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Cicero's Songs, making a welcome return, has naught for your comfort: "The decadence of the American Empire is upon us, and the consequences will be dire, unless the EU can manage to secure the defeat of Putin without American support.  Quite possibly the USA may now seek to obstruct the Europeans in their attempts to bring Putin's murderous misadventure to a close."

The allegations against British special forces operating in Afghanistan will not go away, argues Mark Urban.

John Sweeney says Reform's 19-year-old leader of Warwickshire County Council is skating on thin ice: "[George] Finch’s comments have the potential to jeopardise a fair trial and that, of course, would harm the victim and her family – and waste a huge amount of public money. ... Most people know that after someone has been charged for a serious offence, you must take care not to publish or say anything in the public square that could prejudice the criminal proceedings. ... Finch appears to have forgotten this."

"Here’s a rule I have developed for myself: never talk about a culture-war topic with anyone who only wants to talk to you about that topic. These conversations can only be helpful if they happen as part of a relationship. If you’re going in cold on a very hard topic, you will not be able to experience each other as people, only as opinions or symbols." Naomi Alderman offers 12 rules for online survival.

Dezeen chooses 10 key buildings by high-tech pioneer Nicholas Grimshaw.

"Screwball elements run through their films like runaway socialites: eccentric leads, unexpected reversals, physical comedy, chase sequences, false identities; best intentions go hilariously awry; hard-bitten cynics battle zany dreamers in matters of romance and will." Amber Sparks celebrates the Coen brothers' 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy 

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"The 'peace deal' that America is now attempting to force on Ukraine, is not like Neville Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich; it is far, far worse," says Jonty Bloom.

Sam Bright on the right-wingers who claim to love Britain, but want to destroy all its institutions: "The whole of Britain has become one big Oxford restaurant after a Bullingdon Club dinner: the tables upturned, the glass smashed, the staff left to sweep up the mess while the lads stumble out laughing, having dumped a bag of cash on the table by way of compensation."

"This feels partly like a sidelining of Wales in the national agenda, but also something more than that: a kind of disaster ennui. Floods aren’t new any more. They have become commonplace: but the way they are disregarded by some of the media and the government is deeply dangerous." Jude Rogers asks why the floods Storm Claudia caused in Monmouthshire received so little coverage.

Jack Walton remembers the lost world of Greater Manchester’s newspapers: "The Manchester Evening News is now the only local newsroom in Greater Manchester that has more than a handful of staff reporters, but go back 25 years and it would have been one of a dozen. Grand old titles like the Oldham Evening Chronicle and the Bolton Evening News used to inhabit imposing buildings which were buzzing with staff. In 2011, the Chronicle had 22 journalists and 76 total staff at its Union Street offices."

Colin Thurbron gave the eulogy for the writer Gillian Tindall at her memorial gathering last week: "'Houses and barns,' she wrote, 'gate posts, hedgerows, field slopes and the lie of paths, persist and persist, even when people that created them are earth themselves'.  In effect cities and buildings become, in her work, a palimpsest, in which the past lingers beneath the surface of things, and continues to shape them."

"Twain eventually came to believe that his idyllic childhood in Hannibal – immortalised in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – had been only a dream, from which he had awakened to inescapable loss and misery. The boom and bust so redolent of American life haunted Twain, as it would F Scott Fitzgerald." Edward Short reviews a new biography of Mark Twain.

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"Make no mistake: Raise the Colours and Unite the Kingdom, which drew more than 100,000 protesters to London last month, want the same thing: nativist dominance; a fortress Britain built on exclusion. It poses as spontaneous grassroots patriotism, but scratch its surface and you’ll find that veteran far-right and neo-fascist organisers are behind its coordination and financing." The global far-right is brainwashing a town near you, warns Joseph S. Furey.

Richard Ovendon says libraries are palaces for the people that must be defended: "More than a decade of austerity has ... ravaged the public library sector in many parts of our nation. There are fewer palaces for the people, many are open for fewer hours than before 2010, and some of them are in dire need of physical repair."

"The challenge for anyone trying to bring propagandists to trial has always been connecting vile words to horrific acts." Peter Pomerantsev on holding Putin's propagandists to account.

Liz Green says that support for councillors is vital to democracy: "Within months of being elected, many are already wrestling with exhaustion, frustration or a sense of being out of their depth. For those stepping into cabinet or committee chair roles, the pressure intensifies."

Zoe Williams mourns Jilly Cooper: "People got groped and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how OK it is in many far more literary books of the era."

"Another picture here, 28 London Streets, is a gallery of evocative street names from their neighbourhood – Princelet Street, Henriques Street, Chudleigh Street. Instead of gurning or cavorting as in their other self portraits, the artists here are two misty, spectral entities: the ghosts of Gilbert & George, haunting their old streets for ever." Jonathan Jones enjoys the G&G exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.

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Peter Jukes reveals that, during the crucial period when Nathan Gill, the former MEP convicted of accepting bribes, was most active, working directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most senior ally in Ukraine, he was also one of Nigel Farage’s closest confidantes.

"Labour’s former tough talk on sleaze and lobbying has largely melted away. Aside from tinkering with rules on MPs’ second jobs, there has been no sign of meaningful reform – despite the lobbying industry’s own trade body, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, calling for it." Peter Geoghegan went to the Labour Party Conference.

Fiona Harvey fact checks the arguments Kemi Badenoch used in support of her vow to repeal Climate Change Act if her party wins power.

Hilary Cremlin, reports Varsity, has called for the "rewilding" if the school system: "Despite decades of reform, I think the school system as we presently configure it may be beyond redemption. This isn’t an attack on the idea of education, or on the thousands of brilliant teachers who give the job their all. But government after government has tinkered with education when the basic model is obsolete."

"The London Stadium was conceived as a world-class athletics venue and perhaps the kindest thing you can say about it today is that it remains a world-class athletics venue. The shallow rake efficiently disperses the noise up the back straight; the high distant seats offer a magnificent view of the javelin competition. There is a nice canal alongside and as much boutique street food as you can eat. But a walled fortress it is not, and can never be. And frankly it is the most visible symptom, if not the underlying cause, of modern West Ham." Jonathan Liew smells loss and dislocation at the famous London club.

Bearded vultures often pick up human artefacts to build or repair their nests, and those nests can remain in use for centuries. The result, reports Andrew Paul, is a gold mine for archaeologists.

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Adam Barnett itemises Nigel Farage's long history of support for Vladimir Putin: "On the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion, Nigel Farage ... argued for ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine – an odd time to do that – and when the war started he called it 'a consequence of EU and NATO expansion'. Last year he called on the west to negotiate with Putin, adding that 'the relentless insistence on continued war is worrying. Whose insistence, Nigel?" 

"There are few fundamental political differences between Corbyn and Sultana. There is a clash instead of style, but this could well be used to their advantage. The conflicts are many when it comes to the wider group involved, however." Sienna Rodgers takes us the power struggles attending the birth of the proposed new left-wing party.

Francis FitzGibbon on the threat to jury trials: "Juries decide​ the outcome of about 1 per cent of criminal cases in England and Wales, and yet the jury system is permanently under threat. The latest threat comes in Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts."

"The problem has always been where to place him. Unlike Monsarrat he wasn’t published in the 1930s, so can’t be ranked alongside early social realists like Graham Greene and George Orwell. Two decades later he was older than the proto-Angry Young Man writers John Wain and Kingsley Amis. Nor did he write about life outside London, like William Cooper, John Braine and others." Simon Matthews explores the life and works of novelist and TV dramatist Alexander Baron

"As luck would have it, the club had arranged Mick Channon’s testimonial match for 3 May, and so two days after the cup triumph, fans were still in a celebratory mood as they packed into the Dell to see their heroes. The FA Cup was paraded in front of an official attendance of 29,508 that night, although those who were there would probably tell you there were a few more than that. Spare a thought for the hundreds outside who could not get a ticket." Historic Southampton tells the story of The Dell.

Andrew Nette watches a favourite political thriller. "The Day of the Jackal spends a hell of a lot of time just showing things being done and the minutia involved. For Jackal this includes creating and sourcing a false identity and designing, ordering and learning how to use a bespoke lightweight sniper rifle. ... The mechanics of the police investigation into Jackal’s identity and whereabouts is also painstakingly rendered and I love every minute of it."

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Denis Mikhailov, a Russian dissident lawyer now exiled to Poland, explains how Trump’s generosity to Putin only entrenches his tyranny: "For Putin, this meeting was not a platform for negotiations, but above all an instrument of political legitimisation. On the one hand, it was an opportunity to show the world that he is still being received, that he is capable of holding dialogue on equal terms with the President of the United States, despite the warrant of the International Criminal Court and his de facto political isolation."

"Your politically engaged supporters inhabit the networks where these narratives form. They populate the WhatsApp groups, the comment sections, the office conversations where political meaning gets made. When you demoralise them, you surrender these spaces to your opponents. The passionate few shape the context in which everyone else encounters politics." AE Snow discusses the government's failure to get its message across. 

Magda Osman says that though laws are being introduced across the world to reduce 'psychological harm' experienced online, there is no clear definition of what it is.

"Pubs help people feel connected to a local place. When they close, they can become sites of mourning, a painful reminder of change and decline. One resident of a former colliery village in Nottinghamshire said of the pub she had once worked in – now derelict, fire damaged and vandalised as it awaits redevelopment – that despite her wish that it had remained open it was now better to 'knock it down' to 'put us out of our misery'." Thomas Thurnell-Read and Robert Deakin have researched what is lost when pubs close.

"As editor of The Nation in Trinidad during the 1950s, C.L.R. James campaigned for the Barbadian Frank Worrell to be appointed as the first full-time black captain. The selectors' 'whole point was to continue to send to populations of white people, black or brown men under a white captain', James later wrote in Beyond a Boundary." Tim Wigmore on race, cricket and the history of the West Indies.

Dave Haslam champions a forgotten film  - The White Bus: "Scripted by Shelagh Delaney in 1965, it’s directed by Lindsay Anderson. The cast includes a very young Anthony Hopkins, and Arthur Lowe who had already played a role in Coronation Street but would go on to star as Captain Mainwaring in the hit TV series Dad’s Army."

Ed Davey's big day: Cheaper energy bills and challenging the BBC over Nigel Farage

This was Ed Davey on BBC Breakfast this morning. His determination to attack Nigel Farage at every turn, and hang his admiration for Vladimir Putin around his neck in particular, is clear.

Given that no one other party is prepared to have a go at Farage – the Conservatives agree with him, Labour is afraid its voters do – Ed is both performing a public service and exploiting a huge opportunity for the Liberal Democrats.

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Sienna Rogers says No. 10 sleepwalked into a crisis on welfare cuts: "The media rounds of ministers only deepened the frustration of dissatisfied MPs. Cabinet members repeatedly stated that the threshold changes to PIP eligibility were about getting people back into work, yet employment does not preclude receiving PIP; in fact, PIP was seen by the rebels as a key way of enabling disabled people to work."

Jenna Corderoy and Peter Geoghegan report that British police forces are hiding their collaboration with the US spying technology firm Palantir: "In both 2024 and 2025, multiple FOI requests about Palantir’s police contracts  - including from Liberty and the Good Law Project - were referred to the CRU [Central Referral Unit], which advised forces to withhold information."

"The shifting sands of politics are making electoral reform more likely. But almost certainly not before the 2030s. And much will depend on how the party system evolves in the years to come." Alan Renwick reacts to the rising support for electoral reform in opinion polls.

Russia is waging a silent war across Europe, not with tanks, but with propaganda, disinformation, AI and political influence, says Tetiana Toma.

"Like many enduring classics, Jaws - while in essence a rootin-tootin creature feature - is ideologically malleable, capable of meaning different things at different times. Is it a post-Watergate rumination on political malfeasance? A comment on laissez-faire capitalism? With the film now 50 years old, this month marking its half-centenary anniversary, it surprises me that more hasn’t been made about it as a commentary on responses to the climate crisis, given how strikingly this fits with its core messages." Luke Buckmaster argues that Jaws predicted the politics of climate inaction.

Elizabeth Ammon lists six things we learnt from the first test against India.

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"Part of this is down to the increasing centralisation of politics. The prime minister’s role has expanded dramatically over the decades, and cabinet government has been a fiction for a long time (Nigel Lawson claimed that cabinet meetings were the only time during the week that he got a rest). Even minor departmental decisions now have to be signed off by the centre and slotted into a communications grid." Sam Freedman on the rise and rise of political advisers.

Luke McGee suspects Putin is up against his biggest opponent yet - Trump's ego: "Trump clearly wants something that looks like a peace deal so he can show off what a great negator he is. If Trump now sees Putin as the block to a deal, that is a problem for Putin, as he has to make a choice between looking weak domestically or losing whatever goodwill he had with Trump’s White House."

"Yes, Pecksniff and Trump are bullshit artists of the highest order and neither ever experiences the least bit of remorse." Robin Bates argues that Charles Dickens, with Mr Pecksniff from Martin Chuzzlewit, anticipated Donald Trump.

Ray Newman watches Some People, which was made in Bristol in 1962 with a young cast including Ray Brooks and David Hemmings: "The church opened in 1956 and was typical of the space age houses of worship built on overspill estates all over the country in the post-war period. Unfortunately, though it looked astonishing, it was plagued with structural problems and was demolished in 1994, which only adds to the value Some People holds as a record of a time and place."

Benjamin Poore says that Shostakovich spoke truth to power - both Nazi and Communist - through his Babi Yar Symphony.

"Without any particular training, the animals - like human babies - appear to pick up basic human language skills just by listening to us talk. Indeed, cats learn to associate images with words even faster than babies do." Christa Lesté-Lasserre discusses a study that supports my view that cats are much cleverer than they choose to show us.

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Heidi Siegmund Cuda and Dmitrii Kovegin discuss where the anti-Putin resistance in Russia goes from here: "Putin killed Navalny. There is no other way to look at it. Putin along with Russian intelligence kills anyone who opposes him and the regime and who is influential. Anna Politkovskaya, Nemtsov etc. I believe Navalny went back to Russia knowing he would be imprisoned and likely die because he was courageous and believed in his purpose."

J. Mckenzie Alexander asks if Popper's 'Open Society' can survive the information age: "In the book I question if, in looking for likes or retweets, we’re actually chasing the sugar rush rather than the truly nutritious, substantive meal. My concern is that, in a number of senses, people are using these proxies as a way to satisfy very real and justified human needs - but these proxies just aren’t adequate to doing the job right,"

Georgia is descending into a pro-Putin Mafia state, reports Will Neal.

Felicity McWilliams explores the disproportionate impact of a small group of West Berkshire Commoners on the US-USSR nuclear arms race in the 1980s.

"What we have, then, is an omniscient narrator. Except, in a twist that seems to make no sense, where he does pop up to make a comment in his own person, it’s often to admit uncertainty, or to explain that what he’s saying is close to speculation." Daniel Soar on Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamzov.

"The collective angst of the motherless von Trapp children is vaguely written and blandly performed. The film urgently needs the stakes-raising intrusion of the Nazis in its second half; the breath-held tension of its climactic escape sequence may be drafted in from another movie altogether, but necessarily so." Guy Lodge celebrates the flawed but enduring film The Sound of Music.

Ed Davey calls for parliament to be recalled over Ukraine

Ed Davey has demanded a recall of parliament so it can debate the possible deployment of British troops in a peacekeeping force in Ukraine.

The Politico website quotes him as saying:

"Keir Starmer should bring back Parliament to debate his plans to support Ukraine.

"We have just days for the U.K. to lead in Europe and save Ukraine from a shoddy deal cooked up by Trump and Putin."

Politico says this comes from an interview of theirs with Davey, but I can't find it on the website.

Later in this report we read:

Davey ... offered flexibility about the timing of any vote, but insisted a check by parliament is needed as Starmer presses ahead.

Asked if it was essential that MPs should get a vote before any troops head to Ukraine, Davey said it was !too early to say. We’ve always been happy with retrospective votes. It’s about getting the balance right between Parliament making its voice heard and government doing what it thinks it needs to in order to protect the realm."

Davey said he welcomed Starmer attending Macron’s mini-summit in Paris on Monday as a good start. "But we need to do even more," he said. "For instance, it is time that the UK and Europe look at spending frozen Russian assets on protecting Ukraine."

Ed is often to be heard calling for a recall of parliament - he's as fond of recalls as the England cricket selectors were when I was a boy - but this time he is surely right.

If the US is no longer prepared to underwrite the security of Western Europe, then we are entering a new and frightening world. Our politicians going to have to step up and, in the case of the Conservative front bench, grow up.

I don't believe that Russia has designs on Western Europe, but it is an imperialist power with a near racist belief that anyone who speaks Russian should be its subject. This means that in future the Baltic states, for instance, will be in serious danger of a Russian invasion.

But then I was warning about Russian imperialism 20 years ago.

Later. The Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin has also contributed his thoughts in a Twitter thread.

John Major: The last Conservative statesman

Embed from Getty Images

John Major was a figure of fun to many while he was prime minister, but compared to any leader the Conservative Party has come up with since, he is a titan.

Here he is talking about J.D. Vance's speech on the World at One earlier today:

That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world. It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off very dangerous signals.

It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr. Putin.

In Mr. Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, on the statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.

You can listen to the whole thing on BBC Sounds - Major's interview begins at 12:20.

One interesting point Major makes is that his own father was brought up in the United States.

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Luke Clements says everyone should be talking about Tash Ashby. "Tash Ashby was 21 years old when she died. At the time of her death, she was street homeless, living in the undergrowth around Hereford bus station. Her lifeless body was found in her tent. Tash Ashby was taken away from her birth parents in 2011. Both her birth parents were at her inquest, along with her sister. Their pain was evident."

Chris Grey looks at the new year's Brexit news: "So this, coming up to five years since the day we formally left the EU, is the level to which the grand promises of Brexit have brought us: arguing over just how bad the damage has been. Not a single leading advocate for Brexit has ever apologized for the promises they made."

Over the past three years, Garry Kasparov has repeatedly argued that any chance at Russia becoming a democratic country not only requires its total military defeat but a shedding of its imperialistic legacy — a stance not widely embraced by other Russian opposition figures. Read an interview with him by The Kyiv Independent.

"For a decade now, liberals have wrongly treated Trump’s rise as a problem of disinformation gone wild, and one that could be fixed with just enough fact-checking." Facebook fact checks were never going to save us, argues Natasha Lennard, they just made liberals feel better.

Simon Taylor reflects on the ideas about public health and landscape design shared during a recent symposium.

"It’s one of the genre of midcentury English novels that feature little boys (usually travelling home from boarding school) who must bridge the gap between the pagan and the Christian in the haunted English landscape." I just wanted to share this comment by Katharine May on Lucy M. Boston's The Children of Green Knowe.

Man 'who looks like Vladimir Putin' hunted by cops after flashing on path in UK

The Mirror wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges hope Grandpa in his bunker has a good alibi.

Nigel Farage's defamation action against the Mail is going nowhere

Says who? Says a practising barrister, that's who.

Following the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry has introduced me to the world of legal vloggers. And one of my favourites is Alan Robertshaw, whose YouTube account is Art of Law.

He provides legal comment on stories in the news, and you can watch his views on Nigel Farage's spat with the Daily Mail at the top of this post.

Robertshaw, who also teaches young barristers, provides more general comment on the law from time to time.

So you can enjoy his thoughts on the art of advocacy and on how to be the perfect witness.

The latter could be useful to anyone. I once gave a witness statement for the defence in a civil action, but the plaintiff died before the case was heard, so I never got my day in court.

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"Over the past decade the Conservative Party has taken millions of pounds from individuals and businesses with ties to Russia. Just this week it was revealed that JCB, which is owned by a major Conservative donor, continued to send equipment to Russia for months after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, despite publicly saying that they wouldn’t. This is not a one off. Over the past decade, Russia-linked donors have repeatedly been given access to senior Conservative ministers after donating to the party. This culminated in the absurd spectacle of former Prime Ministers David Cameron and Boris Johnson." Adam Bienkov reminds us how the Tories emboldened Vladimir Putin.

Giorgia Tolfo on Chiswick Women's Aid, who opened the world’s first safe house for women and children in 1971: "In the first month of opening the centre, a woman suffering violence at home arrived asking for shelter. Erin Pizzey, CWA's coordinator and spokesperson, didn't think twice. She quickly made arrangements to host the woman at the centre until her situation improved. Word spread and soon more women arrived seeking shelter."

Amid rising rents and closing businesses and venues, locals in South London are increasingly forming cooperatives to take charge of spaces and reinvigorate their communities, reports Kemi Alemoru.

"He discovered ... the fine perspectivist and occasional architect Raymond Myerscough Walker living in a vagabond caravan in a wood near Chichester, his archive stored in his car, a near sunken Rover. Such persons are much more than also-rans. They are the substance of a parallel history of Stamp’s creation that abjures inflated reputations, vapid self-promoters and the slimy gibberish of PRs and journalists who pump them up to this day." Jonathan Meades reviews Interwar: British Architecture 1919-39 by Gavin Stamp.

John Boughton has been to Thamesmead, where tenants are trying to fight off unwanted redevelopment.

Jonathan Denby discusses the importance of gardening to Victorian politicians: "Their involvement in gardening went much further than being responsible for a large estate. At Hawarden, it was a fixture of Gladstone’s calendar to host the annual horticultural society show in his garden, giving an address on horticulture, which was later published as a pamphlet."

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Bill Browder, in a video interview by Kyiv Post, argues that: "Putin is a little man, who has stolen too much money, who is terrified of losing power. If he loses power he will go to jail, lose his money and die."

"The learning process of having your opinions tested, being exposed to new information, or accepting there are multiple, nuanced but rational positions on many contentious issues, should be an ongoing lifelong pursuit, but if children and young people are not exposed to this approach within schools, how do we expect them to achieve this?" Claire McGuiggan and Peter D'Lima make the developmental case for free speech in schools.

A right-wing political and media ecosystem pushing a US-style anti-abortion agenda is gaining traction in the UK, says Sian Norris.

Michael Bacon found going to a child psychoanalyst four times a week for three years bad enough: reading what she wrote about him was worse. His article a powerful indictment of the harm that 'therapy' with no scientific basis can do.

"Being a gardener means learning how to care for and appreciate the little things in nature. This involves a sense of pride in your work as well as respect for the space around you – an approach you can carry into other areas of life, the environment and interpersonal relationships. Our species is more fragile than we often like to think but we have a greater chance of survival if we learn to work with nature and not try to be its master." Susie Porter on the mental health benefits of gardening.

A London Inheritance visits the Waterman's Arms on the Isle of Dogs: "The audience at the Waterman’s Arms attracted not just the locals, but also those from the West End, and a global set of celebrities from the early 1960s. Names such as Lord Delfont, George Melly, Groucho Marx, Lionel Bart, Trevor Howard, Tony Bennett, Mary Quant, Norman Hartnell, Judy Garland and Clint Eastwood (who wrote the word ‘rowdy’ in the guest book)."

Tories refuse to drop council candidate who called Volodymyr Zelenskyy an "enemy of the people"

New on the Mirror website:

A Tory election candidate branded Volodymyr Zelensky an "enemy of the people" as he suggested we should stop supporting Ukraine.

Ian Glass, who is standing to represent the party on Hartlepool Borough Council, dismissed the war hero as a “puppet”. ...

Mr Glass, a personal trainer, posted his criticism of Mr Zelensky when the Ukrainian President visited the UK in February last year. After Mr Sunak tweeted a photo of the two leaders together, he wrote: "The puppet installed president (after coup) meeting an unelected PM, both enemies of the people."

In another post in January this year, he suggested that Vladimir Putin's regime isn't as bad as it's presented and hit out at the sums the Government has pledged to help Ukraine defend itself. He wrote: "It's over with Sunak and Crew, people will not vote for Cons, they sick of the boats, money going to Ukraine and this BS that Russia wants to rule the world."

The Mirror says the Conservatives have not responded to requests for a comment on Mr Glass and his opinions, but the local party has continued to promote him as a candidate.

I'm blogging about this because I suspect Mr Glass is not so untypical of today's Tory activist. As I said after a fake Tory campaign on speed limits in Wales was exposed earlier this year:

It does confirm my impression that the average Tory activist is now less likely to be a pillar of the local business community than a keyboard warrior or social media troll.

If these new-look Tories like fascism so much, they should go and live in Moscow and see how much they like it then.

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Adam Bychawski on how the Tories have driven local council services into bankruptcy: "Britain is so broke that it can’t afford lollipop people any more. Councils are having to turn off the fountains in Nottingham and dim the street lights in Birmingham. In some areas, public toilets are a thing of the past. Libraries might soon follow them."

"Since 1997, the number of black professional cricketers in England has dwindled by 75 per cent. A 2020 report by Sport England found that whereas approximately 36 per cent of adult involvement in recreational cricket is ‘non-white’, black participation was so low as to be statistically irrelevant, apparently lower than golf and tennis." Michael Collins researches the reasons for this very English collapse.

Vladimir Putin has cast his soldiers as the liberators of Ukraine from domination by Poland. As Luka Ivan Jukic explains, it's a distorted historical vision, but one with deep roots.

Rachel Pronger watches Copa 71, the film about the unofficial Women’s football world cup of 1971: "There’s plenty of inane misogyny on display in the vivid footage – the press are reassured that the player’s uniforms will be 'as close as possible to hot pants' - but the astonishingly petty actions of Fifa, who objected to the tournament then used it as an excuse to systematically shut down women’s football around the world, are anything but laughable." 

Lestari has a literature review, photo essay and podcast series on the social and cultural value of trees found outside woodlands.

"Perhaps we shouldn’t forget one of the messages from Roald Dahl’s original book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: children don’t need to be spoiled to be happy." Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff says Willy’s Chocolate Experience was a rip-off, but then so is a lot of children's entertainment.

Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan has been sanctioned by the British and American governments

The later careers of child stars can be an interesting, even tragic, study. Outcomes can vary from being a distinguished art historian (Jon Whiteley) to drug addiction and anonymous burial in a pauper's grave at 30 (Bobby Driscoll).

I've found a new disappointing outcome for a former child star: being sanctioned by the UK and US governments.

Andrei Tarkovsky's Ivan's Childhood would be a good nomination for the best first film by any director. It tells the story of a young orphan who acts a scout for the Soviet army on the Eastern Front in the second world war. He fights off attempts to send him to military school until he undertakes one mission too many and does not return.

Ivan was played, to universal acclaim, by Nikolai 'Kolya' Burlyayev, who has been acting and directing in Russia ever since. He has become increasingly associated with Vladimir Putin and was elected to the Russian parliament in 2021.

The result is that you will find his name on both the UK and US lists of people who have been sanctioned over their support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Click on the image above to go to YouTube and watch the whole film - and a wonderful film it is. It is beautifully photographed and has all of Tarkovsky's symbolism and dream logic, but you also get a proper story about the war.

h/t Thomas Stern on Twitter.