Arms company drops plan to test bombs at world heritage site owned by Lib Dem peer

Today's Guardian reports that a British arms company has abandoned plans to carry out live fire testing of anti-personnel bombs dropped by drones in the middle of the Flow Country world heritage site. The planned testing ground is owned by the Liberal Democrat peer John Thurso.

The paper says: 

The Flow Country became the first peat bog in the world to be granted world heritage site status by Unesco in July, in recognition of its rarity and its importance to conservation and combating the climate crisis.

The bomb tests have now been cancelled after the Guardian told Overwatch that the area earmarked for them included part of the Strathmore peatlands site of special scientific interest, a heavily protected peat bog home to rare and threatened birds, such as dunlin, golden plover and greenshank.

The paper quotes John Thurso:

Lord Thurso said he was unaware that Overwatch had planned to use drones, did not know that fragmentation bombs were involved, and did not know that the CAA application included part of the Strathmore peatlands.

He said a deep quarry he owns near the peatlands had been used for “all sorts” of military and munitions testing for 20 years without incident.

He said “there is absolutely no way” he would have approved the use of drones or explosives over Strathmore. “Certainly we would never give permission for people to go dropping bombs in the blanket bog.”

Lord Bonkers ponders: I suppose they'll be looking for somewhere else to test their infernal contraptions.

The earliest-born person to cut a record was the grandfather of a Liberal Party leader

Sir Tollemache Sinclair has featured on this blog before. Writing of his grandson, the Liberal leader Sir Archibald Sinclair, I said:

Sinclair was orphaned at an early age and lived at Thurso Castle, the home of his grandfather Sir Tollemache Sinclair. The castle was a gothic pile which had been reconstructed by Sir Tollemache to his own design and was notable for its orchestrion - a sort of mechanical organ which he loved to play.

Thurso Castle was damaged by a sea mine during the second world war and largely demolished in the 1950s as a result. Some claim that it was never particularly structurally sound in the first place.

Sir Tollemache, who was a Liberal MP himself, has another claim to fame. He is the earliest-born person whose voice is preserved on a disc (as opposed to a wax cylinder).

Born in 1825, he cut a number of records in 1906. You can hear him above giving Byron both barrels.

Sir Archibald Sinclair's grandson is John Thurso, who was Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross between 2001 and 2015. He was a member of the House of Lords before that and is now one again, having won one of those strange by-elections for hereditary peers.

Thanks to a reader on Twitter for putting me on to this.

Lord Bonkers on the by-election for a Lib Dem hereditary peer

The sad death of Eric Avebury means there has to be a by-election to choose a new Liberal Democrat hereditary peer.

A BBC News report suggests there will be two candidates: John Russell (the current Earl Russell and the son of the much-missed Conrad Russell) and John Thurso (former member of the Lords and former MP for Caithness and Sutherland).

But then the electorate is barely larger than the number of candidates:

Three current Lib Dem hereditaries are entitled to vote: Lord Addington, the descendent of a Conservative MP from the 1880s; the Earl of Glasgow, the descendent of one of the Scottish Commissioners who negotiated the 1703 Union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England; and the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who is directly descended from the Liberal Prime Minister H H Asquith.

Or should that be four current Lib Dem hereditaries?

Lord Bonkers holds a Rutland peerage, which means he is sometimes overlooked by the pundits, but he is determined to vote in this election.

I don't know which way he will vote, but he did remark at dinner the other night that "the Russells always come good in the end" and that "this Thurso fella needs to make up his mind which House he wants to sit in".

He also said that a donation to the Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans before the votes are cast on 19 April would be "a Terribly Nice Gesture".

Thanks to Mark Pack.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: He was never one to resort to underhand methods

Lord Bonkers continues his survey of Liberal Democrat prospects at the next general election, perhaps becoming a little sidetracked in the process.

Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross

Caithness, the most northerly part of this most northerly of mainland Scottish constituencies, was once the seat of Sir Archibald Sinclair. It is an area best known in recent decades for the Dounreay atom plant, with its habit of spilling nuclear waste on to the neighbouring beaches.

Sir Archibald, the grandfather of the current member, was a gentleman, a fine leader of our party and a friend of mine; certainly, he was never one to resort to underhand methods to deprive the bookies’ favourite for Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Moustache of the Year 2014 of his rightful prize.

I am not saying that John Thurso used atomic waste to make his moustache grow so luxuriantly, but shouldn't he come forward and clear the matter up once and for all?

That said, I have no doubt that he will win again this time.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

"Top Secret: Burn Before Reading"

The mint cake workers of Kendal

There can be no doubt that he was Terribly Sorry

The Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey Railway

Armed with pitchforks and flaming brands

Those new Liberal Democrat committee co-chairs in full

Several new Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee co-chairs have been appointed by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

Paul Burstow has also been elected as chair of the parliamentary party. The former chair Lorely Burt stood down after being appointed as parliamentary private secretary to Danny Alexander.

The new appointments in the House of Commons are:

• Gordon Birtwistle - Business, Innovation and Skills
• Mike Crockart - Energy and Climate Change
• Julian Huppert - Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities
• John Leech - Culture, Media and Sport
• Greg Mulholland - Work and Pensions
• Alan Reid - Transport
• Mark Williams - Wales
• Roger Williams - Food and Rural Affairs
• John Thurso - Constitutional and Political Reform in addition to the role he holds for the Scotland committee.

The new appointments in the House of Lords are:

• Lord (Jonathan) Marks of Henley on Thames - Justice
• Lord (Monroe) Palmer of Childs Hill - Defence
• Lord (Mike) Storey - Education
• Lord (Martin) Thomas of Gresford - Wales

Thanks to the East Midlands Lib Dems site, which has the full list of Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee Co-Chairs.

Andrew Tyrie is not up to chairing a banking inquiry

There was a feature of Bob Diamond's appearance before the Treasury select committee that said much about the authority and judgement of its chairman Andrew Tyrie.

Diamond addressed MPs by their first names throughout. I would have bridled at that when I was a young district councillor. Why middle-aged MPs put up with it, I cannot imagine. Tyrie should certainly have stepped in early to stop him doing it.

His failure to do so was damaging because he and his committee were on trial. The government wishes the committee to conduct the inquiry into banking rather than a judge. According to Sue Cameron on the Daily Telegraph website:

Word is that it was Mr Tyrie who went to Mr Osborne suggesting a select committee inquiry. “Everyone is wondering what the implications will be,” said one Westminster insider. “Virtually nobody thinks it’s a good idea apart from Tyrie and Osborne – and Osborne doesn’t understand Parliament.

By failing to curb Diamond's overfamiliarity Tyrie at once made himself look weak and, as a Conservative, too close to the bankers.

My own view remains that there should be a judicial inquiry into banking and I am sorry that Liberal Democrat MPs have not taken this line. Certainly, although John Mann and John Thurso made a reasonable fist of it, most select committee members suggested they lack the skills to question witnesses effectively when those witnesses are not inclined to be forthcoming.

Not that they or Andrew Tyrie are alone in being a limited performers. This morning the Today programme introduced Lord McFall as some sort of hero of the banking crisis. In fact, as John McFall, he was a worse chair of the Treasury select committee than Andrew Tyrie.

I fear the moral is that our MPs, like our bankers, are just not very good at their jobs.

John Thurso remembers his grandfather Sir Archibald Sinclair

The BBC News website has an interview with John Thurso, the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness and Sutherland. In it he recalls his grandfather, Sir Archibald Sinclair, who led the Liberal Party between 1935 and 1945 and served in Churchill's wartime cabinet:

Sir Archibald suffered a stroke in 1952, the year before Mr Thurso was born.

"I remember him getting me to stand on a chair and make a speech after a lunch when I was six or seven. He would sit there in his big armchair and shout 'hear, hear'.

"Then, in '59, he had his second stroke and was largely bedridden after that.

"The tragedy is that, when I left his house he would lean across and hold my arm and try to say something. I remember him listening to the news and quite clearly wanting to say things."

Sir Archibald died in 1970.

An earlier post on Liberal England discussed Sir Archibald's grandfather.

Lib-Con: New Politics, Old Partnership

There was a programme on Radio 4 yesterday evening about the historical precedents for co-operation between the Liberals and Conservatives. As the webpage for the programme says:

The new politics isn't as new as people think. Shaun Ley looks back at the historical links between Conservatives and Liberals, the previous coalitions and the common philosophical traditions between the two parties.

What can history tell us about the implications for the parties today? We hear from the LibDem MP John Thurso, whose grandfather Archibald Sinclair was the last Liberal to sit in a cabinet during the wartime coalition. Lord Heseltine explains why he first stood for election under the Liberal Conservative banner. And Professor David Dutton of Liverpool University explains how the two parties have converged and diverged over the last century, and identifies some risks to both parties in the future.

You can hear it via that page for the next six days.