Liberal England in 2017: Part 1

January



I said Yes to Leveson 2, No to Section 40 and  offered some thoughts on Vince Cable, British Asians and Brexit.

"This is wonderful", I said, when posting this video of Paul Robeson singing to Scottish miners in 1949. It is.

I argued that Just because Paul Nuttall is from the North, it doesn't mean he will appeal to Northern voters. Call me Mystic Meg.

And I quoted Karl Popper on not tolerating intolerance:

We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

February

I was complimentary about Tim Farron's leadership of the Liberal Democrats over Europe.

Stewart Lee joined the Lib Dems.

I was very taken with the 1967 children's TV serial Flower of Gloster:

In the first episode a 10-year-old boy rides his bike into the Llangollen Canal as it passes over the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct. The trough stands 126ft above the River Dee, there is a sheer drop on the opposite side to the towpath and it is scary enough making the crossing in a boat.

A song I had been trying to identify for years turned out to be Mary Wana by The Nicotines. I also said I would like to see Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf again.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives discovered that the North is massive.


March

I wrote about Stanley Rundle and the 1960s Liberal revival in Richmond upon Thames.

The Orange Book, I recalled, had been too statist for me.

I marked the 40th anniversary of the Centenary Test:

I remember, listening in the small hours, hearing John Arlott quoting Shakespeare:

And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.

British deference to the Royal Family, I discovered, had protected child abusers in Australia.

The chairman of Harborough Ukip tried to find people to stand for his party by telling them they could avoid going to meetings and collect their expenses "until they are asked to leave".

And on my birthday I marched for Europe.