Steve Winwood and Carlos Santana: Why Can't We Live Together

Here is this blog's hero playing with Carlos Santana and his band at the 2004 Montreux Jazz Festival. 'Why Can't We Live Together' was originally recorded by Timmy Thomas in 1973.

I am impressed that the Mexican-American guitar virtuoso joins the percussionists at the start. I am even more impressed that he can conjure a wicked Latin rhythm out of what appears to be a giant sausage.

Nick Clegg pledges no two-tier system in education

Liberal England comes to you from a hotel bedroom in York with a slightly flaky Internet connection.

Before I left home I sent the following tweet:

I'm against a two-tier system in education says Westminster Old Boy ‪#slfconf‬

Some people on Twitter have interpreted this as an attack on Nick Clegg, but if it was an attack on anyone it was an attack on his audience.

We already have a two-tier system because Britain today is dominated by the products of private schools. This is not so surprising. In a contest between a ruthlessly competitive private system and a public system where egalitarianism is the greatest virtue, there is only going to be one winner.

In the light of this it is a little silly for Nick to set his face against a two-tier system when we already have one. But I am more concerned that this was so clearly what his audience wanted to hear.

Social Liberals - indeed all Liberals - should be looking to make changes so that young people leaving state schools do better and looking for ways to break down the Berlin Wall between the two systems.

I am replying here because the Internet connection is so unreliable and I cannot be sure of getting replies through on Twitter.

But I am on holiday and blogging is likely to be self-indulgent for a while. I passed the birthplace of W.H. Auden on the way from station to the hotel, for instance.

Later. I have just found a post (sometimes an argument needs more than 140 characters) on the same theme.

Salute: The Movie

At the end of Matt Roebuck's guest post Tommie Smith: The Man Behind the Image I mentioned the film Salute: The Movie.

This was made by Matt Norman. He is the nephew of Peter Norman, the white Australian silver medalist who also took part in the demonstration.

Here is the trailer for the film

Leicester suffragettes, urban warfare and Bonkers Hall

Time for a final dip into Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester. We have read about suffragettes in Market Harborough and Isobel Logan, but what struck me most in the book was the level of direct action in and around Leicester by supporters of women's suffrage.

There was nothing quite as startling as the arson that badly damaged the church at Breadsall in Derbyshire, but it came close.

Leicester pillar boxes in Eastgates, Humberstone Road, Rutland Street and Newark Street were attacked. So was Leicester Golf Course on Stoughton Drive, where 'No Votes, No Golf' was carved into the turf. Telephone lines in this affluent part of the city were cut too.

More than that:

Kitty Marion arrived in Leicester in early June and began to instruct the branch in urban warfare with the result that, in July 1914, she, Ellen Sheriff and Elizabeth Frisby, armed with wood shavings dipped in creosol and an axe to break in, trekked across a field in the middle of the night and managed to burn down Blaby railway station, causing £500 worth of damage.

Blaby station was on the Leicester to Birmingham line. It closed in 1968 and there is a local campaign to have it reopened.

And there's more:

an arson campaign was carried out around Leicestershire with three empty mansion houses being targeted: the Red House in Burton Walk, Loughborough, on 19 October 1913, Stoughton Hall in May 1914 and Neville (sic) Holt Mansion near Market Harborough in May 1914.

That's right. Nevill Holt, thought by many to be the model for Bonkers Hall, was attacked. It was standing empty because the Cunard family had vacated it in 1912 and it did not become a prep school until 1919.

Government to announce electrification of the Midland Mainline

A report in tomorrow's Guardian says the government is to:

embark on the biggest investment in the rail network since the Victorian era as ministers move to demonstrate their commitment to boosting economic growth. 

In an attempt to show a renewed sense of purpose, after last week's bruising rows over Lords reform, the prime minister and his deputy will announce the electrification of a series of lines and the symbolic reversal of some closures imposed in the 1960s by the Beeching axe.

Among the projects listed is the electrification of the Midland Mainline. That is the line that runs from St Pancras to Leicester, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield.

Most importantly, it is the line that runs through Market Harborough.

The Guardian also says that the reopening to passengers of the line from Bletchley to Oxford will be announced. This is part of the line from Oxford to Cambridge that many want to see restored to full use.

A dig in Leicester to find Richard III?

Last month I wrote about the strong possibility that the bones of Richard III still lie under the streets of Leicester. It seems that someone is trying to fund a dig to find them.

For a note on the website King Richard Armitage: Support Network for the Film 'Richard III' says:

An archaeological dig is scheduled to take place this summer in Leicester, seeking the last resting place of Richard III, and hoping to find and re-inter his remains with proper solemnity. In addition it is hoped the excavations will be filmed, and then form part of a proposed landmark TV special telling Richard’s real story. 

We are appealing to you today because the project dig has encountered a sudden and unforeseen shortfall of £10,000. We are desperately trying to raise this sum and avert the closing down of the dig – that’s why we are appealing URGENTLY for pledges.

Should you feel moved you can pledge funds to the dig online, though I had better emphasise that I know nothing about the people behind this project.

Still, they do have some useful resources on the death of Richard III on their site.

Allegations of bullying at Ludlow Town Council

In the early days of this blog the goings on at Ludlow Town Council kept my readers entertained. There was the fight that broke out and the dog who attended meetings.

Now the authority is back in the news, or at least the South Shropshire Journal:

Four councillors have been called on to stand down from Ludlow Town Council amid allegations of bullying, following the resignation of the authority’s clerk. 

Former town mayor John Aitken and fellow councillors Viv Parry, Susan McCormack and Jeffry Wilcox have been accused of bullying town clerk Veronica Calderbank over a period of several months and failing to act in the interests of the people of the town.

The report goes on to say that a dossier of letters and town council committee minutes connected with the allegations was presented at a meeting of the council on Monday and that at least one of those named denies those allegations.

On a happier note, we have managed to obtain an exclusive interview with Sarky, the dog who used to attend meetings...

Liberal England: So, Sarky, what was it like attending meetings of Ludlow Town Council?

Sarky: Rough!

Six of the Best 260

Photo credit: Robert Cutts

GamesMonitor, writing before today's news broke, welcomes us to The Security Games: "Since 2010, the number of security personnel required by Olympic organisers has risen sharply to an overall estimated 23700 on the busiest days, more than double the original predictions. As well as up to 12000 police from forces across the country, the Ministry of Defence has provided more troops deployed (in uniform) to work during the Games than are currently stationed in Afghanistan. More CCTV has been installed in a part of London already awash with cameras and around £80 million has been spent on the construction of an an 11-mile long 5000-volt electric fence around the Olympic zone."

In the last couple of weeks three major UK political figures have spoken about drugs and drug policy for a variety of reasons. Ewan Hoyle is not surprised that they have demonstrated hypocrisy, ignorance and an irresponsibly casual disregard for evidence and expertise.

Politics is for young people insists Victor Chamberlain, elected as Manchester's youngest ever councillor, in a guest post for the ALDC.

You know those thousands of 'never-worked' families living on what have been termed the 'Shameless estates' of Britain? FullFact.org presents evidence that suggests they are a myth.

"It was a warm, pleasant evening when I checked myself into the mad house. The irony of my situation wasn’t lost on me. Everything was back to front. As a psychology PhD, I fully expected to see the inside of such an institution in a professional capacity. But I now sat on the other side of the clinical transaction: a patient, tremulous and anxious, in the small admissions room of a large, gloomy psychiatric hospital." Darragh McCausland writes (and reads) for The Racket.

Richly Evocative takes us to Granville Road Spinney, a short walk from Finsbury Park tube station - and namechecks Richard Jefferies and Alan Garner.

Lib Dems "abandon" interim peers panel elections

A reader emails to alert me to the fact that Michael Crick has just reported on his blog that "the Lib Dem high command has quietly decided this year to abandon its election for future peers".

He asks

• First, who in this instance is "the Lib Dem high command"? 
• Second, whoever they are, do they have the right to unilaterally abandon scheduled elections to the party's Interim Peers Panel? 
• And third, why has this decision been taken "quietly"?

Later. Mark Pack provides some answers - it seems this is a recent Federal Executive decision. He also says:

the way in which the news has seeped out rather reinforces my view that party committees could and should be better at communicating their decisions.

Fischer vs Spassky: It was 40 years ago today

Thanks to the invaluable Open Culture for reminding us that the first game of the chess's 'match of the century' was played on 11 July 1972. The Russian Spassky won that game but went on to lose the match and his world title to the American Bobby Fischer.

Though Spassky was far from a model Soviet citizen, the match symbolised the Cold War as nothing else could and captured the imagination of the world.

The video above is an excerpt from the 2006 GSN documentary Anything to Win: The Mad Genius of Bobby Fischer.

I can also recommend last year's documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World.

Isobel Logan resigns from the Women's Liberal Association

Time for another extract from Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester by Richard Whitmore. The first dealt with the Market Harborough branch of the Women's Social & Political Union (WSPU).

This one deals with events in (I think) 1909 when Christabel Pankhurst made a special effort to win the support of women and position:

One such woman, Miss Isobel Logan, had been a committed Liberal in her own right but had become increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of action by organisations like the Women's Liberal Association [WLA], as her resignation letter makes clear: 

"To my mind the question of women's suffrage is so important  and its continued denial so great an injustice to women, that it is impossible for me to belong to an association that does not put the question before others. For the same reason I am sorry that I can no longer resubscribe to your funds." 

Clearly, what was bad news for the coffers of the WLA proved beneficial to the WSPU, for Isobel Logan was a wealthy woman of some local standing and often cut a dashing figure as she attended suffrage meetings in her motor car. Yet this conversion went much deeper than just financial support. Without doubt, close contacts with the working women of the Leicester WSPU had a profound effect on her, and soon after joining the WSPU she took employment as a bookbinder. 

In some ways this might have been seen as a token gesture by a woman who clearly didn't need to work, but not only had she been converted to socialism and the need for working women to be independent, but she also argued that women should be allowed to enter the labour market on equal terms with men. However, this conversion to socialism was also tempered with a little luxury, and in August she invited Alice Hawkins and the Clarion Cycle Club to attend a picnic in the grounds of her father's house in East Langton.

Nina Boyd is researching a group of women who committed their lives to animal welfare from the beginning of the twentieth century until the last of them died in the 1960s. They include Isobel's sister Nora Logan, who was also a supporter of women's suffrage, though perhaps a less prominent once than Isobel.

If anyone comes across more information about the Logan family, both Nina and I should be interested to hear about it.

Finally, a reminder that this blog's hero J.W. Logan (Liberal MP for Harborough 1891-1904 and 1910-16) was himself a strong supporter of votes for women.

GUEST POST Tommie Smith: The man behind the image

This is an extract from The Other Olympics: Playing with Identity by Matt Roebuck. It describes the day he met Tommie Smith, the man at the centre of this controversial image.

I was at the International Children’s Games in Lanarkshire and had spent the last three days at a conference discussing how to use utilise sport and the conclusion was that if sport is a platform to be built upon, then for sport to be a force for good, the message surrounding sport must lead people towards a choice of ethical and healthy behaviour. A movement with the size and universality of the Olympics has always found governments, companies and individuals who look to abuse Olympism. If the Olympics wishes, as it claims, to transcend sport, then a proactive approach to ethics and an engagement with a community beyond sport is a must.

The actions of Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman in 1968 are one of the greatest examples of this power and the consequences that all three faced from the sporting authorities should be the shame of all those at the heart of sport.

Heroes – Past and Future

Having flexed my academic muscles, the next day I returned trackside to the International Children’s Games athletics meet. In East Kilbride I was fortunate enough to encounter the man who is probably the most well-known for using the Olympic stage as a platform to promote an ethical and indeed a political stance.

“That’s right son.” My greatest living sporting hero had just called me son. I shook his hand and as we talked he agreed with my views on the power of sport, yet this still wasn’t the highlight of my day.

He probably calls everybody son. Nevertheless I sat as a disciple at the feet of an Olympic hero, a true legend beyond his sport. The configuring of the small benched track stand by the Leisure Centre Athletics track meant I was literally sat at his feet.

You may not know this man by name, you may not recognise his aged features but his image is one of the most iconic of the 20th century. I swear it was even briefly featured on the Simpsons, though I can’t find the picture.

Tommie Smith is the man atop the podium accepting gold for his victory in the Mexico 1968 Olympics’ 200 metres sprint. In that iconic image he and the bronze medallist John Carlos hold up alternate outstretched fists. On those fists is a single black glove. Look this event up on Wikipedia and it refers to social anthropologist Orin Starn’s editorial “Bottom line turns to hollow gold for today’s Olympians” lamenting “the lack of social engagement of modern sports athletes, in contrast to Smith and Carlos.”

As we talked, Smith still referred to himself as a controversial character and even an outcast. They certainly were, even receiving death threats. The attention he received on a blustery day in central Scotland suggested that was less the case now, at least it was in this company. The aftermath for the third athlete, the white Peter Norman is less well known.

Norman took to the podium wearing an Olympic Movement for Human Rights pin badge in support of the Americans’ actions. Peter was ostracised in his Australian homeland for doing so. He failed to achieve selection for the 1968 Tokyo Games despite having posted the fourth quickest time in the world. The Sydney 2000 Games were supposed to represent a reconciliation with Australia’s own race issues and the Aborigines. When the Olympic medallists of Australia were invited to the closing ceremony, Norman’s invitation was missing. Peter Norman died in 2006.

Smith went onto teach sociology and track. He continues to use Sport as a tool, “To some people I’m an outcast but through the foundation in my name I’m able to make a difference. It’s not about using sport for a political means now, it’s about using it for health and wellness.”

This man knew the stage the medal had put him on and he was determined to use it. I watched whilst local children using the games to learn the skills of journalism took the opportunity to interview him. A boy was ushered by his teacher towards the large crowd of media lining up to meet Smith by the finishing line. A whole interview was conducted about Tommie’s involvement with the Tommie Smith Youth Initiative and the Oakland track team before the boy was told that Tommie had won a gold medal. The boys eyes lit up and he asked to shake Tommie’s hand.

The Tommie Smith Youth Initiative works across a number of states in poor inner city neighbourhoods. Athletics is the draw, but to receive coaching kids must attend sessions “every Saturday morning dealing with health, wellness, camaraderie, speech and different things which the classrooms don’t really put a lot of emphasis on.” Tommie didn’t want to just use sport as a diversionary tool, he and his wife were committed to building positive structures that would surround it.

“It’s not just about keeping kids off the streets, it’s about educationally qualifying them to move on viably in life.”

The girls they’d brought to the games weren’t necessarily the most athletically gifted of those on the program. Oakland like many cities had come to these games in order to provide a goal for their children and the opportunity to benefit through cultural exchange. Lanarkshire chose to send their best athletes as a reward for their dedication in training.

******

Coincidentally, the highlight of my day also involved Mexico. It was a conversation with a girl who has no iconic image. No one knows who this girl was, I didn’t even catch her name but when I met her she was bravely holding back the tears, signing an autograph for some local infants and their mum.

She was a swimmer and she had come fourth. She was fourth by only hundredths of a second, she was angry, devastated and pawed a wet, crumpled tissue in her hand. This wasn’t my highlight because of some twisted schadenfreude. It became my highlight because I was able to lift her, not with the same old platitudes and ‘better luck next time’ but with a tale of Seb Coe. I’d heard this tale at a conference delivered by a top sports psychologist brought in to do the inspirational job Scott Hastings had provided in Lanarkshire.

Coe apparently says the most important race of his life is one he lost after bolting too early. In this race, at least for the purposed of my tale, Seb had come fourth. Why was this the most important result of his life? It was because from this race he learnt the most and it spurred him towards future success.

“Maybe you lost today but if you take how you feel now and learn from it maybe you’ll win the Pan-American Games, even the Olympics one day. There is always another opportunity, when is your next race?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Well there you go.”

“You know what, Seb Coe can’t even swim.” She didn’t know who Seb Coe was but I thought this was somehow relevant. I’d only just heard this myself when he was reported as using it as an excuse for not joining the press at the opening of the London Olympic swimming pool. I guess in pursuit of excellence in one field, important life lessons can be missed. More importantly she was smiling and I treated myself to a piece of cake.

As I wandered back to catch a bus to the airport I passed another team from the United States.

“He was asking a legit question.” A girl responded angrily to her compatriot.

“I’m not a tourist information,” the boy shouted back.

“There was no need to be so rude,” she countered. It made me smile to hear this peer group insisting that more social lessons were to be learnt by their colleagues.

The young Mexican was the highlight of my day because it reminded me just how much I enjoyed coaching. It also proved that the daily life experiences that surround sport can be just as rewarding as that once in a lifetime opportunity to meet your hero. As I left the games that day, I imagined Tommie giving me a pat on the back and another “well done son.”

Tommie Smith knows that politics and sport do mix because both grow out of community. Sport can be used and sport can be abused. The Other Olympics: Playing with Identity visits 13 alternative games each promoting a specific identity. The Other Olympics goes shopping with the Palestinian National Football team at the Arab Games in Qatar. It dances the conga with the South Wales Police and watches firemen running up the rebuilt World Trade Center 7 at the World Police and Fire Games. It meets those running with their new hearts and promoting organ donation at the World Transplant Games and has a cup of tea and a chat about the future of the Olympics with IOC member the Princess of Liechtenstein.

If you have enjoyed this extract then please consider buying The Other Olympics: Playing with Identity. You may also be interested in Salute: The Movie.

Harry Potter, martial arts and lesbian and gay psychology: A reminder

Dr Martin Milton is giving a free public lecture on the links between courage, creativity and mental well-being in Leicester this Saturday (14 July).

His lecture forms part of the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Counselling Psychology. It will see Dr Milton drawing upon the Harry Potter stories, boxing and mixed martial arts, as well as lesbian and gay psychology.

Dr Milton's talk will launch his book Diagnosis and Beyond: Counselling Psychology Contributions to Understanding Human Distress. Tea and cake will be available afterwards.

The lecture takes place at the Mercure Leicester City Hotel in Granby Street  (you know, the old Grand Hotel) between 12 and 1 p.m.

You can book in advance or just turn up on the day.

Labour, schools and the Forces

I find myself oddly unconcerned by the call for the armed forces to be more involved in education made by Stephen Twigg and Jim Murphy in the Daily Telegraph yesterday.

There are many children who will hate the idea (I would have been one) but there are others who would jump at the idea of “specialist Service Schools,” so why shouldn’t they be able to attend them?

Liberal and radicals should be keen to leaven the state system with more variety, choice and outright eccentricity. I also like the argument of Sean Davey on Liberal Democrat Voice that ssuch moves would be good for the Forces.

This sudden enthusiasm for the armed forces from two herbivorous Labour politicians, however, may tell us something about the Labour mind-set.

Because only a few days ago Stephen Twigg responded to research from the Sutton Trust suggesting that teenagers in England are half as likely as those in the average developed nation to reach higher levels in maths with the claim:

"Results for all pupils, including the brightest, improved under Labour. While there are always improvements that could be made, gifted and talented pupils were stretched through a National Academy, targeted scholarships and a new A* grade at A-level.”

It seems that in the Labour universe all is well with education or you have to call in the Army. My own radical case for children standing up when a teacher enters the room probably sounded laughably old-fashioned to most Labour bloggers, but look what their party is advocating now.

This lack of a middle position is somehow typical of Labour. I am reminded of a post about teenagers and swearing that I wrote in the early years of this blog where I note the assumption of a Guardian (inevitably) writer that the only alternative to his lax approach was something absurdly repressive.

David Cameron is the new John Major

John Major was a decent man who wanted to govern as a one-nation Conservative prime minister, but was not allowed to do so by his ungovernable party.

David Cameron is an arrogant man who has grasped that he needs to govern as a one-nation Conservative prime minister if he is to win a second term, but is not being allowed to do so by his party.

Back in December 2006 I commented on a warning that Cameron, then leader of the opposition, gave to his party. He told it that it must back his drive to modernise or face a fourth consecutive general election defeat.
I said:

Obviously, Cameron feels obliged to play down the difficulty of the task he faces in bringing the Conservatives back to power. If he is to become prime minister, it is overwhelmingly likely that it will take him two elections to get there. 

The really hard thing for him will be to avoid being knifed by his party after he loses the first of those elections.

Cameron exceeded my expectations by becoming prime minister at the first attempt, but I was right to the extent that he had to form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats as a result.

And I was right about the knifing.

Large sections of the Conservative Party, following Calder's Fourth Law of Politics, are convinced that there own eccentric views are shared by the majority of the British people and blame Cameron and his modernising for its failure to win the 2010 election.

Having tasted blood delaying Lords reform - and in the process tearing up not just the Coalition agreement but the 2010 Conservative manifesto as well - that wing of the party will be all the keener to defeat Cameron again.

In their own minds they will imagine that they are being helpful to the party and even to its leader, but I doubt the wider electorate will see it that way. And I am sure it will not feel like that to Cameron either. John Major even resigned as Conservative leader to challenge his critics to a contest, but even beating Ol' Pointy-Ears did nothing to end the agony.

Indeed, in two ways David Cameron is in a weaker position than John Major was after 1992.

Major had won an overall majority in a general election. And he did not have to contend with a Conservative blogosphere that exists to broadcast the opinions of every critic of the leadership and has close connections with the media.

The Suffragettes in Market Harborough

On Saturday I bought a copy of Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester by Richard Whitmore. I was looking for more information on J.W. Logan's Suffragette daughters Isobel and Nora.

I found them, and rather more on the notably militant campaigning of Leicester suffragettes. I shall be sharing some of them with you.

Here is the first, discussing the Leicester branch of the Women's Social & Political Union in 1912:

From late May and early June the Leicester branch had been making tentative moves towards the southern part of the county and had managed, with the help of Isobel Logan, to form what was, to all intents and purposes, a predominantly middle-class branch in Market Harborough under the capable leadership of Miss J. Jerwood of Little Bowden Rectory.

David Steel goes arse about face on Lords reform

If you judge a man by the company he keeps then David Steel's remaining admirers must be weeping at this paragraph from this morning's Guardian:

The other former Tory cabinet ministers [besides Geoffrey Howe and Norman Lamont] who signed the letter are the former Northern Ireland secretary and party chairman Peter Brooke, the former Scottish secretary Michael Forsyth, the former agriculture minister Michael Jopling, the former transport secretary John MacGregor, the former attorney general Patrick Mayhew, the former Scottish secretary Ian Lang and former environment, industry and social security secretary Patrick Jenkin. Another signatory is the former Liberal leader David Steel.

A man who devoted his life to campaigning against complacent Toryism has joined its ranks.

If you doubt me, just see what the Liberal manifesto said in the three general elections in which Steel was the party's leader.

1979

The House of Lords should be replaced by a new, democratically chosen, second chamber which includes representatives of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, and UK members of the European Parliament.

1983 (this and 1987 were joint documents published with the SDP)

In the light of these deficiencies in the structure of government, we propose ... to increase the accountability of Government to Parliament by reforming the operation and procedures of the House of Commons, to make its control of the executive more effective and to reform the powers and composition of the House of Lords, which must include a significant elected element representative of the nations and regions of Britain.

1987

"In recent years the House of Lords has proved the value of a second chamber by its careful scrutiny of bills which got little attention in the Commons and by its willingness to defeat the government on issues of national concern. But there can be no justification for basing the membership of the second chamber so largely on heredity and on the whim of Prime Ministers. The Alliance will work towards a reform of the second chamber linked with our devolution proposals so that it will include members elected from the regions and nations of Britain and will phase out the rights of hereditary peers to vote in the Lords."

If Steel has better ideas for bringing about a more democratic House of Lords than those Nick Clegg has brought forward then by all means let him propose them. The House of Lords, after all, is meant to be a revising chamber. But this cosying up with the opponents of a political lifetime does him no credit.

It is hard to resist the question: "So, unelected peer David Steel, what made you decide that unelected peers are a good idea?"

Headline of the Day visits Bromley

From the Evening Standard:


Toxic foreign moths infest Bromley

Paddy Ashdown on Lords reform - and Alex Carlile

The former Lib Dem leader has an article in the Mail on Sunday today defending the Coalition's plans for reform of the House of Lords:

The Cameron/Clegg reform Bill does not ‘trash’ the Lords, as some claim – it retains the best of what we have now and discards the worst. The more democratic ‘new Lords’ will remain different from the Commons – they will be more separated from the short-termism of a five-year electoral cycle and less likely to kowtow to the whips and the media. 

The Commons will remain more powerful and finally able to get its way if it insists. Which means more democracy, but no deadlock. That’s proper democracy. 

Some write of the ‘amazing expertise’ in the Lords. They are right to do so – we have some eminent, independent figures there. But they are far outnumbered by the retired, the rejected, the defeated and the sometimes dead-beat from the Commons.

And he goes on to show that he has forgotten none of his training in unarmed combat by felling Alex Carlile, who wrote an article critical of the plans last week:

My colleague Alex Carlile, who wrote in this paper last Sunday, is not a Lord because he is a great legal eagle (which he undoubtedly is), but because he is a former Lib Dem MP. I should know. It was me who recommended him for a peerage.

Captain Sensible: Wot

By 1982 the guitarist Captain Sensible (real name Raymond Burns) had parted from Rat Scabies (real name Christopher Millar) and the rest of The Damned and enjoyed an unlikely UK no. 1 with his version of  'Happy Talk' from South Pacific.

This, his follow up, was released in the same year, owed nothing to Rodgers and Hammerstein and reached only no. 26.

But it seems that 'Wot' was more popular elsewhere. Interviewed by Ink 19 in 2001, Sensible said:

What do you think is the most controversial thing you've done in your career? 

Oh, dear. [Long pause] I remember when rap first started and I did that stupid rap piss-take, I did a song called "Wot." I thought rap would be around for five minutes and I didn't think anyone would take it seriously. And how stupid and wrong I was. So I did this song and it was a bloody massive hit! It was number one in France for seven weeks. I couldn't go anywhere in France without people chasing me down the road, you know? So, not that that was controversial, but I used to come over to New York and go to these black radio stations and they couldn't believe that I was a white bloke, and a white bloke from England as well. They couldn't see it. 

But "Wot" is a very British expression. Americans don't say that. 

Yeah, exactly. And the whole joke about the lyric was that it was done with kind of an upper-class accent. What I was taking the piss out of was not so much the rap; I was taking the piss out of the upper-class English. You know, stupid English people trying to get down and boogie [note: The Captain pronounced it "Boo-gay"]. [Quoting lyrics,] "I'm aware that the guy must do his work/but the pile driver man drove me berserk!/He drove me berserk, I say!" 

And I recall you took a bit of a jab at Adam Ant in that song, who was all the rage at the time. 

Yeah, I couldn't work out what Adam was all about. "Ant Music for Sex People" -- what was that all about? What a strange bloke he was. No, he's alright. He was cute while he had his hair. [Laughs hard] Oh, you bitch!

As to the video, the above suggests that everyone in it is a lookalike - it was only Adam Ant I thought might be the original. Except Hugh Lloyd. I don't suppose anyone found work as a Hugh Lloyd lookalike even in his sixties heyday.

In September 2006, says Wikipedia, Sensible formed his own political party - the Blah! Party. Sadly, as his own website records:

a lack of organizational skills has seen that dwindle somewhat and my political rants now take the form of the odd rant on my Facebook and Twitter pages.