Parents shocked after children’s paper hedgehogs found to contain pages from explicit novel

The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award for this worrying one from the Wirral.

The Joy of Six 1537

David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour’s next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth."

A deliberate strategy to push the British right – from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – into a radicalising auction over the mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens is being underwritten by the owner of 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"The party holds one seat in a chamber that has grown from 60 to 96 members, meaning their proportional presence is smaller now than at any point since devolution began." Elsie Jones asks why the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperformed in last month's Senedd elections.

Andy Bull looks back on Brendon McCullum's career in New Zealand: "All of which may, or may not, be a timely reminder that McCullum's dressing rooms have not always been the sort of free-and-easy open-to-all environments they seem to be when the team are winning. That, expert as he is handling his players, he is also a pretty ruthless dressing-room politician, a man who knows how to instruct a media team and even deploy his lawyers during a crisis."

Wayne Gooderham explores the influence of Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn on popular music and on the gender sensibilities of The Smiths, Van Morrison and The Velvet Underground in particular. 

"I had never been so far below sea level, it was difficult to comprehend, the layers of rock, millions of years old above us." Neala shows that being an archives volunteer at Manchester Central Library is more exciting that you might expect.

The Joy of Six 1431

"Nine of the groups are being run from Sri Lanka, three have admins in Nigeria, and the admins of six other groups appear to be located in Mexico, the US, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Kosovo. The remaining eleven have hidden their locations, but conform to the same pattern of fake address – AI memes – gaming video creator, suggesting they are similarly moderated." Katherine Denkinson explains how foreign entrepreneurs are monetising the clicks of British racists.

Rebecca Hamer on the common thread that links abusers, from grooming gangs to Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.

"His speech on Monday was a sprawling grievance tour, hitting every GB news talking point: immigrants, net-zero, lefty lawyers; all responsible for our economic woes and declining living standards." Zoe Gruenwald deconstructs Nigel Farage's big speech.

"In July 1616, nine women from the small South Leicestershire village of Husbands Bosworth were hanged after being found guilty at the Leicester Assizes of bewitching the teenage son of the Lord of the Manor." Margaret Brecknell says the case of the so-called Witches of Husband Bosworth shines a spotlight on the atmosphere of fear and superstition sweeping the entire country during the reign of King James I.

Rob Goulding reports on disagreements over the restoration of the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire. This marvel of Victorian engineering lifts boats from the River Weaver to the Trent and Mersey Canal.

Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow show that Orson Welles notorious 1938 radio dramatisation of War of the Worlds did not cause hysteria across the US and ask why this legend persists.

The Joy of Six 1420

"'They are treated with the most appalling hostility at the border with officials laughing at them, and shouting,' says Rivka Shaw, policy officer at Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit. Once in a hostel, 'the adults can tell they are children and they are treated differently – adults take their food or fight with the.'" Martha Gill describes the treatment of teenage asylum-seekers.

Christopher Ketcham argues that the powers the British and American governments are using to suppress demonstrations have their origin in the War on Terror: "The question now is whether the Trump administration will continue to expand the use of terrorism material support statutes to go after protest of all kinds – whether for Palestine, for racial justice, or for climate and the environment."

"Business is all about risks and some people will inevitably fail. But the problem is that too many aspiring business owners are floundering unnecessarily. The task for government, business groups and others is to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, has the chance to realise their entrepreneurial potential." Ben Dellot explains why entrepreneurship is still the preserve of the privileged.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead reports on the Open Spaces Society's call on Emma Reynolds, the new environment secretary, to prioritise legislation for wider and fairer access to nature.

"Andy and Piper are real in a way characters in even upmarket horror films often aren’t: they have history, catchphrases, a spiky-yet-devoted relationship, and neither asks for special treatment because of their circumstances." Kim Newman was impressed by this summer's horror release Bring Her Back.

Jason Watts on the remarkable Anderton Boat Lift and his family's connections with it.

Photograph by Mike Peel.

The Joy of Six 1409

Dominic Bryan, who has researched the politics of flags in Northern Ireland for decades, sets out what England needs to understand: "We’ve heard predictable claims that the flags are just a display of pride in a British or English identity. This is an easy claim to make as it clearly is, in part, to do with nationalistic pride. The point is that they are being hung in particular places, by particular groups of people and in a particular way that clearly links them to the ongoing debates and hostility to migration."

"Not only have reports of McSweeney’s political genius become as rare as hen’s teeth, but many Labour MPs are coming to the realisation that any recovery for this Government is now wholly dependent on his removal from Number 10." Adam Bienkov on Morgan McSweeney's reverse Midas touch.

Natalie Bennett makes the case for a national play strategy for England: "The sell-off of playing fields and closure of swimming pools is well-documented, but less noticed is the way in which informal play spaces and child-friendly public spaces are often overlooked or treated as expendable; many communities just don’t have accessible, safe places for play." 

"In 1995, after a local school had been destroyed in an arson attack, the MP Roy Hattersley (a former chair of Sheffield’s Housing Committee in the sixties) dubbed the Manor Estate 'the worst estate in Britain' – quite a comedown for an estate which had once been one of Sheffield’s showpieces. The truth, as ever, was more complex but the reality of decline on the now troubled estate was undeniable." Some fascinating social history from Municipal Dreams.

"Sid isn’t simply passable in these films from the 40s – he’s already very, very good. Critic Barry Norman summed up what made him so convincing. 'He never appeared to be acting,’ he noted. ‘And to act without appearing to be acting is an enormous skill.'" Hammer reminds us that Sid James was a tremendous actor long before the Carry On films claimed him.

Bobby Seal remembers Ron Chesterman, an original member of The Strawbs who later became county archivist for Cheshire.

Book Review... All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between by Mike Parker

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between

Mike Parker

Harper North, 2024; £10.99

The Welsh border is the most intoxicating landscape I know, and Mike Parker is a companionable guide to it. Immune to the tendency to complain that things aren’t what they used to be – when were they ever? – he is interested in the towns and countryside as he finds them today.

Parker made the journeys he describes in this book during the Covid pandemic, a period that may turn out to be little represented in our literature. An English-born Welsh Nationalist, he found the more collectivist traditions of his adopted country served people better in that time of trial.

Along some stretches of the border, it’s easy to forget which country you are in. I remember once coming down off the hills to Kington and being almost surprised to find myself in a red-brick Midland town with Burton beers in all the pubs. Further north, around Chester in particular, Parker shows the border is still a hard reality that affects the economy and society on both its sides.

Much as I enjoyed All the Wide Border, it’s a reminder of how personal our reaction to places can be. The first chapter takes you to a place I’ve been many times: the country west of the Stiperstones up to Shropshire’s border with Powys. 

For me it means the remains of the lead-mining industry; the children’s books of Malcolm Saville; Ronnie Lane and one of his rock star mates, down to use the studio at Lane’s place a couple of fields into Wales, playing unannounced at a remote pub; the death at a farm of the foster child Dennis O’Neill, which led both to the 1948 Children’s Act and Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap. Parker’s chapter mentions none of these, yet I still found it as interesting as any in the book.

Jonathan Calder

Hilaire Belloc's persecution of Charles Masterman

I knew Charles Masterman had won the enmity of Horatio Bottomley, the publisher of John Bull magazine, over the Home Office inquiry into alleged abuse at the Akbar Nautical Training School at Heswall on the Wirrall.

The report of the inquiry, which Masterman led, failed to accept many of the allegations published in John Bull, with the result that Bottomley regarded it as a whitewash and used the magazine to attack Masterman ever afterwards. 

As Bottomley spent some of his childhood in a Birmingham orphanage, I suspect he might have had a better knowledge of the abuses that can take place in residential institutions than the average Home Office official.

What I didn't appreciate until recently was that Masterman was also a target of the far-right antisemites Hilaire Belloc and Cecil Chesterton, brother of the better known G.K.

Here's Peter Howarth reviewing Richard Ingrams' book The Sins of G.K. Chesterton for the London Review of Books – the “volcano” is Belloc:

The volcano’s first eruption was The Party System, an exposé co-written with Cecil, which claimed that, despite the opposition to Lloyd George’s introduction of National Insurance, the Tories and Liberals were a political cartel. 

Cecil and Belloc took particular exception to the Liberal politician and journalist Charles Masterman, an old friend of the Chesterton family, and characterised his marriage to Lucy Lyttleton (the Liberal-voting daughter of the Tory chief of the general staff and a childhood friend of Frances Chesterton) as the act of an insecure and unsuccessful journalist inserting himself into “the little governing group which has the salaries and places in its gift”. 

They issued scurrilous leaflets during the 1911 Bethnal Green by-election, which Masterman narrowly won, and joined the Daily Express in smearing him again in 1914, when he lost two by-elections (one after being appointed to the cabinet). The New Witness crowed that Masterman, as the lackey of “Lloyd George ... the Jews and their hangers-on’, should have been ‘excluded not merely from Parliament but from the society of decent honourable men”.

If Belloc was motivated by rancour at a more successful MP than he had been, Ingrams argues, the only explanation for Cecil’s venom can have been to force his brother to declare his allegiance to the attackers, not the Mastermans or his own wife. When H.G. Wells wrote to the New Witness to protest against the vendetta, Cecil replied: “I think it very probable that my brother and I should disagree to a considerable extent ... on Masterman’s character and motives.”

But G.K. could not defend Masterman in public without calling Cecil’s motives into question. “By allying himself to Belloc, and insulting Masterman in the most vicious attacks imaginable,” Ingrams writes, “Cecil could force his brother to change sides.” 

He succeeded. Chesterton had dedicated a book to Masterman less than two years earlier, and Frances and Lucy had loved to go to parties together; the friendship disintegrated when he wrote to Masterman that he could not defend him in public, since he believed “the new and mutinous camp” formed by his brother and Belloc were right.

There's a tendency to treat G.K. Chesterton as a sort of holy innocent, but I find him a perfectly worldly writer when he wants to be. So it's hard not to think less of him after reading this.

GUEST POST The state of our canals - and canalside pubs - today

Fresh from a canal holiday made difficult by unannounced closures, Peter Chambers looks at the many challenges facing the Canal & River Trust.

The British have been using waterways for a long time: we are told that the canal called the Fossdyke was created by the Romans. 

Things started to get busier as entrepreneurs such as the Duke of Bridgewater and Josiah Wedgewood raised capital for specific ventures that would pay for something that by-passed the toll roads of the day – iron mining and pottery in their cases. 

This was the start of the first Industrial Revolution in the 1700s. Once these connections existed, the marginal cost for other uses dropped and more firms used them. The logic of places such as Birmingham became evident, as you were taught in O level Geography. The more you link, the more profitable it is to link more.

At the time. each new major canal required an Act of Parliament. Limited liability companies solicited funds, and shopped around for an MP to propose another Canal Bill. The canal age had started. The emergent network was a strange one. Different fees, widths, depths, keys, windlasses, heights and naming conventions. It topped out at about 8000 miles. Today we have the best 2000 in preservation.

The canals survived into the 20th century. They played a part in winning the two world wars, helped by a big public works programme run by Herbert Morrison in the 1930s.

Then reality caught up. The combination of the post-war car economy and the railways removed most of the profitable trade. The network was taken into public ownership under the British Transport Board. The canal network was put under the British Waterways Board (BWB). Even today there are artefacts stamped BWB. 

The Department of Transport debated the future of the waterways with its boards. However, despite attempts at running high-latency cargo, leisure was the only viable long term use identified. The BWB settled in for a long stretch running a national ‘linear leisure park’. 

During this time a large number of restoration societies restored hundreds of additional miles to use. They then handed over the restored mileage to the BWB, often during ceremonies involving the Queen. Or Prunella Scales.

This led to a happy time for many people. The canals had been built by thirsty 'navvies' for whom real-ale pubs had been constructed. These pubs were retained for the thirsty boatmen who worked the boats during and after the first Industrial Revolution. 

Generally, blond continental beer was kept away from key waterway junctions for decades. Additional supplies of real ale could be supplied by breweries such as Wadsworth's at Devizes on the Kennett and Avon Canal, which operates today and runs tours ending in a small shop only a short walk from the Caen Hill flight of locks.

The restoration effort even benefited from additional charitable funds from the National Lottery. An umbrella body – The Waterways Trust – was formed in 1999 to use charity funds to open new facilities and attract new interest and spending to the waterways. 

Restorers entered a peak activity phase, linking up old routes, and pushing into Wales with the Montgomery Canal past Offa’s Dyke. The "Monty", as it is known, is only a few miles away from the award-winning real-ale pub The Bailey Head in Oswestry (dogs welcome). 

It is probably best to moor outside the Queen’s Head (closed on Mondays) and make your way into town. Alternatively you can cross the border near Chirk and press on to Llangollen, with its excellent hostelries. Ideally do both.

Time, however, moved on. In 2012, during the time Justine Greening was transport secretary, all of British Waterways responsibilities and assets in England and Wales were transferred to a new charity, the Canal & River Trust (CRT). This had the advantage of removing the liabilities of the waterways from the books of the government. 

The CRT was endowed with the assets of the BWB. It was also intended that it would receive tapered funding from the state. It would continue to provide a public benefit, but would increasingly stand on its own thousand feet. One day licence fees and other charges would have to rise, and the ageing physical infrastructure of the endowment would require gradually increasing maintenance charges. 

The restored plant of the waterways had been stabilised, but no programme of replacement or upgrade was baked into the system. There would be no refresh, only an endless set of repair patches, done in priority order. The staff and facilities of the BWB started to age out. After a while the maintenance capability became increasingly contractorised.

Following the Covid pandemic, many old canalside pubs closed. They lacked the financial 'bottom' of large chains, and often served distinct local clienteles. A victory for continental lager seemed certain,, with blond 'craft beer' often substituted to tempt the unwary.

In 2025 there exist many unplanned remedial works that will consume millions in unbudgeted funds. This will mean that planned work to partly remediate the effects the pandemic will not happen, and the deficit of the CRT will rise above £10m. A general review of fees is promised, with all up for grabs – widebeam fee increases, loss of green initiatives, possible closures.

In addition to the effects of long-postponed asset failures, the long-term effects of climate change are making themselves felt. Several waterways this year have restrictions or stoppages due to low water conditions. The Pennines are all but closed. The Macclesfield is in doubt. The Rochdale looks rather dry. The Trent is low, but usable. When planning journeys in these areas, the bleating of the fossil-fuel shills sound particularly self-serving.

Finally, I could mention the pollution levels and the water companies. It is enough to say that you should wash your hands every time you go indoors afloat. I mean it.

Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire.

GUEST POST Defections of local councillors have doubled in 2025

Augustus Carp sees early signs that the shifting of tectonic plates in national and international politics may be reflected in local government too.

All the experts tell us that the political order is changing in ways previously thought to be inconceivable. Alliances are shifting, established relationships are faltering and old friends are becoming foes. But that’s not just the case in international relations – the world of local government seems to be undergoing a heightened wave of upheavals as well.  

The rate of political defections in British local government has accelerated significantly in 2025. By way of comparison, there were 52 defections in the first two months of 2024 – resulting in a net decrease of 19, 20 and 1 councillors for the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats respectively, counterbalanced by an increase of 1 for the Greens with the remainder going to the Independents.

In 2025 the numbers have doubled, with 101 councillors identified as having changed their political allegiances so far. The net impact is that the Conservatives are down 38, Labour down 54, the Liberal Democrats down 8 and the Greens down 1. Reform UK has gained 21, with the other gains going to various manifestations of Independent.  

One feature this year is a significant number of mass defections, most notably in Broxtowe, where 18 ex-Labour councillors set up the Broxtowe Independent Group, which now controls the council (although they should not, of course, be confused with the 5 other Independents on the council). Add in two more from the same patch on Nottinghamshire County Council and it’s clear that the People’s Party are in a bit of a pickle there.

Several purges have also reduced Labour’s numbers in Tameside (10) and Stockport (2) as a consequence of the ShiverMeTimbers WhatsApp Group fiasco, which also saw two MPs suspended. Remember, if you can’t say it in a leaflet you probably shouldn’t put it on social media….

Compare and contrast with the four former Conservatives on Mid Suffolk Council (and a few more elsewhere) who have resigned in protest at their erstwhile party nationally and locally supporting the Labour government's unheralded plans to impose wholesale changes in local government administration. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats have lost five councillors in Buckinghamshire, all in Aylesbury.

One councillor has gone directly from Labour to the Conservatives, but Reform are clearly on the up. As well as welcoming 21 councillors from the Independents, four Conservatives have switched directly to Reform, together with two from Labour. Details are sketchy, but there are reports of a former councillor having joined Reform from the SNP, and of an independent councillor joining the Liberal Democrats "having flirted with Reform".

It will be interesting to see whether the international scene (Trump, Ukraine, Nato etc,) will have as much of an impact on council defections in 2025 as the Middle East did in 2024.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

Mike Amesbury MP has his prison sentence suspended

On Monday Mike Amesbury, the Labour MP for Runcorn and Helsby, was imprisoned for 10 weeks after assaulting a man in the street. Today his appeal was heard and the court decided to suspend his sent

Were the rapid hearing of his appeal or the suspension of his sentence the result of special treatment for an MP? Alan Robertshaw, barrister at law, considers those questions in this video and concludes that the answers are a) no and b) not really.

As ever, Alan provides a gentle education in the law and how courts operate.

A recall petition can still be launched against Amesbury and, of course, he can still resign before that happens and retain a little dignity.

Major breach in the Bridgewater Canal at Dunham Massey

The Bridgewater Canal has suffered a major embankment collapse at Dunham Massey in Cheshire. You can see the damage caused in the video above.

With the inland waterways under financial pressure since the scrapping of British Waterways by the Coalition, there are fears that some canals could be lost to navigation.

The Bridgewater, certainly, will be closed for months while repairs are undertaken.

Later. I'm told that the Bridgewater was never owned by British Waterways. It's currently owned by the company that also owns the Manchester Ship Canal,

The Stockport Branch Canal waits impatiently to be restored

The Stockport Branch Canal was not officially abandoned until 1962. It ran from the Ashton Canal at Clayton in Manchester for five miles to a basin in the centre of Stockport, through what was then a heavily industrialised area.

As this remarkable video shows, the structures of the canal are still in place - including even an aqueduct over a four-track electrified railway near Gorton station - and crying out for restoration.

The last stretch into Stockport has been lost to redevelopment, but the reservoir at Gorton makes an enticing alternative goal in this era of leisure boating.

More about the canal and its possible restoration on the Manchester and Stockport Canal Society site.

And follow Court Above the Cut on YouTube for lots more canal videos.

All 19 Ealing Comedies ranked by the Guardian

Andrew Pulver has ranked all 19 Ealing Comedies for the Guardian. In the process, he notices some films that even I have not seen. But I've seen most of them, so here are a few thoughts on his reviews and rankings. 

Following his counting up the list up from 19th and last place, my first comment is that Hue and Cry is ranked far too low at 16th place. The film a celebration of the way boys ruled London and its bombsites - this would never be seen in such a positive light in a British film again - and there are fine performances by Jack Warner and Alastair Sim.

I can't make much of a case for The Magnet, which stars an 11-year-old James Fox, being placed much higher than the 14th place where Pulver has it, but he gets some things about the film wrong. Fox did not go near a drama school until he was 16: the accent he has in the film is that of a prep school boy of the day, and this is just what he is playing here. Parts of  The Wirral were very posh in 1950. 

Barnacle Bill is at 13. Pulver, quite fairly, says Alec Guinness never gets out of third gear in this film, but then Guinness in third is better than most actors in fifth. When you see his walk at the start of the film you believe absolutely that he is a former Naval officer. The film also sees Ealing take the side of teenagers against the stuffy establishment of the seaside resort where it is set. And where else will you see Guinness boogying with Jackie Collins?

Harry Secombe's star vehicle Davy is too high at 10. As Pulver admits, he isn't much of an actor and the film's approval of his character's surrender of his operatic ambitions for the sake of the family variety act is a bit Ealing-by-numbers.

I'm pleased to see the The Maggie (which is rather like a harder-edged Local Hero) in seventh place, which is one above the more celebrated The Titfield Thunderbolt. For me, the latter film's awareness of its own quirkiness is a sign of the studio's decline. The train must be saved because its quaint, not because it helps anyone get to where they want to go.

From now 6 down to 1, Pulver gets it pretty much right:

6. Passport to Pimlico

5. Whisky Galore!

4. The Man in the White Suit

3. The Lavender Hill Mob

2. The Ladykillers

1. Kind Hearts and Coronets

They are all celebrated films, though maybe The Man in the White Suit deserves to be even better known. Its satire hits the spot more accurately than the Boulting Brothers ever managed, perhaps because it doesn't star Ian Carmichael.

It's also worth noting that Kind Hearts and Coronets, with its period setting, is far from being a typical Ealing film. And Pulver gets it right in saying that Dennis Price is its real star.

Mirror publishes list of 14 seats where Labour supporters can help defeat the Tories by voting Lib Dem

From today's Mirror:

The Compass campaign group has published details of 14 constituencies where the Lib Dems are best placed to topple the Conservatives - and urged Labour supporters to switch allegiance

Tactical voting campaigners have revealed how Labour supporters switching their loyalty in 14 'unwinnable' seats could help oust the Tories.

So the Mirror isn't yet backing such tactical voting, just putting the idea out there, you understand.

The Mirror is remembered as having influenced Labour supporters to vote tactically in the 1997 general election, but its readership was higher then and there were fewer sources of information and 'alternative facts'. 

Still it's good to see the paper is making moves in that direction again, though I can't find anything about this on the Compass website.

But you want to know the list of 14 seats, don't you?

• Carshalton and Wallington
• Cheadle
• Cheltenham
• Esher and Walton
• Guildford
• Hazel Grove
• Lewes
• St Ives
• South Cambridgeshire
• Sutton and Cheam
• Wimbledon
• Winchester
• Woking
• Wokingham