Sunday, December 29, 2013

Liberal England in 2013 - part 2

Part 1 was posted yesterday. On with part 2.

April



I offered some thoughts on the death of Margaret Thatcher and It emerged that "top bloggers" had been in discussion with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on how the legislation following the Leveson Report might affect bloggers.

Paddy Ashdown attacked Tory demonisation of the poor, while Lord Bonkers offered some characteristically humane words on the conviction of Chris Huhne:
Leave the sermons to the Reverend Hughes: what a chap needs at a time like this is a cake with a file in it.
I posted the video above, which shows colour footage of St John's Wood from the 1940s set to music by Georges Delerue.

May


Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell wrote me a guest post about political defections and I recalled being quoted on the Today programme: "Now we can sit back and watch the Tories go mad."

I quoted chunks from my favourite blog post of the year - "An anthropologist looks at the Liberal Democrats" - and gave my reaction to the Guardian's front page reporting the views of the killers of Lee Rigby: "Just because you murder someone, it doesn't mean your views are worth hearing."

And, as the picture above shows, I visited the blacksmith's forge at the mouth of Blisworth canal tunnel.

June



They still speak of the Great Little Bowden Allotment Fire and I remember discovering the Green Men of Rawson Street in Leicester.

I enjoyed the Welland Valley Beer Festival and was puzzled by Liberty Hall in Northampton. Most of all, I enjoyed coming across the Imperial Typewriters building in Leicester and came across a cracking ghost sign in the same part of the city: "Guaranteed English Trapped Rabbits."

There was some politics too, I expect.

Later. Not quite politics, but Market Harborough was mentioned on The News Quiz...

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