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| Copyright © Dennis Calow |
Game Show Host: Good evening and welcome to Stake Your Claim. First this evening we have Mr Norman Voles of Gravesend who claims he wrote all Shakespeare's works. Mr Voles, I understand you claim that you wrote all those plays normally attributed to Shakespeare?
Voles: That is correct. I wrote all his plays and my wife and I wrote his sonnets.
Host: Mr Voles, these plays are known to have been performed in the early 17th century. How old are you, Mr Voles?
Voles: 43.
Host: Well, how is it possible for you to have written plays performed over 300 years before you were born?
Voles: Ah well. This is where my claim falls to the ground.
Host: Ah!
Voles: There's no possible way of answering that argument, I'm afraid. I was only hoping you would not make that particular point, but I can see you're more than a match for me!
To many people Norman Baker is as authentic a part of Lewes as the Castle or the Brewery, epitomising the county town the way, for example, Jilly Cooper epitomises the shires or Pam Ayres epitomised Norfolk [the geography a bit off in both cases].
Against the Grain is the perfect title for his biography.
Like Lewes, he is slightly bohemian (not for effect), plain speaking, anti-authoritarian, quirky and possibly an uncomfortable political bedfellow. (David Cameron memorably described him as ‘the most annoying man in Parliament’). Times columnist Matthew Parris called him ‘a classic House of Commons bore’ but also said: ‘you underestimate him at your peril.’
His book is full of astonishing revelations and the most wonderful, insightful gossip. Did he keep a diary? “No, I collected press cuttings, partly because it was a defence if someone said: ‘You said that’ and I knew I had not but also partly because at that stage I thought I might write something.
“I also had access to papers, particularly for the Ministry of Transport but while at the Home Office I decided I would keep detailed notes.”
His book vividly describes his early territory as a local councillor, and later an MP representing – among other villages – Glynde and Firle. “In the Civic War, Firle was Royalist and Glynde was Parliamentarian – I think they still see it in that way a little.”I am sure Norman would like me to point out that Against the Grain is published by Biteback.
MP Michelle Thomson has withdrawn from the SNP whip after police launched an investigation into property deals conducted by her lawyer.
The MP's solicitor was struck off by the Scottish Solicitors' Discipline Tribunal over several deals where Mrs Thomson used his services.
After that ruling, Police Scotland has confirmed it was instructed by the Crown Office to investigate “alleged irregularities relating to property deals" in 2010 and 2011 following the Tribunal ruling.
Mrs Thomson insisted she would cooperate with any investigation into the deals but said she would withdraw from the party whip as the probe was ongoing.Michelle Thomson is MP for Edinbugh West, a seat held by the Liberal Democrats before May's general election.
You might have noticed in some of our newspapers they’ve taken a bit of an interest in me lately. Some of the things I’ve read are this. According to one headline: "Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the prospect of an asteroid ‘wiping out’ humanity.”
Now, asteroids are pretty controversial. It’s not the kind of policy I’d want this party to adopt without a full debate in conference. So can we have the debate later in the week!How the audience laughed!
That this House is appalled, but barely surprised, at the revelations in M15 files regarding the bizarre and inhumane proposals to use pigeons as flying bombs; recognises the important and live-saving role of carrier pigeons in two world wars and wonders at the lack of gratitude towards these gentle creatures; and believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again.There were only three signatories: the late Tony Banks, Corbyn and his new shadow chancellor John McDonnell.
"The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn.
"Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
Tyson would only play 17 Tests, picking up 76 wickets at an average of 18.56. No bowler since he played has managed more than 20 wickets at a better average.
To measure Tyson in cold numbers, though, is to do him a disgrace, for here was a man of words. One of only three or four university graduates in county cricket at the time, Tyson studied English Literature at Hatfield College in the University of Durham. When he went on tour, he took with him the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, Virginia Woolf and Bernard Shaw.
Consider the words JM Kilburn, respected sports writer of the Yorkshire Post, used to describe Tyson: “His best pace was nothing short of startling to batsmen and spectators alike. He represented an elemental force obscuring the details of his technique and the highest tribute he received was the gasp of incredulity frequently emitted by the crowd as the ball passed from his hand to the distant wicketkeeper.”The video above shows Tyson bowling for Northamptonshire against Kent at Rushden in 1957.
Mickie Most introduced me to an Australian band called New World. They were on Opportunity Knocks. So, my first comment was, “Surely, we are going to see if they win it” and Mickie said, “Oh, they will”. That was my first intimation that things weren’t quite as they should be.
A guy from ATV who produced the show said, “and when they win the final..” and I looked at him and said, “How can you be so sure?” and he said, “Don’t worry, we are very sure. They are going to win.” That’s when it all came home and I realised it was fixed. The fix was nothing to do with me; I was just going to make a record.And that blog goes on to record how it ended:
Of course, the fixing scandal of Opportunity Knocks blew open and that’s what killed New World. They were at my house in Henley, rehearsing. They got a phone call and literally ran out of the house.
I had never seen people move so fast. They had a car waiting to take them to Henley station. They went back to London and the next thing I heard, the band had been arrested.
Of course they could never be accused of anything but they were material witnesses to the Opportunity Knocks fix. After it all got out it destroyed their career.UK Game Shows tells a slightly different story:
The pop group New World were tried at the Old Bailey for trying to fix the outcome of the show on which they appeared. They had asked friends to send in bogus votes.If anyone has more leads on this long-forgotten scandal, I would be interested to hear about them.
I wrote of my father’s lifelong friend Osmund Edwards: Uncle Os lived far away beyond the Severn; he owned a pub surrounded by orchards and hop-yards. I have a very strong memory from the age of about three and a half of that place, of a bright day, of a line of trees – limes maybe – beside a dusty dappled road. That was, I believed, the first time I registered dapple.
My memory was indeed very strong – and entirely incorrect. Forty years later I returned to that pub between Tenbury Wells and the worryingly gothic St Michael’s College. No orchards, no hop-yards, and the surrounding fields were devoted to cereal crops. Lime trees? According to an old postcard I subsequently found, there never had been trees.
Riverbank piling works as part of the Jackfield Stabilisation Project have now been completed. That work involved 2,000 steel piles being driven into the banks of the River Severn to stabilise the land and halt the land slip – and was the bulk of the work designed to prevent landslides and try to reduce erosion and the movement of land in the Ironbridge Gorge.I have blogged about subsidence at Jackfield before. Do follow that link and view the newsreel footage of the area from the 1950s.
This week's Glee Club was a great success, with the biggest attendance ever. Our supply of the Liberator Songbook sold out in record time. Onlookers seemed to enjoy it. Even a journalist from Sky News called it "the best night ever" (and on being challenged she did not say she was being sarcastic).All of which makes the party's response to media attempts to manufacture a controversy over reference to Charles Kennedy in the songbook look pretty silly.
Even as a youth Graham had been concerned with major philosophical questions. Not content to room the streets of Market Harborough abusing freemasons like normal children of his age, Graham wanted something more, something deeper, something that would last.
From the sleeve notes for the Monty Python's Meaning of Life soundtrack album.
A planning application has gone in to Harborough District Council asking for permission to put a plaque on a house where Graham Chapman lived as a teenager.
The plaque would be on the wall of Caffe Nero in The Square, formerly a house where the Chapman family lived in the 1950s.
Lovers of comedy should be delighted: it’s a little bit of Monty Python in the very centre of Market Harborough.Graham Chapman has already been honoured with a plaque in Melton Mowbray, but I have heard it suggested that he once lived in Haborough. If it was as a teenager, it would be interesting to know where he went to school.
With this speech, he shook awake a conference hall that had spent the best part of five days slumped in torpor. He spoke with feeling; he was self-deprecating; he was funny; he showed warmth.
Party leaders always pump their conference speeches with stories about their childhood, mainly in the hope of persuading us they were born to human parents. But Mr Farron's reminiscences had a point to them. Unlike most party leaders, and indeed most MPs, he grew up in a single-parent family, with little money, in a high-unemployment northern town. So when he went on to declaim at length about the urgency of the housing shortage, "the biggest single issue that politicians don't talk about", chances are he actually meant it.John Crace (sort of) liked it:
“Believe,” said Tim, changing from the usually smiley Tim to sincere Tim. And by and large, the conference crossed their fingers and did believe. Especially when Farron moved on to the subject of refugees.
Here Farron was at his best. Partly because it’s not an issue on which he needed to gloss over previous political inconsistencies, but mainly because it was one on which he spoke from the heart. This wasn’t the voice of the snake-oil salesman, but a genuine humanitarian. The standing ovation he got for transcending party politics was a just reward. The Lib Dems had come to Bournemouth in search of a reason to believe and Farron had given them a hint their faith might not be misplaced.Hell, even Quentin Letts liked it:
Parts were over-ripe, so nearly mawkish that one expected a Lancashire brass band to start playing the old Hovis theme tune. But Tim Farron, making his first big leader’s speech, played a weak hand well. ...
The ‘eehbahgum-we-were-poor-when-I-were-a-lad’ stuff was more than balanced by later passages when a pumped Farron spoke about housing and argued for greater generosity to refugees. On the latter, particularly, he showed us something of his core – fashioned, I suspect, by his Christianity.
‘I tell you frankly: you don’t risk everything clinging to the bottom of a truck if you’re looking for an easy life,’ he said, recalling some of the migrants he met on a recent trip to Calais. He became so animated when speaking up for these unfortunates that he hit his tie microphone. This section of the speech won, and deserved, a standing ovation.Crace is right. Tim stamped his authority and the personality on the party with this speech.
Our next quartet of mysteries will take the audience on a psychedelic Summer of Love fairground ride, filled with twists and turns, shrieks and scares. In particular, one encounter at a certain stately home will echo down the years, and have consequences that not even Endeavour Morse could have foreseen.My guess is that means the young Morse introduces Hathaway's parents.
I don't think this is about hardball or softball, it is about cleverball.Yet Miliband 1 is not the first New Labour grandee to invent a new sport.
The contents of the millennium experience, the dome, will attract people of all ages, although I suspect that playing surfball, the 21st century sport, will have an especial appeal to young people.If you visited the Millennium Dome and don't recall being offered the chance to play surfball, that is because it never existed.
The serious play zone, to which the hon. Gentleman refers, will include explanations of the world of sport and games in the 21st century. It will cover the sort of 21st century game for which the term "surfball" was an illustrative title.But maybe cleverball does exist. Not only is there the photograph above, but it may still be known in North London back gardens.
Mr Hemming said that the songs had been written many years previously and it would be wrong to remove them from the songbook now.
He said: “Charles wouldn’t have wanted that at all.
“We spoke to his family and they didn’t want the songs removed either.”
However, organisers of the event had removed lyrics to another tune, based on a Scottish folk song called the Skye Boat Song, which contained lyrics which were more offensive, Mr Hemming said.Elsewhere the inevitable "senior Liberal Democrat" is quoted everywhere as saying the Glee Club "should have been axed years ago".
Soon after seven o'clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs. Jellyby's advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient in stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine cod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an excellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was almost raw. ...
All through dinner—which was long, in consequence of such accidents as the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the handle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in the chin—Mrs. Jellyby preserved the evenness of her disposition. She told us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and the natives, and received so many letters that Richard, who sat by her, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once.
Some of the letters were proceedings of ladies' committees or resolutions of ladies' meetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people excited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives; others required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from the table three or four times to write. She was full of business and undoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.I also remember Edmund Burke's dismissal of Rousseau:
He melts with tenderness for those who only touch him by the remotest relation, and then, without one natural pang, casts away, as a sort of offal and excrement, the spawn of his disgustful amours, and sends his children to the hospital of foundlings. The bear loves, licks, and forms her young; but bears are not philosophers.
Vanity, however, finds its account in reversing the train of our natural affections. Thousands admire the sentimental writer; the affectionate father is hardly known in his parish.In part it's the sort of ad hominem attack that has always been made on left-wing intellectuals, but I think Burke is on to something when he sees exaggerated altruism as a variety of vanity.
Blogs were gold and bloggers were rock stars back in 2008 when I was arrested. At that point, and despite the fact the state was blocking access to my blog from inside Iran, I had an audience of around 20,000 people every day. Everybody I linked to would face a sudden and serious jump in traffic: I could empower or embarrass anyone I wanted.
People used to carefully read my posts and leave lots of relevant comments, and even many of those who strongly disagreed with me still came to read. Other blogs linked to mine to discuss what I was saying. I felt like a king.Emerging from prison, he found a very different web:
The Stream now dominates the way people receive information on the web. Fewer users are directly checking dedicated webpages, instead getting fed by a never-ending flow of information that’s picked for them by complex –and secretive — algorithms.
The Stream means you don’t need to open so many websites any more. You don’t need numerous tabs. You don’t even need a web browser. You open Twitter or Facebook on your smartphone and dive deep in. The mountain has come to you.
Algorithms have picked everything for you. According to what you or your friends have read or seen before, they predict what you might like to see. It feels great not to waste time in finding interesting things on so many websites.This worries Derakhshan. He fears it makes us more dependent on big corporations and more open to government surveillance.
We seem to have gone from a non-linear mode of communication — nodes and networks and links — toward a linear one, with centralization and hierarchies. The web was not envisioned as a form of television when it was invented. But, like it or not, it is rapidly resembling TV: linear, passive, programmed and inward-looking.
When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts. All I need to do is to scroll: New profile pictures by friends, short bits of opinion on current affairs, links to new stories with short captions, advertising, and of course self-playing videos.
I occasionally click on like or share button, read peoples’ comments or leave one, or open an article. But I remain inside Facebook, and it continues to broadcast what I might like. This is not the web I knew when I went to jail.Bloggers used to be scrupulous in acknowledging their sources, so... h/t Thomas Jones on the London Review of Books blog.
Legend has it that LBJ, in one of his early congressional campaigns, told one of his aides to spread the story that Johnson's opponent fucked pigs. The aide responded "Christ, Lyndon, we can't call the guy a pigfucker. It isn't true." To which LBJ supposedly replied "Of course it ain't true, but I want to make the son-of-a-bitch deny it."
Winwood’s vacuous hymns to hedonism and the “finer things” the aging rich can afford are, in their way, nearly as offensive and excoriating as the hallucinatory violence Bateman imagines visiting on the world of superficial splendor within which he has imprisoned himself. This is music that can only be enjoyed by someone who is dead inside.Winwood maintains that his music in that decade did what he has always done - bring together influences from the blues, folk, jazz and beyond - but was given a sheen by his producers that has not aged well.
It’s associated particularly with the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Bitter arguments by one side about terrorism were often countered, not by reasoned argument, but by accusations of similar atrocities by the other.
In 2000, The Scotsman attributed the coinage to the former West Belfast MP Gerry Fitt, and gave this example: “Aye, the IRA might be bad, but what about ...”. That makes clear it’s what about turned into a noun.
The Belfast Telegraph used it on 29 September: “Both sides are steeped in historical ‘whataboutery’ and they cannot see the historical woods for the modern trees.”I mention it because whataboutery is pretty much all that enthusiasts for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party have to offer.
"It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle.
"It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table."there were numerous tweets like this from Corbyn supporters.
Did Thatcher ever apologise for her open support of Pinochet, a military dictator who tortured & killed tens of thousands? Er, nope. #bbcqt
— Nicholas Pegg (@NicholasPegg) September 17, 2015
Thatcher's support for the Pinochet regime was an outrage, and if there had been blogs in the 1980s I would have said so.
The Liberal Democrat leader said the conversations “may or may not be conclusive” in terms of defections, but that many Labour members “feel deeply distressed” after the election of the left-wing Mr Corbyn.
“I’ve had various unsolicited texts, some of them over the weekend, where I felt like I was being an agony aunt rather than anything else,” Mr Farron told the Evening Standard.
“People who have been members of the [Labour] party for as long as I’ve been a member of mine who feel that they don’t recognise their party anymore and feel deeply distressed.”
He said “some” of those who contacted him were well-known Labour figures, but refused to be drawn on whether they were frontbenchers.
In the long-running detective drama Inspector Morse, actor Kevin Whately played the role of Det Sgt Robbie Lewis, the no-nonsense Geordie who served as the perfect foil to the highbrow, Oxford-educated title role.
Off-screen though, it was a different story altogether. While Morse was played by John Thaw, who grew up in the tough Longsight area of Manchester, Whately was the grandson of the Rev Herbert Whately, the Oxford-educated former rector of Church Stretton.Reader's voice: It's not that interesting, is it?
