Lembit in the jungle?

I am not saying this is necessarily true, but it is being widely reported that Lembit Opik has signed up to take part in the next series of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

According to the Sun, his fellow contestants may include Sheryl Gascoigne, Gail Porter, Britt Ekland, Nigel Havers, Linford Christie and Stacey Solomon.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: My new friends, the Conservatives

So what are our Conservative friends like? It has been what the young people call “a steep learning curve” for me as, until recently, I generally saw Tories from the saddle as we hunted them across the fields of Leicestershire and Rutland. I recall a good run a county councillor gave us until he went to earth near Billesdon Coplow...

Anyway, in the spirit of cross-party co-operation, I here offer pen portraits of a few of my new colleagues.

My older readers will recall that popular programme from the early days of the moving television, “Have a Go with Eric Pickles”. With his catchphrases “Are yer courting?” and “Give him the money, Barney”, Pickles soon became a household name. He disappeared from our screens amid persistent rumours that he had eaten one of the Dagenham Girl Pipers, but later resurfaced as MP for Brentwood and is now Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government.

George Osborne, a scion of the biscuit dynasty, made his first worker redundant at the age of 10. His parents must have been so proud.

A little bird told me that, had the Conservatives won an overall majority, then Nadine Dorries would have been prevailed upon to accept my Outer Space portfolio. I take it as a tribute to Nick Clegg’s skill as a negotiator that he was able to win the post for a Liberal Democrat.

Iain Duncan Smith is known as “the quiet man”. I am told that he intends to revolutionise the Social Security system in Britain, but am unable to hear a word he says.

In 1977, at the age of 8, William Hague brought the Conservative Conference to its feet with his peroration: “I hate Socialism and, besides, you lot will soon be dead anyway”. Thirty-three years later, now aged 87, he is Foreign Secretary. Isn’t it strange how things turn out?

“Do you know Theresa May?” a civil servant asked during one of my first visits to my new department. “No,” I replied, “but I am grateful for the tip.”

Earlier this week

Autumn has come to Rutland
At the first hint of an asteroid

Six of the Best 104

The hyperlocal Saddleworth News has been at the centre of the blogging world today for its coverage of the Phil Woolas court case. Meanwhile, BBC journalists have been on strike. So up yours, Andrew Marr.

Also on that case, Norfolk Blogger argues: "Many ordinary Labour voters have found the campaigning from Labour in Oldaham to be distasteful and counter productive. There is a line which many people in politics push against, but few so blatantly step over it (although I feel the Dr Death leaflets distributed in Oxford West and Abingdon - not by Labour - in May 210 against Lib Dem Dr Evan Harris were equally as shameful)."

Sandy Walkington ponders the importance of being Chris Huhne.

David Blunkett's guide dog Sadie is finding it hard to come to terms with life in opposition, reports The Questing Vole.

Elected mayors are the latest gimmick to afflict local government. David MacLean has the latest gossip on who might be the Labour candidate in Leicester.

Talking of Leicester, the Guardian has a guide to the city's best budget restaurants. Of those listed, and others are available, I happily endorse Kayal in Granby Street.

Calder on Air: Jeremy Paxman is Steerforth

My column from today's Liberal Democrat News. I am told my set was working beautifully in the repair shop earlier this week. I shall pick it up from the shop tomorrow. Perhaps it just needed a holiday.

Asking the Questions

Calder on Air should have appeared last week, but I wasn’t well and then my television set fell ill too. For a couple of days I put up with the blue faces and purple grass, reasoning that I must have OD’d on Day Nurse, but in the end I realised something was wrong and sent it back for repair.

Living without a TV not the radical step it was when I did it for several years back in the 1990s. These days you can watch on line, catch up with the BBC iPlayer or a DVD into your computer. But I did take the opportunity to think a little more widely about television and politics.

******
Wealthy, arrogant, members of powerful dynasties... It is not the politicians we should worry about these days so much as the interviewers.

Take the biggest cheese of them all: Jeremy Paxman. Politicians are not brought before him to have their views examined: they are there to suffer a form of ritual contempt. Forget any ideas of a sustained line of questioning designed to probe and elucidate his interviewees’ views. What he offers is sneering, snarling and attempts to catch his victims off guard.

Paxo acts as a channel for our hatred of the political class. It is all great fun, but contempt for democratically elected politicians is not the mark of a mature democracy. It is the stock in trade of fascists or, to be less melodramatic, of fruitcakes like UKIP in Britain or the Tea Party in America.

And there are alternatives. For better or worse, the days when Brian Walden on Weekend World could act like a kindly but irascible professor faced with a bright student are long gone. They are part of that lost era when a Marxist Play for Today could gain 14 million viewers – chiefly because there was little else to watch.
But some people do it better even now. For all his silly guests and references to Blue Nun, Andrew Neil can be a devastating interviewer. I once heard him, with forensic politeness, draw from Michael Gove the fact that his adoptive parents had paid for him to attend one of the most expensive private schools in Scotland.

This mattered because in those days Gove was widely assumed to be a state-educated moth among the Brideshead butterflies of the Cameron front bench. After this interview I saw him in a new light – even if, unfashionably for a Liberal Democrat, I am still an enthusiast for his ‘free schools’.

Jeremy Paxman, by contrast is most famous for asking Michael Howard the same question 14 times. And he still didn’t get an answer.

******

The Genius of British Art (Channel 4) has been a good series, and Howard Jacobsen’s essay on Victorian art and sexuality was valuable in helping to overturn the absurd view of the 19th century that many still have. The Victorians did not cover piano legs because they found them shocking: that was a joke they told at the expense of the straitlaced Americans.

But if there is a worse factual programme this year than Janet Street Porter’s discussion of modern British art I hope I do not have the misfortune to watch it. All we learnt in the course of an hour was a) she enjoys hanging out with famous people and b) cannot talk for more than 30 seconds without blatantly contradicting herself.

******

Being without a television has driven me back to my bookshelves, and I have found a literary equivalent of Jeremy Paxman. He is Steerforth from David Copperfield.

Having learnt from the innocent young hero that one of the masters at Salem House has a mother in the poor house, Steerforth uses the information to publicly humiliate him and secure his dismissal.

No doubt that made him as popular with his fellow pupils as Paxo is with viewers. But I am with Tommy Traddles, the conscience of the novel: “Shame, J. Steerforth! Too bad!”

The Yorkshire Evening Post quotes me on Bonfire Night and Halloween

At this time of the year it is traditional for me to moan about the way that Halloween has supplanted Bonfire Night. Think of it as part of my programme of radical nostalgia.

This time my views have made the Yorkshire Evening Post, with quotations both from this blog and a telephone interview:

"I definitely think Bonfire Night's being pushed out," says Jonathan Calder, a journalist for the New Statesman magazine who has written about the phenomenon on his popular blog Liberal England.

"When I was a boy in the 1960s we always had a family bonfire and fireworks in the back garden and there was no doubt that the great festival at this time of year was Bonfire Night.

"My only contact with Hallowe'en was at Cubs, where we would bring pumpkin lanterns one evening.

"But now there are all these safety warnings and everyone seems to go to organised displays for Bonfire Night, while Hallowe'en has become so commercialised that some of the stuff sold in the supermarkets is quite horrific."

And:

"Over here we have Mischief Night on November 4, which originated in Yorkshire as part of Bonfire Night, but now we're seeing something much more in common with the trick or treating you get in the US

"Perhaps it's a generational thing, but I don't think I've seen anyone collecting a penny for the Guy since the 1980s. There's no sense of kids being outside and having fun in the dark any more, they all seem to go trick or treating and always under heavy parental supervision."

Dog and dolphin; Cat and dolphin

At work today there was a lot of cooing over this video of a dog swimming with a dolphin...



But this one of a cat taking no nonsense is more to may taste.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: At the first hint of an asteroid

A second day with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

Last week, in my capacity as under-secretary at the Department for Outer Space, I travelled to a top secret location on the border between Shropshire and Montgomeryshire. There, amongst the spoil heaps of the Victorian lead-mining, a strange erection hoved into view.

Like all ministers in the Coalition government, I have had to wield my surgeon’s scalpel in order to comply with the dictates of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Many of these cuts have been achieved by doing away with the sort of Labour nonsense we all familiar with: missions to suppress vice on Alpha Centauri, public education campaigns against sexism on Venus and so forth. I was also minded to do away with the warning signs about horse chestnut trees in the Crab Nebula until I discovered that they are so named because they can gallop at speed across rough country and are capable of giving a nasty bite if you let them sneak up behind you.

Other cuts I have made with a heavy heart. The British space programme, for instance, is no more and I am painfully aware this will lead to redundancies at Woomera. However, I am proud that I have been able to uphold the pledge made by so many Liberal Democrat candidates at the last election by continuing to train a full complement of British space cadets (a course of action enthusiastically urged upon me by our own Liberal Youth – when they are hiking through forests singing “I Love to Go A-Wandering” or sitting around camp fires). I realise they may be disappointed that there will be no spacecraft for them to crew, but feel that if they take up my suggested alternative – trampolining lessons – with sufficient vim and vigour then this need not prove an insuperable barrier to their career ambitions.

There was one spending item that I was determined not to cut and it was this that I travelled to the Welsh border to inspect. It is a model spacecraft. By this I do not mean the sort of model that the best sort of schoolboy spends his evening gluing together. No, I mean a rocket, crewed by fashion models and piloted by our own Lembit Öpik, which will be dispatched at the first hint of an asteroid that has the intention of colliding with Earth. (I am not exactly clear what Lembit will do when he reaches it, but I have every confidence in his ability to Use His Initiative).

There are those in the London chapter of the Liberal Democrats who are urging me to send him off on the thing this very afternoon. As a responsible minister, however, I am determined not to launch it until it is needed.

Earlier this week

Autumn has come to Rutland

MoneyMarketing praises Steve Webb

From a MoneyMarketing leader by Paul McMillan:

Pensions minister Steve Webb must be congratulated for persuading the Government that the huge benefits of a higher state pension are worth the huge costs involved. When Webb was appointed, we were quick to jump on strong statements he made in opposition suggesting the need for a higher and simpler state pension as the bedrock to all other reforms.

Many in the industry, including myself, were cynical that Webb had any chance of getting the coalition to support a citizens’ pension and believed the best he could hope for was to have the plans added as a future aspiration. I’m glad it looks like I have been proved wrong.

Lib Dem councillors cleared of misconduct after complaint by Phil Woolas

From the Manchester Evening News:

Town hall bosses have been cleared of misconduct following a row over a new mosque.

Council leader Howard Sykes was among seven Lib Dem councillors accused of ‘fast-tracking’ the planning application for a mosque on Waterloo Street, Glodwick.

But an investigation has now ruled they did not bring the council or their office into disrepute.

Councillors Jackie Stanton, Mark Alcock, Roger Hindle, Lynne Thompson, Mohammed Masud and former councillor Mohammed Mohib Uddin have also been cleared.

Labour MPs Phil Woolas and Michael Meacher sparked the investigation after accusing the Lib Dems of rushing the plans through ahead of May’s elections in order to win votes.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Autumn has come to Rutland

It is time to visit Rutland's most popular fictional peer again...

Autumn has come to Rutland. As I look out across the lawns from my Library windows, the skeletons of distant trees stand stark against the low skies. Nearer at hand stand piles of leaves – and from one of those comes muffled cursing and swearing. I fear that, in a surfeit of enthusiasm, one of the undergardeners has dumped them on top of Meadowcroft.

But my thoughts are far away in the Welsh Marches...

"The ConDems" is the new "Bliar"

From the The Snow in the Summer or So-So:

Received from the email pile:

Dear Weaver,The ConDems [....]

At this point, we switched off. Like «Bliar» before it, this wordplay might have been mildly amusing when it was first coined, but has long since moved past its chortle-by date. It's become symptomatic of a weak and vapid lack-of-argument. If you have a strong case, you will be able to make it and give respect to your opponents. If you have a weak case, you will need to distract with shrill words and glossy imagery.

Well said.

Denver voters reject plan to track space aliens

Fox News reports a hitherto overlooked result from last night's elections:

Denver residents have jettisoned a plan to officially track space aliens.

The proposal defeated soundly Tuesday night would have established a commission to track extraterrestrials. It also would have allowed residents to post their observations on Denver's city Web page and report sightings.

Early results show Denver residents voted 106,776-20,162 against the proposal.

This plan was put forward by Jeff Packman, who once produced who in May 2008 publicly screened what he claimed to be a video of an alien...

US elections latest: Tea Party celebrates gains

Churchill and the Anarchists: The Siege of Sidney Street

From the Museum of London Docklands website:

To commemorate the 100 year anniversary of the siege of Sidney Street and Houndsditch Murders, the Museum of London Docklands will open London Under Siege: Churchill and the Anarchists, 1911.

In partnership with the Jewish East End Celebration Society, the exhibition will set the murders and the siege in their historical and social context, exploring immigration at the time and the then Home Secretary Winston Churchill's role at the siege.

The Houndsditch Murders took place on the night of 16 December 1910 when a group of armed Latvian revolutionaries attempted to break into H.S. Harris’ jeweller's shop in Houndsditch. Three City of London policemen were fatally shot and two were disabled for life. The murders remain the highest loss of police life on a single day. The Siege of Sidney Street took place two weeks later on 3 January 1911. Over 200 armed police and a detachment of Scots Guards laid siege to100 Sidney Street in Stepney where two of the Houndsditch gang were hiding.

The Museum of London Docklands can be found in a late Georgian Grade I listed warehouse on West India Quay. And the exhibition opens on 18 December 2010 and runs until April 2011. Entrance is free.

All this gives me a chance to mention Charles Masterman for the second time this evening. At the time of the Siege, Masterman was Churchill's deputy at the Home Office. In her biography of her husband, Lucy Masterman wrote:

The "Sidney Street incident" had taken place while we were abroad, and the Home Secretary, Mr. Churchill, had incurred a certain amount of criticism for calling out the troops and for being there himself. As Mr Balfour observed later, "I understand what the photographer was doing but why the Home Secretary?"

The story was told in heightened terms in the foreign press, with illustrations in red and blue; every English person we encountered demanded what was happening, with vocal complaints that they did not expect this sort of action by a British Government. I will not deny that by the time he reached home Masterman's official loyalty was beginning to show signs of wear and tear.

He burst into Mr. Churchill's room at the Home Office with the query "What the hell have you been doing now, Winston?" The reply, in Winston's characteristic lisp, was unanswerable. "Now Charlie. Don't be croth. It was such fun."

From Shropshire to Porthmadog

After Saturday in Clun and Sunday in the Stiperstones, I left Shropshire and England on Monday, catching the train from Shrewsbury to Porthmadog. I had to stand for two or three stations, but after that it was a lovely ride.

We were passed by a steam excursion at Machynlleth and west of there the route ran through long wooded valleys until we reached the coast. It must be spectacular at this time of year.

The line splits at Dovey Junction - a strange, remote station almost in the Dovey estuary. One line runs south to Aberystwyth and the other north up the coast to Pwhelli. This is the line I took, passing through numerous small resorts until we reached Porthmadog.

I travelled there partly because of a couple of local attractions. One of those is the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway, which you see in my photograph crossing The Cob - a causeway across the mouth of the Afon Glaslyn - with the town in the background.

And I went partly for old time's sake. I first came here in 1977 on a coach trip with my Mum. It was the day before the public holiday to mark the Queen's Silver Jubilee and every village we passed through in Mid Wales had the bunting out.

An Estonian Childhood by Tania Alexander

Regular readers will know of my interest in - and debt of gratitude to - Nick Clegg's great great aunt Moura Budberg. It was writing an article about the old girl for the New Statesman website that got me a fortnightly column there for a while.

Back on this blog, I suggested three years ago that anyone who shares this interest should also read the Times obituary of Budberg's daughter Tania Alexander.

The good news is that Alexander's memoir An Estonian Childhood has recently been republished as a Faber Find:

The tone of her memoir, mainly set in Kallijärv, is almost idyllic, surprisingly so given the political upheaval of the period. In her own words ‘my early life was influenced by three women, all of them complex characters and strong personalities, who had to find their own way of adapting to very different from those they might have expected to enjoy. My Irish governess, Micky, sacrificed her family and suffered exile - a mother ostracised by the pressure of Victorian values. My Aunt Zoria lost everyone who was dear to her, as well as her homeland and her position in society. And my mother, who stayed behind in Russia throughout the terrifying events of the revolution and civil war, lost her home, her husband and, perhaps most important to her, her great love - a loss which profoundly affected the rest of her life.’

Her mother was Baroness Moura Budberg and ‘her great love’ was the famous diplomat and spy, Robert Bruce Lockhart, expelled from Russia in 1918. Among her other lovers were Maxim Gorky and H. G. Wells who both feature in this memoir.

You can also find The Condition of England by my favourite Edwardian Liberal Charles Masterman republished in this Faber series.

Bob Russell slams door damage claims

Over the weekend there were reports that a confrontation between Nick Clegg and Bob Russell had left a Commons door hanging off its hinges. The Daily Mail, for instance, said:

Colchester MP Bob Russell’s fury over the Coalition’s housing benefit cuts boiled over at a stormy private meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister.

To the astonishment of fellow Lib Dem MPs, it ended with Mr Russell storming out and slamming the Commons’ committee room door behind him.

Witnesses said last night: ‘He took the door off its hinges.’

But today Bob told the Colchester Daily Gazette that the story is "complete rubbish":

“I only wish I could take a door off its hinges at my age. It really is laughable.

“It is a Westminster joke, it simply is not true.

“It’s no secret the Deputy Prime Minister and I have differences of opinions about benefits and I am concerned the cuts to housing benefit will lead to child poverty, but the story is pure fabrication.”

All of which means that my favourite part of the Mail story - Mike Hancock coming back early the next morning to repair the door before anyone noticed - is not true.

Shame. I've got this dripping tap I hoped he would be able to help me with.

Traditional End of Month Lolcat arrives a day late

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Six of the Best 103

Birkdale Focus reports that council by-elections continue to be far more rewarding for the Liberal Democrats than the national opinion polls would lead you to expect.

With the verdict in the Phil Woolas case due on Friday, Saddleworth News looks back to recent parliamentary contests in the area - the 1995 by-election in particular.

A Liberal Helping offers some reflections from the East Midlands regional conference.

The Commons is taking internet privacy far more seriously these days, says The Register: "One possible difference was the nature of the new intake, with 2010 members, such as Julian Huppert, Lib Dem MP for Cambridge, intervening at length and knowledgeably on the subject. By contrast, the low attendance by Labour MPs and their almost complete lack of participation in the debate was noted by others present."

Always Win When You're Singing has a recipe for chocolate banana loaf.

Did you know there were tunnels under New York built to transport cattle? Gothamist has the details.

Get your own Nick Clegg mask

Great news! Thanks to FunkyBunky it is now possible to buy a Nick Clegg mask. Hours of fun for all the family pretending to be the Lib Dem Leader and Deputy Prime Minister.

The only snag is that, such has been the demand, this product is currently out of stock. No doubt they are reprinting as I type.