"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall "Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman "A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
A film producer who lied about his income to secure a £519,000 loan has been jailed for more than three years.
David Shipley, 37, admitted editing images of his payslips and P60 to "over-inflate" his income to obtain money, Southwark Crown Court heard.
He is credited with producing the 2016 documentary film Brexit: The Movie, which promoted the UK's departure from the European Union.
Judge Martin Griffith said his actions were "a blatant piece of dishonesty".
Quite. And to be precise, he got three years and nine months and was disqualified from being a company director for seven years.
Released in the weeks before the June 2016 referendum, Brexit: The Movie was a feature-length documentary advocating Britain's departure from the European Union.
With most of the low-hanging fruit having been picked, canal "restoration" projects now tend to involve the digging miles of new route. The Derby Canal is no exception.
This video illustrates plans the Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust has had for years. They obtained planning permission for the scheme back in 2011, but funding it in the current economic climate will be a much greater challenge.
Still, it would be great to see boats on the Derwent in the centre of Derby.
This idea is frequently attributed to Gramsci but surely, as a critical sociologist, he must have been aware of Matthew Arnold’s lines: "Wandering between two worlds, one dead / The other powerless to be born…"
In 19th century Britain, cultural criticism was a recognised literary form and practically a profession. And Matthew Arnold was one of the more attractive of the Victorian sages who practised it.
I'm still grateful for Roland Hall's 19th century English thought option when I did my philosophy degree at York and for its wonderfully comprehensive reading list in particular. ("You are not expected to read all or none of these books.")
"By restricting jury trials, removing protest rights and expanding surveillance, Labour is entrenching an authoritarian legal infrastructure that a far-right government will not hesitate to exploit." Karl Hansen says Labour is building Farage's state for him.
Phoebe Weston reports on the French ski resorts that are closing as the snow line in the Alps edges higher: "In France, there are today 113 ski lifts totalling nearly 40 miles (63km) in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas."
Catherine Rampell says Trump is misusing Norman Rockwell's art to promote Gestapo tactics and nativist ideas: "The works have been endlessly parodied since their introduction in 1943. In the internet age, they’ve become ubiquitously memed. (Freedom of Speech, for example, is nowadays widely known as the 'unpopular opinion' meme.) But originally, they served as wartime propaganda, meant to help rally support for America and its cause during the years of war against the Nazis."
"Take Me High's unexpected legacy is to act as a kind of Brummie Rorschach test: what do you see in its depiction of the angular 'new' Birmingham of 1973? An ugly, car-worshipping mess that, like Cliff's career, needed desperate reinvention? An ambitious feat of post-war planning? Or a nostalgic vision of your childhood? It’s a question that becomes more poignant with each landmark razed and every area redeveloped beyond recognition." Shaun Patrick Hand has discovered the Cliff Richard film from 1973.
"Raynor’s efforts simply render the magnificent landscapes of Devon and Cornwall as joyless, grey backdrops to her own ceaseless complaining. The South West Coast Path should sue for defamation of character." Finlay McLaren takes aim at The Salt Path.
Andy Marshall chooses and photographs his all-time best pubs.
Augustus Carp finds the Conservatives are losing local councillors, but not as fast as Labour are losing them, and Reform UK are gaining.
Back in January we were solemnly assured by the nation’s leading political commentators that 2025 was going to be a tough year for the Conservatives, and a good one for Reform UK.
That’s pretty much how it panned out, but why didn’t anyone predict that, when it comes to political defections, the biggest losers were going to be the Labour Party?
The figures are stark. The Conservatives lost a net 212 councillors in 2025, but the Labour Party lost a net 275. For the others, the figures are Reform +138, Greens +32, Lib Dems -14 and the Nationalists -5. The balancing figure is Independents on 336.
To be clear, my methodology treats every single change in status as a recordable event. So a councillor leaving Party A to sit as an Independent in January, and then joining Party B in August is regarded as two separate data points. Suspensions, expulsions and readmissions are all included in the tally.
By my reckoning there were defections in 271 local authorities during the year. Councils where eight or more councillors have changed their allegiance are
Tameside20
Kent16
Dudley13
Durham10
Sevenoaks10
Wakefield10
Bolsover 9
Buckinghamshire9
Hounslow9
Oldham9
South Kesteven9
Tamworth9
Cornwall8
Dumfries & Galloway8
Portsmouth8
Solihull8
The figure for Tameside is perhaps a bit misleading – seven Labour councillors had their status changed for them when they were suspended and subsequently reinstated after being caught up in the Shiver Me Timbers WhatsApp fiasco/scandal. Nevertheless there were other goings on there to ensure that Tameside would still rank highly in the table.
Kent and Durham have trouble retaining councillors within their Reform UK groups, and Dudley has seen movements from Labour to Independent and from the Conservatives to Reform UK. Wakefield saw councillors move from Labour, Lib Dems and Conservatives to Independents, and a few suspensions and readmissions in the Labour Group added to the complexity there. Bulk defections have occurred in Sevenoaks (from the Conservatives) and in Buckinghamshire (from the Lib Dems).
Labour defections in the London boroughs increased towards the end of the year, once the reselection season started. Councillor defections in areas which still have two levels of local government (for example Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire) might deserve more attention, as some councillors there wear two hats.
Watch out in 2026 for problems with party discipline if local government reform is pushed through against local opposition, as has already happened in Suffolk.
It is very difficult to identify how many defections arise out of personality clashes rather than ideology. There have been 92 defections straight from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, which would seem to be driven by ideology or the survival instinct.
There have also been 28 straight swaps from Labour to Greens in 2025, with another 14 councillors making the slow-burning transition from Labour to Independent to Greens. This, together with the number of ex-Labour councillors forming their own Independent groups, would seem to indicate that politics is more significant than personalities at the moment. That matters when it comes to fielding troops in a general election ground war.
As ever, these figures are provided on a best endeavours basis, so E&OE and DYOR. Perhaps if readers have any simple questions on the goings on in any particular authority, they could put them in the comments below and I will answer them if I can.
Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.
I've written another post for Lion & Unicorn. To celebrate its 10th year, the blog asked me to write about what the last decade has been like for the Liberal Democrats:
Swinson saw her party’s vote increase from 7.4 per cent of 2017 to 11.5 per cent, but its number of seats dropped from twelve to eleven, with none of the recent star recruits from Labour and the Conservatives (such as Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger and Sam Gyimah) managing to get re-elected in Lib Dem colours.
And Swinson’s own East Dunbartonshire seat was one of the ones that were lost. In a striking illustration of the maxim that all politics is local, her defeat was attributed locally to her getting on the wrong side of an indoor bowls club in Milngavie.
The image above was posted in the large few days of 2024. It shows one of the less visited locations in the Bonkersverse: The Jack Straw Memorial Reform School, Dungeness. Think of it as Les Quatre Cent Coups with added shingle.
But let's see what Rutland's most popular fictional peer has been up to this year.
February
Shocked by the number of Tory placement at the top of the BBC, Lord Bonkers called for a traditional arse-booting at Broadcasting House:
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.
March
When Ed Davey urged Keir Starmer to visit Canada to show support for Mark Carney in his stand against Trump, I was able to report:
Lord Bonkers tells me that when Queen Victoria was once urged to visit Canada, she replied: "We are not a moose."
I also mentioned the old boy in posts about about otters arriving unbidden on Rutland Water and about one of the models for the Bonkers Arms being mentioned in a an Evening Standard article about "The Notswolds".
April
Lord Bonkers found his tender-hearted Cook "manifestly in charge" of the wrapping of food parcels for the US state of New Rutland:
“No, that Stilton’s not too ripe, my girl. Foreigners like strong flavours. And make sure you screw those jars as tight as tight – we don’t want to give the poor Americans salmon-error and bolshevism. And write the contents on the parcel or the customs and exercise men will be after us.”
He also found time to object to talk of "the first all-female space crew" being launched:
I well recall that a British rocket took off from Woomera 56 years ago almost to the day. Its crew?
Marguerite Patten Helen Shapiro Pat Coombs Marion Mould on Stroller
Still in April, I found plentiful mentions of Lord Bonkers' old friend Violent Bonham Carter, the gender-fluid gang boss of the Sixties both on the net and in books. See?
June
The old boy was rather proud of a zinger he supplied to Ed Davey for use at prime minister's questions:
“First he came for our steelworkers and carmakers. Now Donald Trump is coming for our world-leading British film industry. Will the PM make it clear to him that if he picks a fight with Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's, he will lose?”
Lord Bonkers entertained Nick Clegg at the Hall and broached the subject of Artificial Intelligence:
“I’ve been looking at the money people pay artists and writers. It’s only a few thousand quid each, but it adds up, and my plan is that it should go to me instead. I shall help myself to the artists and writers’ work and feed it into a computer, which will jumble it up and produce versions of its own. Obviously, I’ll make these versions free at first, but when all the writers and artists have given up, I’ll be able to charge what I like.”
September
When fire broke out at what was slated to be the venue of the Lib Dems' annual conference, my employer entertained dark suspicions:
When I heard there had been a fire at the Bournemouth International Centre, I naturally assumed it was the latest ruse by the party’s high-ups to justify the cancellation of our Autumn Conference. In recent years this gathering of the Liberal clans has been canned because of, variously, the Covid pandemic, the death of Her Late Majesty and a threatened bombing campaign by Isle of Wight Separatists.
I once had a shot at it myself; all went well until I sat down to pen the final chapter, only to find I had not included a butler among the cast of characters and thus had no murderer to reveal.
The Cascades were a clean-cut American vocal group who had an international hit in 1962 with Rhythm of the Rain and were later influenced by the Beach Boys.
I Bet You Won't Stay is a Ray Davies song that, as far as I can tell, The Kinks never recorded. It turned up on the B-side of an unsuccessful Cascades single in 1965.
It's easy to imagine Davies singing this himself. The poster on Bluesky who alerted me to the song described it as a "fantastic link between See My Friends and Tired of Waiting". It's the best Kinks single that never was.
Twelve years old Dennis Mallard, who appears very briefly in the new Harry Secombe film "Davy," thought his film career was not developing fast enough.
He ran away from home on Monday night, aiming to get to a film studio.
While his family thought he was asleep in bed, he was trudging through the cold night wearing only jeans, shirt and blazer, to Dartford, six miles from his home, 119, Milton Road, Gravesend.
There he hid in the back of a lorry which took him to London.
He stowed away on another lorry and found himself in Ealing.
Then the glamour of finding the limelight the hard way wore a bit thin and he became frightened.
He went to a church for help and a clergyman informed the police.
But that was not the end of Dennis Mallard.
I can't find any mention of him having appeared in Davy, which was one of the long tail of inferior Ealing comedies and designed as a star vehicle for Harry Secombe.
But I have found a page that has him making an uncredited appearance in a Children's Film Foundation production, One Wish Too Many, as early as 1956.
And the British Film Foundation has him making a similarly unacknowledged appearance in The Violent Playground later in 1958. As this film's premiere was in March 1958, it must (as Flashbak suggests) have been filmed in 1957, before the boy ran away to Ealing.
So it looks as though young Dennis Mallard was already appearing in films by the time he ran away, but as nothing more than an extra.
Researching him is difficult because he does not have an IMDb entry, so I was pleased to find that the British Film Institute has a page for the 1959 BBC adaption of Great Expectations, which lists him as having played Pip, along with the slightly older Colin Spaull and much older Dinsdale Landen.
Yet a clip of the young Pip encountering Magwich in the churchyard from this serial looks nothing like the photo of Dennis Mallard in the local newspaper report that sent me down this rabbit hole. And, sure enough, IMDb has a photo of the encounter, with the boy playing Pip named as Colin Spaull. As this scene is as young as Pip gets in the book, what did Dennis Mallard do?
The answer is on BBC Genome, where he is billed as playing Pip Gargery. Over to Dickens, and the scene thee a sadder and wiser adult Pip returns to the forge, only to find that Biddy, who he has resolved to marry, has wed Joe Gargery:
There, smoking his pipe in the old place by the kitchen firelight, as hale and as strong as ever, though a little grey, sat Joe; and there, fenced into the corner with Joe’s leg, and sitting on my own little stool looking at the fire, was – I again!
"We giv' him the name of Pip for your sake, dear old chap," said Joe, delighted, when I took another stool by the child’s side (but I did not rumple his hair), "and we hoped he might grow a little bit like you, and we think he do."
And if you think Dennis was too old to play this part, he's not. Because Nostalgia Central helpfully tells us:
One major narrative change has Joe Gargery’s proposed marriage to his housekeeper Biddy taking place before Pip goes to London (this revelation occurs much later in the novel and is the last nail in the coffin of Pip’s disillusionment as he was planning to marry Biddy himself).
Let's cut to the chase. Here's a report from the Kent Evening Post for 27 June 1975:
Few people meeting the quiet and unassuming Dennis Mallard at his Leysdown china shop would ever dream of his past. For the man who compared last night's Evening Post search-for-a- star show was once a star of stage and screen himself.
Dennis. now married and a father of three living in Poplar Avenue, Gravesend, started his carcer at the age of five.
He went to stage school at Upton Park till he was 11 when he landed his first mal part in a BBC production of Great Expectations.
After numerous theatre and TV appearances in plays and adverts he landed his own ITV show in which Una Stubbs (remember her as the screen daughter of Alf Garnett in Till Death Us Do Part) was a dancer.
That was all in the days of early commercial TV – and before Dennis’ 16th birthday.
"Then I for some reason felt I'd had enough of showbusiness and decided to try and make some money instead.
"I thought being a market trader was next best thing and began selling china."
He still keeps his hand in however by doing occasional compering slots and has accepted an invitation to be MC at all the talent competition evenings.
I've not so far found any trace of his ITV series or of an ITV adaption of A Christmas Carol starring Stephen Murray as Scrooge in which he is said to have appeared. But the upturn in his career does seem to have happened soon after he ran away to Ealing.
And there is one thing we know he was doing in 1960: he was in the first performance of Oliver! as a workhouse boy and member of Fagin's gang. Because his name is on the credits for the original cast recording.
Here's a holiday treat: a South Bank Show documentary from 1980 that follows Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince as they rehearse the first West End production of Sweeney Todd. It had opened on Broadway the year before.
Sweeney Todd and Mrs Lovat are Denis Quilley and Sheila Hancock – look out for wine expert Oz Clarke and Michael Staniforth (Timothy Claypole from Rentaghost) in supporting roles.
It was a mark of my mother's liberal parenting that. aged 9 and 10, I was allowed to stay up late on a school night to watch Up Pompeii! I later found from a Twitter conversation with the novelist Jonathan Coe that he was granted the same dispensation.
In my case, at least, it worked. I passed O level Latin, despite receiving free school meals and having Allison Pearson in the same class.
Watching Up Pompeii! today, it stands up pretty well, notably the clever formal device whereby Howerd is constantly breaking the fourth wall to criticise the script or the audience, but none of the other characters ever does.
And the show was comforting in that it was the same every week. Poor Lurcio never got far with the prologue before Senna the Soothsayer came along, and then there was Nausius with his ode and inability to find a rhyme.
Throw in an element of plot involving high Roman politics or Lurcio's master Ludicrous Sextus's love live and you had your show.
There were a lot of nubile young women on show – a reminder that the permissive society came before feminism – but I think they were safe with Frankie.
Note the contemporary jokes about Waggoners' Walk and decimalisation. And note Pat Coombs enjoying herself immensely as the sorceress – you never knew who would turn up in the cast.
"At its core, A Christmas Carol is the transformation of a man without empathy, to a man with empathy. It accomplishes this through forcing the character Ebenezer Scrooge to remember the past, witness the present, and to consider the future. It is through seeing other human beings as human beings with lives equal in worth to his own, that forms the basis of Scrooge's transformation." Scott Santens sets out the science behind Charles Dickens' famous story.
Barbara Speed on the shocking scale of the abuse perpetrated by the Jesus Army: "The ... coroner returned an open verdict, but noted his 'concern' about the two strange deaths and the letters he had received from parents of young people in the fellowship, who were worried about their children’s safety. These incidents were closely reported by local media but never became national news."
Welcome to the working week - Microsoft Teams will soon start telling your boss where you are, reports Zak Doffman.
"I think, therefore I am" isn’t the best translation of Descartes’s famous pronouncement "cogito, ergo sum", argues Galen Strawson.
Owen Hatherley has been watching a new box set of immediately post-war films from the DDR: "'Rubble films' were sponsored by the Soviet occupiers of Eastern Germany and East Berlin as part of the project of de-Nazification, with the theory being that mass market film was uniquely suited to forcing ordinary Germans to understand and come to terms with what they had done. It was a brief moment, necessarily compromised ... but the films are fascinating as attempts to make antifascist commercial blockbusters, in a devastated society that would have preferred to think about almost anything else."
Gavin Speed looks at the latest research into Saxon Leicestershire: "Along the River Welland in south-east Leicestershire, extensive fieldwalking surveys have identified several settlements close to the north of the river, and close to former Roman roads."
Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee, Gave thee life, and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly, bright; Gave thee such a tender voice, Making all the vales rejoice? Little lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee?
Little lamb, I'll tell thee; Little lamb, I'll tell thee: He is called by thy name, For He calls Himself a Lamb. He is meek, and He is mild, He became a little child. I a child, and thou a lamb, We are called by His name. Little lamb, God bless thee! Little lamb, God bless thee!
Father Christmas has been around a lot longer than Santa Claus. A version of Father Christmas called “Sir Christmas” featured in a fifteenth century carol, and Father Christmas himself was appearing regularly in print by the seventeenth century.
At first, Father Christmas was just a personification of the season. Most often depicted wearing a crown of holly, he represented wintry weather, feasting and drinking with friends and family, and a generally merry spirit of Christmas celebration.
But, at least to begin with, he didn’t have anything to do with stockings.
When Santa Claus became popular with Victorian children, slowly but surely Father Christmas started to push back on the American’s grip on the nation’s stockings.
So, he started helping out with the business of delivering presents, dressing a bit more like Santa Claus, and by the dawn of the twentieth century, the two figures had become virtually interchangeable and shared the load of making sure everyone’s stockings were full up on Christmas morning.
In those days the house belonged to a Mrs Beadon, who tells the paper she has seen the ghost on quite a number of occasions but has never resented his presence because he is a "perfectly good-tempered old man".
She then added:
"Not like the horrible ghost up on Nevill Holt hill, who makes the village people scared to walk up there after dark."
Nevill Holt Hall, you may remember, is now accepted by most scholars as the chief inspiration for Bonkers Hall, though I don't recall the old boy reporting any hauntings there. Come to think of it, he never mentions Bonkers Hall being on a hill either.
So I wonder if the ghost was really the headmaster of the notoriously abusive prep school at Nevil Holt manufacturing a haunting to keep prying eyes away, like a Scooby-Doo villain.
Martin Barrow reports that, following the intervention of Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, it is hard to find anyone prepared to defend the current arrangements, outside the actual 'business' of children’s homes and foster care.
"Despite the numerous inquiries that have been carried out, the lessons identified often fail to translate into meaningful, lasting change. As a result, organisations find themselves repeating the same mistakes, leading to avoidable disasters. Those impacted wait years for answers, and political impetus for reform can wane." Rebecca McKee and Jack Pannell make the case for reform of public inquiries.
The 'one chatbot per child' model for AI in classrooms conflicts with research that shows learning is a social process, argues Niral Shah.
Jo Lonsdale and Jane Downs tell the story of Mary Ann Macham, who fled slavery in Virginia and found safety in the North East of England: "Mary Ann was born in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1802, her father 'a gentleman's son', her enslaved mother raped by him. Aged 12, Mary Ann was sold at a public auction at Richmond, a 'poor puny little thing', as she later said, fetching $450."
Emma Slattery Williams on Christmas in the Victorian era: "Roast turkey remains the customary fare for Christmas lunch and we can thank the Victorians for this, too. In the early 19th century, turkeys would have been too expensive for the majority of households to afford. But the development of the railway made them more accessible and affordable, and soon they had become the star attraction at Christmas dinner tables."
"Despite their initial rejection by the Ministry of Transport, the signs were actually rather well designed. Seen side-by-side against the regulation sign that was supposed to be used ... they compare very favourably." Oxfordshire Signs looks back to the days when the county had its own unique designs for road signs.
We've all heard of The Notswolds, and an article in the Guardian today adopts my definition of Les Notswolds profonds: the Welland Valley between Market Harborough and the Welland Viaduct.
Ben Lerwill visits Market Harborough:
The town itself has ancient Saxon roots and is easy to like, with a head-turning mix of Jacobean, Georgian and Victorian architecture. I stumble on Quinns, a cracking independent bookshop tucked down an alleyway, then devour a curry bowl at a lively cafe called Two Old Goats.
A board on the street lists notable town residents through the ages, the most recent being rugby giant Martin Johnson. I read this, then turn and immediately see him on the pavement 10 metres away. It’s unclear if this clever routine is something he does for all visitors, but he’s hard to miss in any case.
He visits Foxton Locks:
The real pull of the Welland valley is the countryside, a slow-moving world of hushed green dales and drifting red kites. On local advice, I head to rural Foxton Locks – Britain’s highest combination of staircase canal locks, where 10 adjacent early 19th-century locks transport boats up and down a 23-metre hillside – for a gawp and a wander. “It takes 50 minutes for boats to get from one end to the other,” says volunteer Malcolm, who seems delighted to have a visitor to talk to. The neatly painted locks rise up handsomely beside us.
And he visits Medbourne to stay at one of the models for the Bonkers Arms:
My base is nearby Medbourne, one of numerous placid, calendar-pretty villages that stud the Welland valley. Medbourne has a clear stream, a lovely pub – the Nevill Arms, where I spend the night in a four-poster and enjoy exactly the kind of warming, candle-lit dinner you’d want from a country inn in winter – and cottages built of tough, reddish Leicestershire ironstone.
Because of the new television version of Amadeus ("flat, airless and banal" – Guardian), there's been much recent discussion of Paul Shaffer's original play and of the 1984 film.
A television documentary about Paul Scofield has recently appeared on YouTube. Simon Callow, who played Mozart to Schofield's Salieri in the first production of the play, talks about the experience in the video above. (Just click play to see the extract.)
If you watch the whole programme on YouTube, you will see that Scofield was regarded by his contemporaries as a peerless stage actor. Because he made relatively few screen appearances, his name has rather faded from memory. Looking at his IMDb entry, it's only A Man for All Seasons that's likely to be watched today.
It's not just Scottish MPs who worry about island ferries: Andrew George's St Ives constituency, as well as the far west of Cornwall, takes in the Isles of Scilly, which are 28 miles off the Cornish coast.
In this latest Cornish Times column, the Liberal Democrat MP reports a meeting with the transport minister Keir Mather:
He says he wants to help. I’ve invited him to visit, to help him better understand the challenges islanders face, and then help ensure sustainable solutions are found. Scilly may be an exceptional place. But it’s also a tough place to survive, especially if you’re not well off.
He then adds pointedly:
Two-thirds of all income to the primary provider of transport to Scottish islands (CalMac) is government subsidy. In comparison Scillonian passengers, freight customers and inter-island travellers pay unsubsidised full commercial rates. No government has yet offered parity for the Isles of Scilly.
Andrew also reports that he is calling a Special Educational Needs summit next year:
I’m keen to listen, and to work with local families to ensure children get the support they deserve.
And writing of falling immigration figures, he says:
The real worry across many sectors – including agriculture and care work here in Cornwall is how we will cope with the politically driven fall in migrant workers. But of course, no leading politician dares mention this.
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS) is currently responding to a major incident in the Whitchurch area following a significant breach of the Shropshire Union Canal near Drawbridge, Chemistry, Whitchurch.
At about 4:22am, Fire Control received reports of a canal bank collapse with large volumes of water escaping into surrounding land. Crews form Whitchurch, Prees, Shrewsbury, Newport, Albrighton and Telford attended.
Three boats had been caught in a developing sinkhole approximately 50 metres by 50 metres in size and crews helped more than 10 members of the public to safety.
Firefighters have been working in challenging conditions with unstable ground and rapidly moving water, crews immediately established upstream and downstream safety sectors and began mitigating water flow using barge boards and water gate systems.
We are working with out partners on scene including West Mercia Police, West Midlands Ambulance Service (including HART), the Canal & River Trust, the Environment Agency, local authority emergency planning officers, and National Resilience.
Are Manager Scott Hurford said: "We can confirm no persons are believed to be on board the affected canal boats, and no injuries have been reported.
"Approximately 12 residents from nearby moored boats are being supported and relocated to a welfare centre at the former Whitchurch Police Station.
"A major incident was declared at 5.17am however as of 8.30am the situation was stable with water flow reduced and there is no ongoing search and rescue activity.
"Multiagency attendance remains in place to manage the environmental impact, protect nearby properties, and ensure public safety. Please avoid the area while we continue to deal with this significant incident."
This incident may give more prominence to the lack of maintenance now being carried out on the canal system since the government has reduced its funding of the Canal & River Trust.
Peter Jukes says Boris Johnson and Alexander Lebedev must be investigated in a new public inquiry into Russian influence
"If you are young or have a young family, should you vote for millionaire Nigel Farage? For me, he is likely to directly impoverish and disenfranchise the young – Reform UK policies are already shaping up in this way. Where will it end?" Mark Cunliffe itemises Reform's attack on the young.
"This punishment represents the state’s most severe power to harm its citizens. Understanding how and why it is used tells us about our appetite for punishment and the state’s power to inflict it. And evidence suggests that its use is rising." Jake Phillips and Hannah Gilman discuss why the number of whole-life sentences is increasing in England and Wales.
Charlotte Williams investigates how archaeology helped the US colonise the Panama Canal Zone – just as the current US government threatens to retake it.
Alex Harvey revisits Lindsay Anderson’s If.... 50 years after its release: "Anderson was a classic child of the British imperial class. His father, a Scot and a soldier, was born in Northern India, his mother, a formidable memsahib, in Queenstown, South Africa, and Anderson himself in Bangalore. He was raised to replicate his father’s social class and profession."
"The family of the ITV Sport presenter Mark Pougatch were all wearing lederhosen." Thomas Weber attends the World Conker Championships at Southwick in Northamptonshire.
I heard this the other day and was instantly transported back too... Well, it turned out to be the spring of 1994. Mr. Jones was everywhere then, so much so that I'm surprised to find it never got higher than no. 28 in the UK singles chart. It was a big hit in the US though.
But what is the song about? Wikipedia (crediting an old Counting Crows FAQs) thinks it knows:
The song is about struggling musicians ([Adam] Duritz and bassist Marty Jones of The Himalayans) who "want to be big stars", believing that "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely". Duritz would later recant these values; and in some later concert appearances, "Mr. Jones" was played in a subdued acoustic style, if at all.
The Roding is London’s largest forgotten river. Out on the eastern fringe of the city, it endures every modern indignity: scythed by motorways and concrete bridges; choked with sewage and rubbish; canalised, fly-tipped, retail-parked, thickened with the polluted slime of London clay. It is a forbidding place to call home.
Yet in 2017 that is what the environmental barrister, Paul Powlesland, set out to do. Embarking on a hair-raising journey up the Thames on a tiny narrowboat (his propeller nearly fell off on route) he made it to the mouth of the Roding, chugging upstream to anchor among the reeds. His mission: to protect the river and speak for its rights. The River Roding Trust was born.
Seven years later Right to Roam visited the Roding to team up with Paul and the Trust to highlight this incredible story of guerrilla guardianship. Alongside the local community we planted trees, created hibernacula for reptiles and amphibians and tackled the endless crust of rubbish washed in by the tide.
We believe that access to land and water is about more than just recreation. Instead it can be the start of a new relationship with nature, where we connect in order to protect. A concept we call Wild Service.
Yet currently only 8 per cent of land in England has a "right to roam" and only 3 per cent of rivers enjoy an uncontested right of access – a major obstacle to community guardianship. We’re campaigning for that to change.
If you're interested in these issues, you may enjoy The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes.
Our Headline of the Day Award goes to one of its regular recipients: the Shropshire Star.
This gives me an excuse for linking to one of my favourite stories from last year – the one about the pet donkey who strayed from home and was later found living as the head of a herd of elk.
George Dobell argues that England have not been competitive in Australia because the domestic cricket season here is now geared to making a quick buck rather than producing test players.
He mentions Ashley Giles's comments after our Ashes defeat four years ago – you can read them in a Guardian report from the time:
"Unless we look at more systemic change, a collective responsibility and collective solutions, we can make whatever changes we want – you can change me, the head coach, the captain – but we’re only setting up future leaders for failure. That’s all we’re doing. We’re only pushing it down the road. ...
"Are we creating [domestic] conditions that will allow us to better prepare our cricketers for playing in the conditions out here? I’m not sure we are at the moment.
"What we play, when we play, on what [pitches] we play – that’s a collective responsibility. It’s up to us as ECB but also a conversation to have with the counties."
At present the England and Wales Cricket Board puts me in mind of Robert Conquest's Third Law of Politics:
The behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.
"Almost a quarter of pupils say they 'never' feel safe or 'only on some days'. ... Half of all secondary school pupils say they 'only sometimes' or 'never' enjoy school, and parents aren’t always aware – they underestimate this figure by a factor of three." Cara Cinnamon on the Department for Education’s newly published pupil experience data.
Prem Sikka states the bleeding obvious – to tackle child poverty the government must deal with parental poverty – but isn't it rare to see it stated?
Is your car journey suspicious? Police forces are trialling AI technology that enables them to identify and track “suspicious” journeys by drivers on Britain’s road network. Mark Wilding and Charles Hymas have the story.
Kathryn Rix explains the legislation that bound MPs suffering with prolonged periods of mental illness from 1886 until legislative reform in 2013.
Starr Charles reports that the Twentieth Century Society has selected 10 UK buildings as part of its annual list highlighting 30-year-old buildings it says deserve to be nationally listed. The society says: "Given that around 30 years after construction is often the point at which buildings are likely to require their first major refurbishment, any listing designation at this point would provide a timely opportunity to ensure that such works recognise and respond to what makes a building significant."
"Reading the poems now, it is the lyricism that stands out and still surprises. Sometimes it seems as though the subjects Larkin writes about are merely placeholders for the poet’s deeper fascination with poetry, and its relationship with the passing of time." Jeremy Wikeley looks at Philip Larkin's early collection of poems, The Less Deceived.
Anger is mounting in the small Shropshire village of Bentlawnt as residents remain without a post box, months after its sudden removal, with Royal Mail failing to respond to repeated pleas for its return.
The essential village service was removed from its position outside the old shop without any community consultation. Despite persistent lobbying, local residents and politicians say they have been completely ignored by the postal giant.
Bentlwant's councillor happens to be Heather Kidd, the Liberal Democrat leader of Shropshire Council. She is quoted in the story:
"What worries me is that the now privatised Royal Mail now think they have carte blanche to remove these boxes. This is particularly vexing in rural areas like ours where boxes are few and far between."
It also quotes a concerned local resident:
"The nearest box to Bentlawnt is outside Stapeley Vets, but it is unusable as it is infested with mice, which eat the letters. Nobody, including the vets, uses it."
Consulting my files, I find I don't have a photo of the missing Bentawnt post box but do have one of the mouse-ridden box outside Stapeley Vets.
Andy Edyvean, a former deputy leader of Rushcliffe Borough Council, has left the Conservative Party and now sits as an Independent, reports BBC News:
In an email to colleagues, Edyvean said he took the "difficult decision" over a "worrying decline in the standards" at a council he "was proud to serve".
One point of interest here is that Edyvean is the councillor for Bunny ward, which wins our Ward of the Week Award. Bunny is a village a few miles south of Nottingham.
I have a memory that the conversation between Brian Clough and the chairman of Nottingham Forest, in in which the former agreed to become the club's manager, took place as they walked round the boundary of Bunny cricket ground, but I can't find any mention of this online.
This single was the first CD I bought. I liked it so much I bought it even though I didn't yet have a CD player.
This is my thousandth blog post of the year, a feat I haven't managed since 2016. I've no particular ambition to do it again, and I'm starting to write more for other outlets now, but you never know.
"Millions of teenagers would lose the freedom to enjoy games and social interaction in the name of 'safety'. Even complaining on family WhatsApp would be impossible, as they would be banned from that too. Such a restriction would severely impact not just young people’s ability to play games or socialise, but also access support services, or engage in or discuss political content or ideas." James Baker argues that Liberal Democrats should not support Baroness Benjamin's amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.
Sophia Alexandra Hall explains why care leavers need better access to childhood records: "Among the papers was a photocopy of a photograph of Jackie and her sister. The council initially refused to give her the original, saying it belonged to them. She persisted. When she finally received it, she discovered a date and time written on the back. Those details had never appeared in the copy."
Anglican Ink has an anonymous post by an anonymous retired Church of England that paints an unflattering portrait of the young Justin Welby.
We hear a lot about making cities child friendly, but Max Western and Afroditi Stathi remind us that the modern urban landscape isn't kind to old people either.
"The public story of Google Maps is that it passively reflects 'what people like'. More stars, more reviews, better food. But that framing obscures how the platform actually operates. Google Maps is not just indexing demand – it is actively organising it through a ranking system built on a small number of core signals that Google itself has publicly acknowledged: relevance, distance, and prominence." Lauren Leek on how Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants and how she built a dashboard to see through it.
Scott Shea chooses six songs that tell the story of Sam Cooke.
Cllr Hollis, the deputy leader of Ashfield District Council, is a Zadroznyite – a member of the Ashfield Independents, whose leader Jason Zadrozny almost won the Ashfield constituency for the Liberal Democrats at the 2010 general election.
Here's a seasonal story from 1927 – from the Christmas Eve edition of the Leicester Mercury to be precise.
Treat for Tramps
Police Chief as Host at Market Harborough
The quaint and picturesque old Grammar School at Market Harborough, which is partially built on wooden piers, and stands near the parish church, will be the banqueting Hall of road tramps on Christmas Day.
Feveral years now a woman in the town has interested herself in bringing some comfort and joy each Christmas to the men who tramp the roads.
Supt. Robertson, with this financial help, will entertain the tramps to breakfast and dinner.
He expects about 40 guests, all of them men who are wayfarers whose life is spent on the road and in common lodging houses.
Breakfast will be at 9 o'clock and dinner at 1 o'clock.
I find a police superintendent doing that on Christmas Day rather impressive.
Here's the inevitable picture of the Old Grammar School. I blogged about an echo of the days of tramps and tramping last month.
The high-street banks' retreat from the high street was accomplished with little complaint or even comment from politicians. Maybe that's a reflection of where power now lies in Britain, but it will have done nothing to make people feel warmer towards politics and politicians.
But here's Tim Farron raising the issue in the Commons last week.
Banking hubs are owned by Cash Access UK, which is owned by the banks, and run for it by the Post Office. So I'm not sure how far the minister, Lucy Rigby, is justified in implying it's the government that's rolling them out.
Here in Market Harborough, it was local government - in the shape of Harborough District Council - that acted as a catalyst by making space available for a banking hub in its offices.
That hub has just moved to a more convenient site among the shops. You can see it in the photo above.
Banks save £2 billion a year from abandoning our high streets and town centres.
Our post offices pick up the slack, but they are not funded by the banks anywhere near enough to be able to maintain their presence.
This must change.
On Friday evening Camden Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners took on their Labour counterparts at football. At full time the scores were level at 6-6, but the Lib Dems won on penalties to repeat their victory from last year.
Richard Osley, our man on the press box with a mug of Bovril, reports for the Camden New Journal:
As usual when these two teams meet, it was not a match light on controversy.
The Lib Dems say a late equaliser by Labour housing chief Sagal Abdi-Wali to make the scoreline 6-6 was netted in "Eddie time". Mayor of Camden Eddie Hanson had been in charge of the stopwatch.
But the yellow team’s complaints died down when they promptly won a penalty shootout to take the bragging rights – just four and half months before the local elections.
Labour only scored one of their penalties with hot-shot captain Camron Aref-Adib among the missers.
The match was played to encourage donations to the New Journal’s Christmas Hamper appeal.
"They can mess about with flags and play the national anthem and rail against DEI all they like. But if they shut down your mum’s nursing home, will you vote for them?" Helen Pidd looks at how Reform UK are coping with running the council in Lancashire.
Michael Savage dissects Liz Truss's attempt to win herself a share of MAGA gold: "The alternative media ecosystem has no shortage of comeback stories. It is always possible to rebrand yourself when you give in to a rabid political fanbase."
"Systematic synthetic phonics is taught using 'decodable' books that often have very limited content. But using real books is a way to motivate children through the imaginative ways that stories, poems and information are portrayed in these books." Dominic Wyse says England’s synthetic phonics approach is not working for children who struggle to read.
"In a story ... a boy runs into Jesus. He curses the child, who instantly drops down dead – though Jesus brings him back to life after a brief reprimand from Joseph." Mary Dzon on medieval Christians' enjoyment of tales about the young Jesus being a holy rascal.
Bob Trubshaw has studied the numerous east-west routes in north-east Leicestershire that continue into Lincolnshire and on to the Norfolk coast. They once transported wool in great quantities and were used by countless pilgrims heading for Walsingham.
JacquiWine reads Dark Tales, a collection of Shirley Jackson's later short stories.
Today is World Monkey Day and to mark it here's the sad story of King Alexander of Greece.
Alexander came to the throne in 1917 after his father (Constantine I) and elder brother (Crown Prince George) were deposed by the Entente Powers and the Liberal statesman Eleftherios Venizelos. Alexander became a puppet king under the control of Venizelos, and Greece continued to fight the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.
In 1919 Alexander married Aspasia Manos, a commoner. This became a major scandal. and the couple were forced to leave Greece for several months.
Soon after their return to Greece, Alexander tried to separate his dog from a tame Barbary macaque with which it was scuffling. In the process, he was bitten by the monkey and died of sepsis a few days later aged 27.
Under the restored King Constantine I, whose return was endorsed overwhelmingly in a referendum, Greece went on to lose the Greco–Turkish War with heavy military and civilian casualties. The territory gained on the Turkish mainland during Alexander's reign was lost.
Alexander's death in the midst of an election campaign helped destabilize the Venizelos regime, and the resultant loss of Allied support contributed to the failure of Greece's territorial ambitions. Winston Churchill wrote, "it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite".
The Rest is History podcast once chose the greatest 10 monkeys in history and unaccountably left this one out. I have never quite trusted it since.
