Liberal Democrats commit to bedroom tax reform

Danny Alexander writes:

“As a Liberal Democrat I want everyone to have the opportunity to have a secure and decent home. 

“We brought in changes to how housing benefit is calculated in the social housing sector with the best of intentions. 

“However, a recent report shows people are having to cut back on household essentials despite the help offered through Discretionary Housing Payments. 

“Therefore, we have reviewed our position so only those already in the social rented sector who turn down suitable smaller homes will see a reduction in their benefit. These commitments will be in the Lib Dem manifesto and we will push for it as government policy right away. 

“This change, combined with a commitment to build 300,000 houses a year in the next Parliament, will build on the progress we have already made to address Britain’s housing problem.”

That sounds about right to me.

The Saxon carvings and Renaissance tombs at Breedon on the Hill

Back to the church at Breedon on the Hill. This is the Breedon Angel, an Anglo Saxon carving believed to represent the Angel Gabriel appearing to Mary.

Great English Churches says it is "secreted away in the bell tower where only the privileged are allowed to see it". Ah, but I turned on the Calder charm and was taken up to see it by the excellent woman who was looking after the church that afternoon.

Other carvings of the period line the walls of the church. As that website says:

There are Greek and Byzantine influences to be seen and all of this should help to give the lie to the suggestion that between the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Normans poor old England went through artistic “Dark Ages”.

And in the north aisle you can find tombs belonging to the Shirley family, who bought the priory at the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Vince Cable compared to Saruman from The Lord of the Rings

He was not trying to be complimentary, but the Conservative MP Richard Fuller - as quoted by the Evening Standard - wins our Imaginative Parallel of the Day award for this comment on Vince Cable:

"[It is] as if the Secretary of State sees himself as a real-world version of Saruman, that character in Middle Earth who came down with the best of intentions but unfortunately took the power unto himself and believed that he alone was benign enough and all-seeing that he could create a wonderful environment ... in which all would be good."

Joan Hickson was the greatest Miss Marple

I have said it before and I am going to say it again here: Joan Hickson was the greatest Miss Marple.

And if you won't take my word for it, listen to Natalie Haynes writing on a Guardian blog a couple of years ago:

Hickson captured perfectly the fluffy ruthlessness of Jane Marple: she has wispy white hair like the mohair she's so often knitting with her softly clicking pins; the slight thickening of the voice when she's thinking; the real sense that she is, as Sir Henry Clithering describes her, "one of the most formidable criminologists in England. There she sits, an elderly spinster, sweet, placid, so you'd think. Yet her mind has plumbed the depths of human iniquity, and taken it all in the day's work". 

Hickson's Marple is neither Rutherford's buffoon nor McEwan's camp schoolmarm: she is a frail elderly woman who is simply unshockable and fearless. Jason Rafiel (Donald Pleasence) has her number: "She also has a mind like a bacon slicer." He is the one who nicknames her Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, in A Caribbean Mystery. And it is the measure of a good policeman that he can recognise her brilliance in spite of her old-lady mannerisms: Chief Inspector Fred Davy (the much-missed George Baker in At Bertram's Hotel) gets her immediately, whereas poor Chief Inspector Slack (David Horovitch in The Body in the Library) is a less good judge of character. 

Miss Marple's great gift is to have seen every facet of human behaviour in her village, St Mary Mead. Every new person, situation and crime is filtered through this knowledge: she is never surprised by anything. "Apparently, he's a … communist," whispers the vicar's wife of Edmund Swettenham in A Murder is Announced. "Well, yes," replies Miss Marple, thoughtfully. "Then he must be very lonely in Chipping Cleghorn."

Haynes also reminds us that the first episode of The Body in the Library (Hickson's first Miss Marple) was screened on Boxing Day, two days after the the final episode of The Box of Delights was shown.

They really don't make Christmas television like that any more.

Six of the Best 450

"Journalism is in remorseless decline. 30 years ago the quality newspapers would devote a page (a broadsheet page that is) to parliamentary proceedings. Now the best many offer is a facetious piece from the ‘lobby correspondent’ and the cartoon." Richard Kemp asks if democracy is dead or merely dying.

Trail by Jeory looks at new accusations of organised fraud at the count for the election of the mayor of Tower Hamlets.

"Here’s our choice. We wait and see whether a class of powerful pesticides, made by Bayer and Syngenta, is indeed pushing entire ecosystems to oblivion, or we suspend their use while proper trials are conducted. The natural world versus two chemical companies: how hard can this be?" George Monbiot calls for a global moratorium on neonicotinoids.

Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West, writes on the party website about his debut for the Great Britain Veterans rugby league team.

Londonist discovers the Great Beer Flood of 1814, which claimed at least eight lives.

"He made his Middlesex debut at 16, making him the club's youngest player since 1949; and his first England Test ... at the age of 20. A year later, he became the youngest ever Englishman to 50 Test wickets. He was hailed as one of the finest young fast bowlers in the world." Steve Finn talks to CricInfo about his struggle to rebuild his cricket career.

Parrot and its owner stuck up a tree on Hull estate

The Hull Daily Mail wins Headline of the Day.

Thanks to Carl Minns on Twitter.

Now Jo Swinson is going to replace Vince Cable

Political commentators are agreed that Jo Swinson will get a Cabinet post in the autumn: it's just that they can't agree whom she will replace.

The other day we saw that both Alistair Carmichael and Ed Davey have been given the black spot.

Now David Maddox in The Scotsman has found a new victim:

This could be the moment when Mr Clegg considers the position of Vince Cable. The Business Secretary has been a thorn in Mr Clegg’s side throughout the coalition and may have been involved in the failed coup attempt organised by his close friend Lord Oakeshott. But most importantly, Mr Clegg now has an excuse to sack Mr Cable because of the botched privatisation of Royal Mail. Most ministers struggle to survive losing the taxpayer at least £1 billion. 

The timing could be significant. Cable is adored by the party faithful and sacking him before the Glasgow conference in autumn could see him become a focal point for members’ widespread unhappiness with Clegg’s leadership. Do it after the conference and Mr Cable would have less of a platform to lead a popular rebellion.

It's almost as if commentators don't always know as much as they pretend.

Breedon on the Hill lock up

English Buildings explains:

The lock-up was once a common sight in English towns and villages. The local constable found it useful to have a place where wrongdoers could be detained until the authorities could deal with them and hotheads and drunkards could be locked up until they cooled down. In other words, lock-ups were used in a similar way to the cells at the police station in a time before there was an organized police force.

This distinctive 18th-century lock up can be found in the village of Breedon on the Hill across the road from the pub and beneath the church and its cliff. There is a board outside giving its history and it is kept unlocked so you can go in and experience life as a Georgian felon.

English Buildings describes it:

The tiny, one-room building is all about security. There is a stout door, no windows, and – because tiles or shingles might be removed from inside by an inmate eager to climb out – a solid stone roof. The adjoining wall is part of a secure enclosure or pound, where stray animals could be kept until claimed by their owners.

A Leicester Shire Promotions leaflet reveals that the Breedon lock up is one of five surviving in this corner of South Derbyshire and North West Leicestershire.

Kenneth Clarke should have become Conservative leader in 1997

Kenneth Clarke stood down today after a remarkable 42 years in front-bench politics.

If the Conservative Party had known its own best interests, he would have become its leader after the landslide defeat of 1997. Clarke would have busked it and kept the Tories' spirits up while they worked out how the hell they were going to fight back against Tony Blair and New Labour.

Instead, the party's members chose leaders whom they saw as true Thatcherites - William Hague and then Iain Duncan Smith. Eventually the MPs felt obliged to take control by nominating Michael Howard as the sole candidate for leader after the collapse of IDS.

The party began its recovery under Howard, but if Clarke, a figure far more likely to appeal to the wider public, had been made leader in 1997, that recovery would surely have come sooner.

And if Clarke had become leader, William Hague would have been spared the premature exposure that blighted his career. Without it, he might well have become prime minister by now.

Committee says no action needed on ‘tit for tat’ ‘schoolboys in a playground’ ‘waste of time and taxpayers’ money’ complaint

Headline of the Day goes to the Wisbech Standard.

The complaint in question was made against a Conservative councillor who filmed a UKIP county councillor during a meeting of Wisbech Town Council.

Iain Sinclair on Edge of the Orison

This is a film Iain Sinclair made for Newsnight about his book Edge of the Orsion, which was based on a walk he made retracing John Clare's steps from Epping to Peterborough.

You may also enjoy The Straw Bear takes a stroll through the streets of Peterborough.

Keith Vaz and Greville Janner

In view of Keith Vaz's new-found role as the scourge of secrecy on child abuse, it is interesting to be reminded of a speech he gave in the Commons in December 1991.

It was in a debate on contempt of court, which was held after the conviction of Frank Beck for serious sexual offences in Leicestershire children's homes (including two in Market Harborough).

In the course of that trial certain accusations were made against Greville Janner, who was then Labour MP for Leicester West and is now a Labour peer.

This is part of Keith Vaz's speech in that debate:

My hon. and learned Friend, too, is a brave man in what he has done, said and endured over the past weeks and months. Every one of us should be grateful to him, because, as the hon. Members for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) and for Leicestershire, North-West (Mr. Ashby) said, what has happened to my hon. and learned Friend could happen to any one of us, so we should all be aware of it. 

During the course of that terrible ordeal, I suggested to the Lord Chancellor that there should be a change in the law to provide for the protection of the innocent. The Lord Chancellor said that he would consider the idea. The Solicitor-General is here today, and I make him an offer. I came 18th in the ballot for private Members’ Bills. I know that that is not very high —and there are other subjects that I wish to raise. Nevertheless, I would happily introduce a Bill to cover the point if the right hon. and learned Gentleman would promise it a safe passage through the House. 

We should not wait for another Criminal Justice Bill. There is parliamentary time, and we should get on with the job. I foresee that many unscrupulous people in this country would be prepared to do exactly the same thing again. If it is possible to do so, I will happily give the Solicitor-General my place.

It is worth reading the whole debate, if only because it features the names of politicians who were always in the media in those days but are now quite forgotten. Ivan Lawrence. Martin Brandon-Bravo. Anthony Beaumont-Dark.

Thanks to The Needle for the link to the debate.

More speculation on a Liberal Democrat reshuffle

Jane Merrick reports in the Independent on Sunday that reports that Nick Clegg will not be conducting a reshuffle of Liberal Democrat ministers on Tuesday when David Cameron's reshuffles his team.

As part of a concerted effort by Lib Dems for a "conscious uncoupling" from the Conservatives, he will be holding his reshuffle just before the party conference in the autumn.

Merrick quotes an unnamed "Lib Dem Source":

"We are under no obligation to be bound to David Cameron's timetable. We have a party conference later this year and at that point we will set out who we will take into the general election."

So far, so good. But some of the detail in her article is distinctly odd.

First, she tells us that there has been speculation this week that Alistair Carmichael would be sacked as Secretary of State for Scotland to make way for Jo Swinson.

No doubt Jane Merrick is better connected than I am, but this makes little sense to me. All the speculation I have come across recently has been that Jo will take Ed Davey's place as Secretary of State for Energy.

The idea of dropping Alistair in the final weeks of the referendum campaign is bizarre. As Merrick says, "this would have been seized on by Alex Salmond and his supporters as an admission of failure".

It would also ignore the fact that Alistair is fast emerging as one of the party's most effective communicators both in the media and in the Commons.

Her report also tells us that "Mr Clegg is being urged by some allies to sack Business Secretary Vince Cable".

I don't know who these allies are, but I suspect they are the usual 12-year-old special advisers.

The usual complaint against Vince is that he sounds more like an independent economic commentator than a minister.

When these SpAds are older, they will realise what a precious gift that is.

Man dropped trousers and underpants, exposing himself, in Leicester branch of Tesco to prove he was not shoplifting

Congratulations to the Leicester Mercury for winning our Headline of the Day Award.

T-Bone Walker: Hey Baby

On Tuesday we saw a photo of T-Bone Walker playing at what I knew as the Wyvern in Granby Street, Leicester. So here is playing for the BBC the same year.

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame says of him:

T-Bone Walker’s single-string solos influenced blues players like B.B. King and such rockers as Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. 

As Pete Welding wrote: “T-Bone Walker is the fundamental source of the modern urban style of playing and singing the blues. The blues was different before he came onto the scene, and it hasn’t been the same since.”

And "T-Bone"?

His full name was Aaron Thibeaux Walker.

St Mary and St Bardulph's, Breedon on the Hill

The Leicestershire and Rutland Pevsner puts it well:

The hill is only 180ft higher than the surrounding country, but the church upon it sturdily dominates the scene, most dramatically perhaps from the immediate E[ast] where the building rises precariously near a huge lime quarry.

Indeed, the church of St Mary and St Hardulph now stands above a cliff. I stood in the churchyard and see the vast cooling towers next to East Midlands Parkway railway station and watch the planes taking off from East Midlands Airport.

What feels like the original path up from the village has escaped the quarrying. The guidebook quotes John Throsby from 1790:

Breedon hill stands on the very edge of Derbyshire; on it formerly stood the village which is now seated at its base. It would make a fat alderman puff and blow to gain the top for a turtle dinner.

The church stands within the remnants of an Iron Age hillfort  on a site has been the site of a hermitage, a monastery and a priory, though by the time of Dissolution the priory was in a poor state.

Today’s church contains parts of the old priory, with the result that it is full of blind windows and doorways, and the outside has the broken ends of buttresses and old rooflines visible. It even has a large porch that you might find in a friendly country hotel.

St Mary and St Hardulph’s is famous for its Renaissance monuments and Anglo-Saxon carvings. It is always open – staffed by local volunteers – and a kind lady allowed me upstairs in the tower to see the best of the carvings.

More about these and the monuments another day.

Six of the Best 449

"I've been hugely influenced by my co-author David Clark, one of the world’s leading clinical psychologists. He always stressed to me that the aim of therapy is not to help people manage their condition but to recover and be free of it." Richard Layard is interviewed by Joel Suss, editor of the British Politics and Policy blog.

Sanchia Berg looks at the inadequate way allegations of abuse at children's homes and approved schools were dealt with in decades past.

"No one tells you to learn Chinese for the literature, or the history, or the love of the language itself (beautiful as it is). The unspoken message they’re sending out is “do it for the money”. Emily Maitlis says our children are learning Chinese for all the wrong reasons.

Diamond Geezer offers a dialogue on Transport for London's decision to stop allowing people to pay their fares on the bus with cash. He foresees trouble.

"The city came alive… I felt proud to be a York resident." Miles Salter writes for York Mix on the triumph that was Le Grand Depart.

Wartime Housewife mourns the death of Jeremiah the cat: "I hope that wherever he is now, he has gardens to explore, furry things to chase and a full tummy." Excuse me, I seem to have something in my eye.

Was Carmarthenshire sheep abducted by aliens?

Our Headline of the Day comes from the Carmarthenshire Journal.

The Haxey Hood Game

#3437469 / gettyimages.com

From the Haxey Hood website:

The Haxey Hood is a annual event held in the village of Haxey, North Lincolnshire. It is most easily described as a kind of rugby game with unlimited participants and few rules, where a leather tube is slowly walked by a large unorganised rugby scrum to 1 of 4 pubs. Here it it remains until the following year's game. 

The official story is that in the 14th century, Lady de Mowbray, wife of an Isle landowner, John De Mowbray, was out riding towards Westwoodside on the hill that separates it from Haxey. As she went over the hill her silk riding hood was blown away by the wind. Thirteen farm workers in the field rushed to help and chased the hood all over the field. 

It was finally caught by one of the farm workers, but being too shy to hand it back to the lady, gave it to one of the others to hand back to her. She thanked the farm worker who had returned the hood and said that he had acted like a Lord. Whereas the worker who had actually caught the hood was a Fool. 

So amused was she by this act of chivalry and the resulting chase, that she donated 13 acres of land on condition that the chase for the hood would be re-enacted each year. This re-enactment over the centuries has become known as "The Haxey Hood"

The Getty Images website dates this photo to c.1928 and goes on to say:

Caption:circa 1928: The inhabitants of Haxey in Lincolnshire take part in the Haxey Hood Game, held every January 6th. Wearing a garlanded top hat, the Chief Boggin is escorted to the village church by a group of 'boggins' carrying 'hoods', rolls of leather about three feet long.

Team Clegg plays down the idea of promoting Jo Swinson to the Cabinet

On 1 July 2012 I blogged about a Scotland on Sunday report tipping Jo Swinson for promotion to the Cabinet. The idea was that she would replace Michael Moore as Secretary of State for Scotland. In the event, of course, it was Alistair Carmichael who got the job.

Yesterday the New Statesman tipped her again. This time the proposed victim was Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy.

Today's papers have clearly been briefed by Team Clegg - Freddie and Fiona - that this is not going to happen. I think that is a shame.

The Guardian holds out some hope for Jo:

She is expected to succeed Alistair Carmichael as Scotland secretary after September's independence referendum.

I hope Nick Clegg has something new in mind for Alistair. The sack would be a poor reward for The Man Who Saved the Union.