The Joy of Six 1476

Chris Dillow argues that if government wants to foster economic growth, it will have to fight for it: "Right now, the social transformation needed to raise growth requires the government to face down the powerful interests of, if not capital in general, then at least the more regressive elements of it such as rentiers, monopolists and media barons."

Virginia Heffernan investigates Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon, Edge. She finds that it infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science.

"'Free School Meals' and 'Free School Clothing' were an absolute lifeline for us ... That support meant I could walk through the school gates looking like everyone else, focusing on my education rather than the clothes on my back. It taught me that while education is a right, the cost of accessing it can be a barrier we must actively dismantle." Shaffaq Mohammed on the importance of the Lib Dem amendment, passed by the Lords, that will put a price cap on school uniforms.

Lauren Leek crunches the numbers to see why so many pubs have closed: "So here’s the political economy of pub closures. It is not: people stopped going. It is: pubs became collateral in leveraged buyouts, debt costs were passed down as higher rents and lower investment, and the pubs that couldn’t sustain the extraction closed, while the ones that could were reshaped into higher-margin branded concepts serving a wealthier clientele."

Did climate change lead to greater persecution of witches? York Historian weighs the evidence.

"Whenever a performer had a Muppet on their hand, they never broke character. So all the time in between takes, Gonzo would still be Gonzo and I was still talking to Gonzo, not Dave Goelz, who is the performer of Gonzo. I believed that Gonzo and Rizzo were my friends, and we were on an adventure together. Rizzo in particular, Steve Whitmire, was so funny. We would just play all day long." Kevin Bishop shares his memories of playing Jim Hawkins in Muppet Treasure Island with Brian VanHooker.

Three-legged lion makes record-breaking swim across a crocodile-infested river - for sex

Many thanks to the reader who nominated the Telegraph for this blog's Headline of the Day Award. The story may be behind a paywall, but the headline is in plain sight.

I had some clear-the-air talks with the judges yesterday evening about their insistence on choosing videos for my blog, and... here are Elton John and the Muppets.

Why the general election may well be on 28 January 2025

I now believe it's likely that Rishi Sunak will put off the general election until the last possible moment, which is 28 January 2025.

It's only human for him to hold on to office in the hope that "something will turn up", though it's hard now to imagine anything that could turn the polls round enough for the Conservatives to win. Victory over an invading force of Martian spaceships might just do it, I suppose.

But there may be another human reason for his delay.

In the autumn of 1978 it was widely thought that Jim Callaghan was about to call an election. Instead, in his speech to the TUC Congress, he mocked journalists who were speculating about it by singing the old music hall song Waiting at the Church.

Yes, really.

He soldiered on, but loss control of the unions and then lost of a vote of confidence. There was no guarantee he would have won in 1978, but things only got worse for him after he declined to call an election then.

It was I think James Fenton - now a distinguished poet, then the political sketchwriter for the New Statesman - who pointed out that "Prime Minister 1976-9" would look much better against Callaghan's name in the history books than "Prime Minister 1976-8".

So maybe Sunak wants to be remembered as "Prime Minister 2022-5" rather than "Prime Minister 2022-4".

Sadly, I can't find a video of Jim Callaghan singing Waiting at the Church to embed, so we'll have to make do with Miss Piggy.

You what?

John Denver: Rocky Mountain High

John Denver was everywhere in the Seventies. His gentle take on country music may not have pleased hardcore fans of the genre, but he was enormously popular with a wider public.

Turn on the radio and it wouldn't be long before you heard one of his songs - possibly Annie's Song played by the flautist James Galway, who was everywhere in those days too. Rather more creditably, he wrote Leaving on a Jet Plane, which Peter, Paul and Mary made famous.

His pleasant personality made him a favourite on television. Notably, he was a friend of Jim Henson and starred in two Muppet Show specials: John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together and Rocky Mountain Holiday. You may enjoy The Twelve Days of Christmas from the first of these.

I see John Denver's stellar career as stemming from the same roots as the popularity of The Waltons and Jimmy Carter's election as President: a desire for a simple, wholesome America after the shocks of Vietnam and Watergate. 

Denver was politically active himself as a notable supporter of environmental causes. And in the debate on harmful pop lyrics he stood with Frank Zappa and the angels against censorship. He also toured Russia and China in an era when few American artists did.

His fame dwindled after the Seventies, and he seems to have problems with alcohol, as evidenced by several convictions for drink-driving. He died in 1997 after crashing his private plane.

Turn on the radio today and you won't hear John Denver, but I still like Rocky Mountain High.