Zoinks! It's a book about the spooky folklore behind Scooby-Doo

Mark Norman, creator of The Folklore Podcast, talks on American TV about his book Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby-Doo.

Lord Lucan helps Agatha Christie win Quote of the Day

Lord Lucan is everywhere this week, because it's 50 years since he murdered his children's nanny, attacked his wife and then disappeared.

The new Fortean Times has an article on the affair, which quotes the reaction of Agatha Christie:

“ I wonder what has happened to Lord Lucan?”

Christie may seem like a figure from an earlier era, but she did not die until 1976. And Lord Lucan died in 1974.

Or did he?

The Joy of Six 1283

"There is a pervasive rhetoric circulating on the role of environmental regulation. It goes like this: regulation blocks growth, slows things down and should be stripped back. Such blunt logic usually misses the point. There are many reasons why we have regulation but none more important than the protection it provides to people and the environment from harmful practices." Ruth Chambers argues that limiting the use of judicial review would be an assault on democratic values.

Ruth Swailes is sceptical about government plans to offer care and education for two-year-olds within existing schools: "By the time children start nursery education at 36 months (three years of age) when nursery teachers would normally first meet them, they are typically quite adept communicators. But two-year-olds are very different."

Josie Cox decided to publicise her book online. So began her journey into "the fascinating and infuriating world of self-promotion, humblebrags, 'boomerasks' and, yes, a healthy dose of sexist cultural norms".

"Now widely considered as one of folk horror’s classic films, Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) was not only the first of the unholy trinity that are seen to define the genre – alongside Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) – but also arguably the most disturbing of the three." Adam Scovell travels to Suffolk to visit the locations used in Witchfinder General.

"The effect of T20 is not just affecting Test cricket. Its penetrating deep into the grassroots.  An experienced school coach and former first-class player reports that “the U11s in Kent are being told batting long is not what we want. 10 runs off 5 balls is what we want! And a decent U13 player at Hampton school was told he does not 'hit the ball as hard as Jason Roy'! (Few do to be fair.) These may be isolated examples but you only have to watch a colts or schools match to understand the general direction of travel. Defence only exists in the NFL." Simon Hughes says the effect of uber-positive T20 batting styles is penetrating deeper into cricket, not necessarily for the good.

Eoghan Lyng chooses 10 of the best rock books of 2024.

For Halloween: From the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic

"Britain ... introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it"

Robert Jenrick's assertion that the countries Britain colonised should be grateful to us, reminds me of a comment by the historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams.

Wikipedia says:

He has been described as the "Father of the Nation", having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. 

As a historian, he was best known for his book Capitalism and Slavery. Based on his doctoral thesis, it:

makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation.

In other words, it attacks just the understanding of history that Jenrick urges upon us.

As Williams once observed of such views:

"The British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

Richard Morton Jack on his biography of Nick Drake

Gabrielle Darke and her raisins have inevitably put me in mind of her brother Nick. In the video above, you can Nick Drake's biographer Richard Morton Jack talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth on their Word in Your Ear podcast.

It's an interview that offers a different perspective on Nick Drake's life and career, and on the late Sixties music scene in general.

Gabrielle Drake can be heard talking about her reasons for agreeing to cooperate with the biography on an edition of BBC Radio Four's Front Row from last year.

Mr Logan's hunter Lottery was named after the famous racehorse

A reader has kindly directed me to a document on the neighbourhood plan review for East Langton parish, which mentions the monument to J.W. Logan MP's favourite hunter Lottery. (It's hard to link to, so I have pasted the relevant extract above).

As I blogged a couple of days ago, this is widely claimed to be the grave of Lottery, the winner of the first Grand National in 1839, or at least a monument to him. But my discovery that Logan had a horse called Lottery makes that beast a much better candidate for the dedicatee.

Because the story about the Grand National winner ending his days at East Langton never really added up. Thoroughbred Heritage tells us (scroll down the page, because most of it's about this Lottery's father, who was also called Lottery) that the horse was foaled in 1829.

After detailing his many triumphs, the site records Lottery's final days:

The last race of his career was at Windsor in April, 1844. For some time after his retirement, he served as his trainer's hack. Later, he was sent to a Mr. Hall, who had a pack of harriers at Neasden, and it is said he was put to ploughing when he was "too much played-out to stand cross-country work." He was buried at Astley Grange Farm stud at East Langton, Leicestershire.

The greatest Grand National horse, Red Rum, lived to be 30, and I believe that is a typical lifespan for a racehorse. So there is no way in the world that this horse lived until 1886 - at East Langton or anywhere else.

Lottery's sad decline after the end of his racing career reminds me of the hero of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. I fear that when he became too old for ploughing, his next appointment was at the local glue factory.

Four quick points about the extract from the document above:

• I love the detail that Paddy Logan named his hunter after the great racehorse. I shall take this as authentic local knowledge.
• The same goes for this being a gravestone rather than just a monument, but it is, of course, dated 1886 and not 1896.
• I suspect the, surely untrue, sentence about the Grand National winner Lottery also ending up at East Langton is taken from an earlier blog post of mine.
• Why? Because they've used my photos from that post.

The idea that the winner of the first Grand National is buried at East Langton will probably prove one of those 'zombie facts' that keeps being repeated and will not die. I have played my part in passing it on, and I apologise.

But there is hope. The zombie fact that Reginald Gough, who was convicted of the manslaughter of Dennis O'Neill, later had his conviction changed to one of murder and his sentence lengthened by some unspecified process, is now specifically contradicted in the Wikipedia article on the case.

Gabriella Drake advertises Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar in 1973

One of the great lost chocolate bars of our youth, along with Aztec and Summit, is Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar. Nostalgia Central says it was sold between 1971 and 1978.

This television commercial dates from 1973 and features Gabriella Drake. I don't what raisins have to with the English Civil War, but thanks again to Anachronistic Anarchist on YouTube.

That soup has missed the oil companies and splattered art lovers

"There is a price to teaching public venues to be suspicious of visitors and it is a price we all pay," wrote Stephen Daisley in response to Just Stop Oil's stunts at Stonehenge and the National Gallery. 

How right he was.

The London blogger Diamond Geezer has written about what a visit to the National Gallery now entails:

Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned?Spoilers - really very bad indeed.

And here are just some of the details:

Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. 

Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. 

By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.

From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50 per cent longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. 

The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master.

Throwing soup - which is wanky and middle-class protest to begin with, like throwing milkshakes at Nigel Farage - has left the oil companies completely unscathed. Its victims have turned out to be art lovers and the reputation of environmental protestors more generally.

The Joy of Six 1282

"As just one of a handful of MPs known to have grown up in care, I am hugely conscious of just how fortunate I have been on my journey. Fortunate because I had fantastic foster parents who then adopted me, and who always encouraged me in education and supported my aspirations. And fortunate because my experience has been so different from that of so many other care-experienced children and young people." Darren Paffey says that care-experienced children and young people are too often written off before they even take their first steps into adulthood.

Edward Henry KC talks to Legal Business: "I've been very fortunate to have two of the most remarkable cases that any barrister could hope for: the Andrew Malkinson appeal and representing the subpostmasters who were destroyed by the Post Office in the Post Office Horizon inquiry. Those clients, Andrew and the subpostmasters, are remarkably wonderful people. It’s a huge privilege and honour to represent them. I don’t think I can put into words how important their interests are to me, particularly given the monstrous injustices they suffered."

Alan Lester sets out the top five manoeuvres used to avoid discussion of reparations for slavery.

"I recently came across two rather depressing reflections on the present and future of the Internet. One contemplated the apparent death of the hyperlink, the original glue that held the World Wide Web together. The second predicted that within just two or three years, 80 per ent or more of all the text on the Internet would be machine generated." Kate Watson asks if we can make an internet fit for people again.

Laura D'Olimpio argues that encountering philosophy at school gives young people the tools to discuss difficult topics like the Israel-Gaza war.

"Some described Spring-heeled Jack as a ghost, some as a bear, an armoured man, a devil; others suspected he might be a dissolute aristocrat. As well as his flaming breath and burning red eyes, many claimed he had the astounding ability to spring or leap great distances, bounding over walls and hedges and even onto house roofs." David Castleton wonders who or what a figure that terrorised Victorian London was.

The Lottery buried at East Langton is not the winner of the first Grand National but a hunter owned by J.W. Logan MP

Later. There's a little more on Mr Logan's horse here.

I am reading John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, which is an earlier story about Kay Harker from The Box of Delights. Here Kay is tangling with his governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is also a witch and an acolyte of the villainous Abner Brown.

Early in the book, Masefield mentions "that famous horse Lottery at various stages of the steeplechase, the prints of which hung in the study". This name leapt out at me, because I once came across what Thoroughbred Heritage says is a monument to Lottery just outside the village of East Langton.

I set out to photograph it on my very first day out with a digital camera. Perhaps that's why I didn't take a better photo, though I do remember it was a baking hot day and I had to look south to take it.

Just now I searched the British Newspaper Archive for a story about the burial or commemoration of Lottery at East Langton. What I found was one that proved that this Lottery was not the winner of the first Grand National, but a hunter owned by this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

So here's the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 12 May 1939:

In view of the great interest taken by listeners acquainted with the Langtons. the writer of this thought the following particulars might be of interest to local readers of this paper. It was a pity no reference was made to Mr. Logan's famous hunter "Lottery." 

In the late seventies and early eighties, of the last century, every boy in the Langtons and adjoining villages could tell some amazing stories of this horse and Mr. Logan, his rider. “Lottery" was brought out of a plough team in Ireland by Mr. Logan, and it is said he never once had an accident or went lame, and never once missed his turn to carry Mr. Logan, who hunted and rode him till he was well on in his teens. 

One of his most amazing jumping feats was during a fast run of Sir Bache Cunard’s (now the Femie) Hounds. The fox and hounds had swam the canal and a field of two hundred horsemen and hunt staffs had go some distance round by a canal bridge. 

Mr. Logan was as usual, somewhere in the front rank of riders, left them and put his horse "Lottery." at the canal, and landed in the shallow water close up the towing path. With another spring he was out of the water and on the towing path, and went a few yards and then cleared the hedge, following the pack by himself and leaving the large field simply gasping with amazement. This happened in the Smeeton district and was the talk of the district all thot winter. 

It is said that several times “Lottery” jumped the Burton Overy brook, other riders following. and he could jump the country anywhere Of course, everyone knew that at that time Mr. Logan was one of the finest riders in the country and no one was surprised when a fair number of years later he won the House of Commons Steeplechase on "Chic.” 

During the later years of his hunting career Mr. Logan set a new fox covert which he called Home Rule Covert, though one never sees the name mentioned in foxhunting reports now.

I love Home Rule Covert, and it strengthens my theory that Logan's nickname of Paddy was given to him locally because of his pro-Irish sympathies.

Fire destroys former Buddhist centre at Kelmarsh

Last night, reports HFM News, eight fire crews fought a blaze at the former Nagarjuna Buddhist Centre in Kelmarsh. 

The main house's roof was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to the newer buildings next to it.

One of those newer buildings housed the World Peace Cafe, where I once had lunch. The cafe closed a few years ago when the Buddhists relocated to the more attractive Thornby Hall.

The main house was originally Kelmarsh Rectory, and became a care home before it was a Buddhist centre.

Bertrand Russell: "First they fascinate the fools..."

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When asked how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell replied: "First they fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent."

I have seen this tweet several times in recent days. As ever with quotations posted on social media, you have to ask if its genuine,

The answer is that there's no evidence of Russell having a conversation like that, but he did write something similar.

Quote Investigator alerts us to an essay - Freedom and Government - that Russell contributed to a collection complied by Ruth Nanda Anshen. It was titled Freedom: Its Meaning and published in 1942.

There Russell wrote:

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

This technique is as old as the hills; it was practised in almost every Greek city, and the moderns have only enlarged its scale.

So Russell didn't say that, but he did write something very like it.

In praise of Jason Beer KC, the counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry

The clinical psychologist Dr Paul Duckett examines the techniques used by Jason Beer KC, counsel to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.

Notably, he sees Beer's mastery of comedy as one of the five keys to his masterly performance.

For those who have been following the hearing, it's good to re-encounter favourite characters like Paula Vennells, Rodric Williams and - above all - Jarnail Singh.

I agree with all Duckett says, and would also like to put in a word for Sir Wyn Williams, the chair of the inquiry,

When he makes one of his Columbo-like interventions - "Before we move on, can I get one thing clear in my head..." or "I'm probably being very slow, but..." - you just know he's about to ask a killer question.

The Irrepressibles: Tide

The Irrepressibles is the name under which the Scarborough-born musician Jamie McDermott works. The Tide come from his first studio album Mirror Mirror, which was reviewed on its release in 2010 by Nina Joyce:

McDermott’s exuberant performances dance on the border of disturbing, but an ability to melt between the light and the dark with such mesmerising grace has led to comparisons to Anthony Hegarty, though the heights McDermott’s voice can reach sometimes suggest a male Joanna Newsom, minus the folk. The time for the rise of the Irrepressibles is surely upon us. 

The somewhat poperatic tendencies undoubtedly catch your attention but the flamboyancy can sometimes seem more like a child starved of affection. The positive side to this is The Irrepressibles’s contagious spirit and exuberance for sticking a tongue out or a lithe finger up to convention.

This spirit spills over into their live performances, according to the Guardian's review of Mirror Mirror:

After much performing by woods, lakes and even amphitheatres, a flamboyant full debut from the 10-piece orchestral ensemble, who, lavishly dressed in anything from Flash Gordon gear to exotic fruit, pirouette as they play.

The video here, however, comes from Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature film, Ivan's Childhood. It's the famous scene of Captain Kholin and Masha among the birch trees.

The Joy of Six 1281

"The adversarial trial system has been shown inadequate to deal with complex, and indeed developing, scientific data in Lucy Letby's trials. Procedure has triumphed over the serious search for the truth. Yet there is also the question as to whether existing legal procedures were followed over testing expert witnesses." Timothy Bradshaw claims that Lucy Letby has been betrayed by a legal system that can’t handle scientific evidence.

Ian Martin is not impressed by Boris Johnson's Unleashed: "On the basis of this magnum opus, satirists who’d pointed their lances at some imaginary political giant were in fact tilting at a windbag."

Jamie Stone, who has served at both Holyrood and Westminster, compares the two parliaments: "Having been a Member since its inception in 1999, I happen to know that when they were being trained, the staff were instructed to address the newly elected MSP’s as Mr, Mrs, Ms and so forth… but never by their first name. I also happen to know that this training fell on deaf ears from the very start. I was Jamie on day one, and still am today. I must admit that’s how I’ve always preferred it."

The organisation that became the RSPB was started by Victorian women protesting against the use of feather in millinery, shows Tessa Boase.

"The Lansbury Exhibition of Architecture would show how town planning and scientific building principles would provide a better environment in which to live and work, and how this would be applied to the redevelopment of London and the new towns planned across the country." A London Inheritance finds much of this 1951 event still standing in the East End.

Xan Brooks gives his choice of the best fiction set in the American South.

Volunteers turn out to help plant new Market Harborough park - and the local Tories are appalled

More than 30 people turned out this morning to help plant bulbs and plants at Market Harborough's new Friendship Park. You can hear one of them on the HFM News site.

I'm not surprised at the turnout. A few weeks ago I saw someone with a clipboard looking at the derelict site and guessed that she was involved with the planning of the park. I went over for a chat, and she mentioned how much support for the scheme she had found in the nearby flats.

The park is a project of the Liberal Democrat, Green and Labour coalition that has run Harborough District Council since last year's elections.

The Green councillor (and sometime Liberal England contributor) Darren Woodiwiss tweeted:

There was a great turn out this morning to plant 10,000 bulbs in the new friendship park on Northampton Rd, #Harborough.

Thank you to the lovely volunteers and @HarboroughDC officers and contractors for organising. pic.twitter.com/soin3aeJE8

— Darren Woodiwiss (@darrenwoodiwiss) October 25, 2024

Who could be against voluntary action, a new park and friendship? Our local Conservatives, that's who.

My old friend Phil Knowles, the Lib Dem leader of the council, was spot on his reply to this nonsense:

It’s a shame that local Tory councillors won’t be coming down to Market Harborough’s new community led green space because they think it’s “silly”, or that they don’t like the residents suggestion of calling it a Friendship Park. As it sounds like they could do with a little friendship, and hopefully they’ll change their minds.

Luckily the local community, who championed this project, have warmly received the invitation to help be apart of it’s success.

“It’s rather sad that involving the community and our many wonderful volunteers is seen as a negative.  I’m proud to say that the coalition see the community and volunteer involvement as a tremendous positive.

We feel that creating a new park and community open space close to the town centre for residents and visitors to enjoy for wellbeing is a positive addition. We as we say, are not about negativity, let’s improve our district not keep talking it down!

Investing in communities is what we as a coalition do.

That's good sense and good politics. Who the Tories think the are appealing to, I cannot imagine. This attitude will do nothing to dispel the general impression that their party has gone rather weird in recent years.

And, best of all, the park is on my way into town.

Later. Another email from the good guys.

“Most of the people who came on Friday didn’t know each other or others groups but now they are all friends” - Cllr Peter James, Market Harborough Friendship Park pic.twitter.com/2xR7m1TOLg

— Harborough Lib Dems (@HarboroughLD) October 26, 2024

Northampton Bridge Street level crossing in use in the 1990s

Ten years ago this blog often explored Northampton - and often ended up at the former Bridge Street level crossing. This video from the 1990s shows a couple of workings using that crossing.

When I explored the land to the east of Bridge Street in 2014, I wrote:

South of the power station and the Avon building, the footpath that was once Nunn Mills Road takes you thorough a derelict industrial area. The Northamptonshire Enterprise Partnership calls it "one of the largest brown field development opportunities in the UK".

I was puzzled. It all seemed very derelict, but if I had my bearings right then a train had passed over Bridge Street level crossing and through this site as recently as recently as 2006. Certainly, there are pictures of an enthusiasts' rail tour in the area in 2002.

Just as I was beginning to doubt myself, a pair of rails crossed my path.

"The number 72 was enunciated with something like reverence": An outside view of this year's Lib Dem Conference

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Greg Taylor has written about his impressions of the three main political parties' conferences this autumn on the LSE British Politics and Policy blog.

Here's what he made of the Liberal Democrats:

The Lib Dems, up first as usual, were so full of zest that their hair practically stood on end from the moment they piled out of Brighton Station (those that had some, anyway). In debates, in speeches, and in casual conversation the number 72 was enunciated with something like reverence, something like disbelief. 72, the number of Lib Dem MPs elected in July, the party’s most ever and a jump of 645% from their devastating 2019 result. 72, the Shibboleth that elicited lusty cheers that only increased in volume over four long days.

Fringe debates on social care, on environmentalism, on education, drew hundreds of eager ears. Too many for piddling meeting rooms, leaving latecomers lingering gloomily by closed doors. Lib Dems now represent the UK’s northern reaches, its most southern tip, and urban and rural areas in-between. Their Conference gave all of them their first forum to grapple with what this means and how they should act as the third party in Westminster and hold the government to account.

Sir Ed Davey – an ever-present, bungee-jumping beacon during the election campaign, morphed into a serious statesman. Mostly. Usually ever-present around conference, this year he was barely glimpsed. Assumedly wining and dining donors, and enmeshed in serious backroom meetings, a rare spotting of the Leader was greeted with post-resurrection giddiness by the throngs.

The energy fizzed, especially during the infamous Glee Club on the final night, when attendees let their hair down by crooning specially-written hymns to Lib Demmery, set to pop tunes, in raucous unison. You could just tell they can’t wait for Conference 2025.

It's Freddie van Mierlo vs Russell Brand

The Guardian reports from Pishill on Oxfordshire

It is an idyllic, quintessentially English scene, but rake the surface and the embers of a fierce local row soon spark into life. On one side, people determined not to lose an 800-year-old pub; on the other, a magic amulet-toting, born-again Christian broadcasting "alt-right" views to the world from its environs.

Yes, it's Russell Brand.

The author of My Booky Wook and Booky Wook 2, Newsnight interviewee, former guest editor of the New Statesman and Guardian sports columnist, and recent adherent of whichever branch of Christianity requires you to prance about in your underpants with Bear Grylls, wants to take over the pub at Pishill:

Brand, who lives in a nearby village but often broadcasts from Pishill to his 6.83 million YouTube subscribers, saw an initial plan to convert the pub into a recording studio and a community space refused in February after more than 50 local objections. Residents argue the most recent iteration, which seeks a “mixed use of pub, ancillary accommodation, function room, media studio, offices”, would still leave them with nowhere to have a pint.

“No one believes he’s going to open the pub,” said Josh Robinson-Ward, who got married in the Crown’s function barn. “He’s said from the beginning he had plans to open the pub but never has and it’s unclear that he’ll have to open it if this goes through. From the off I think he thought that if he had enough money he could just do what he wants.”

But the forces of light have a champion:

Freddie van Mierlo, the local Liberal Democrat MP for Henley and Thame, said the Lib Dems were pushing the council to support pubs becoming assets of community value with tax relief.

He said the Crown should be opened solely as a pub. “Pubs are not the playthings of the wealthy; they are the heart of rural communities like Pishill and Stonor, and should be protected and cherished,” he said.

Tomato factory lights mistaken for 'lovely aurora'

Another win for BBC News in our Headline of the Day Award:

The pictures, showing a pink and red glow, piqued the interest of hundreds of people, with many praising the "impressive" snaps, but all was not as it seemed.

The "beautiful" glare - seen early in the morning on Wednesday - actually came from Suffolk Sweet Tomatoes’ LED light units, which are used to encourage the growth of its stock.

The Joy of Six 1280

"There is a strand of conservatism that is protectionist and isolationist but for any admirer of Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher to go along with these policies is extraordinary. Trump represents a repudiation of their values on free trade and internationalism." David Gauke explains why Conservatives should have no truck with Trump.

Wera Hobhouse says it's time we had an open and honest conversation about legalising euthanasia.

Despite the fact that governments have spent the last 40 years giving capitalism's loudest voices mostly what they want, such as lower top tax rates and weaker trades unions, in the last 10 years GDP per hour worked has grown by less than one per cent a year. Read Chris Dillow on Labour and the Conservatives' shared belief in "the Scooby-Doo theory of capitalism".

At least 2000 babies were born to Black GIs stationed in Britain during the second world war and a home was created for some of them: Holnicote House in Somerset. Those who grew up there are now telling their stories, reports Steve Rose.

"As a statistician with 20 years of experience in the field of ecology, I recently faced a challenging moment. In August, some colleagues in Canada published a response to a paper that I co-wrote a decade ago, showing that the method my co-authors and I proposed back then is fundamentally flawed." Oliver Gimenez reflects on having a paper of his shown to be wrong.

"Tom Baker was in his fifth full year as the Doctor and was the well-recognised face of the series across the UK. Cleese was also a household name, but for comedy. He had started to build his comedy reputation in the late 1960s and solidified this with his work on the first three series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus between 1969 and 1973 before ascending to comedy royalty with Fawlty Towers, which he created with his then-wife Connie Booth." Oliver J. Wake on the coming together of two giants of Seventies television.

The Rolling Stones' Rice Krispies television commercial

This was written by Brian Jones and recorded by the band and broadcast in 1963 or 1964.

There's all sorts of wonderful stuff on the Anachronistic Anarchist YouTube channel.

PC stole toilet rolls from police station

This shocking tale wins BBC News our Headline of the Day Award.

Michael Heslop on his cover illustration for The Dark is Rising

This is a clip from Read On, a BBC schools programme broadcast on 9 February 1981. The presenter Vicki Luke reads a short passage from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, then the artist Michael Heslop talks about how he produced his cover illustration for the book.

I have all five books in this series with covers by Heslop. I bought them in the mid Eighties. These days his work concentrates on horse racing and golf.

Thanks to Bob Fischer for tweeting about this video. Susan Cooper fans may also be interested in my post on the 1969 Jackanory dramatisation of Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in the series.

Paddington has a British passport now, but the Browns could have got 14 years for helping him when he arrived

From the Guardian:

He has been one of the UK’s favourite and most prominent refugees for two-thirds of a century. Now Paddington Bear – official name Paddington Brown – has been granted a British passport.

The co-producer of the latest Paddington film said the Home Office had issued the specimen document to the fictional Peruvian-born character – listing for completeness the official observation that he is, in fact, a bear.

Aw, innit cute?

Ten years ago, as the first Paddington film was due for release, I quoted Free Movement blog:

Paddington stows away and deliberately avoids the immigration authorities on arrival. He is in formal legal terms an illegal entrant and as such commits a criminal offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971. It is an offence punishable by up to six months in prison. If or when detected by the authorities it is more likely he would simply be removed back to Peru than that he would be prosecuted, though. To avoid that fate he would need to make out a legal basis to stay. 

Incidentally, for offering a home to Paddington - or harbouring him, as the Home Office would have it - Mr and Mrs Brown could potentially face prosecution under section 25 of the Immigration Act 1971, entitled "Assisting unlawful immigration to member State". The maximum sentence is 14 years.

Whatever Paddington's status now, he didn't have a British passport when he arrived in 2014. So I stand by my reaction then:

"Crikey!" said Jonathan.

The towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station await demolition

James Graham (the television writer not the former Liberal Democrat blogger) has joined calls for the preservation of the cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which was Britain's last working coal-fired station before it shut down at the end of September.

BBC News quotes him as saying:

"Some might think they're ugly. I think they're majestic. Concrete cathedrals.

"I got to stand inside one, filming Sherwood series two. I've never stood anywhere like it on Earth.

"I'd love future generations to stand in them too. But they are inexplicably all going – all of them."

There are various online petitions calling for the preservation for one or more of the towers, but none seems to be arousing much enthusiasm.

No application for demolition has yet been submitted to the local council, says another BBC News report. But if demolition does take place, East Midlands Airport will have to be closed while it is underway.

Ric Holden calls a Westminster hall debate on pie-and-mash shops

In his parliamentary sketch for The Critic, Robert Hutton catches up with Ric Holden, whom he finds displaying a new-found enthusiasm for pie-and-mash shops:

A few months ago, Holden was the chairman of the greatest election-winning machine in history, the British Conservative Party. Now he is just a humble opposition backbencher. Some might say his demotion was deserved. He did after all oversee a campaign that set a number of records, including lowest Conservative share ever and most seats lost by a government ever. But those people miss a very important point: although Holden waved goodbye to 250 colleagues in July, he did succeed in saving his own skin. 

When his Durham seat was abolished, he realised that he had always, at heart, been an Essex man, and fled south to the ultra-safe constituency of Basildon and Billericay. Not that it stayed ultra-safe for long. Under his stewardship, the Conservative majority fell from 20,000 to just 20. You could see why he’d felt that a seat with a majority of, say, 19,000 wouldn’t have been enough. 

This all explains why on Tuesday afternoon, Holden was in a room off Westminster Hall where MPs are allowed to raise matters that are likely to be of limited interest. Officially, he was there to ask the government to save a Cockney delicacy by giving it official protected status. Really, he was there to beg the government to save Ric Holden.

A teenage Jimmy Page talks about his work as a session guitarist

The video of Jimmy Page playing skiffle as a 13-year-old is well known, but here he is six years later being interviewed about his work as a session guitarist.

It was tweeted by Nikki Kreuzer.

Jimmy Page, age 19, still completely unknown, June 1963, interviewed in Guernsey, Channel Islands, about his session guitar work. He had only been playing guitar for 4 yrs and hoped to one day become an accomplished visual artist, financing his artwork with his guitar playing. pic.twitter.com/0XTl1gWdJk

— Nikki Kreuzer (@NikkiKreuzer) September 25, 2018

Nate Silver's 24 reasons why Donald Trump may win

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Judging by my Twitter feed, British liberal opinion is unanimous in the view that Donald Trump, as well as exhibiting increasing signs of senility and having an unpleasant smell about him, is bound to lose next month's election.

As a corrective to this unwarranted optimism, here's a link to a piece by Nate Silver giving 24 reasons why he may win:

This election remains extremely close, but Donald Trump has been gaining ground. One of my pet peeves is with the idea that this is Kamala Harris’s election to lose. I could articulate some critiques of her campaign, but if you study the factors that have historically determined elections, you'll see that she’s battling difficult circumstances.

The Joy of Six 1279

"The UK now has the outline of a modern welfare state, but it is increasingly failing to fill in the gaps. Those gaps let far too many people fall through, and the consequences are both individual misery and collective decline." The state should be there when things go wrong in our lives, argues Andrew Sissons.

The most senior former judges in England and Wales have called on the government to reverse the trend of imposing ever longer sentences, giving warning that radical solutions are needed to address the acute crisis in prisons. A briefing from the Howard League for Penal Reform looks at what can be done#.

Robert Saunders reminds us that David Cameron rose without trace: "No prime minister of modern times has been so deeply rooted in the Establishment. None has been so routinely tipped for greatness. And yet few retain such an enduring air of mystery."

Andrés Rodríguez-Pose and Rosalie Henry de Frahan assess the effects of private schooling and school composition on student performance. "Our findings contribute to the growing body of research questioning the comparative advantage of private schools, demonstrating that their perceived superiority often arises from the socio-economic advantages of the students they enroll, rather than the quality of education provided." 

Christina Bollen presents five surprising ways that trees help prevent flooding.

"For Maynard, the old lesson 'be kind to people on the way up, because you'll meet them again on the way down', was, belatedly, about to hit home hard." Graham McGrath on a great stage feud: Bill Maynard vs Derek Nimmo.

Band of Horses: No One's Gonna Love You

It sounds beautiful, but as someone explains on Reddit:

This is basically a pretty mean-spirited breakup song. It's like saying "You will never again know happiness or true love, because you lost me".

Scott Russell on Paste, who described it as "one of the great indie-rock love songs of the 2000s," offers a more generous-minded reading:

There’s no malice in the song's eponymous oath - "No one is ever gonna love you more than I do" - but rather an overwhelming sense of certainty, despite all the attendant suffering. It’s not the possibility of a new beginning that drives the song ("Things start splitting at the seams and now / It’s tumbling down, "Bridwell admits), but rather the passion that’s survived through the pain - the bittersweet echoes of the narrator’s most intimate personal history.

Band of Horses are a Seattle band and have been going since 2004. No One's Gonna Love You comes from their second album, Cease to Begin, and reached no. 22 is the Danish singles chart in 2011, three years after its original release.

"Finding junk and talking bollocks": The appeal of Detectorists

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"Finding junk and talking bollocks." That’s how Lance (Toby Jones) describes the life he and his best mate Andy (Mackenzie Crook) live in Detectorists, the gentle and beloved BBC sitcom that began 10 years ago this month.

David Renshaw had a nice piece on Detectorists in the Guardian earlier this week, though calling the series 'gentle' downplays its ability to embrace the mystical and the sinister.

Mackenzie Crook, the writer of the series, came up with a better word:

"I deliberately set out to write something uncynical and removed from the awkward 'cringe comedy' that was prevalent at the time," Crook ... says, as he reflects on the show. 

He points to the series being made cheaply and airing on BBC Four, a channel made for obsessives precisely like Lance and Andy, as being key to the show’s slow-burn success. "Those who found it felt they’d discovered something special."

And he shared insight into the the genesis of one of the recurring themes of the show:

His introduction to the world was through an episode of Time Team in which a pair of detectorists claimed they had found Viking artefacts in a field in Yorkshire. 

The often difficult relationship between the amateur detectorists and TV archaeologists, perhaps mirrored in Detectorists through the villainous Simon & Garfunkel characters, struck him as a rich source of comedy and pathos. 

"There was something suspicious about these guys and the feeling was that they weren’t telling the whole truth," he says.

UK experts warn against buying ‘XL bully cats’

The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges ask why there is now a mania for strange breeds when the domestic cats we know and love are so beautiful.

Margaret Wintringham: The first woman Liberal MP

The first woman Liberal MP was Margaret Wintringham, who held Louth in a by-election in September 1921. She won despite being in mourning for her husband Tom, whose death caused the election.

This video explores her political career and achievements during her short time in the Commons (1921-4), including her work on the Widow's Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act and the Guardianship of Infants Act.

Accounting for the rise and rise of Russell Brand

I strongly recommend Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey's latest Origin Story podcast, which covers the rise and rise of Russell Brand:

Dorian and Ian reassess Brand’s extraordinary rise to fame in the 2000s in light of recent allegations of sexual misconduct and explore how British culture gave him a free pass. 

In 2013 Brand swapped sex and fame for a new compulsion, reinventing himself as a flamboyant agitator to great acclaim. In the void between Occupy and Corbynism, his verbose mishmash of self-help and socialism briefly made him a lion of the left. 

During the pandemic Brand embraced a darker shade of politics, promoting conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Ukraine and much more besides. After the allegations broke last year he went full crank, aligning himself with Robert F Kennedy Jr, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones in the paranoid space.

As they say, this is a bizarre story of celebrity and conspiracy, addiction and attention, which says a great deal about where we are now.

Two ghost signs from the back streets of Northampton

It was a nice sunny day so I headed for the back streets of Northampton. 

Discoveries included The Old Grocery Espresso Bar (have the sausage roll if you go), Heyford Books (interesting stock at miraculous prices) and these two ghost signs.

Roger Blackmore (1941-2024)

Liberal Democrat Voice has posted a tribute from Leicester Liberal Democrats to Roger Blackmore, who died on 6 September at the age of 82:

Having moved to Leicester in 1963 when he became a student at Leicester University, joining the local party whose brief revival that year quickly faded.

Roger managed to establish himself as the main voice for Liberalism in the city as well as contesting the Gainsborough constituency in Lincolnshire. He fought the seat four times, his campaigns being the stuff of legend.

As this excellent tribute says, Roger went on to fight Jeremy Thorpe's old seat of North Devon, to be leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Leicester City Council and then leader of the council itself, and after that a popular Lord Mayor.

If you click on the picture of a youthful Roger above, you will be taken to a 1975 news report about the strike at Imperial Typewriters in 1975. Roger is interviewed about the formation of an action group that attempted to prevent the factory from closing.

The Joy of Six 1278

Christine Jardine believes that dying people should be able to make their own choice about whether they want palliative care or to end their life: "I would want that choice to be mine. More importantly perhaps I feel I don’t have the right to deny that choice to others. I believe the law as it stands does not offer those facing such circumstances the compassionate and humane options they deserve."

Berna León reviews a study of how Britain’s elite continues to reproduce itself through entrenched structures of privilege, despite the appearance of increased meritocracy and diversity.

"It would introduce a legal requirement for local authorities and the Department of Education to collect and publish data about the extent to which they are finding local placements for children in care ... Local authorities would also have to develop and publish sufficiency plans, setting out what steps they are taking to meet their requirements to find local homes for children in care, under the Children Act 1989." Jake Richards introduces his private member's bill.

"Rural voters stopped caring about the Democrats because the Democrats stopped caring about them." Tom Zoellner searches for solutions to the Democratic Party's "rural problem".

Mary Colwell remembers her early encounters with curlews: "I saw a large group in a field in northern Scotland as I waited for a ferry. It was autumn and they must have been migrating. I remember thinking how elegant and strange they looked with their long bills and legs, and I watched them for ages. When I reached Orkney, one flew over a loch, crying an unearthly, evocative call. It fitted the landscape and the mood of the day perfectly They were with me from then on."

"Rod Argent was the engine room of the Zombies. He wrote She’s Not There and his playing takes it to another level. It’s very English-sounding, very reserved and melancholy, then out of nowhere he plays this incredible solo that’s soulful but slightly classically influenced. It both fits the song perfectly and takes it somewhere else." Elton John on the piano and organ players who inspired him.

The 1966 BBC radio adaptation of The Box of Delights

Look what I've found on YouTube. This radio adaptation of The Box of Delights was first broadcast at Christmas 1966 and repeated in the same season in 1968 and 1969.

It may have been through the 1966 broadcast, but is more likely to have been through the 1968 one, that the story won my heart. Who can resist a healthy blend of the Christian and the pagan? I know I was enthralled by it as a little boy.

Listening to the broadcast today, it's slow to get going. But when the story picks up, the production makes good use of sound and the proper music is used.

Cole Hawlings is Cyril Shaps and the young Kay Harker is Patricia Hayes. Caroline Louisa is played by Carol Marsh, whose first film role was Rose in Brighton Rock, and there's even a small part for Stanley Unwin.

Welsh Lib Dems attack Labour over cuts to rail services in North and Mid Wales

The Liberal Democrats have attacked the Labour government in Cardiff over proposed cuts to services on the Cambrian and Heart of Wales railway lines.

Herald Wales reports that:

Under proposals by government-owned Transport for Wales, services on the Heart of Wales line will be cut from five trains a day to four. They are also removing the two late evening services to Llandovery and Llandrindod Wells.

On the Cambrian Line, TfW will cut four services between Machynlleth and Pwllheli (two in each direction).

Promises for an hourly service on the Cambrian Line between Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury ... have also been scaled back and will only be in place for four months of the year when they finally commence in summer 2026.

The paper quotes criticism of the cuts by two leading Welsh Lib Dems. Senedd Member Jane Dodds said:

"At a time where we should be encouraging rail usage and adding extra services, Labour is allowing Transport for Wales to make sweeping cuts to services in rural areas. It is an appalling state of affairs. 

"While services in South Wales are being increased, North and Mid Wales are facing cutbacks. Year after year we see the same story from Labour in Cardiff Bay. 

"I am appealing to the Labour First Minister Eluned Morgan, who represents Mid & West Wales in the Senedd, to intervene directly to stop these cuts."

And the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, David Chadwick, added:

"These cuts from Labour are an absolute disgrace.

 "You have Labour on the one hand telling people they need to use their cars less, but on the other hand, they are cutting public transport options. The two things don’t go together. It’s a ridiculous situation that shows how poorly they understand rural communities.

"We need more reliable and more frequent rail services across Mid Wales, not less. Access to public transport is vital for increasing economic investment and employment, supporting our tourist industry and attracting highly skilled workers like GPs to work in our communities."

This is a good point to send you to a guest post by Eric Loveland Heath on singing the songs of the Cambrian Railway.

Fred Titmus goes to the opera

In his latest book Turning Over the Pebbles: A Life in Cricket and the Mind, Mike Brearley writes of being an intellectual among professional sportsmen and turns it into a reflection on the accident of our birth:

Similar cynicism came my way when I was doing philosophy in my early days playing cricket for Middlesex Fred Titmus, the senior player (whose first game for Middlesex in 1949 coincided with the first of my father's two games, so that after Fred played in my last game at Lords In 1982 he was able to say he 'saw the father in and the son out'), would prod me with questions like: "This philosophy that we're all paying for, what's it all about?" He was being sarcastic, goading, but he was genuinely curious. 

I took his curiosity seriously, and tried to give some sort of answer. In other lives, with different backgrounds, Fred might have been doing philosophy and I might have been born and brought up in King's Cross and had left school at fourteen, and learned cricket, football and boxing at a local boys' club. (I once had a spare ticket for Benjamin Britain's Peter Grimes, and asked him if he'd like to go. We sat in the gods, and Fred was taken with it.)

Brearley talked to the Australian cricket journalist Gideon Haigh about this book and his life for the podcast Cricket, Et Cetera. It's well worth a listen.

Traffic Babylon

Paul Rees tells the story of Steve Winwood's second band, with more of an emphasis on its darker side than you normally see:

With the extravagant Capaldi cheerleading, and fragile, mystical Wood bringing with him a traditional English folk tune called John Barleycorn – which he’d heard on Frost And Fire, a 1965 album by Hull folkies The Watersons – the stage was set for Traffic to at last become the band Winwood had wanted all along: one capable of harnessing a dizzying array of musical styles and then make them over into a fresh, original form that ebbed, flowed and soared. 

The John Barleycorn Must Die album was the first, giant step along that path. From there they conjured three more records that marked them out as prodigious explorers and rare virtuosos. Yet it also extracted a heavy price from the three principals – it could be said that not one of them was ever the same again.

Lib Dem MPs voted against Labour's plan to impose VAT on private school fees

News from the Guardian that

The UK’s biggest and richest ­private schools are in line for substantial financial windfalls as a consequence of the government’s plan to impose VAT on their fees, according to official new guidance issued by tax authorities.

has done nothing to undermine the impression that out new government isn't terribly good at governing.

But this wasn't the reason that Liberal Democrat MPs gave for voting against Labour's plans last week.

Today, #LibDem colleagues and I voted against ending the VAT exemption on private school fees because we believe in protecting parental choice and opposing the taxation of education.

— Charlotte Cane MP🔶 (@CharlotteCane8) October 8, 2024

No one is going to march in support of the taxation of education, but that does feel a little like a principle you make up to appeal to once you have decided how you are going to vote.

And I'm pleased to see our MPs supporting parental choice. It's just that I'd like to hear our plans for extending it beyond the seven per cent of parents who send their children to private schools.

Alleged cheating scandals rock conkers and chess

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From the Guardian:

The World Conker Championships is investigating cheating allegations after the men’s winner was found to have a steel chestnut in his pocket.

David Jakins won the annual title in Southwick, Northamptonshire, on Sunday for the first time after competing since 1977.

But the 82-year-old was found to have a metal replica in his pocket when he was searched by organisers after his victory.

The retired engineer has denied using the metal variety in the tournament.

Meanwhile on Chess.com:

22-year-old GM Kirill Shevchenko has been expelled from the 2024 Spanish Team Championship with his draw against GM Bassem Amin in round one and win over GM Francisco Vallejo in round two turned into losses. 

When Shevchenko’s regular absence from the board aroused suspicion in round two a locked phone was found in the toilet, with arbiters claiming a link of the phone to Shevchenko based on handwriting and behaviour. 

Shevchenko, who is originally from Ukraine but now based in Romania, also denies the allegations.