Six of the Best 149

You may not be surprised to learn from Virtually Naked that today's encounter between Nick Clegg and Gillian Duffy had Labour's fingerprints all over it.

Chris Davies MEP wants Liberal Democrats to be angry, be proud and campaign harder.

Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, has asked Sir Philip Mawer, the adviser on the ministerial code of conduct, to investigate George Osborne. Channel 4's Gary Gibbon has the story.

John Major's next book, according to the diary in yesterday's Evening Standard, will be a social history of the music hall: "The introduction to the book is apparently extraordinary, comprising the death scene of Major’s father, Tom Major-Ball, the music hall performer and circus artiste, who died in 1962 aged 83, having performed at every theatre in the British Isles. Every act in the country trooped through to perform at the bed of their dying fellow artiste. And young Major watched it all."

Could it be that Mr Gladsone is to thank for modern Britain's love of wine? An article on History Extra says: "James Nicholls of Bath Spa University, a specialist on the history of alcohol consumption, hails the 1860 Treaty of Commerce - in which import duties were reduced on all wine - as a turning point. William Gladstone, the treaty’s chief architect, spoke openly of what he hoped would be a change in British drinking habits - away from an obsession with beer - so that wine would no longer be a 'rich man’s luxury'."

I am not the only Liberal Democrat with an interest in tin tabernacles, as an old post about Kilburn by Ed Fordham proves.