Parents' fury after Bobby Davro simulates sex with giant kangaroo during children's panto

The Daily Mail has just walked away with our Headline of the Day award.

John Hemming fears new gagging order could see journalists imprisoned

John Hemming, the Lib Dem MP for Birmingham Yardley, is stepping up his campaign against the extraordinary injunctions being granted by British courts these days.

According to a report on the Guardian website this afternoon, John is concerned about a new breed of injunction, used in relation to a case in the high court in London last week, which means journalists could face gaol simply for asking questions.

The newspaper quotes him as saying:

"This goes a step further than preventing people speaking out against injustice. It has the effect of preventing journalists from speaking to people subject to this injunction without a risk of the journalist going to jail. That is a recipe for hiding miscarriages of justice ... It puts any investigative journalist at risk if they ask any questions of a victim of a potential miscarriage of justice … I don't think this should be allowed in English courts."

John is launching an inquiry in parliament into excess court secrecy. He is planning to collect a range of gagging orders and then present to the justice select committee in a number of Parliamentary petitions later this year.

Anna Raccoon recently investigated the use of injunctions in an attempt to prevent people approaching their own MP for help.

The Doors: Light My Fire

I was going to say that everyone will know this song, but people are so young these days and that may no longer be true.

Anyway, I was browsing in a recently opened second-hand bookshop in Leicester yesterday while this was playing. I cannot remember listening so closely to the long instrumental section in the song before. It is very good.

I promise to put more thought into the selection next week.

Jonathan Coe on satire

From today's Guardian:

I'm frequently told that I'm a satirical writer, and although I don't think the label really fits me any more, it probably does apply to What a Carve Up!. But the problem with most satire, I've started to feel, is that it doesn't just preach, it preaches to the converted. Satire – besides being what Milan Kundera disparagingly called a "thesis art" – actually suppresses political anger rather than stoking it up. Political energies which might otherwise be translated into action are instead channelled into comedy and released – dissipated – in the form of laughter.

An interviewer recently asked me if I thought there was a dearth of political satire in this country at the moment. I would argue that there is too much. Our comedians have a default position – comfortably left-liberal, slightly sneery, relying on sharing rather than challenging the assumptions of their audience – and this keeps up a low-level rumble of cynical chuckling which allows our political masters to keep on doing whatever they want to do, completely untouched and unthreatened. And there is an element of this, I feel, in What a Carve Up!. Over the years I've found that one of the reasons its admirers like it so much is because they already share its politics.

Amen. Amen. Amen. I tried, and probably failed, to say something similar when discussing 10 O'Clock Live.

Lord Bonkers on Shirley Williams and National Velvet

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

It is well known that my old friend Dame Shirley Williams auditioned for the part of Velvet Brown in National Velvet. What is not so well known is that a number of scenes were shot with Shirley Williams before the decision was taken to cast Elizabeth Taylor instead.

Film historians have long thought these scenes to be lost, but one of them turned up in the Library here at Bonkers Hall the other day. (It was found among a collection of leaflets from Welsh county council by-elections of the 1960s.)

One of the scenes shows the climactic running of the Grand National. In it the young Shirley arrived at the winning post some three hours late.

Another scene shows her looking as if she had been dragged through a hedge backwards - as indeed she had been.

Those interested in Lord Bonkers' memories of the cinema business should read his tribute to Elizabeth Taylor and Fred Titmus.

It seems I am now writing for Conservative Home

Yesterday evening I wrote a short post giving the names of the five candidates standing in the Leicester South by-election.

Being fond of self-deprecating humour, I added the comment:

My prediction - "this is no Barnsley Central: we are not going to finish sixth" - is looking safer by the day.

The link takes you to an earlier post I wrote about Leicester South.

This morning Jonathan Isaby wrote a post on Conservative Home, also giving the names of the five candidates. And then he added the comment:

The last time there were as few as five candidates contesting a by-election was in Cheadle in 2005, so Lib Dem blogger Jonathan Calder can sleep soundly in the knowledge that his prediction that "this is no Barnsley Central: we are not going to finish sixth" will come to fruition.

A remarkable coincidence, don't you think? It looks very much as though Isaby has lifted one of my jokes and then deployed it in a way calculated to make me look silly. Already Sunder Katwala has tweeted about the "wit of @isaby".

I did try leaving a comment pointing this out on Conservative Home, but at the time of writing it has yet to be approved. (Later. It has now appeared. Thank you.)

Still, we are in a coalition now, so there is no reason why I shouldn't write jokes for Conservative Home. But I would prefer it if we could agree a rate of payment in advance next time.

Market Harborough dress auction in aid of Mind, 7 May

Elinor O'Neill, who recently wrote a guest post on bipolar disorder for this blog, spent 2010 engaged in a novel exercise to raise awareness of mental health issues. She wore a different dress every day of the year.

All of the dresses she wore were donations, clothes from her own collection of frocks or loans from friends, family and kind strangers from as far away as the USA.

Now Elinor, who covered the project on her blog Lost in Notation, is auctioning off the dresses donated to the project to raise money for the national mental health charity Mind. The auction will be held on Saturday 7 May at the Oat Hill pub in Market Harborough.

Entry to the event, which starts at 4p.m., is free of charge and families are very welcome to attend the day which will take place in the gardens of the Oat Hill or inside the pub in Kettering Road should the heavens decide to open. Protheroes Motor Group in Northampton Road is sponsoring the event and the Oat Hill will be hosting the event free of charge.

All are welcome to the event which will include guest speakers, a barbecue and stalls with clothes, cakes and other goodies for sale.

Bidding will begin once buyers have had a chance to handle and try on the many dresses. All lots will start at £5 per dress.

Elinor tells me:

“It is going to be a really special evening and the collection of dresses is just fantastic.

“There is Prada and Primark, vintage and brand new, designer and high street. Every one of the dresses sold will help towards removing the stigma of mental illness.

“One of the things that pains me about mental health problems is the fact that there is so much help available out there and yet people are sometimes too anxious or ashamed to reach out for help.

“I picked Mind because they do so much work to try and end the stigma that surrounds mental illness. Their campaigns and the way they are trying to change people’s perceptions is something I am passionate about.“

If you want to know more about this event, please email Elinor O'Neill.

Six of the Best 150

"I have no doubt that the government’s social mobility strategy is needed and that the intentions behind it are honourable. But the misuse of statistics (and probably where no misuse is required) does nothing to further the cause of reform." Just One More Ten Pence Piece... introduces us to the concept of reversion to the mean.

The Liberal Democrats are paying the price for basing their last election campaign on the idea that Nick Clegg was the man of the moment, argues Solution Focused Politics.

Uprising Live explains how the left got it wrong by opposing intervention in Libya.

A couple of weeks ago there was a flurry of interest in the rumour that the NUS leader Aaron Porter might put himself forward as the Labour candidate in the Leicester South by-election. Was there ever anything in it? Political Scrapbook thinks there was.

Play Political has the video of a Sky News report showing how Ed Miliband's aides tried to cover up the fact that he was travelling first class.

"From local specialities to homemade treats, shopping at Britain’s farmers’ markets is a great way to get stuck into premium produce and support local farmers." The Ecologist presents its top 10.

Only five candidates in the Leicester South by-election

Nominations have closed for the Leicester South by-election on 5 May and there are just five candidates:

• Jon Ashworth (Labour)
• Zuffar Haq (Liberal Democrat)
• Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony)
• Jane Hunt (Conservative)
• Abhijit Pandya (UKIP)

My prediction - "this is no Barnsley Central: we are not going to finish sixth" - is looking safer by the day.

Shunter Black's Night Off (1941)

britishrailways.tv

Funding secured for Arts Fresco 2011

Good news from the Harborough Mail tonight:

Arts Fresco will return to the streets of Harborough this year after the Arts Council announced it would maintain its funding for the popular annual event.

Securing the £56,000 grant means the 2011 event will be able to take place as organisers had hoped on Sunday, September 11.

Liberal England visited this event in 2009 and 2010.

The picture shows a member of the excellent Ant Orkezdra having a breather outside the then-empty Golden Wonder building in Abbey Street in 2009.

From Desborough to Wilbarston via Pipewell

You left me in Desborough, exulting over another tin tabernacle.

After that I walked to Pipewell (pronounced Pipwell). I last made this journey at least 30 years ago, but I can remember planning the route to pass what used to be an ironstone quarry in the innocent hope that there might still be traces of its railway system to be seen. That quarry turned out to have become a tip full of stinking rubbish and squawking gulls.

On Saturday I could not remember exactly where that quarry had been, but I suspect it was under one of the new estates of desirable houses being built on the outskirts of Desborough. Given the depressed state of the town centre, as far as it has one, I doubt that the inhabitants will shop there.

Pipewell, some three miles away along a busy back road, was the site of a Cistercian abbey was founded in 1143. The last of the ruins disappeared in the 18th century, but the earthworks in a field beside the road and the ironstone Pipewell Hall nearby give you a good idea where it was and where some of the stone went.

The only church in Pipewell now dates from the end of the 19th century and is pictured above. It is described by a website devoted to fighting proposals for a wind farm:

Pipewell church is reputably the smallest church in the diocese of Peterborough, it was originally the old school house where the teacher had a house and one small classroom.

The house was part of the Hambrough estate and in 1880 Mrs Hambrough who resided in Pipewell hall decided she would like a church in the village and through public subscriptions £600 was raised to convert the house into a church.

The East and West wings were added to the existing building to form the shape of a cross and it was named Pipewell Abbey Church. At a later date the name was changed to its current name of Abbey church of Saint Mary.

Today it looks like a cross between a lodge house and a folly as much as it resembles a church.

I sat on the village green opposite the church and decided where to go next - reaching Pipewell had exhausted my planning. The lane north through a remnant of Rockingham Forest looked inviting, so I took it.

Although stretches of the road were unfenced, for the most part the woods were regularly protected with signs saying "Private Woods Keep Out". How Lord Bonkers' old friends the Elves of Rockingham Forest get by these days, I do not know.

(On reflection, those notices may have been aimed at a particular soldier with a bad reputation in the area.)

Eventually I reached a T junction. I turned left and, after taking in a corner of the old RAF Desborough, I found an old lane that led to Wilbarston and its pub The Fox.

The bus service between Corby and Market Harborough is something of a mystery, but one turned up to take me home exactly as promised by the timetable on the village noticeboard.

Are the Liberal Democrats unjust to candidates who face allegations?

Writing about David Jack last night I was reminded of a similar case involving a Liberal Democrat PPC.

In April of last year, just as the general election campaign was getting underway, David Murray withdrew as our candidate for The Wrekin "on the advice of party bosses" over unspecified allegations of "sexual abuse".

Mr Murray maintained his innocence at the time and three months later it was announced that he would face no charges. But by then, of course, his political ambitions, if not his reputation, had been trashed. The original allegations always receive far more publicity than the news that there has turned out to be nothing in them.

You may say that a party has to act swiftly if allegations against an individual candidate threaten its reputation nationally, but there is a danger of that candidate suffering injustice. David Jack told me he was resigned by Cowley Street without being consulted and, reading between the lines, the same thing may have happened to David Murray. There was nothing terribly Liberal about that.

Beyond that, our anxiety to get rid of candidates facing allegations encourages our opponents to dig for dirt and then publicise it, however poorly founded their allegations are. It also accelerates the decline of British politics from a battle of ideas into a hunt for sleaze, gaffes and goofs.

Terry Wogan and the burka

Sunday evening television is pretty poor. I like Heartbeat, because a Spencer Davis Group B side might pop up at any moment, but apart from that it is a washout.

So much so that, back in January, I found myself watching Terry Wogan's Ireland. The shows long ago disappeared from iPlayer, but you can still find a description of episode 2 on the BBC website:

After sharing memories of his buttoned-up childhood holidays in Galway and witnessing a seismic shift in Catholic prudery when 180 Irish ladies throw off all their clothes and take a 'Dip in the Nip' for charity, Terry heads for the border.

And a seismic shift it has been. We were shown a very young Wogan on the beach in a bathing suit that covered his chest for decency's sake. Today the Dip in the Nip women are happy to swim naked to raise money for the Irish Cancer Society.

Wogan, to my mind quie rightly, treated this shift as an unqualified good news story.

There is a great contrast here with our attitudes towards the burka and Muslim women. Liberal opinion was not content with tolerating Catholic prudery because it was "their culture". Liberal opinion tended to make fun of it and campaign to change it. But that is not our reaction with Muslim prudery today.

Of course there is no question of the burka being banned in Britain, and nor should there be. And of course it is people's right to wear whatever they choose.

But that does not exhaust all you can say on the subject. As I wrote in one of my last House Points columns for Liberal Democrat News, there are two important points for liberals to bear in mind here:

The first is to point out that what people wear often tells us something about society. Yes, the hoodie has been demonised, but where it represents an arms race between security cameras and youths it brings us unwelcome news. Maybe it also tells us how much effort teenage boys in some communities have to invest in not catching the eyes of other teenage boys.

And the second is to remember the central place that dress reform once played in radical politics. In the 19th century it was an important movement that aimed to free women from the confining and even crippling fashions that held them back. Radicals then did not shrug, say it was “part of their culture” and move on.

Heresy Corner wrestles with the same dilemmas in a thoughtful post. And Stephen Bigger has written on the issues for education that the Muslim dress code gives rise to.

David Jack was exonerated

The other day I revisited the case of David Jack, the former Liberal Democrat PPC Stoke-on-Trent North. You may recall that he was forced to stand down after claims were made that he had sent a racist email.

I had an interesting conversation with David this morning. He tells me that he was cleared by Bradford police last year after a 10-month investigation during which his computers were seized and his servers searched. It was carried out by Bradford police because the formal complaint against him was made from that city.

No evidence was found that the email in question came from his address. The original allegation was that he had sent it "from his Blackberry", but at the time he did not even own a Blackberry.

David was allowed to rejoin the Liberal Democrats last November.

He told me that he did not resign as PPC, as was reported at the time. That announcement was made from Cowley Street without his being consulted. He still awaits an apology from the party leadership.

Who did send the email?

It is probably no coincidence that Davd was involved at the time in exposing a number of dodgy finance companies. As I understand it they claimed to be able to get people's debts paid off by exploiting vaguely defined "loopholes" in credit law. However, those people were first asked to make a payment...

Trevor Eve in Shoestring

While we are mourning the end of Waking the Dead, here is a glimpse of a much younger Trevor Eve.

Shoestring is the series that made his name. It ran in 1979 and 1980, in two series totalling 21 hour-long episodes.

These are the opening and closing titles. The whole of the first series seems to be on Youtube, but it won't let me embed the videos. So you will have to look there yourself.

When will the student flats bubble burst?

This is the Manchester, a Leicester pub that has been closed for a couple of years now. It is just down the road from the Wheatsheaf Works - the vast former Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS) boot and shoe factory in Knighton Fields Road East. The Manchester is pretty big itself for a suburban pub, which leads me to think it may have been built as a meeting hall for the CWS.

The other day the Leicester Mercury had the inevitable story saying that the Manchester is to be converted into flats. But what struck me was the sentence: "The company also wants to build a four-storey block of 47 student flats in the grounds of the pub."

Every time a site becomes available in Leicester we are told that it is going to become student accommodation. This cannot go on for ever, even in a city with two thriving universities like Leicester. The bubble must burst soon.

Leicester and Market Harborough are full of "buy to let" flats built just before that bubble burst. (The vestigial balconies are a giveaway.) How long will it be before student accommodation goes the same way?

Why is the left determined to keep the private/public divide in education?

What is the greatest problem with British education? I would say that it is the Berlin Wall between the private and public sectors.

The former Tory minister George Walden put it well in his 1996 book We Should Know Better:

In no other European country do the moneyed and professional classes - lawyers, surgeons, businessmen, accountants, diplomats, newspaper and TV editors, judges, directors, archbishops, air chief marshals, senior academics, Tory ministers, artists, authors, top civil servants - in addition to the statistically insignificant but eye-catching cohort of aristocracy and royalty - reject the system of education used by the overwhelming majority pretty well out of hand, as an inferior product.

In no modern democracy except Britain is tribalism in education so entrenched that the two main political parties send their children to different schools.

Put like that, it makes you wonder if this isn't the greatest problem with British society.

Given this analysis, you might expect that anyone who imagine themselves as on the left would welcome moves to break down this divide. But an article by Sara Gaines in today's Guardian managed to sound outraged by the news that private schools are queueing up to enter the state sector.

We are told, for instance, that Kevin Courtney, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers:

fears worse is to come. Because funding for places follows the pupil, if children flock to free schools, it could leave neighbouring schools with surplus places and budget shortfalls.

But this is just a variation on John Prescott's ludicrous argument that "If you set up a school and it becomes a good school, the great danger is that everyone wants to go there."

Still, the left is not accepting the prospect of social barriers being broken down without a fight. Sara Gaines tells us that David Mann, the chairman of a free school that intends to open in Rotherham:

faces a challenge from local education authorities concerning his new 850-place secondary school, which will draw pupils from existing state schools. Barnsley, Rotherham and Doncaster council are fighting the plans and say a new school would inevitably lead to job losses at other schools.

Just imagine it. You pay your local taxes to a council that provides poor schools. Someone offers you the prospect of something better. The council then uses more of your tax to try to stop them providing it.

It is hard to argue with Mann's words:

"Lots of schools in the town are not very good. We are aiming to raise the bar. Unions are obsessed with schools and teachers' jobs, not parents' requirements."

George Walden imagined you would have to allow private schools to retain control over their own admissions to persuade them to move into the state sector. This government, however, is achieving this without making that concession.

The left should be delighted. But it seems determined to maintain a Berlin Wall between the public and private sectors at all costs.

Six of the Best 149

You may not be surprised to learn from Virtually Naked that today's encounter between Nick Clegg and Gillian Duffy had Labour's fingerprints all over it.

Chris Davies MEP wants Liberal Democrats to be angry, be proud and campaign harder.

Douglas Carswell, the Conservative MP, has asked Sir Philip Mawer, the adviser on the ministerial code of conduct, to investigate George Osborne. Channel 4's Gary Gibbon has the story.

John Major's next book, according to the diary in yesterday's Evening Standard, will be a social history of the music hall: "The introduction to the book is apparently extraordinary, comprising the death scene of Major’s father, Tom Major-Ball, the music hall performer and circus artiste, who died in 1962 aged 83, having performed at every theatre in the British Isles. Every act in the country trooped through to perform at the bed of their dying fellow artiste. And young Major watched it all."

Could it be that Mr Gladsone is to thank for modern Britain's love of wine? An article on History Extra says: "James Nicholls of Bath Spa University, a specialist on the history of alcohol consumption, hails the 1860 Treaty of Commerce - in which import duties were reduced on all wine - as a turning point. William Gladstone, the treaty’s chief architect, spoke openly of what he hoped would be a change in British drinking habits - away from an obsession with beer - so that wine would no longer be a 'rich man’s luxury'."

I am not the only Liberal Democrat with an interest in tin tabernacles, as an old post about Kilburn by Ed Fordham proves.

Labour tries to throw its weight about in Stockport

Knightsbridge Park is a new housing development in the Adswood area of Stockport. Rather impressively it has its own website:

Our approach is to create a framework of conditions that help residents to be neighbourly when and if they want to be. This is the main reason why we have created this online space for interaction and dialogue and we hope that it can encourage neighbourliness.

We aim to provide a centralised source of updated news and information, covering all aspects of local life (business, shopping, education, entertainment, clubs and societies) to better inform the residents and visitors of events and activities taking place around the Adswood area.

In many ways it is a model of what a neighbourhood website should be. But judging by a recent post on the site, that is not the way the local Labour Party sees it:

After we published the fact that Stockport will not increase the council tax, Councillor Driver emailed us:

"I would appreciate if you would not use your website to promote party political statements. I have assisted you as a I am your councillor not because of what party you support. I would also add that as the Lib Dems are very unpopular in Adswood it does not help you make friends with local people on your estate. I assume you meant well but with local council election in May you will have to be careful about using a public website for party political reasons."

We never promoted any party political statement. Telling that the council bill in Stockport will not be increased this year is not a political statement but only the truth.

Telling us that we will not make friends with local people in our estate if we publish what is simply the truth is perfectly unacceptable. We consider that as a direct threat and we cannot tolerate such appalling behaviour.

Read the full story on Knightsbridge Park, Adswood.