind does the work." Michael Hogan talks to people involved in the making of the trilogy of television plays Red Riding.

"Sounds fascinated Joe from an early age. He would build circuit boards and take radios and record players to pieces, even creating his own recording equipment (there’s a tale that he put speakers up trees so that the local cherry pickers could listen to the radio whilst they worked, which is brilliant if true). Signing up for his National Service, he became a Radar Technician which also helped nurture another of his fascinations – outer space." Samantha Veal discovers the mercurial Joe Meek.

Sky Sports face down Pakistan authorities over Michael Atherton's interview with Imran Khan's sons

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The Pakistan Cricket Board threatened to tell its team not to take the field yesterday afternoon if Sky Sports screened a Michael Atherton interview with Imran Khan's two sons.

Sky delayed the broadcast while conversations with the board took place, but to their credit eventually broadcast the 18-minute insert.

In the interview, reports Cricinfo, Imran's sons Suleiman and Kasim Khan expressed concern about the health of their father, who has been in prison for three years, and said they feared for his life.

Growing up at Foxton Locks around 1910

Another video from Bob Trubshaw. He writes on YouTube:

My maternal grandmother – known as a child as Dorothy Durran and in later life as Sarah Dallaston – spent her junior school years living at Bottom Lock Cottage at Foxton Locks. Her family were the lockkeepers at Foxton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

I interviewed Sarah in 1988 and this video mostly uses these recordings.  In 1991 I published edited transcripts of the interviews, along with family photographs, as a booklet called Around Foxton.  In 2016 that booklet was revised and made available as a free PDF.

For an excellent video about the history of Foxton Locks see @OurHistoryUnderfoot and their video Foxton Locks and the inclined plane by foot, narrow boat and drone.

Happy 20th birthday to Liberal Democrat Voice

Congratulations to Liberal Democrat Voice, which is celebrating its 20th birthday today. And hello to Mary Reid, a fellow York philosophy graduate.

I find that I first mentioned Lib Dem Voice here on 14 September 2006:

Welcome and congratulations to Liberal Democrat Voice, which already seems to be establishing itself as the place for Lib Dem discussion on the net. Natural selection operates pretty ruthlessly there, so it is obviously doing a lot right.

I recommend in particular Alex Wilcock's dissection of Trust in People: Make Britain Free, Fair and Green and the debate in the comments on Rob Fenwick's posting on the 50p top tax rate amendment.

GUEST POST Doctor Who: The Most Golden Era?

Peter Chambers weighs the Doctor Who era I remember from my childhood and does not find it wanting.

No Doctor Who fan is without an opinion on which era was a golden era. This is evident in that someone who professes otherwise is not a true Doctor Who fan. Douglas Adams would have understood. And gone for lunch.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, here in Liberal England, that our host remembers that the Pertwee era was the best, because he remembers Pertwee as "my Doctor". Is he right? Can we adduce evidence for this? Or are we condemned to find evidence to the contrary.

I will contend that he is half-right. Does this make me half-right? Are we both half-wrong? I shall explain.

I shall describe an era by the name of the Producer who was in charge at the time. Implicitly I shall claim that the Most Golden Era was within the Classic Period, but the Moffat-Capaldi era featured some material as good as any in the Classic Period. This will not be further discussed here, and is obviously true in the Douglas Adams sense. A list of Producers and the episodes they supervised is given on the Tardis Fandom site.

Our host’s theory that the Most Golden era starts with the first Pertwee episode equates to saying that the serial Spearhead From Space is the start. This is coincidentally the first serial I ever watched, the first colour serial, the first Pertwee episode, and the first Caroline John (Liz Shaw) episode. It is reviewed by a credible commentator who uses the name The Watcher on Who.

The Watcher asks if Spearhead is a 'soft reboot' of Doctor Who. The second Doctor wished to leave the show, and monochrome was to be replaced by colour, which meant that the cost of colour production had to be absorbed by the existing budget. 

The previous production team made some plans for this and used the last monochrome serial, The War Games, to set up the transition. This has been rendered in colour and is now on iPlayer. It is a nice contrast to Spearhead. The previous producer, Derrick Sherwin, stayed on for Spearhead, then handed over to Barry Letts.

Jon Pertwee exits the Tardis surrounded by smoke and collapses on the ground. It is the 1970s. Soon a scientist called Liz Shaw meets a Brigadier in a building in London. Soon they are up to their necks with Autons. A little like the events of 2005 in the Modern era. Start with a bang and work your way up from there.

Pertwee and Letts entertain us until the end of Season 11 – Planet of the Spiders. Then Philip Hinchcliffe becomes Producer and Tom Baker takes over as the Doctor. This starts what is known as the Hinchcliffe-Holmes years, which I believe is the second part of the Most Golden era. 

Robert Holmes was sometimes script editor, and sometimes writer. Many of your favourite episodes from that time might turn out to be written by him, possibly under a pseudonym. Spearhead was one. The Deadly Assassin was another. (Did he and Moffat ever go down the pub? Who knows...)

The Hinchcliffe-Holmes years continued until the end of Season 14, when the team met the most frightening monster to threaten Doctor Who. No, not Bonnie Langford, Mary Whitehouse.

Mrs Whitehouse spoke out for a moral majority of people in Britain that no one could quite remember the names of. The National Viewers and Listeners Association. They contended that some giant spiders and people running down corridors from monsters in cheap plastic costumes constituted a threat to the moral character of the nation. 

Some of the senior management of the BBC agreed with them. The show Had To Change! Hinchcliffe was shown the door. Gothic horror and drama was out. Light entertainment was in. Comedy. Escapism. The Most Golden era was over.

Robert Holmes provided a low key note of revenge in Season 15 – a transitional season – in The Sun Makers, when Louise Jameson is shown throwing Capitalist Landlords from the top of "kilometre high towers". Philip – thou art avenged!

So perhaps Jonathan is half-right and I am half-wrong. Or so it seems. Please avoid pressing Like or Subscribe as these functions are not provided here. Perhaps comment down below, and certainly watch a few favourites over on iPlayer. 

There is no paid sponsorship, but do have a pint of real ale in your local before it is closed down by a Private Equity firm. Or it burns down due to wild fires and climate change. You heard it first in The Green Death. Which also warned you about AI.

Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire. The photo of Jon Pertwee is from New Zealand Archives.

Listen to Dr Francis Young on the history of fairies

Where did fairies come from? They are so ubiquitous in our culture that there seems to never be a time when we were without them. 

But what are fairies exactly? Were they always associated with magic? Are they small? Are they winged? When did the first fairies appear? Who named them the fairies or the fey?

Francis Young discusses these questions here and in his book Fairies: A History.

Will Labour back the reform of parliamentary elections next week?

Neal Lawson writes in the Guardian:

Next Wednesday, the representation of the people bill will come before parliament for its final stages. An amendment has been tabled to set up a national commission to look at which system of proportional representation (PR), which does match votes to seats, would best suit our country. It has huge backing in the Commons, in the Labour party and among the public. The prime minister, Andy Burnham, is also a longstanding supporter of electoral reform. The political conditions have never been more favourable to begin making changes to the voting system.

What, Lawson asks, could possibly go wrong? The answer, he rightly suggests, is the existence of: 

a minority but powerful view within the upper reaches of the Labour party, the cabinet and the party bureaucracy is vehemently opposed to PR and the plural politics of cooperation it demands. According to this tribal view, only Labour, governing alone, can represent the interests of "their voters". And so it is preferable to lose all power than to share it.

The remarkable thing is that many in the party cling to this view despite the fact that no Labour government has been motivated chiefly by representing the interests of working-class voters for 50 years.

So next Wednesday's vote is a chance to make progress towards the introduction of PR for Westminster elections. I wish I felt more confident that Labour will take it.

The Joy of Six 1567

"Profound isolation contributed to the deaths of more than 100 care leavers in England in a year, with a dramatic drop-off in support from social services at 18 leading to catastrophic consequences, a review has found. A government-commissioned report into the early deaths of young people who left care described the problem as a national tragedy and said many were left on their own 'at the height of vulnerability' before they died." Jessica Murray reports on the continuing scandal of Britain's care system for children.

William Lane tells it like it is: "Liberalism in Britain has been and always will be a centre-left tendency, and British history is littered with the corpses of right-Liberal projects. Any successful Liberal government or coalition in Britain must come through the centre-left, and a Lib Dem shift to the right would alienate the very voters it needs to be reaching out to if the party is to expand over 100-odd seats."

Justine Pedussel and Jim Dickinson argue that the Treasury is bankrupting universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

"Despite being diagnosed with ADHD in 2020, I remain somewhat agnostic about the disorder. Many friends have since been diagnosed. When I was in America in 2023, it seemed that most of the young people I spoke to had been diagnosed with it. Procuring Adderall was about as easy as buying a packet of cigarettes. But that does not mean that ADHD isn't real, and Pemberton’s documentary seemed to elide this distinction throughout." James Bloodworth reviews The Great ADHD Myth?

"What is the future for the Tower of Power? No-one knows. It’s not listed, and you know what people are like about postwar buildings. These places frighten them for the different ways of living they suggest, and the ambition of an age we no longer feel directly connected to." John Grindrod celebrates the tower that houses the offices of Buckinghamshire County Council in Aylesbury.

Candice Bailey collates of collection of reviews of the 25 best folk horror films of the 2020s (so far).

Argent: Hold Your Head Up

I loved this when it came out when I was 11, but it now makes me remember seeing The Zombies at Market Harborough Leisure Centre in 2011.

After he had played his keyboard solo on this, Rod Argent was shaking hands with people in the front row of the audience. I do like small venues.

Also in the band that night was Rod Argent's cousin, the late Jim Rodford. He is also playing on this original recording.

A mystery in Church Stretton and the most picturesque tin tabernacle of them all in Little Stretton

This is the last of these brief posts on where I have been that day, as I'm going home to Leicestershire tomorrow. They will remind me of what I got up to on holiday and of some possible longer posts about the places I've been to that I may write later in the year.

Today it was the town of Church Stretton and the village of Little Stretton. I saw several emergency vehicles in Church Stretton and a helicopter landed in the centre, all of which made me fear that someone had met with an accident on the Long Mynd, a hill that towers over the town. But I can't find any news reports about what was going on.

And in Little Stretton I once again admired All Saints' Church. This began life in 1903 as a tin tabernacle – one of those flat-pack, corrugated-iron churches that were produced in their hundreds for new industrial settlements or the further reaches of the Empire.

It's a surprise to find one in an ancient Shropshire village, but All Saints' was soon zhuzhed up with a mock Tudor exterior and thatched roof to make it look at home. And it does to this day.

Later. The incident at Church Stretton, whatever it was, didn't make the media, but somebody was flown to the Royal Stoke University Hospital in the helicopter.

Bournemouth's giant IMAX cinema lasted only 14 years

Bournemouth, famous for hosting Liberal Party Assemblies and Liberal Democrat Conferences, wanted to keep up with the times as a resort. So it built The Waterfront, which opened in 1999 and was demolished in 2013.

This video tells you why it came and went so quickly.

Learning to love Ludlow (without a memory card)

I got on better with Ludlow today. In the past I've not always loved it as much as I should - I think this dates back to the time that the tourist information centre told me off for not booking accommodation before I came to the town.

But today I arrived with the firm intention of finding and photographing a rather unLudlowlike building on the edge of town, and that gave me a sense of purpose beyond wandering about the centre waiting to be smitten. 

I fulfilled that intention, even though I found I had set off without a memory card in my camera. (Thank you, phone.)

I'll show you the building I hunted down on another day, but here is a little bit of typical Ludlow to enjoy.

The Joy of Six 1566

"Our promise should be: We don’t want power so we can run your life. We want power in order to give it back to you." Roz Savage asks what has happened to Liberalism and what would make it relevant again.

Simon Pearson rightly says that the online left has lost sight of issues like class, ownership and material power: "The left needs to recover the harder ambition that once defined it: taking people divided by culture, race, sex, nationality and countless other experiences and building a common politics around material interests without pretending those differences do not exist. That requires organisation rather than recognition, explanation rather than denunciation and a serious account of ownership and power."

Nathan Ley explains why our streets may flood this winter, and why it won't be because of the council's 'blocked drains': "Dry clay shrinks, cracks, and forms a crust that sheds water instead of taking it in. Soil hydrophobicity is the technical term. The first heavy rain after a long drought doesn't soak away. It runs, quickly, and reaches the drainage network all at once rather than seeping through over several hours."

"A rash wartime policy ordered the detention of hundreds of Manchester Italians in a prison camp in Bury, and sent many to their deaths on a camouflaged military vessel in the Atlantic. Amongst them were ice-cream sellers, bakers, shopkeepers and a priest. Why were they there at all?" Ethan Penny uncovers a forgotten wartime injustice.

"Nuts In May was an accurate and excruciating reflection of the human condition when it was first broadcast in 1976, was still relevant to us students in the 90s, and even today in 2026, has lost none of its power over the viewer. This is a film with tension, outrage and tragedy. That so much perfectly fits into 81 minutes is a tribute to the brilliance of its director, the taut script structure and flawless cast." Adelle Stripe revisit Mike Leigh's 1976 cult classic.

Mike Nevell takes us to Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, the world’s first iron-framed building (built 1796-7), and thus the forerunner to the modern-day skyscraper.

Wandering the backstreets of Shrewsbury

After yesterday's exertions on the Stiperstones, I decided to spend today exploring the backstreets of Shrewsbury.

This photo was taken in Belmont, a backwater behind the town's Roman Catholic Cathedral.

Gene Chandler: Duke of Earl

This topped the US singles chart in 1962. Gene Chandler, who sang it, later took to calling himself the Duke of Earl.

I don't know when this suitably aristocratic live performance dates from, but Chandler (who is still with us) was later better known as a producer than a singer.

The Joy of Six 1565

"In 2008, I met the Ukrainian diplomat and journalist who would go on to bribe Nathan Gill: Oleh Voloshyn. At the time he was working as press attache at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow, where I was based as the bureau chief for the Guardian. Voloshyn made no secret of his pro-Kremlin views. He was clever, chatty and spoke impeccable English. He later went back to Kyiv to work for the Putin-backed administration of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych." In his new book, Luke Harding joins the dots of a continent-wide Kremlin influence network that was disrupted by the jailing of a former leader of Reform UK Wales.

Josh Gabbatiss, Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans find ten flaws in the new Conservative report on "cheap power": "The report relies on a series of questionable assumptions to claim that gas and nuclear will be cheaper than renewables – including the idea that gas prices will be low and stable."

Caroline Scott meets a few of the thousands of young people who leave the care system each year with no home and little support.

"Trees are planted because they cool streets. Wetlands are protected because they can hold floodwater. Parks are funded because they improve our health. All of those benefits are important. But they can also leave nature looking like a service provider for people. If a tree no longer provides enough shade, or a wetland becomes more valuable as development land, what happens to the argument for protecting it?" Saman Sobhani believes our cities should be designed for wildlife as well as people

Weilong Zhang reports the results of an inadvertent scientific experiment conducted in Britain between 1951 and 1956: "We found that people who experienced longer periods of sugar rationing during their first 1,000 days had a lower incidence of five types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, rectal and lung cancer."

"Dancing Queen is the absolute summit of the purest pop. It’s almost a tasting menu of the greatest components. Its descending glissando is one of the most exciting moments in music history – you know exactly what it is and instantly beam on hearing it." Ian Wade revisits the brilliance of ABBA.

The view west from the Stiperstones ridge today

I was up on the Stiperstones ridge today, placating the Devil and admiring the view into Wales.

Mind you, the border does funny things around there. So the large hill in the background and to the right, Corndon Hill, is in Wales, while the high ground to the left and behind it is Clun Forest and so in Shropshire.

Those tortured rocks in the foreground are, of course, the Stiperstones' very own.

Ian Christie asks if the cinema invented Swinging London

I've already posted the first two videos in this series of film lectures by Ian Christie. They were on Gothic London and on the British pioneer Robert Paul.

Here, in his final lecture, he talks about British cinema and Swinging London.

David Campanale seeks £788,740.75 compensation from Lib Dems

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David Campanale, the former prospective Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam who was deselected in 2023, and the national party are oceans apart when it comes to the compensation he deserves for suffering religious discrimination.

The Guardian reports:

Campanale's schedule of loss, seen by the Guardian, puts his claim at £788,740.75, including interest. It seeks compensation for injury to feelings, aggravated damages, past and future earnings, the loss of an MP's pension, counselling costs and the "loss of a chance", or "loss of political capital".

But in a counter-schedule filed on Friday, the Lib Dems described Campanale's claim as "grossly inflated and egregious". Their lawyers say £14,000 should be awarded for injury to feelings, and as a volunteer political party member, Campanale could have been expected to withstand “rigorous political debate and criticism”. They put aggravated damages, past and future loss of earnings, an MP’s pension and the loss of political capital at £0.

The Lib Dems have admitted to direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of religion or belief under the Equality Act in connection with the affair.

Looking down on Clun's parched bowling green from the castle

I've been to Clun today, making use of one of the last workings of the 745 bus from Minsterley to Ludlow. It's going to be replaced by a community transport scheme that sounds as though it may even be better for residents, but it will no longer be possible to get to Clun, as I did today, by catching the early bus from Shrewsbury to Minsterley.

Anyway, here's a souvenir of Clun and of this extraordinary summer. It's taken from the castle mound looking down on the town's bowling green, though 'green' isn't quite the word at present. 

It seems to be a Shropshire thing to have bowling greens on old castle sites. There is one at the top of what remains of Bishop's Castle castle, and the other day I found one in Ellesmere too. In fact, it was seeing the bowling green that awoke me to the fact that I was looking the remains of a castle.

A vanished island in the Trent near Nottingham

Shakespeare knew all about the River Trent's fondness for changing its course. Here's Hotspur in Henry IV, Part 1:

Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I'll have the current in this place damm'd up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly;
It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.

In and around Nottingham, these changes of course often have more to do with human engineering than natural forces.

Our History Underfoot has been investigating. Here he looks for a lost island at Clifton Grove, a few miles upstream of West Bridgford.

A train ride to Newport to visit St Woolos' Cathedral

I fancied a train ride today, so I went down to Newport in South Wales. I even managed to cover some track that was new to me – Hereford to Newport.

One reason for going there was St Woolos' Cathedral. Ever since I learnt that it isn't the Victorian rebuild I had imagined and has a history dating back to the sixth century, I have wanted to see it.

The photo above shows its twelfth-century Romanesque portal and the arches from the same period in the nave. The building is no larger than many parish churches, but it still impresses.

And the one below shows John Piper's window and decoration behind the altar. The other windows at the east end of the cathedral are largely of clear glass, which I have come to like more and more. It suggests a God, not of gothic obscurantism, but of light and reason.

Reform councillor who said she ‘received no training’ sent resignation letter to wrong council

The Independent wins our Headline of the Day Award.

After they had announced their verdict, I told the judges I didn't receive any training when I was a councillor all those years ago. 

They asked if I lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road.

The Joy of Six 1564

"If there is one consistent theme running through Farage’s political career, it is his striking ability to make enemies out of friends. He seems to be running out of allies. That helps to explain why rumours about his own future, including speculation that health concerns could eventually force him to step back, carry so much weight." Nigel Farage won his by-election but, says Zoe Grunewald, that victory has failed to reinvigorate his party.

Xueyu Geng asks if Britain’s railways can cope with ever‑more extreme heat: "Railway assets have very long lives: a track, bridge or embankment built or substantially renewed today could still be in service in 50 or 100 years. That creates a fundamental mismatch between the current design life and a climate that keeps changing within that lifetime."

Emma Peplow looks back to Martin Bell's victory in Tatton in 1997.

"If you are spending a couple of hours a day scrolling through various apps on your phone, that’s a couple of hours that are not available for reading. It’s also possible that they affect our ability to concentrate for long periods on time on text. Essentially, reading was a more popular leisure pastime in the past, and that probably ensured a steady pipeline of students for the humanities. That pipeline is no longer there." Daisy Christodoulou on the decline of English Literature as a school subject.

"Just occasionally, when your teenage heroes turn out like this, doesn't it just make your heart want to sing along with them?" Pete Paphides salutes Paul Heaton.

Tanya Aldred looks at the problems our extreme summer has caused cricket groundstaff.

The Highland cows of Much Wenlock

On my way to see the ruins of Wenlock Abbey this morning, I met these fine creatures.

Perhaps they are on a religious retreat?

The Creation: That's How Strong My Love Is

The Creation sound good today and all sorts of prominent musicians cite them as an inspiration, but they failed to make it big in the Sixties.

It's a shit business.