"Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub"

So said Jack Kerouac in his Lonesome Traveler. We join John Rogers as he retraces a walk the Beat Generation novelist once took through London.

As the blurb on YouTube says:

American Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, visited London in April 1957 while on a big trip just before the publication of his most celebrated book, On the Road. He recorded his trip in his book, Lonesome Traveler. 

This video follows the walk he took when he arrived by train at Victoria Station and walked past Buckingham Palace, up the Strand to Fleet Street to St Paul’s Cathedral. He then went to the King Lud pub for a ‘sixpenny Welsh rarebit and a stout’, before taking the bus back to Buckingham Gate. 

In Lonesome Traveler Kerouac wrote, ‘Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub’.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

You may also enjoy a post on Kerouac and Lonesome Traveler by C.G. Fewston.

Sandy Campbell, his dog and Queen Victoria

Of all Her Majesty's Highland servants and ghillies, and there are some forty or more all told, Sandy Campbell and Donald Stewart are the favourites. Donald, who is Sandy's senior and superior, carries more responsibility and is more often in personal contact with the Court when at Balmoral, and has his quarters, accordingly, near at hand. He is, in short, the Balmoral keeper, and dubbed the Queen's Head Stalker. 

Sandy Campbell, on the other hand, has his quarters at Glassalt Shiel on Loch Muick (pronounced Mick) and on the eastern boundary of the Balmoral estate, and although taking his orders from headquarters is to the Queen and members of the Court party Sandy Campbell of Glassalt Shiel and a persona grata with Her Majesty as he was with Prince Albert in his day, and a great favourite of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and all the immediate members of the royal household and others who come about Balmoral and visit Glassalt Shiel for a day's deerstalking. 

Yes, it's time to return to Balmoral and my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell. I blogged part of the article about him from The Sphere the other day, and the rest is here.

I've been to Glas-allt-Shiel (that seems the most popular way of writing it today) and walked all round Loch Muick. I remember the change in the air as you enter the pinewood around the house - it suddenly becomes wonderfully soft.

You can even stay at Glas-allt-Shiel yourself: there's a bothy in one of the out buildings.

Anyway, back to my kinsman:

Sandy Campbell stands 6 ft. 3 in. in his stockings, is stout in proportion, athletic and hardy. If a model of a Highland ghillie were wanted a better could not be got than Sandy Campbell of Glassalt Shiel. He can give points to any of his compeers at stalking the red deer in the royal forests; he knows their haunts and lairs, and is a sure guide, philosopher, and friend to the princelings who come up to him from the palace below. 

The mists of Lochnagar may be terrible to others, but Sandy knows his way through the densest cloud, and his footing is as sure as that of the deer itself over the snow steppes of these bleak and dreary regions. Sandy never wastes powder on a second shot the first always finds its mark and although his work is not to shoot deer, but to save and protect them, yet as we all know the keeper's rifle often makes the bag. 

As an angler Sandy knows where the big fish lie in Loch Muick, and the times and seasons when it is desirable to send on a basket of speckled trout for the royal larder. He makes his own flies and rods, and all that he needs from the tackle shops are a few irons and a hank of gut. 

Sandy lives alone in the Glassalt Shiel, for like his old playmate and friend John Brown he has never as yet been tempted into the wiles of wedlock. His sister was house keeper to him for many years, but she died some two years ago, and since then Sandy has taken full charge of his own domestic arrangements and save when the Queen is at Balmoral, and the Shiel likely to be used, there is no one about the place but himself. When, however, visitors are expected a staff of servants is hurriedly driven up from Balmoral, the blinds are run up, the fires more heavily heaped up, and life reigns supreme till they again take their departure. 

But Sandy is never lonely. In the winter and spring he may be months with only his collie and his books he is an omnivorous reader of history but in the summer, and especially the autumn, not a day passes but he has troops of visitors from far and near, and when the Court is at Balmoral the Glassalt Shiel is a favourite resort not only of Her Majesty but of all who come about her. 

Her Majesty does not now visit the Shiel so often nor so regularly as she was able to do till within the last few years, but when she does then Sandy is seen at his best. He has a museum for Sandy is a collector after his own fashion of unique curios, nicely arranged in what he calls his shoppie (shop) at the end of the house. Probably there is no other of its kind extant. 

Certainly it is an original and unique collection, ranging from a boot protector to a shell from Khartoum, gifts of pictures, signed photographs, spears, arrow-heads, and trinkets collected by and presented to Sandy by royalties and others, from the Queen down to her humblest subject who has visited these parts for it is an understood rule with Sandy and his patrons that whoever is permitted to view the collection must add something to it, other than coin of the realm. Sandy draws the line at filthy lucre. 

His object is to have a unique collection of curios, and as he cannot assume the role of collector himself and become an antiquarian hunter he has this way of bring ing the mountain to him since he cannot go to it. Besides he has been the recipient of so many royal avours in the way of hunting knives, dirks, flasks, rifles, scarf pins, and medals that he has a pride in showing them off as well as keeping them intact and in good preservation. 

The Queen has another subject of interest. She never forgets to grant an interview to "Sir William Wallace." He is Sandy's faithful friend and companion, and he and his collie are never far apart. The Queen has a special penchant for dogs, and for Sandy's collie in particular. When Sandy visits the royal quarters at Balmoral "Sir William" always accompanies him as the Queen is sure to ask for him, and to have a titbit brought for him. "Sir William" knows Her Majesty quite well, and whether on the road at the Shiel or the Castle his demonstrations of joy at her appearance are peculiarly demonstrative. 

Sandy takes his full share of all the ceremonies at Balmoral, and the Jubilee rejoicings called forth his special good sense and ripe experience of what would please Her Majesty best. When the servants and tenants met to consider what would best commemorate the auspicious event ol 1897 he suggested the granite well between Abergeldie and Balmoral. Her Majesty was specially pleased with the idea, and has drunk several times from it. 

Sandy is just now in the height of his glory. He has had the Prince of Wales, for whom he entertains an attachment and affection that only Highland ghillies are capable of showing, the Duke of Connaught, the Duke of York, and other royalties, and they have had an extra good season among the grouse and deer, and for the next twelve months to come nothing will be talked of but the visits of the Princes and the bags made on Glassalt Shiel.

According to Robert Smith in A Queen's Country, Victoria liked her stalkers and ghillies to be clean shaven, but Sandy refused to part with his beard. There will be another post about him soon.

Steve Winwood, Sheila E. and Orianthi: Everybody's Everything

This week's music video reminds us of a better world: an American President and First Lady honouring a Mexican immigrant.

Each year Kennedy Center Honors are awarded to prominent figures in the performing arts for their lifetime of contributions to American culture. And in 2013 the recipients were the opera singer Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel, Shirley MacLaine, and Carlos Santana.

Here is part of the segment of the awards ceremony that honoured Santana, with Barack and Michelle Obama in the audience.

Because this is Liberal England, yes, that is Steve Winwood in the Cotswold landowner sideburns that he affected for a while. Winwood has played and recorded with Santana.

With him is the percussionist Sheila E., who collaborated with Prince for many years and is the daughter of one of the members of Santana's original band. 

And on guitar is Orianthi, an Australian singer and songwriter who has played with Alice Cooper.

'LIKE A ROCK' Cops hunting Edinburgh bike ned who battered man with an onion

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Scottish Sun for this tale of life in the nation's capital.

Max Wilkinson launches campaign to keep Six Nations free to air

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Tom Kiernan. Delme Thomas. Peter Brown. Stack Stevens. Jean Gachassin.

Somewhere in my heart, it is always a winter Saturday and there are two Five Nations (as it then was) internationals on television. England are probably losing - in those days you did not so much support them as suffer with them. And if Wales are playing Ireland, it's impossible to tell the players apart in black and white.

So I was pleased to hear that Max Wilkinson, the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for culture, media and sport has launched a campaign to keep the Six Nations on terrestrial television channels. He told the Independent:

"I’m personally deeply concerned by the news that the tournament could be behind a paywall as soon as next year - and I’m sure many rugby fans up and down the country feel the same.

"It would be a travesty if the public were deprived of the right to see their countries compete. That’s why it’s essential that the government acts now to protect free-to-air coverage and save our Six Nations."

If does act, the government will be saving the rugby authorities from themselves. As cricket has learnt, if people can no longer see the sport, it is in danger of losing its standing in our national culture.

I shall watch Ireland vs England later this afternoon, though in Eddie Jones's last years England became really dull to watch.

One problem with the game is that those authorities are constantly tinkering with the laws. This year, I read, scrum halves will be given more protection.

As my pet gripe in recent years is that they are allowed to spend an age, free from challenge, rolling the ball about with a boot before they play it, I can't see how that is going to improve the game.

In truth, the game has never been the same since Bill McLaren died. Artificial Intelligence should be harnessed to bring him back, complete with his favourite phrases: "As the game enters its final quarter," "As the referee blows for no side" and "playing together for the nineteenth time in a major international."

The Joy of Six 1319

"In recent years, the United Kingdom has seen a troubling increase in Holocaust denialism, fuelled by disinformation, a lack of historical education, and the actions of influential public figures." Jack Wilkin on a growing assault on truth.

Patrick McGuinness remembers the hounding of Christopher Jefferies: "The day after his arrest, one of my former classmates spoke to the Telegraph. The article was headlined 'Joanna Yeates Murder: Suspect Christopher Jefferies was eccentric with love of poetry' and my classmate was quoted as saying: 'He was particularly keen on French films.' If innocence can look this bad, who needs guilt? Jefferies became the nation’s High-Culture Hermit-Ogre.

Phil Edwards asks why the New Statesman keeps hyping up the threat posed by Nigel Farage.

No, the HS2 'bat tunnel' has not cost £300,000 per bat, and it will protect a lot of other mammals, birds and insects. Holy heritage, Jeff Ollerton.

"That's what made him such an ideal partner for Kenneth Williams: always unselfish and understated, he complemented rather than competed. While Williams concentrated on the broad brushstrokes, he was content to add the fine details. It was why Williams, who so often came to clash with his fellow performers, never had a bad word to say about Hugh Paddick." Graham McCann pays tribute to a skilled and understated performer.

John McEwen celebrates the books of Denys Watkins Pitchford ('BB'): "His most famous was The Little Grey Men, a children’s adventure story about some gnomes who went in search of their long-lost brother. It was inspired by his own incontrovertible sighting of a gnome at the age of four. He was a down-to-earth man and never budged on this issue; though latterly he felt that gnomes, like so much of the countryside, might have become extinct during his lifetime."

Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 General Election by Michael A. Ashcroft

This short review appears in the current Liberator - that's issue 427. You can download it for free from the magazine's website.

Losing It: The Conservative Party and the 2024 General Election

Michael A. Ashcroft

Biteback Publishing, 2024, £10 pbk

There are two people inside Lord Ashcroft. One is Mr Hyde, who co-wrote what was intended to be a damaging biography of David Cameron. It contained a baseless story about a pig’s head, which useful idiots among the online left, as Hyde had no doubt intended, spread far and wide.

But Losing It is written by the impartial psephologist Dr Jekyll. It contains the fruits of two large opinion polls Ashcroft funded just after last year’s general election, and of 24 focus groups conducted with people who voted Conservative in 2019 but switched to another party in 2024.  

Having studied all this data, Ashcroft puts forward three principal reasons for the Conservatives defeat: it’s hard for any party to keep winning after 14 years in power; the coalition of voters Boris Johnson put together to win in 2019 was, like its architect, always likely to prove unstable; and the Conservative administration became – “to use a technical term from political science” – a total shambles.

It was this last point, he argues, that turned a likely defeat into a rout where the party lost half its vote and two-thirds of its MPs. The Conservatives forfeited the trust of voters because “senior Tories seemed to be playing out a soap opera for their own amusement, rather than tackling the country’s mounting problems”.

Ashcroft goes on to present the findings from his polls, interspersing the tables and charts with quotations from focus group participants. Liberal Democrat readers will find that someone voting for us in 2024 was most likely to be motivated by a wish to keep another party out (no wonder we can struggle under PR), and that the one factor on which we lead the other parties among voters as a whole is having our heart in the right place. This left me feeling at once pleased and a little patronised.

So we must thank Dr Jekyll for Losing It, even as we wonder what advantage Mr Hyde hopes its publication will bring in his internal Conservative Party politicking.

Jonathan Calder

GUEST POST How Dune anticipated Deep Seek

Peter Chambers turns to Frank Herbert's classic science fiction for help in understanding the Artificial Intelligence world of today.

Recently a small company in the People's Republic of China released a GPT-LLM model set called Deep Seek. This seems to have surprised some in the US tech oligarchy to the tune of about a trillion dollars.

This is presented by some commentators as ‘little China’ being nimbler than ‘big America’. But this is not strictly true, and Frank Herbert anticipated the point in Appendix I of his novel Dune.

Big America is in reality a bandwagon started by OpenAI and Nvidia around a specific architecture epitomised by Chat-GPT. 

This demo caught the common imagination and was backed by Elon Harkonnen, Eric Corrino, Mark Richese, Sam Atreides and others. They organised investment in the $100 Bn range. Eric even said at a closed meeting at Stanford that the technology would do what his “15,000 programmers would not do”.

Little China was one company within the PRC headed by one Liang Wenfeng, which claims to have spent about $6m on electricity for their demo, using older export-grade chips from the USA.

How many firms and universities in the PRC failed to produce anything? We do not know. We will never know. Deep Seek found a sweet spot in the landscape of possibilities. We do not know what combination of skill, money, inspiration, technology, and luck led them to this. But they got there.

What did Frank Herbert say about finding success? In Appendix 1 of Dune he wrote:

Kynes knew that highly organised research is guaranteed to produce nothing new. He set up small-unit experiments with regular interchange of data for a swift Tansley effect.

Sir Arthur George Tansley FRS was an English botanist and a pioneer in the science of ecology. There is a lot of stuff on him online. He organised committees. One term - 'ecosystem' - associated with him was actually from a colleague. He was an inspiration, but not perhaps a Great Man.

Small teams with a lot of lateral information sharing versus a highly organised structure run from the centre. I shall not labour the point more.

Trillion-dollar pivots can come about by quite humble people noting that an Emperor is actually naked. Maybe 9999 people at that time miss that point. It might take only one though. 

There are a lot of possible configurations in the space of GPT-LLM. Multiple ones may be valuable. Herbert used the example of ecology in his Appendix to appear profound. Ignoring this might cost someone a trillion dollars.

Peter Chambers is a Lib Dem Member in Hampshire.

Glossary

GPT – generative pre-trained transformer, something that generates an output by transforming an input using pre-trained (fixed) weights, mathematically. The inputs and outputs are digital data.

Chat-GPT – a demonstration GPT made by the firm OpenAI. It obtained viral PR fame.

FRS – Fellow of the Royal Society

LLM – large language model, a model that uses a language of digital data tokens, which are strings of bits. Make it a large one. The meaning and significance of the tokens exists in the senses and minds of humans, natural intelligences that evolved on the Third Planet.

PRC – the People’s Republic of China ("the Mainland one").

Regions of Britain: The Fens (1977)

Made in 1977 but feeling somehow older, this pleasant little film takes us round various Fenland locations and discusses the history of the region.

It's good to see Crowland Abbey included among the better-known locations.

Lib Dem MP: Trump has disgraced the office of the Presidency

Listening to Donald Trump’s press conference about last night’s tragic air collision over Washington DC and I feel physically sick. The man has disgraced the bereaved families and the office of the Presidency.

— Al Pinkerton MP (@AlPinkerton) January 30, 2025

Labour has to observe the diplomatic niceties: the Conservatives are too busy sucking up to Donald Trump.

So it falls to the Liberal Democrats to say what the large majority of the British population would say about him.

Well done, Al Pinkerton.

In which Queen Victoria calls on my great great great grandmother

I thought I would have a search for my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell in the British Newspaper Archive, and I struck gold. He was the subject of an article in The Sphere for 13 October 1900 - the photograph above is taken from it.

There's more than one post in it for me, but here is Queen Victoria calling on Sandy's mother - and my great great great grandmother - Margaret Campbell (née Gordon), 1808-91. What the report calls "Kintore" is the settlement near Crathie known as Khantore today:

Sandy and the late John Brown were boys about Balmoral, and were close and intimate friends through life. They both attended Prince Albert when deerstalking, Sandy's particular domain being the Glassalt Shiel district, where his father was keeper before him. 

For many years after her husband's death his mother lived at Kintore, Crathie, where she had a free croft and cottage, as well as many other gifts from the bounty of the Queen. While Mrs. Campbell lived Her Majesty paid her a yearly visit, as is her custom yet to her old pensioners, residenters, and tenants, and presented her with a new gown and a pound of tea, and made numerous inquiries as to her health and supply of bodily comforts. 

The Queen never does her calling in any perfunctory manner. She left her carriage, entered the little homely "but and ben," a thatched but comfortable cot, and seating herself in the "ben," or parlour, would engage in a homely confab over various domestic affairs of an hour's duration, and often to the annoyance of John Brown, especially if it was a good angling day, as he would be impatient to get his royal mistress home in order that he might get free himself and on to the water. "When you women get together there's nae end to your gab" John was heard once to remark as he tucked his royal mistress into her carriage and mounted the box himself.

But that was five-and-twenty years ago. Most of these old landmarks have gone over to the majority; John himself lies in the little old country kirkyard of Crathie, and no wonder that the Queen has a fondness for Sandy Campbell and such like life servants. They are all that are left to her of a bright and happy past, and Balmoral would indeed be to her the banquet hall deserted were it not that a few a very few are still left to her now staid grey old men who were boys in her service forty and more years ago.

There'll be more on Sandy Campbell another day. Like his friend John Brown, he is buried in the old kirkyard at Crathie.

Alexei Sayle and Stewart Lee discuss comedy

Here's a treat from four years ago: Stewart Lee appears as the guest on Alexei Sayle's podcast.

They talk about the inevitable apocalypse, Beryl Reid, dinner parties, comedians of the Music Hall era and Lee's film King Rocker.

Big duck explodes on Glasgow street as locals left fuming at mess

Congratulations to the Daily Record, which waddles away with our Headline of the Day Award.

The strange ride of Alan Amos

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Augustus Carp, our Defections, Principles and Opportunism Correspondent, has drawn my attention to the remarkable career of Alan Amos. What follows comes from research by Mr Carp, backed up by investigations of my own Wikipedia.

Amos was first heard of as a Conservative councillor in Ealing, sitting between 1978 and 1987. He unsuccessfully fought Walthamstow at the 1983 general election, but had more joy four years later, when he was elected for Hexham in far-off in Northumberland.

He was to become a victim of John Major's Back to Basics campaign, or rather of a briefing given to the press by the now-forgotten figure of Tim Collins - he was the Tory MP Tim Farron defeated to gain Westmorland and Lonsdale in 2005.

As far as Major was concerned, Back to Basics was about bringing back the three Rs in school and the timely repairing of pot holes. But when asked by journalists if it was also about private morality, Collins said yes.

The result was the appearance of a never-ending stream of scandals (or minor incidents dressed up to look like scandals) involving Tory MPs. And Amos was involved in one of them, having the misfortune to be arrested for what sounds like cottaging on Hampstead Heath just before the 1992 election. 

Amos was not charged, but he accepted a police caution for indecency, and stood down as MP for Hexham. Perhaps this might have been survivable by the Nineties, but in the climate engendered by Back to Basics he was toast.

While at Westminster, Amos was known for his vehement opposition to abortion and his enthusiasm for corporal punishment. So it was a great surprise when, in 1994, he announced he had joined the Labour Party. In 2000 he was the star of a Guardian article about the former right-wingers who were now approved Labour parliamentary candidates.

And he was given a seat to fight, losing to Peter Lilley in Hitchin and Harpenden in 2001. He was elected as a Labour member for the Millwall ward of Tower Hamlets in 2002, but lost four years later as the yuppies invaded the Isle of Dogs. In 2008 Amos was elected to Worcester City Council.

In May 2014, with the Council hung, he resigned from the Labour Group to become an Independent, allegedly because Labour hadn't put him up for Mayor.  At the Council AGM in June, Amos accepted the Conservative nomination for Mayor, and as Mayor he then voted for council control to change from Labour to Conservative.

A year later, hours before his tenure as Mayor came to an end, Amos announced he was rejoining the Conservative Party. In May 2024 he was to find himself returned as the last remaining Tory on Worcester City Council.

And, a few days ago, Amos resigned from the Tories to become an Independent once again.

So, over the years, Amos has gone from Conservative to Labour to Independent to Conservative to Independent. What comes next? Will he perhaps rediscover his enthusiasm for reactionary social policies and join Reform?

The Joy of Six 1318

Doree Lewak on the 17 year old from New York who solved a family mystery on a recent visit to Auschwitz: "While touring an exhibit of children’s artwork at the notorious death camp,17-year-old Bronx native, Yuval, made a shocking discovery amid the drawings of guards with guns and trains. Alongside the artwork, he noticed the name of his grandfather’s brother, 13-year-old Freddy Popper, whose fate was lost to his family - and history."

"Wilkie is talking about something that has become an increasing refrain in Western capitals - that Ukraine’s military difficulties are not down to a lack of Western support but down to Ukraine’s failure to mobilise its population into the military." Arthur Snell finds that the West is already rehearsing the excuses for its coming betrayal of Ukraine.

Pam Jarvis argues that the jury is still out on the quality of England’s 'improved' state schools, and on the impact of large Multi-Academy Trusts, with their superannuated non-teaching chief executives and directors in particular.

When people have fewer places to socialise they are more likely to turn to populism, says Jeevun Sandher, the Labour MP for Loughborough.

"At the peak of his business Teesside-based court reporter Peter Holbert could make more than £5,000 per week (in 1970s money!). At the end of January 2025, at the age of 84, he will be covering his last case. He says in recent years demand for his services has almost completely dried up from both local and national media." Dominic Ponsford tells a tale that sums up the decline and fall of the regional press.

Andrew Male defends the genius of 'Allo 'Allo against a modern puritan critic: "As much as it derived its humour from the war itself, 'Allo 'Allo! was also lampooning the tropes of serious BBC drama. In fact, many of 'Allo 'Allo!’s archetypes – the covert beret-sporting female Resistance member, the kind Nazi, the bosomy waitress – are based on Glaister's original characters (in a sly moment of industry subversion David Croft even re-employed some of Secret Army’s actors within the 'Allo 'Allo! cast)."

SNP 'held hostage' by Liberal Democrats in budget negotiations

I fear it may be an exaggeration, but that's the headline on the Alba Party press release on the Holyrood budget negotiations.

The release quotes that party's acting leader, Kenny MacAskill:

"Without a strong independence party in opposition at Holyrood, the SNP will continue to be held hostage in negotiations with the Liberal Democrats and other unionist parties. Thus keeping Independence firmly on the back burner.

"This emphasises the need for Independence supporters to use the list ballot at the next Scottish Parliament election to rally behind the Alba Party.

"A strong contingent of Alba MSPs will ensure Independence will always be at the forefront of the Government’s agenda."

If we're forcing the SNP to concentrate on delivering services for a while, we're probably doing it a favour. It's recent record in government is not impressive.

But one of the things that unites Lib Dems is the belief that constitutional questions do matter. We can't keep pushing the line that people don't want Independence but better public services for ever.

Not only is it reminiscent of the No campaign in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, it also aims to deny people the possibility of debating something that will always be an issue in Scottish politics.

Mr Rumbold was also a constable in Z-Cars

Talking Pictures TV has started showing Z-Cars episodes from the early Seventies, though this one comes from the excellent Vintage British Television channel on YouTube. Like. Follow. Subscribe.

One thing I have learnt is that Nicholas Smith - Mr Rumbold in Are You Being Served? - was also a semi-regular in Z-Cars when the comedy was launched in 1972. He played PC Jeff Yates on and off until 1975.

You can see him in the episode above. Nothing much happens, yet it turns into a tragedy that stays with you.

I don't remember Nicholas Smith from this era of Z-Cars, but I do remember John Collins as the hard-bitten Detective Sergeant Haggar. Constables would groan when he turned up at a crime scene, yet he often turned out to have a surprisingly sensitive side.

Just like Dixon of Dock Green, these episodes of Z-Cars are much better than I expected. Unlike Softly Softly: Task Force, they are not all about the senior ranks and fighting serious crime. They are more interested in the lower ranks and their day-to-day work - see my Softly, Softly: Task Force and the history of police on television.

A word too for the location. A new private estate, it shows you exactly what 1974 was like, down to the Raleigh Chopper in one of the gardens and Leo Sayer on the radio.

Telegraph names each county's best pub, but two aren't even in the right county

Time Out reports that the Telegraph has named what it believes to be the best pub in every English county, based on reports from its readers. 

So naturally I turn first to the winner for Leicestershire and for Shropshire.

They are:

• Best pub in Leicestershire - The Swan at Braybrooke
• Best pub in Shropshire - The Sun Inn, Leintwardine

The only problem is that Braybrooke is in Northamptonshire and Leintwardine is in Herefordshire.

I don't expect the urban sophisticates of Time Out to know better, but shouldn't the Telegraph? Someone there has been misled by postcodes, as Braybrooke has a Market Harborough postcode and Leintwardine a Craven Arms one.

Anyway, this is a good time to point you to my post on Malcolm Saville and the Pubs of Leintwardine.

The Joy of Six 1317

"Regulation is one of those words used by politicians that is nearly always bad in the abstract and good in the specific. They rail against bureaucracy, red tape and pettifogging rules that get in the way of innovation and efficiency. But the moment something bad happens, they immediately accept that more regulation is the only way to avoid a recurrence." Sam Freedman explains why governments struggle to turn anti-regulation rhetoric into an agenda for the real world.

Peter Jukes says Russia'a information warfare primed the world for Trump and Musk: "There has been a decade-long war against ‘one person, one vote’, and the concept of a transparent media to inform our citizenry. If we are ever to protect our democracies from this synergy of autocracy and tech, we will have to unravel these alliances of money and information and their traffic of hatred and falsehood."

Ginny Smith on the battle to retain village life in Sussex: "There are many examples ... of villages where people have come together to fight the 'hollowing out' of their community. They have clubbed together to buy the local pub or village shop, they have fought the threatened closure of their school, raised funds to build a village hall and created community orchards and wild spaces."

"'What I tell you now doesn’t go past this room,' the colonel said. 'You’re going to London on Saturday on the boat-train, and you’ll be playing at Churchill’s funeral.' 'But he’s not dead,' protested King, and the colonel replied: 'He will be by Sunday.'" Alwyn Turner recalls the trumpeters who played at Churchill's funeral.

It was only possible to begin production of The Mirror and the Light - the third part of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy - when the producer, writer, director and  leading actor gave up a significant proportion of their fees, Ellise Shafer reports on the economics of quality television.

Sven Mikulec watches the Coen brothers' first film, Blood Simple (1984).

Anne Briggs: She Moved Through the Fair

Anne Briggs is one of the lost legends of the British folk revival of the Sixties. Orphaned as a young child, she came from Toton in Nottinghamshire - then home to a huge railway depot.

A feature in Uncut last year described how she was discovered:

Her aunt and uncle felt she might be the first person in her family to make it to university, but the arrival of the Centre 42 festival in Nottingham in the summer of 1962 was to change everyone’s plans.

A trade union-sponsored travelling event aimed at decentralising art from London, it hinged on the discovery of local talent. Having learned folk songs off the radio, and the records of Isla Cameron and Mary O’Hara, the 17-year-old Briggs auditioned to appear, and was invited to sing on stage the following night, a one-off engagement gradually morphing into a longer tour, and then a decision to quit school and run away with the circus.

She moved to London, hung out with Bert Jansch and the Watersons, wrote songs and inspired Beeswing, one of Richard Thompson's greatest.

That Uncut piece paints her as an unhappy live performer:

On bad nights, Briggs dissolved on stage, forgetting lyrics and abandoning songs as she battled with her profoundly ambivalent attitude to performing. She always sang with her eyes tight shut, making no attempt to reach out to the crowd; her transcendent nights might be the ones when she managed to blank the audience out entirely. “I was always singing to myself,” she says, momentarily cheery. “I hated being in front of an audience. I was nervous. I was just so fucking nervous.

She recorded a folk rock album in 1973, but hated it so much that she blocked its release. (It emerged in 1997 under the title Sing a Song for You, and everyone else loved it.) 

And after that she headed for a remote part of Scotland with her partner, and has rarely been heard from since,

So that's Anne Briggs: a reminder that you can find wonderful artists if you look beyond the usual sources.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Get thee behind me, Santa"

The end of another week at... 

No, it's not a "typo". It's a payoff from something in Monday's entry. Remember when Lord Bonkers visited the Elves of Rockingham Forest's 'Santa's Christmas Wonderland' and took a turn in the Santa costume to give Meadowcroft a break and then the Revd Hughes turned up?

You've "not read it"? But I put the links to the earlier events that week at the end of each entry! If you can't be arsed to click on those then you can hardly expect to get full enjoyment out of such carefully crafted satire, can you?

I'll admit that yesterday's offering was a bit flat, but a lot of thought goes into this. It's not like those other Lib Dem blogs - when there were other Lib Dem blogs.

Anyway, those of you who have done the reading will enjoy this next bit.

Sunday

Back to St Asquith’s. I make another attempt to interest the Revd Hughes in standing for Archbishop of C., emphasising the power and riches that would be at his command, but he remains adamant: “Get thee behind me, Santa.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green
• Hoping it might be so
• Resourceful orphans, elves and the like
• "It’s just given a tremendous sneeze"
• The more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys
• At least they look delighted

Can the Rochdale Branch Canal be restored to navigation?

The Rochdale Canal runs for 32 miles from Castlefield Basin in Manchester to  the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. Its return to navigation in 2002 was one of the triumphs of the canal restoration movement.

That restoration, however, did not include the branch that ran into Rochdale town centre. This video looks at what remains of it today and the prospects for its restoration.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: At least they look delighted

The success of the Liberal Democrat campaign at last year's generation has turned Freddie and Fiona into all-powerful figures, at least in their own estimation. But did they do any more than fetch the coffee?

Saturday

Do you know the Zoom? It’s a way of having meetings without taking the train to Town and, best of all, you can mute any speaker you wish. I have a morning meeting on it with Freddie and Fiona, who are already making plans for Ed Davey’s stunts in the next general election campaign. 

I suggest, a little acidly, that, given our party’s new-found enthusiasm for landowners, I have a word with the Duke of Buccleuch to see if there are any ditches he needs cleared out on his Northamptonshire estate. Getting into my stride, I mention that private schools are always looking out for someone to mark out the rugby field or clean boots. The pigeon pair are delighted with my ideas – at least they look delighted.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green
• Hoping it might be so
• Resourceful orphans, elves and the like
• "It’s just given a tremendous sneeze"
• The more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys

Geoffrey Boycott on Parkinson before the sticks of rhubarb

As far as I can make out, this interview was screened on 3 September 1977. This other guests on the programme were James Stewart and Elkie Brooks, though she may just have sung.

That summer Boycott had ended his self-imposed exile from test cricket, played three tests for England, scored 442 runs in 5 innings (at an average of 147.33, and helped us win back the Ashes. The man could play.

Here he is very serious, with no sticks of rhubarb or mothers' pinafores. This is the Boycott who was to become sought as a batting coach by teams all around the world.

I always found Jon Agnew's bating of Boycott on Test Match Special tedious beyond belief. Ed Smith, by contrast, new how to draw him out and get him talking about the technicalities of batting, which was really interesting.

At one time, incidentally, Sir Geoffrey and Michael Parkinson were rivals for an opening birth in the Barnsley first XI. The other opener was Dickie Bird.

The Joy of Six 1316

Tom Forth asks why the North of England is so poor, and suggests a variety of reasons, including the historical lack of universities there and the way Westminster has deprived local government of its powers.

"If George’s world view, and his work, were shaped by the second world war and the postwar international order ... Alex’s has been most influenced by the struggle for civil rights and equality. His father’s philanthropy started in South Africa and the struggle against apartheid, and Alex met Nelson Mandela at a young age." Roula Khalaf meets Alex Soros, the son of George Soros and chair of the Open Society Foundation.

Low public trust in politicians places few constraints on their ability to wield power, so leading politicians may lack the motivation to take meaningful action to arrest low levels of trust among voters. Chris Butler, Will Jennings and Gerry Stoker present their research into how politicians cope with this lack of public trust.

Margaret Brecknell on the African American abolitionists who travelled to Leicester in the mid-19th century to share their stories.

"To Be or Not to Be is twisty, turny, filled with gags and smart writing and humorous quagmires our heroes must rely on their skills to escape from. But it’s also clearly poking fun at Hitler and his gestapo and their countless failings as ring kissers par excellence. Let’s learn a lesson or two from Lombard and gang and not blindly follow our leadership until we’re no more than history’s villainous punchline." Ed Travis, Elizabeth Stoddard and Frank Calvillo celebrate Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film - one of the "funniest and most groundbreaking comedies ever made".

Graham Fellows has realised. after 40 years, that he likes John Shuttleworth. He talks to Brian Logan about him.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys

Lord Bonkers was in and out of Savoy Hill all the time in the early years of the BBC, though he has asked me to make clear he was never subject to an arse-booting himself. Such methods may not be appropriate in the world of today, but the old boy's right: something does need to be done about BBC News.

Friday

It’s high time we had a proper BBC arse-booting; those Tory placemen (one of them is a former member of the Bee Gees, if you please) have been there long enough. I don’t suppose you’ve had the pleasure of being present at this ceremony, where a bad hat who has evaded the stern eye of Sir John Reith and talked his way into the corporation, is ejected forthwith, but the way of it is this. 

The Chief Commissionaire, traditionally a former RSM from one of the Guards regiments, boots the miscreant the length of the longest corridor at Broadcasting House and out through the revolving doors. That corridor is lined with BBC luminaries, who tut and look disappointed in the bootee. You might spot, for instance, John Snagge, Grace Wyndham Goldie, Alvar Lidell, Franklin Engelmann, Katie Boyle, Moira Anderson, William Woollard, Angela Rippon, Lauren Laverne, Richard Osman, the Frazer Hayes Four, the more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys in the throng.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green
• Hoping it might be so
• Resourceful orphans, elves and the like
• "It’s just given a tremendous sneeze"

Lib Dems will continue to back 50 per cent cap on faith-based admissions to schools

Embed from Getty Images

It may be unintentional, but as it stands the government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill allows the creation of a new generation of church schools that are not bound by the existing 50 per cent cap on faith-based admissions.

So I'm pleased that the Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson is to move an amendment that would make new schools subject to this cap too.

Pleased? Back in 2017, I blogged about a Sunday Times report that Muslim pupils outnumber Christian children in more than 30 church schools.

I said I regarded this as good news and quoted Timothy Garton Ash, in his book Free World, on the woolly duffle-coat of Britishness:

Gisela Stuart, herself a German-British MP, describes a neighbourhood in her Birmingham constituency that has a large Asian population. Since Asian parents want the best education for their children, and the best school in the neighbourhood is a convent school, they send their daughters there. Never mind the Catholicism; that can be expunged by Islamic instruction after school hours, at the local madrasah. 

So there they sit, row upon row of girls in their Islamic headscarves, being taught maths, British history and, incidentally, the story of baby Jesus, by nuns in their Christian headscarves. A complete muddle, of course, but Europe will need more such muddling through if it is to make its tens of millions of Muslims feel at home.

As to whether we should have faith schools at all, I remembered tackling this question long ago in an article for the Guardian website.

Reading it today, I find it better than I remembered - I'd still be happy to defend the views in it.

What I had forgotten completely is that it was written as a reply to the mighty James Graham. 

Those were the days. When the Guardian would invite one Lib Dem blogger to reply to another Lib Dem blogger and they both got paid for the privilege.

Mystery over 200-year-old bottle of urine

Congratulations to BBC News for winning our Headline of the Day Award, but their headline could have been, nay, was, much better.

The judges have furnished me with this proof - the reference to Cleethorpes could have made this our Headline of the Year.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "It’s just given a tremendous sneeze"

The second day of Christmas at Bonkers Hall is quite as much fun as the first. Danny Chambers' phone call was inspired by a news story that broke at Christmas:

Russian scientists have unveiled the remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth found in thawing permafrost in the remote Yakutia region of Siberia during the summer. They say "Yana" - who has been named after the river basin where she was discovered - is the world's best-preserved mammoth carcass.

More fun with Cook and her malapropisms another day, no doubt. 

Boxing Day

When I thank Cook for her sterling work yesterday, she expresses a wish that I will entertain the current prime minister here one day so that she can meet him – “He used to be Director of Public Persecutions, you know.” 

That pleasurable duty done, today is a day for talking with old friends – perhaps waving a cold turkey drumstick to emphasise a point – and strolls about my Estate. I take a party of new MPs to meet the Rutland Water Monster (‘Ruttie’ to her friends, among whom I am proud to number myself). Later, the more intrepid spirits leave for the legendary Boxing Night party at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes.

I am dozing by my Library fire when the telephone is brought to me. “Hi, this is Danny Chambers. They found a frozen baby mammoth in Siberia and I’ve had it by my fire all Christmas, and given it a rub with a towel now and then. It’s just given a tremendous sneeze, so all the signs are encouraging. I was wondering if you had a spare field where it could….” Politely but firmly, I replace the receiver.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green
• Hoping it might be so
• Resourceful orphans, elves and the like

Green energy will supplement conventional energy rather than replace it

Writing in the London Review of Books, Adam Tooze begins his review of More and More and More: An All-Consuming History of Energy by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz thus:

Any​ hope we have of containing the escalating climate crisis depends on getting to net zero, which will mean cutting greenhouse gas emissions drastically in the next few decades. Coal, gas and oil will have to be replaced with clean energy sources. 

In the language of climate policy, this is known as the green energy transition and is often presented as the latest in a series of transitions that have shaped modern history. The first was from organic energy – muscle, wind and water power – to coal. The second was from coal to hydrocarbons (oil and gas). The third transition will be the replacement of fossil fuels by forms of renewable energy. 

The transition narrative is reassuring because it suggests that we have done something like this before. We owe our current affluence to a sequence of industrial revolutions – steam engines, electricity, Fordism, information technology – that go back to the 18th century. Our future affluence will depend on a green industrial revolution, and to judge by the encouraging headlines, it is already well underway. 

The standard estimate is that energy transitions take about half a century; if that were true of the green energy transition, it could still be on schedule for 2050. 

Unfortunately, as both Tooze and the the book he is reviewing argue, the history of human energy use provides little support for this optimistic take.

Tooze writes:

When we look more closely at the historical record, it shows not a neat sequence of energy transitions, but the accumulation of ever more and different types of energy. Economic growth has been based not on progressive shifts from one source of energy to the next, but on their interdependent agglomeration. Using more coal involved using more wood, using more oil consumed more coal, and so on. 

An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but that what we are attempting – the deliberate exit from and suppression of the energetic mainstays of our modern way of life – is without precedent.

This is hardly an encouraging conclusion, but I'll leave the last word with the 18th-century bishop and philosopher Joseph Butler:

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi

Then again...

I love this: you hardly need to ask for subtitles. German satire could be the trend of 2025. 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Resourceful orphans, elves and the like

On days like this I wonder where Lord Bonkers' family is. Perhaps being immortal, whether through bathing in the spring that bursts from the ground beneath the former headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors or that cordial the Elves of Rockingham Forest sell, is bound to leave one lonely?

Christmas Day

This is what Christmas used to be like at the Hall! A long table simply groaning with good things and lined by friends, relations, staff, Liberal peers and MPs, members of Earl Russell’s Big Band, resourceful orphans, elves and the like. 

Here, Daisy Cooper is discussing economic policy with the Wise Woman of Wing and the Professor of Hard Sums at the University of Rutland. There, the King of the Badgers discusses the finer points of guerrilla warfare with Helen Maguire and Mike Martin. And everywhere, Freddie and Fiona are rushing out to make or take phone calls to prove how important they are – I strongly suspect them of phoning each other. 

I even spy, at the farthest end of the table, a couple of Conservatives who were MPs until the last election, but I pretend not to notice: it can’t be easy finding a job with that on your curriculum v. And as a multitude of the heavenly host put it (and I think rightly): “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green
• Hoping it might be so

Picturesque decay: The Derwent Valley Light Railway in the Sixties

Opened in 1912 and 1913, the Derwent Valley Light Railway somehow escaped both Grouping in 1923 and nationalisation in 1948.

By the time I was a student in York, it ran from its own Layerthorpe station in the city to Dunnington, a distance of four miles. The line was linked to the wider system at its York end by British Rail's Foss Islands Branch.

When this footage was taken in the Sixties, the line ran further than Dunnington, reaching Cliffe Common and the BR line from Driffield to Selby. When that line closed in 1964, the process of cutting back the DVLR began. It closed altogether in the autumn of 1981.

I love the picturesque decay here - I recall the DVLR I knew as being better maintained.

A short stretch of the line was reopened in 1993 as part of the Yorkshire Museum of Farming.

The Joy of Six 1315

"As even some of his most sympathetic supporters in the media are now coming to realise, Starmer's Labour is neither red, nor blue, nor green, nor indeed any other easily recognisable colour on the political spectrum. Let there be no mistake about it: these are the days of Grey Labour." Alex Niven was disillusioned with this Labour government even before it came to power.

Jane Green and Raluca L. Pahontu present research that contradicts the idea that Brexit was voted through by the economically left-behind: "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."

M.F. Robbins tells the tale of two playgrounds: "One is closing soon while the other - brand new - has stood empty for nearly a year, ringed with steel fencing to stop people from using it. Their stories aren’t the most important thing you’ll read today, but they illustrate something much bigger - the collapse and retreat of local government, and the profound effect it will have on our public spaces."

Mother Jones talks to Daniel Immerwahr about what the history of American expansion can tell us About Trump’s threats.

"Unexpected visitors to the Director’s Box that day were ex-goalkeeper and US Secretary Of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, quite literally one of the most famous men in the world at that point and in the UK for talks on Rhodesia, and UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland. A step down from Raquel Welch’s appearance a few years back, possibly, but enough to get pictures of Kissinger, Chelsea Chairman Brian Mears and his wife June in a number of national newspapers." Tim Rolls takes us back to Stamford Bridge in 1976, when the Chelsea team had only one player who had cost the club a transfer fee.

Ian Visits on Heathrow Junction, the London station that came and went in six months in 1998.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Hoping it might be so

Lord Bonkers has made this observation about when Christmas begins before, but as that was in 1990 - before any of you were born - I think he can be forgiven for repeating himself.

As for the rest, I refer the hon. Gentleman to Thomas Hardy's poem The Oxen.

Christmas Eve

To St Asquith’s for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. I’m sure I speak for many when I say I do not regard Christmas as having properly begun until I hear the tremulous voice of a choirboy singing the opening verse of ‘Lloyd George Knew My Father’. 

Late in the evening, a fellow in the Bonkers’ Arms announces “Now they are all on their knees,” referring to some legend that the oxen kneel in their stalls at midnight on this very day to welcome the Christ child. The Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter has been flowing freely, and it does sound Rather Far Fetched, so bets are placed against. 

To ensure fair play, I join a party heading for Home Farm to see what the aforementioned beasts are up to. And – would you believe it? – they are kneeling. I have strong suspicions that the oxen were in on this from the start and will receive a share of the winnings, but say nothing, hoping it might be so. 

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green

Peterborough Cathedral launches £300,000 appeal to allow it to stay open daily

Peterborough Cathedral has launched an emergency appeal to raise £300,000 by the end of March to avoid running out of money.

It costs over £2m a year - almost £6,000 a day - to run. About 15 per cent of that, says the Guardian, comes from the Church of England , and the remainder must be raised by the cathedral through events, rent, grants and donations. Nothing comes from the government.

The cathedral's dean. the Very Rev. Chris Dalliston, tells the newspaper:

"There have been three or four years of erosion of our reserves. Post-Covid, visitor numbers were low and events were slow to pick up. There has been a huge rise in the cost of utilities - our bill has gone up by more than £100,000 a year across the estate, a huge additional expense.

"Peterborough is not a wealthy city. It’s not a hotspot on the tourist trail, it’s not seen as glamorous. In recent years, footfall has not been high in the city centre. We’ve lost our big department stores. People have been badly affected by the cost of living crisis.”

"We’re a spiritual hub and a community space in the heart of the city. But we also have to run this as a business. We need people to recognise the urgency of the situation. We’re not crying wolf."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green

The new Liberator - that's issue 427 - is out today. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

Among the articles this time is one on the evolving politics of Leicester by Alistair Jones. The city saw both the only Conservative gain of the 2024 general election and a shadow cabinet member lose to an Independent who campaigned on Gaza.

On the other hand, there's also Lord Bonkers' Diary. We join him a couple of days before Christmas.

Monday

For the past fortnight, the larger part of the car park at the Bonkers’ Arms has, without my leave, been given over to an attraction calling itself ‘Santa’s Christmas Wonderland’. While there were queues on the first day, word has got about the village; this morning I find myself the only visitor. 

I suspected the hand of the Elves of Rockingham Forest when I first heard of the place: my suspicions are confirmed when I see the legend ‘No Money Returned’ prominently displayed and a couple of truculent elves on the gate. 

I make a beeline for the promised grotto, only to find a disgruntled Meadowcroft in a red suit and false beard (I’m certainly not paying to sit on his knee: as his employer I can do that any time I choose), while the advertised “elven childlings” turn out to be two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green. What Matron will have to say about that, goodness only knows. 

At least I am able to give Meadowcroft a breather by donning the scarlet tunic myself, though I am embarrassed when the Revd Hughes arrives on an unannounced ecumenical visit to the elves and recognises me behind the beard.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West, 1906-10.

'Penis-shaped' housing estate application lodged

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Remembering Don Cupitt and his television series The Sea of Faith

The philosopher, theologian and Anglican priest Don Cupitt died yesterday.

I first came across him through his 1984 BBC television series The Sea of Faith. As that Wikipedia entry says, it dealt with 

the history of Christianity in the modern world, focussing especially on how Christianity has responded to challenges such as scientific advances, political atheism and secularisation in general.

The series had six parts, and this one dealing with the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche and Ludwig Wittgenstein is the one I remember best. 

I also remember it being discussed on Ludovic Kennedy's programme about television Did You See? One of the panelists was Bob Monkhouse, and I was impressed by his suggestion that the austere beauty of the house Wittgenstein designed for his sister in Vienna helps you understand his philosophy.

Certainly,  a good part of the appeal of Wittgenstein, who was the dominant figure in academic philosophy in Britain for much of the 20th century, was aesthetic, whether it was the rigour and numbered paragraphs of his early work or the endlessly interpretable aphorisms of his later.

So thank you to Don Cupitt, and I have to end by observing that we really don't get television like this any more.

The Joy of Six 1314

"The policy is less interesting than the politics, simply because the policy isn’t going to happen any time soon- at the risk of saying the most boring thing I’ll ever write on this substack: the Lib Dems are not in government. But for me, this remains an important milestone, because it is the biggest crack yet in the unloved Brexit consensus. The fact Davey feels able to make the shift at this time, tells us something important about the politics of the moment we’re in." Lewis Goodall weighs the importance of Ed Davey's foreign policy speech.

Dan McQuillan fears Labour's AI action plan is a gift to the far right: "Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, has repeatedly stated that the UK should deal with Big Tech via 'statecraft'; in other words, rather than treating AI companies like any other business that needs taxing and regulating, the government should treat the relationships as a matter of diplomatic liaison, as if these entities were on a par with the UK state."

"The problem for Siddiq is not her personal connections to Hasina - no one can help who they are related to, or be judged for having a personal relationship with their relatives - but rather the fact that the Labour MP is herself named in the investigations taking place in Bangladesh." Shehab Khan on the resignation of anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq,

David Zipper argues that gigantic SUVs are a threat to public health and asks why we don't treat them like one.

Pam Jarvis explores the philosophy, psychology and politics of Pooh.

"When the Paramount executives saw the finished product they were appalled and planned to delay distribution. But by December 1968, Paramount had failed to show their annual quota of British films. Their Barbarella was proving a disaster at the UK box office, so they had to replace it with something, preferably British. Two nights after if.... was released in central London, the queues stretched for half a mile." Alex Harvey revisits Lindsay Anderson’s groundbreaking film If....

The Murder Capital: Words Lost Meaning

Your or I would have written a Focus leaflet: The Murder Capital started a rock band.

Here they are talking to DIY magazine in 2019:

Questioning the current social and political climate in their homeland, they’re viscerally animated, demanding better at every turn.

"It just feels like there are loads of fuckin' hotels going up over Dublin, where there could be new housing," James hammers home. "There are cranes all over the city. There’s one on George’s Street right now, and they're gutting this beautiful Georgian house, and I stopped and asked the builder what it was gonna be, and it’s turning into a fuckin' Premier Inn.

"The hotels are only a sidenote to the homelessness, the suicide, the mental health issues. The lack of services available to people who aren’t from even middle class backgrounds," he continues. "We just wanna talk about it as much as possible, and make sure that the government knows that we’re not happy with the standard of where it’s at. People have real issues in their lives, and they need somewhere to go and talk about these things beyond their friends and families. It feels like there’s no excuses. I know bad things that have happened to people that were avoidable."

"James" is James McGovern, the band's singer.

Words Lost Meaning is a track from The Murder Capital's new single and a track from their forthcoming album Blindness.

McGovern explained it to NME:

"I've had experiences in my own relationship, being on tour a lot, where the words 'I love you' would be used over text, or as a way to close a conversation.

"They were dismantling and losing their essence… if the words 'I love you' are losing meaning in a romantic context or a partnership, it’s a worrying sign. Those words mean so much, and they should be respected as such. I’d rather say goodbye and say nothing if it's not going to be said with meaning."