The Joy of Six 1522

"Why, if the homes are unregistered and therefore illegal, are English councils still placing children in them? And how can the system be reformed so this doesn't continue to happen?" Noel Titheradge investigates a continuing scandal.

James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."

Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.

"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.

Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.

"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.

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"What matters is not the books themselves, but the thinking they reward. They cultivate a taste for compression over depth, for transferable lessons over context, for confidence over uncertainty. They attract people who want the world to be legible in a handful of rules, who prefer inspiration to explanation, and who mistake momentum for understanding. Over time, this becomes a habit of mind: a way of approaching problems that privileges clarity and speed over patience and complexity." John Oxley fears British politics is suffering from Airport Book Brain.

Rosalind KennyBirch looks at the way Finland counters fake news. "There is no vaccine for fake news, but media literacy can come close."

Rose Runswick has posted Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's election address from 1906. Here he is on the record of the Conservatives: "The legacy which they have bequeathed to their successors – and I say it in no partisan spirit, but under a full sense of responsibility – is in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications."

"The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians." John McHugo highlights the plight of Palestinian Christians.

"Stoke-on-Trent says it is facing a heritage emergency and needs £325m in public and private funding to safeguard its historic sites and stories," reports Rebecca Atkinson.

Gráinne Maguire lists five things Is This Thing On? gets wrong about the world of stand up: "Will Arnett has all the natural funny bones of a dead family pet. He wears the same expression the entire time—startled and blinking, like Eeyore caught looking up porn at work and hauled into HR. Yet we're supposed to believe this set – more misguided late-night voice note than comedy – is all it takes for him to be embraced by the world of comedy."

The unsafe bridge over the Staffs & Worcs Canal at Penkridge

Photo: Canal & Rivers Trust 

Having been guilty of posting a fake AI image of the scene of Bluesky, I thought I'd better see what is really happening at the closed bridge over the Staffs & Worcs Canal at Penkridge.

So here is the notice on the Canal & Rivers Trust site:

On New Year's Eve, debris was reported in the canal below the bottom gates at Lock 38.

An investigation found that the debris came from the bywash culvert next to the lock. The culvert, which also runs under a road bridge and beside a house, appears to have collapsed. This has created a large void that is threatening the road and the nearby property.

For safety, the canal and road are now closed while engineers assess the damage and carry out repairs. The towpath remains open. Stop planks have been placed across the canal above the top gates to maintain water levels upstream and prevent further damage to the culvert.

We will provide updates as soon as engineers have completed their assessment.

The Joy of Six 1375

"As I stood outside the barricaded burial site and watched through a peephole, I felt a sense of joy. The grounds are now full of cabins, small diggers and fencing. There are workers in hard hats, forensic archaeologists and a multitude of others who will keep us up to date on what they find. Hopefully it will be the full number - 796 little bodies waiting for a dignified burial." Catherine Corless refused to give up until she learnt what became of the children who died at the mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway.

Ben Ansell dissects the increasing extremism in British commentary about race: "For a large number of writers - from Matt Goodwin to David Goodhart, Lord Frost to the MP Neil O’Brien - the distinctions among British citizens are apparently important and worthy of what can at best be described as suspicion and at worst denigration."

Olivia Bridgen asks if trail hunting is an important tradition or just a cover for illegal hunting.

"Racism, especially Islamophobia, is impossible to avoid in Farage-adjacent TikTok. Some of it is imbued with nationalist melancholia, the screen dotted with Union Jacks, clips of wartime heroics interspersed with laments for what the country has become. Some of it is didactic, explaining to the viewer where Islam originated, and the dangers it supposedly presents." William Davies ventures into Faragist TikTok.

Josh Jones looks at research that confirms what philosophers and writers have always known: walking fosters creativity.

"The six town centres are now littered with empty and derelict historic buildings, many of which are in the hands of absentee owners. Meanwhile, those that are put to use are often terribly managed by what can only be described as rogue landlords." Dave Proudlove weighs the prospects for postindustrial Stoke-on-Trent.

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"With just two days until we mark three years since the invasion, we need to talk about this man, because no one truly knows what could have happened if he hadn’t been there to lead. This is a man who could have left. A man who was expected to leave. The world was really expecting he would run." Victor Kravchuk pays tribute to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Jennie Kermode is worried that US politicians are again talking about mass sterilisation: "The US first began sterilising people with mental illness - requiring neither their consent nor that of their next of kin – in Pennsylvania in 1905, and in 1927 this was formally ruled to be in accordance with the constitution. Although never actually banned, it decreased dramatically after 1978, when new regulations ruled that consent was ... necessary."

When did rock 'n roll die? Chris Dalla Riva and Daniel Parris offer a statistical analysis.

"In an unnamed city, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) keeps his head down in the Department of Records, covering for ineffectual boss Mr Kurtzmann (a brilliant Ian Holm). Meanwhile in his dreams, he is a winged warrior, who soars amongst the clouds, battling a giant samurai creature and rescuing a Botticelli Venus from her aerial cage." Tim Pelan celebrates the chaotic genius of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Londonopia finds that the grazing of sheep in London's parks has a long and complex history: "Just when you thought sheep had permanently retired from their park-keeping duties, along came World War II. With food shortages rampant and every inch of available land needed for practical use, parks across London were repurposed for the war effort. Victory gardens sprung up in many green spaces, and in some cases, sheep were reintroduced to provide both wool and meat."

Ben Austwick takes us to Lud’s Church, a natural geological feature in the Staffordshire Peak District, with rich literary and religious connections.

Wallaby on the loose photographed in Nottinghamshire village

Forget big cats: BBC News has a story about the sighting of  a wallaby in the Nottinghamshire village of Calverton.

What is more, someone has taken a remarkably clear photo of the incongruous marsupial.

He or she may well be a lone escapee, but wallabies can survive in England. A colony of them flourished in the Staffordshire Peak District for decades after the war, though the conventional wisdom is that the harsh winter of 2010 did for them.

But, intriguingly, a story on The Manc suggests there have been more recent sightings in the area.