Reform leader of Leicestershire County Council resigns

Dan Harrison has resigned as leader of Leicestershire County Council's minority Reform UK administration, reports BBC News:

It comes after Harrison had apologised after being recorded saying 76 council solicitors would be made redundant, branding them "incompetent", before saying "what I want to look at now is the women", in remarks which were then released on social media.

Harrison has said that his deputy Kevin Crook will become the council's acting leader.

The Reform Party UK Exposed Bluesky has talked of rumours that several Reform councillors are in talks with Restore Britain or considering going independent. See last week's Harborough Mail report for some background on that.

All this has rather squeezed out news of the censure of the first deputy leader that Harrison appointed, Joseph Boam (the Private Pike of the Reform group).

A new article for Central Bylines: We shouldn’t laugh at Ladybird books but celebrate them

I've a new article on Central Bylines this morning: it's a defence of the much-misunderstood Ladybird Books:

The classic Ladybird Book is no more. The imprint still exists, but it’s based in London – the signs at Loughborough station welcoming people to "The Home of Ladybird Books" were taken down long ago.

There's always an element of nostalgia when writing about old children’s books, but what many of us feel when thinking of Ladybird is not sadness for a lost past so much as sadness for a lost future.

You may also be interested in my recent article on Malcolm Saville for Lion & Unicorn.

Bob Trubshaw revisits the Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire

Between the 1870s and 1970s there were extensive open-cast ironstone quarries in parts of Leicestershire. However few traces of these survive. In this video Bob Trubshaw summarises and updates the extensive research of Eric Tonks, which was published in the 1990s, shortly before his death.

From 33.17 you can see the quarries at Nevill Holt near Market Harborough. Most critics now accept that Nevill Holt Hall was the principal model for Bonkers Hall.

Stalling an Ambush and protecting more than the countryside

The Rutland Panther and the Blair government's abandoned plan to build an eco-town in the Harborough District both feature in a new novel, Stalling an Ambush. In a guest post, its author, Emma Lee, introduces the book.

My novel Stalling an Ambush is set in and around the village of Stoughton in Leicestershire, where, in 2009, an eco-town of at least 15,000 houses, called Pennbury, was proposed. 

Pennbury met with strong local opposition. It was on the wrong side of Leicester city for motorway access, would have put extra cars on already congested roads and wasn’t even on a bus route. Not only that, it was going to be built on farmland at a time of growing concerns about food security, and would have closed Leicester Aero Club as the site included the airport the club use. 

Perhaps then it seems a minor thing to also raise concerns about the so-called Rutland Panther, a large black cat whose territory stretches from the Harborough District in Leicestershire to Rutland. There’s no definitive evidence of the cat, but many sightings have been reported, including one from a surprised motorcyclist in Kings Norton, near Stoughton. Periodically, BBC Wildlife and Big Cat Conversations podcast report on sightings nationwide.

Generally, countryside residents tolerate these mythical cats. If they are real, they are unlikely to impinge on humans. The panther in Stalling an Ambush observes:

She knew two things about humans. They weren’t edible but they were dangerous.

So, in the novel, when radio programme researcher Frances Winter is despatched to interview a Stoughton resident about another sighting, she runs through the interview on autopilot. The interviewee doesn’t have any evidence. Frances drives out to the airfield to take a photo. The novel imagines Pennbury got the go ahead, but was stalled as the economy stalled in the Credit Crunch, and the aero club had abandoned their home. 

Frances discovers something that shouldn’t be there – observing waiting, adapting – and now has the unlooked for responsibility of deciding how much the world needs to know and what the cost of knowing can be. Stalling an Ambush is described as an uncomfortable, tense novel of observation, responsibility and the consequences of the wild not being in secluded places. Her manager observes,  "You know, when you get over the fact that these are serious killing machines, they’re actually quite attractive."

The novel is firmly rooted in the eastern Leicestershire countryside, drawing on both real and fictional locations. Previously I had a short story, Snowena, printed in an anthology, Gentle Footprints which included what turned out to be Richard Adams' last published short story. His story Leopard Aware was written from the viewpoint of a leopard. 

That prompted the idea of exploring some of the story of Stalling an Ambush from the panther’s viewpoint:

"There were old traces of fox, badger and pheasant. No recent scents. No other cats. No recent smell of human either. She slid into the undergrowth. This was her territory now.”

Stalling an Ambush is available from most online bookshops, including Bookshop.org.

Emma Lee was born in South Gloucestershire and now lives in Leicestershire. Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many anthologies and magazines in Britain and abroad.

"A little heaven here on earth": Launde Abbey in Leicestershire

Remember Thomas Cromwell's final words in the wonderful Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light?

"There is an abbey, Launde, in the heart of England. The air is always sweet there and it's quiet. A little heaven here on earth. And I think to myself: 'I'll live here one day, when all my work is done.'"

Launde Abbey is in Leicestershire – in Harborough District, indeed – and though Cromwell didn't get to live there, his son did and is buried in the chapel. Today it is a Church of England retreat and conference centre.

The BBC Radio Leicester's Secret Leicestershire series has two short programmes on Launde:

• History in the making
• The Cromwell connection

Dysfunctional council to be abolished after years of controversy and "all out civil war"

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Leicester Mercury.

I know things can get pretty het up on the city council, but the authority in question here is Witherley Parish Council. 

The village of Witherley lies on the Leicestershire-Warwickshire border near Atherstone, and we are able to bring you exclusive video of its most recent attempt to conduct a parish council meeting.

An afternoon at Foxton locks (with added alpacas)

I went to Foxton Locks this afternoon. I met these charming alpacas, and there were boats, locks, the remains of an Edwardian inclined plane and stuff too.

The passenger ferry across the River Soar near Loughborough

Here's something I didn't know. There's a chain ferry that takes foot passengers across the River Soar at Normanton on Soar, where the river forms the boundary between Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

The ferry operates on Saturdays and Sundays from the beginning of April until the end of September. A crossing costs £1 per person, with an additional charge of 50p for bicycles and dogs.

A report on West Bridgford Wire says:

The ferry, which is believed to be the last chain-operated passenger ferry of its kind in the UK, dates back to at least 1770. Estimates suggest a crossing may have operated at the site as early as the 13th century. ...

It was once used by fishermen and people travelling to markets in Loughborough. Newspaper reports from 1977 said the crossing was regularly used during the 1920s, when the fare was one penny.

Some 40 volunteers now operate the ferry during the season. It carries approximately 3,000 passengers each year, with a record of about 140 crossings in one day.

Growing up at Foxton Locks around 1910

Another video from Bob Trubshaw. He writes on YouTube:

My maternal grandmother – known as a child as Dorothy Durran and in later life as Sarah Dallaston – spent her junior school years living at Bottom Lock Cottage at Foxton Locks. Her family were the lockkeepers at Foxton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

I interviewed Sarah in 1988 and this video mostly uses these recordings.  In 1991 I published edited transcripts of the interviews, along with family photographs, as a booklet called Around Foxton.  In 2016 that booklet was revised and made available as a free PDF.

For an excellent video about the history of Foxton Locks see @OurHistoryUnderfoot and their video Foxton Locks and the inclined plane by foot, narrow boat and drone.

Horse Nell 'stable' after canal rescue

Photo: Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service   

I may be in Shropshire, but our Headline of the Day comes from the BBC News Leicestershire pages:

Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service said they were called to Aylestone Meadows after Nell "must have decided to cool-off in the canal near the Packhorse Bridge" but suddenly became stuck in the waterway.

A technical rescue team from Southern Station and a crew from Wigston Fire Station were dispatched to the scene on Saturday evening, and working alongside local farmers they lifted the animal out and had her checked over by a vet.

A statement from the service said Nell now "appears to be in a stable condition" at home, adding: "You can lead a horse to water, but it can be a struggle getting it back out again."

The judges did find a Shropshire Star story to commend highly:

"The impact would be huge": Residents rally against plans for three new homes in Shropshire village

Recycling centres to stay shut due to "high demand"

Yes, Leicestershire County Council is run by Reform. Why do you ask?

Anyway, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The Joy of Six 1557

Stefan Wolff, Elīna Šteinerte and Hervé Ascensio have investigated Russia’s military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in its occupied territories: "The headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn't yield to the pressure to do so."

"The university’s own financial reports show that 16 members of the University Executive Board are paid an average of £241k – a 27 per cent increase over three years while the institution has been going through financial difficulties. We have also seen the recruitment of highly paid and non-academic 'professors of practice', who are often industry figures without teaching and research experience. New managerial roles with grandiose titles such as 'associate pro-vice chancellor for education and student experience' have been created across the institution." John Heathershaw takes us inside the crisis at the University of Exeter.

"Deaths, misconduct in public office, rat infestations, and a climate of fear." Emma Guy reports on Leicester's privately run HMP Fosse Way.

Gawain Towler explains Rupert Lowe's sudden interest in cooperation with Reform UK: "A  man of sixty-eight, a man elected twice on the coattails of Nigel Farage, who has spent eighteen months declaring that his purpose was the destruction of Nigel Farage, has looked at 8.7 per cent in a nationally ignored by-election and concluded that his moment is now or never. It is not unity he wants. It is relevance, and he is in a hurry for it."

"Works such as Robert McFarlane's The Old Ways, Tom Cox's 21st Century Yokel, Benjamin Myers' Under the Rock, and Edward Parnell's seminal Ghostland explore the connection between the self, the landscape, and the stories and histories that permeate and in many ways 'haunt' these landscapes." Lydia Waites considers the role of environmentalism in recent 'folkish' English writing.

Fed Kandi photographs the public art on the campuses of Lougborough University and the University of Leicester.

The Joy of Six 1553

Michael Savage reports that journalists are self-censoring their reporting on right-wing protests, Donald Trump's administration and trans issues because of growing concerns about their personal safety.

"The magazine’s extensive output about Islam emerges from a coherent ideological viewpoint. Muslims are invaders. They don’t belong in this country. They don’t share our values and they threaten our public spaces. Any civic engagement by Muslims in Britain is suspect and should be resisted." Peter Oborne itemises the Spectator's rabid Islamophobia.

 Alistair Jones on the reorganisation of local government in Leicestershire: "Rutland is deemed too small to be a cost-effective council (although, personally, I remain unconvinced). Similarly, although more contentiously, the population argument was likely to see some expansion of the Leicester City Council boundaries. The question was going to be: how far? And now we know. There will be a significantly enlarged city council, and the remainder of the county and Rutland will form a single unitary authority."

In the latest move to censor US school libraries, one district is considering getting rid of them altogether. Erin Reed reports from Clay County in Florida.

"Both detectives were created or at least popularized by women; both possessed a typically female kind of intelligence that was easy to miss or dismiss. But the women who made them lived entirely different relationships to ownership and credit, and those relationships come through in the characters themselves." As the early Miss Marple and Nancy Drew novels are entering the public domain, Ellen O’Connell Whittet asks what comes next for the characters.

Rob Bagchi recalls the Joe Mercer's short, sunny spell as England's caretaker manager in 1974: "He gave them a blueprint for renovation that was disastrously ignored when the caution and anxiety he had temporarily banished returned with a vengeance."

Exploring the Ivanhoe Line east of Coalville

With the Leicester Mercury reporting a new push to restore passenger services to the railway line from Leicester to Burton upon Trent, it's time to visit it again with Our History Underfoot.

In May we saw the line between Burton and Coalville, which hasn't carried any goods traffic for two years and is already showing signs of decay.

This time we go east from Coalville about half the way to Leicester. Matt sees, or at least hears, more quarry traffic than he expected and comes across relics of the district's early railway history. 

A third video will complete his journey to Leicester.

Labour's weakening of local government will do nothing for voters' confidence in the political system

So Harborough District Council is to disappear, subsumed into a single authority for the whole of the county outside the city of Leicestershire. And Leicester is to be expanded to make the hole in the doughnut bigger.

City boundaries have to be expanded from time to time, but I'm not sure the areas Leicester is taking will be delighted. For some years there has been criticism that its elected mayor Peter Soulsby, now in his fourth term, is keen on prestige projects in the city centre, but less interested in bread-and-butter issues like litter and the state of the pavements out in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, the abolition of all the district and borough councils in the county can only make government feel more distant, and this at a time when our democracy is being challenged from within and without. 

I was in Loughborough today. It's a large town with a university, but it will soon lose Charnwood Borough, the council that looks after it and its hinterland. And Leicestershire, of course, is not the only county seeing huge changes.

This revolution in local government was not mentioned in Labour's last manifesto and there has been little debate about it since the election. It does appear to have been set in place because Labour has a vision for revitalising local democracy, but simply because someone has told ministers that there is an ideal size for a council and many are smaller than this.

I am reminded of a comment by Lord Bonkers:

I’m told that when a Labour junior minister discovered that councils are not All The Same Size, he started screaming and had to be sent home in a taxi. 

The nearest beach to Leicestershire and Birmingham

 Warning issued as beach closest to Leicestershire shuts amid health fears

So ran a headline in the Leicester Mercury. I wondered where the nearest beach to Leicestershire is. Hunstanton? Skegness? 

But it is, of course, on Rutland Water.

The story is about the brief closure (it was reopened this morning) of the beach at Sykes Lane there because of dangerous levels of blue-green algae.

I took these photos some years ago at Whitwell Harbour, which is just along the coast but lacks sand.

Secret Birmingham has worked out that Rutland Water has the nearest Blue Flag beach to them too.

Franz Kafka in North West Leicestershire

From BBC News:

Barbara Skedd was in "absolute horror" when she opened a letter addressed to her executors offering them condolences on her death.

The 74-year-old received a letter to her Ibstock home, in Leicestershire, from North West Leicestershire District Council in May to update its council tax records following the family's "recent bereavement".

And that's not all:

Skedd said she was in tears after the initial shock of reading that she had died in the council letter, dated 21 May.

She said anger then followed when she discovered all her benefit money, including her Personal Independence Payment (PIP), Industrial Injuries Disablement Benefit (IIDB), pension and pension credit - had been frozen.

"Everything stopped dead," she told the BBC.

"I've not had money to buy food, no money to put petrol in my car. I can't do anything or go anywhere."

There's more:

She contacted the government department several times to correct the issue and was told an officer would visit her to confirm she was alive, she added.

"That horrified me to be honest," she said.

"I said, 'I'm talking to you. What more proof do you need?'"

Skedd said since the visit she has had "no explanation, no apologies, nothing" from the DWP.

"Just tell me why it all happened," she said.

District council backs a parish council for Market Harborough

An extraordinary meeting of Harborough District Council has voted unanimously in favour of a parish council for Market Harborough, reports BBC News.

This vote, which took place on Monday, followed a public poll in which 86 per cent of those who voted supported the establishment of a new council. I was one of them.

The BBC report makes great play of the fact that only 24 per cent of those eligible cast a vote, but I wonder if this is such a bad figure for such a poll.

Given the possibility that Market Harborough will be governed from Glenfield in future – it would be Nottingham if Labour had its way – the existence of a forum where the town to debate and decide what it needs is vital.

Knaptoft: The very heart of England

The passage below is from W.G. Hoskins' Midland England. Published as part of Batsford's The Face of Britain series, that book captures the charm of this part of the world better than any other I know:

There is, for example, the green deserted country around Knaptoft in the south of Leicestershire, where the pastures of central England hardly touch five hundred feet above the sea and yet they are the watershed between Trent and Severn; and streams gather here that end in the Humber, the Wash and the Bristol Channel.

This, more than anywhere, is the very heart of England: Knaptoft, with its ruined church, its font under the trees, its village under the sheep-pastures since Henry VII's time, its medieval manor house marked only by a rectangular island within a drying moat, and the later Elizabethan hall itself falling into slow ruin at the top of the field.

Once full of life, a thriving village of plough-land and meadow in the thirteenth century, the squire within his moat and the parson in the newly built church, now it dreams its life away in the autumn sunshine, deserted by all save occasional blackberry-pickers.

Grace Dieu: A railway, a canal and a priory in ruins

This video takes us to Thringstone in west Leicestershire to walk the disused Charnwood Forest Railway, which once terminated at Loughborough Derby Road station. It's a walk I've thought of doing myself.

There are glimpses of the short-lived Charnwood Forest Canal, which also ran towards Loughborough,  though not quite far enough to reach the River Soar, so it was connected the wider canal system by a wagonway.

And then we reach the ruins of Grace Dieu Priory. The Friends of Grace Dieu will tell you all about them.

The poet Wordsworth writes:

Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,

Rugged and high, of Charnwood’s forest ground,

Stand yet, but, Stranger, hidden from thy view

The ivied ruins of forlorn Grace Dieu,

Erst a religious House, which day and night

With hymns resounded and the chanted rite.