Michael Crick meets Rupert Matthews

Michael Crick had a report on Channel 4 News this evening about the continuing saga of Roger Helmer's resignation (or not) as one of the MEPs for the East Midlands and whether Rupert Matthews will replace him.

In his accompanying blog post he writes:

When I went to see Rupert Matthews at his home in Surrey today he refused to speak on camera. He doesn't want to upset his chances. 

Off-camera, he denied several times to my face that he was a teacher for the IMU, and had merely designed the course. Yet in the IMU's online video Matthews talks to camera of being "your tutor for the course". Matthews denies being a professor for the university, though they were calling him such up to the end of last week. 

And he denied that IMU gives out degrees, though their website quite clearly offer masters degrees. All very odd.

I agree with Crick's conclusion:

Conservative HQ says it will do what it can to help Matthews take over Helmer's seat. But they still want to question him. And I can't help feeling that question process will lead to Matthews being rejected, or persuaded to abandon his claim. That would be a pity in a way, for Rupert Matthews would be a lot more colourful than most MEPs.

And from a purely selfish point of view, if he does not become and MEP I shall be robbed of a stream of blog posts that write themselves.

If you want more background to this affair, read my earlier posts on Rupert Matthews.

Claire Tyler is the new chair of Cafcass

Children & Young People Now reports that the Lib Dem peer Baroness Claire Tyler has been appointed chair of Cafcass - the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service:

Education Secretary Michael Gove, who appointed Baroness Tyler, said her appointment would "help ensure that children’s interests are always at the heart of care and family court proceedings". 

She joins after a tough four years for the court service, which has battled to cope with a dramatic increase in caseloads since the Baby Peter case, as well as fend off criticism from MPs and unions. 

Latest figures indicate Cafcass is winning its battle to reduce the number of unallocated cases. By the end of March last year there were just three unallocated cases, compared with 986 by the end of August 2009.

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Welcome to The Libertine, "the blogging platform for young Lib Dems".

"All his life, Havel lived by the belief that if you wanted something to happen, you had to do something to make it happen, and damn the consequences, including arrest and prison, and possibly even death. Speaking about the early days of the post-Stalin thaw, he once said: “The more we did, the more we were able to do, and the more we were able to do, the more we did.” It is a fine summary of his attitude, and, in a sense, his legacy." Paul Wilson writes about the legacy of Václav Havel in the New York Review of Books.

Jock Coats argues, against George Monbiot, that libertarianism is naturally green.

The solution to hospital bed crises is not necessarily more beds, argues Slugger O'Toole, looking at the experience in Northern Ireland.

Nicholas Whyte looks at Scotch on the Rocks, a strangely prescient thriller written in the 1960s by Douglas Hurd and Andrew Osmond.

"Few places I've visited have such a powerful and unique identity as Dungeness and I could see instantly why Ravilious had felt at home. The lighthouses and miniature railway and power stations and eccentric little houses were part of it, but what appealed to me most was the evidence of passing time." James Russell follows in the footsteps on Eric Ravilious and Derek Jarman.

Headline of the Day features a moose

We have a new winner in the shape of the Huffington Post:

Dorothea Murphy, Alaska Woman, Fights Moose With Shovel

Konrad Smigielski and the destruction of old Leicester

This is a video from the University of Leicester that offers a re-evaluation of the career of Konrad Smigielski, the city's planning officer from 1962.

It argues that, though Smigielski is often blamed for the worst aspect of Leicester's redevelopment (the ring road, the loss of ancient buildings in the city centre), he deserves credit for many features of the city that are admired today, such as the preservation of New Walk and the improvement of some of its Victorian suburbs.

There is more about Konrad Smigielski and Leicester in a post by Jones the Planner. For better or worse, we never did get the monorail he proposed.

Stroking the black dog: A carnival of mental health

Ellen Arnison at In a Bun Dance is hosting a carnival of posts about mental health.

British R&B bands of the 1960s

Andrew Hickey is serialising his new ebook on The Kinks. In the first part he writes of British rhythm and blues bands of the 1960s:

Like many British bands in 1964 and 65, the Kinks were attempting to sound like the American blues music of a previous generation. The problem is that like many of those bands, the Kinks were not particularly strong either vocally or instrumentally, and simply couldn’t carry the weight of this material. 

When Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley sing “I’m A Man”, the implicit meaning is “so don’t call me ‘boy’”. When white teenagers from the Home Counties sing the same material, it comes out sounding more like “I’m a grown man, now, mummy, so you can’t make me tidy my room!” 

The best of the British R&B-oriented bands, like the Animals or the Zombies or the Spencer Davis Group, got away with this by having astonishingly good vocalists – and all of these bands soon moved away from the R&B sound.

Andrew seems spot on to me here, and not just because he compliments to two of my very favourite bands.

Does the location of the polling station affect how you vote?

A post by Jon Henley on the Guardian's Shortcuts blog suggests that it may:

A new US study has found "significantly more conservative social and political attitudes" among people near churches than those near municipal buildings like schools. Since both serve as polling stations, voting location could affect a close-run election. 

The research is reinforced by a 2008 study by Stanford business school, which found that in Arizona's 2000 elections, people voting in schools were – regardless of other factors – more likely to support higher education spending. In a control experiment, people shown images of churches proved less likely to back stem cell funding. "Environmental cues", they concluded, may in some cases influence voting outcomes even more than political views.

Leonard Cohen: Famous Blue Raincoat

Leonard Cohen has been in the newspapers this week because of the release of his album Old Ideas. His later style may not be to everyone's taste: "Catch Leonard Cohen's UK tour before his voice drops outside the range of human hearing," as someone said when he released The Future in 1992.

Come to that, Cohen's earlier work wasn't to everyone's taste either, but I find this wonderfully bleak.

More about Leonard Cohen on his official website.

Chelsea, Peter Osgood and Swinging London

As an armchair Chelsea fan (though I was there when we drew the FA Cup final in 1970) the advent of Gullit and Vialli and "sexy football" seemed like a restoration of the natural order of things. Chelsea should be a glamour club that wins a cup now and then. The subsequent Premierships under St Jose were something quite outside the expectations or experience of the club's fans.

I once wrote. To which I can add today: under AVB, Chelsea are pretty much back where they belong.

Just how much of glamour club Chelsea was in the sixties was made clear in a Jewish Chronicle article by Greg Tesser a few weeks ago:

Chelsea were London's glamour club at the time, attracting a host of celebrity supporters. People like the actor David Hemmings, the photographer Terry O'Neill and, on occasion, Hollywood stars like Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen, would regularly lunch at Alvaro's on the King's Road before making their way to Chelsea's ground, Stamford Bridge, to cheer on Osgood and company. 

I was an occasional guest at Alvaro's, and had struck up a friendship with O'Neill, who, along with David Bailey, was the most fashionable photographer in London and the former husband of the actress Faye Dunaway. 

It was not long before the national press cottoned on to the idea of footballers as celebrities and Osgood, playing for a club with so many glamorous supporters, soon became a glamour figure. When the Hollywood actress Raquel Welch was interviewed in The Times and (thanks to a little bit of Terry O'Neill persuasion) informed the world that she really admired Osgood, interest in him and Chelsea mushroomed.

Tesser goes on to describe a successful attempt to persuade Welch to attend a game - the straitlaced Chelsea manager Dave Sexton was against the idea, but Jimmy Hill smoothed things over and she was seen at Stamford Bridge.

Welch did not attend what he calls the post-match "tea room" at Stamford Bridge, Tesser says, but she was about the only celebrity of the day who did not:

Regular visitors convening for refreshment after matches included Michael Caine, John Cleese, Ronnie Corbett, Tom Courtney, Michael Crawford, Leonard Rossiter, Dennis Waterman and even United States Secretary of State and Nobel Prize-winner Henry Kissinger. They were all, as Osgood used to say, "Blues nuts". 

Another fan was the Jewish comic actor Marty Feldman. Marty lived above me in Wellesley Court in Maida Vale and I introduced him to Osgood. I do not know which of them was more starstruck. Feldman at the time was one of the most sought-after comic performers in the country, but even so I remember him saying wistfully to me: "I wish I had Osgood's talent".

Those really were the days.

Nottingham Liberal Democrats' Winter Mini-Conference

I spent this afternoon at Nottingham Liberal Democrats' Winter Mini-Conference.

It was an excellent event and could well provide a model for other local parties. Liberal Democrats can be so concerned with campaigning that they seldom make the time to discuss policy or the party's wider philosophy. Meanwhile, our national party conferences can be prohibitively expensive, are increasingly managed and require you to give your passport number, inside leg measurement and a DNA sample.

So there is certainly a role for more local events that enable party members to learn about and debate policy questions

There were three speakers: William Davidson from ALTER (the Lib Dem group Action for Land Taxation and Economic Reform); Dr Corinne Camilleri-Ferrante, a consultant in public health medicine, and Bill Newton Dunn MEP.

William  Davidson gave a good summary of the case for taxing land values. This is an idea that has been around in the party since the 19th century - indeed, suggested that Henry George's classic work on the subject from 1879, Progress and Poverty, outsold Karl Marx's Das Kapital in the English-speaking world.

The basic idea behind land value taxation is that the state should tax the profits that private landowners make because of public investment - say a new railway station increasing the price of nearby houses - should be taxed so that the public gets the advantage instead. At the same time, the state would have less need to tax income, profit or economic activity in general.

Land value taxation was implemented to an extent by Liberal governments early in the 20th century, but abandoned in the 1920s. There has been a recent revival of interest in the idea and it is now Liberal Democrat policy to use a form of the tax as a replacement for business rates.

My concern, which I tried to frame in a question, is that the idea of land value taxation was developed in a era when the great villains, in Liberal eyes, were landlords who refused to allow the fullest economic development of their estates. Nowadays, Lib Dem campaigning is often predicated on the idea that it would be a good thing if land were not developed to its fullest extent, and I wonder how this fits with taxing land values. Anyway, there is plenty more about the idea on the ALTER website.

Corinne Camilleri-Ferrante made an impassioned case against Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill. You can read her view for yourself in a Guardian article published last week.

I was convinced that we should campaign to retain the duty of the Secretary of State for Health to provide services. This is particularly necessary if you are a good Liberal who wants to see more diversity and local management in the system, as there then needs to be someone at the centre who will act to fill any gaps that emerge. David Cameron's recent intervention on the quality of nursing care is a good example of what can sometimes be necessary.

Beyond that, I always find it hard to disentangle concern for the patient, the defence of professional interests and the resistance to change we all feel in our jobs in such contributions. For instance, Corinne was concerned that local government is to take more responsibility for public health, but that seems to me a thoroughly good thing.

The idea that we should just leave it to the doctors won't really do: as someone pointed out from the floor, the British Medical Association opposed  the setting up of the National Health Service ("...and Lloyd George's Health Insurance Act," I helpfully added).

Finally, there was Bill Newton Dunn - eloquent, patient, polite, as he always is. He gave us a master class on European politics and the current economic crisis.

Somehow MEPs sounds less like politicians than Westminster MPs. In part this is because so many of us know too little about European politics, so such talks always have an element of education about them. But it is also because there is something of a democratic deficit about the whole European project - see this week's election for a new President of the European Parliament for an example, though Bill told us that there are moves to make this process more open and to involve the public more in future.

He also, surely rightly, argued that David Cameron's problems with Europe have their roots in his decision to seek support in the last Conservative leadership by promising to take the party out of the European People's Party where is natural allies are to be found. More encouragingly, Bill suggested that Cameron has now realised the dangers of isolation and is trying to do something about it.

Oh, and this being a Lib Dem event, there was someone who wanted to solve the problems of interpretation at the European Parliament by forcing everyone to learn Esperanto.

Overall, it was a really good event and, as I began by saying, its format could well be copied by other local parties. It ran from noon until four o'clock, meaning that Nottingham people did not have to give up a whole Saturday and those of us who came from further way could travel at a civilised hour.

The venue was the comfortable surroundings of the city' masonic headquarters. There was a Wi-Fi network there, so I had thoughts of tweeting from the event, but I did not have the password (or perhaps the handshake) to allow me to use it.

Lord Mayor of Leicester could be suspended

From the Leicester Mercury:

The Lord Mayor of Leicester could be suspended after an investigation concluded he had brought the office of councillor into disrepute. 

Veteran politician Rob Wann was referred to the city's standards board over claims he had five parking tickets cancelled by senior council officers and received a free parking permit to which he was not entitled. 

Independent investigator Jon Wigmore issued a report to the city council's standards board on his findings this week. 

The law states such reports should not normally be handed to the media. 

However, a copy has been leaked to the Mercury and we have decided to publish its findings as we believe it is in the public interest to do so.

Publishing such a report can currently lead to a prison sentence under Section 63 of the Local Government Act 2000, but that section of the law is about to abolished.

Robert Wann (not to be confused with the city's elected mayor Sir Peter Soulsby) maintains his innocence and says he has done nothing wrong.

I'm just wild about Hari

Well, not wild exactly, but I do think that Johann Hari's resignation from the Independent was the right outcome.

As I said in July of last year when the scandal broke:

He has always seemed to me more of an academic essayist than a journalist. A good example are his slightly irritating appearances on The Review Show, where new film or novel has to be compared with three others to make sense of it. 

So it was no great surprise to me that he should turn out to be more at home copying passages out of his interviewees' books than taking notes of what they say.

The sanest summing up of the affair I have read was posted by Splintered Sunrise in the same month - I included it in a Six of the Best at the time - who emphasised that Simon Kelner, the newspaper's former editor, must take a share of the blame.

It is worth reading the whole post, but this is the key passage:

Again and again, we come back to Kelner. He hired a raw young star about whom doubts had already been expressed at the New Statesman, and relentlessly promoted and protected him. 

Hari didn’t get the firm editorial hand a young journalist needs; his columns don’t seem to have been subjected to fact-checking or serious editing (comparing Hari’s columns on the Indy site with his own site, one sees that Indy editorial broke up his long paragraphs and corrected a few obvious howlers, but little else); he clearly was never given the training or mentoring he needed (and if Hari thought he didn’t need training, Kelner should have insisted) 

Hari was given plenty of resources – one hears stories of Indy interns doing mountains of photocopying that would then be couriered over to the great man (couriered, I ask you, as if he was Peter fucking Mandelson) – but didn’t give him what he really needed, a guiding hand.

Headline of the Day

Today's award goes to the Daily Mirror for:


Man arrested in Saddam Hussein statue buttock investigation

A tribute to Kodak

From BBC News:

Eastman Kodak, the company that invented the hand-held camera, has filed for bankruptcy protection. 

The move gives the company time to reorganise itself without facing its creditors, and Kodak said that it would mean business as normal for customers. 

The company has recently moved away from cameras to focus on making printers, to try to stem its losses.

MEP resignations show what's wrong with the list system

European Voice reports that the Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis is to resign as MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber. Apparently she wants to "take a break from politics" and believes it is time "for someone with fresh eyes to take over".

All of which makes it a little odd that Diana stood as president of the European Parliament earlier this week.

But there is a deeper issue here. Because Diana's resignation appears to form part of an increasing trend for MEPs to stand down between elections.

I suppose the thinking is that it will help resigning MEP's party in the next election if its list boasts more people with experience in Brussels.

But there is a danger that these resignations give the impression is in the gift of the resigning member or that member's party rather than the voters.

The fact that Diana is likely to be succeeded by her husband Stewart Arnold strengthens the impression that Euro seats are the member's personal property to give away, but the Roger Helmer and Rupert Matthews saga (Gollygate? UFOgate?) has made it clear - see the comments on this post - that the seat is in the gift of the retiring member's party.

One thing is for sure: the voters are not consulted.

All of which should remind us how bad the list system is. As someone said in a tweet to me today, we must make sure it is not used for elections to a reformed House of Lords.

With thanks to Lib Dem Voice.

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Richard Clare on Liberal Democrat Voice wants your help in stopping the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer.

Is lack of funding really the only possible explanation for a school's weakness? asks Eaten by Missionaries. "Even the late Labour government's worst enemies would concede that it spent a lot of money on schools in the days when boom and bust had still been abolished. There hasn't been time for the effects of austerity (whether one considers it painful but necessary or ideologically driven) to filter through. So if comprehensive schools have been failing because of lack of funding, then there really is no hope."

Cicero's Songs reminds us that "the deepest instincts of the Labour Party remain collectivist and tribal.".

Writing for Youngzine, Anita Ramachandran notes that 2012 is the International Year of Cooperatives.

"It’s a wonder Dickens didn’t explode and perish long before his death in 1870, at age 58. Quite apart from the act of composing his novels, he was a whirlwind, living a life that is nearly unmatched in its vigour. He had one entire career as a magazine editor, another as an actor and manager of theatrical productions, still another as a philanthropist and social reformer. The record of his private engagements alone — dinners, outings, peregrinations with his entourage of family and friends — is exhausting to read." In the New York Times Review, Verlyn Klinkeborg hears the whirling sound of planet Dickens.

IanVisits peeks behind the hoardings at Blackfriars Station.

Headline of the Day

Well done to the Leicester Mercury for:

Drink-driver was caught in a nappy and a bonnet

Write a guest post for Liberal England

A reminder that Liberal England is now accepting guest posts. So far 24 (count 'em) have appeared:

• In praise of slow government - Simon Beard
• Children and the surveillance state: Will the Coalition keep its word? - Terri Dowty
• Standards matter in higher education, not just participation rates - Anonymous
• A Woking class hero is something to be - Lisa Harding
• The campaign for a Robin Hood Tax - Ian Sullivan
• The limits of the Big Society - Martin Veart
• Can hyperlocal news sites be the future of journalism? - Niall Sullivan
• How Edward Stourton misunderstood The Orange Book - Simon Titley
• Why I caged my son: The Love Outdoor Play campaign - Daniel Raven-Ellison
• Against the Comment is Free view of politics - Jonathan King
• A beginner's guide to anarchism - Ruth Kinna
• The other side of suicide - Elinor O'Neill
• AV, politicians and the wasted vote - Chris Slowe
• Creative Perambulations: Marking the boundaries of Sherwood Forest - Dave Wood
• Towards a Liberal Democrat ideology - Simon Beard
• The community shops movement - Mike Perry
• Why the Liberal Democrats should support co-operatives - Peter Arnold
• Grandparents or adoption: Who would you choose? - Peter Hulme
• Arts Fresco, Market Harborough, 9-11 September 2011 - Hazel Cook
• Richard Jefferies and Coate: A centenary celebration - Rebecca Welshman
• "A modest county": Pevsner in Leicestershire - Susie Harries
• Anthony Burgess in Leicester - Phil Beesley
• Why you should visit The Bog - Paul Davis
• Blogging for happiness - Ellen Arnison

If you would like to write one yourself, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea.

I am chiefly interested in political posts, but if you are a regular reader you will know that this blog is noted for its eclectic range of interests...

The long history of Boris Island

The proposal for a Boris Island airport in the Thames estuary has put me in mind of the debates of the late 1960s and early 1970s over whether London needed a third airport and, if so, where it should be sited.

Writing on a Guardian blog, Andy Beckett reminds us that Edward Heath's government fully intended to build a similar scheme at Foulness (or Maplin as it more euphoniously came to be called) in Essex:

It would have multiple runways and new transport links to London, to relieve the already-notorious noise and congestion at Heathrow and help regenerate the poorer eastern side of the capital. Heath was very keen, and the plan quickly acquired faintly sci-fi features: "a brand-new jet city" to be built nearby, "tracked hovercraft" to whisk airport users to London. Speculators bought up whole streets around the planned London terminus near King's Cross. 

In 1973, construction started on the grey-brown Essex mudflats. A gravel "trial bank" 300 metres long was erected, to see if an airport could withstand the North Sea storms and deep estuary quicksands. 

Riding the rising tide of early 70s environmentalism and political militancy, local opponents of the project organised themselves flamboyantly as the Defenders of Essex, and seduced visiting reporters with picturesque arguments such as the damage likely to be done by the airport to Southend's cockle pickers. Meanwhile, in Westminster, an unholy alliance of Labour MPs and austere Thatcherites-in-the-making such as Norman Tebbit questioned the rising cost of the scheme to taxpayers.

In those days the easiest way to get a round of applause on Any Questions? (the panel usually seemed to consist of Richard Marsh, Arianna Stassinopoulos, Michael Clayton - "editor of Horse & Hound" - and Russell Braddon) was to call for prestige projects like this airport, Concorde and the Channel tunnel to be abandoned. And eventually the airport and the tunnel were abandoned.

It turns out, if you read an excellent paper published by the House of Commons Library - Aviation: proposals for an airport in the Thames estuary, 1945-2011 - that Maplin and Boris Island are just two of many schemes for an airport on the Kent or Essex mudflats.

You may enjoy the Pathetic Motorways entry for the unbuilt M13 too.

Jonathan Meades on France starts tonight

A new series by him is a television event, but the BBC has allowed Jonathan Meades on France little publicity.

So let me tell you that you can see the first part, Fragments of an Arbitrary Encyclopaedia, on BBC Four tonight at 9 p.m. The BBC Four website tells us:

Jonathan Meades travels through Lorraine and explains why, although close to its eastern border, it has become the symbolic, or even mystical, heart of France and a stronghold of a romantic nationalism that is also expressed by such diverse means as typography, music, engineering, exquisite urbanism and, above all, a sensitivity to Germany's proximity.

The second film, to be shown next week, is A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries and third remains a mystery for now.

You can read an interview with Meades about the series on The Dabbler and there is plenty more from the great man at the MeadesShrine on Youtube.

Otters filmed in the River Welland at Market Harborough

Hurry over to the Harborough Mail website for the footage:

One of them plays with a beer bottle in the video, shot near the Northampton Road bridge in Harborough at about 5.30pm on Tuesday night (January 17).

The Guardian catches up with Liberator's editorial on police commissioner elections

There will be an article in tomorrow's Guardian by the paper's home affairs editor Alan Travis that quotes the editorial of the January issue of Liberator. That editorial is highly critical of the Liberal Democrats' decision not to contest the new police commissioner elections in November - as was this blog.

Travis writes:

The January edition of Liberator, the long-established voice of the party's radical activists, has attacked the decision in virulent terms, calling it "an act of political lunacy". 

Its editorial accuses the party leadership of political cowardice and goes on to ask: "Is this really the party that was prepared to stand up for civil liberty throughout the New Labour years, but which now has nothing to say on how voters are policed or how the police behave?"

The only slightly odd thing about this is that the January issue of Liberator was with subscribers before Christmas. You can read the editorial Travis refers to - it is the second item of Commentary and titled "Running Scared - on the Liberator website.

Local News Story of the Day

From the Cambridge News:

Theft victim who caught up with crook 'concerned about youth fitness' 

A long-distance runner has donated cash to promote youth fitness after catching a thief who snatched his laptop. 

Peter Stevens was in his car outside his home in Beche Road, Abbey, Cambridge, when the hooded thief opened the rear door and grabbed the computer. 

The 34-year-old runner and IT expert chased him and was surprised when he caught up with the thief after just 225 metres. 

Realising the game was up, the puffed-out criminal dropped the laptop, allowing Mr Stevens to pick it up. 

Mr Stevens said: “I was appalled by how unfit this guy was. I thought it would take a lot longer to catch up with him."

Leicester rail crash 1949

"It's become a Leicester legend: the night a railway engine and tender derailed and fell into Tommy Wadsworth's backyard in Northgate street. It's still talked about to this day."

The Sutton Trust, private schools and social mobility

Stephen Tall writes in slightly wary support of the proposal from the Sutton Trust that the government should fund places for poor students at the best private schools:

But those who think Sir Peter is wrong-headed should reflect seriously on what their alternative to the status quo is. 

Sure, everyone on the liberal-left champions the comprehensive ideal that all local state schools should be great schools — but decades later we’re still waiting. And in the meantime thousands of pupils are losing out each and every year, while the intelligentsia which wrings its hands at the thought of selection by merit happily games the system to ensure their own kids don’t suffer.

Like Stephen, I am attracted to this idea but feel a little guilty about it. But the size of the problem with the current system was brought home by the recent two-part BBC4 documentary on the history of grammar schools. It quoted figures showing how the percentage of state schools pupils at Oxbridge has declined since the 1960s.

A Spectator Coffee House article by Peter Hoskin quoted much the same figures in a passage from A Class Act by Andrew Adonis and Stephen Pollard:

Modern mythology has it that the number of privately educated children at Oxbridge is on a steadily declining path. And indeed it was - in the heyday of the state grammar schools in the 1960s. By 1969 only 38 per cent of places at Oxford were awarded to private educated children - a sharp reduction for the private schools even on their 1965 proportion. And yet in the 1990s, thanks to the destruction of the grammar schools and the consequent decamping to the private sector of many of the most able children, the figure now hovers around the 50 per cent mark.

Nick Clegg's speech on responsible capitalism and the John Lewis economy

The Liberal Democrat website has the full text of the speech on responsible capitalism that Nick Clegg gave at the Mansion House today. It is worth reading the whole thing:

Our problem is what Jesse Norman has called crony capitalism. It’s easy to throw rhetorical rocks at directors, bankers and businesses. But, if we are honest, this is as much a failure of politicians and regulators, the authorities too often cowed by corporate power. Whether that is political parties of all stripes in hock to vested interests or regulators struggling to stop supermarkets from putting the squeeze on small suppliers, whether it’s politicians kow-towing to media barons, the problem is endemic. 

There’s nothing new about it. Kings have always bestowed privileges on their favourite merchants. Corporations will naturally seek a dominant market position. It’s one of the reasons liberals from John Bright to the present day have been such fierce advocates of free trade. The agricultural landlords of the 19th century and early 20th century were happy for working people to pay more for their food because of protective tariffs. What Lloyd George in 1906 memorably called ‘stomach taxes’. So long as their own profits were protected. 

This has always been capitalism’s greatest danger: a tendency for the rule makers and the money makers to get too close. And we saw the consequences of that closeness play out in the most dramatic fashion right here, in the City, just three years ago. It was a political failure; a regulatory failure; and a market failure too.

As I discussed with his kinswoman Deirdre Razzall earlier today, another Liberal pioneer in this field he could have mentioned is Theodore Cook Taylor.

Chris Huhne hails 50p tax rate decision as a Lib Dem victory

John Bingham in the Daily Telegraph reports Chris Huhne's interview on BBC Radio 5's Pienaar's Politics:

Mr Huhne indicated that the 50p rate was set to stay, remarking: “I think we've won that argument.” 

He said that this was “partly, I think, because people simply realise that this is not an appropriate moment to send out a signal that we're going to tax well off people less”. 

While insisting it had been a collective decision, he nevertheless suggested that pressure from the Liberal Demoracts had forced Mr Osborne’s hand. 

“The Conservatives don't have an overall majority, so they need, if they want to get a finance bill through, if they want to get anything else through, they need to have Liberal Democrat support in the House of Commons and that's absolutely crucial,” he said,

Six of the Best 216

"The current Cabinet of the United Kingdom consists of twenty three members, each department also has several junior ministers. In post-devolution Britain, majority of social policies (health, education,et al) are devolved to regional bodies – the power of Westminster is reduced. And this proposes an intriguing question: Can the Prime Minister justify a large Cabinet?" Too lib·er·al [adj.] makes the case for smaller government.

iRadar gives five reasons why he will not be voting for Ed Miliband.

David Hunt, Conservative peer and the new head of the Press Complaints Commission, recently made the extraordinary claim that bloggers pose a greater challenge than the tabloid press. Richard Wilson has since been in correspondence with him and is far from reassured.

"Croydon once had civic leaders with the vision to commercialise the town centre in the 1960s, replete with subsidised arts and national quality concerts at Fairfield. The recent barbaric destruction of arts provision must have played some role in making Croydon less attractive as a national HQ for Nestlé – playing down to Croydon’s image as a cultural desert." Inside Croydon looks at the decline of the borough under recent Conservative administrations.

Landscape Architecture Blog considers the shared space crossing outside Sloane Square tube station.

"Painting the Forth Bridge" will no longer do as a metaphor for a task without end. Now The Victorianist looks at its construction in the 19th century - and provides this post with its illustration.

Simon Dupree and the Big Sound: Kites

Inspired by Christmas on Earth Continued, it is time for me to show you the first single I ever bought, because I must have done so a few days after that happening happened. I still have the disc, though I don't own a turntable to play it on at the moment.

Kites was released in October 1967 and reached no. 9 in the chart the following month. So I suspect that I bought it with a Christmas record token - I have the amount of 7/6 in mind, but it was all a long time ago.

Simon Dupree and the Big Sound consisted largely of the three Shulman brothers, almost recruited Elton John as their keyboard player and later metamorphosed into the progressive rock band Gentle Giant.

All of which was pretty cool for a seven-year-old, I hope you will agree. Perhaps they put something in the school milk in those days?

My first LP was less cool: Band on the Run by Wings. I thought the title track and Jet were great singles when I was 13 - that is the age when you spin the dial after hearing a favourite track, hoping to find another station that is playing it so you can hear it again right away.

But it all sounded pretty tame by the time I sent it to a charity shop.

Robert Maxwell (Labour) loses his seat at Buckingham

A segment of the the BBC's October 1974 election coverage - there is much more of it on Youtube. Robert Maxwell appears right at the start.

Michael Brown has a dog named Charlie...

...after the former Liberal Democrat leader.

Or so the Daily Telegraph claims.

Christmas on Earth Continued: 1967 The Winter of Love

I came across a priceless (for me) clip of Traffic playing live in 1967 the other day. It turns out to come from an event called Christmas on Earth continued held at Earls Court on 22 December of that year.

Marmalade Skies (from which I have borrowed the illustration here) says of it:

The last major underground event of the year is “Christmas On Earth Continued”, billed as an “All-Night Christmas Dream Party” and held in the vast London Olympia on the 22nd. Pre-publicity is hopelessly inadequate and this, plus a particularly severe winter freeze, results in a sparse attendance and financial disaster for the organisers, despite a fabulous line-up of acts—Jimi Hendrix Experience, Eric Burdon, Pink Floyd, The Move, Soft Machine, Tomorrow, Graham Bond Organisation, Sam Gopal and Paper Blitz Tissue. The Who fail to turn up!

And someone writing on the Pink Floyd fan site A Fleeting Glimpse disproves what they say about the sixties by painting a vivid picture of it:

Olympia was a much more cavernous venue than the Ally Pally, and the focus was on two stages, facing each other across the vast hall. Bands were playing alternately, causing the majority of the 10,000 crowd to turn, first left for fourty minutes, then right and so forth, like a colony of paisley penguins! 

The light shows, if anything, surpassed the amazing Ally Pally event the previous July, with the wall to wall coverage and dreamscapes. ( Mark Boyle's Sensory Laboratory was specifically billed as support for Soft Machine, and the Floyd had announced the first appearance of their fabulous new '3D lightshow'.) We were absolutely wired for a good time and the bands didn't disappoint us. 

Soft Machine, with Kevin Ayers resplendent in pre-punk black string vest, climaxed with the ultimate Dada version of 'We did it again' as Robert Wyatt leapt into a full bath of water, that just happened to be on-stage with them! At least, we assumed it was water. 

Tomorrow powered through their unique mix of heavily Beatles influenced psychedelia. During 'Strawberry Fields Forever' Twink(drums) and Junior (bass) performed a mimed fight whilst being subjected to the most powerful strobe light effects I've ever witnessed. Steve Howe was a revelation, moving from raga to classical to Barrett - style anarchy with an almost arrogant ease. 

Traffic, still with Dave Mason, even performed 'Hole in my shoe'. Steve Winwood was into his white cheesecloth period, and their music was so unlike anything else around that they occupied a totally original space. The song, 'Here we go round the Mulberry Bush' was very typical of their trippy, watery sound at that time. 

Hendrix - voom! All light shows were killed for his performance. Noel Redding was constantly niggling Jimi, playing bass behind his head as Jimi performed his tricks with his guitar. It was the first time I saw Hendrix with his Gibson Flying Arrow, and the tension on-stage produced some electrifying music.

Christmas on Earth Continued is also remembered for a sad reason. As Alison's Wonderland says:

Sadly, the Christmas on Earth festival also marked Syd Barrett's last major show with Pink Floyd. By the time of the concert, Barrett had suffered a significant mental breakdown due to stress and excessive drug use, allegedly exacerbating symptoms of schizophrenia, though Barrett's sister denies this diagnosis. At the concert, Barrett was observed to just stand on stage with his guitar, his arms hanging limp at his side, while Roger Waters played the same bass line over and over again.

Anyway, here is that clip of Traffic. They play Dear Mr Fantasy (which Steve Winwood still plays today) and Giving to You:



And here are various clips of Jimi Hendrix playing at the same event:

Some posts on The Corridor (a cricket blog)

Finding myself in possession of the password for what seems to be an otherwise abandoned cricket blog, I have added some posts this week:

• Peter Roebuck and Basil D'Oliveira
• Who shot Ashley Harvey-Walker?
• Alastair Cook as a choirboy

Later. And now my password no longer works.

In which I have a story published in the Shropshire Star

A story in my favourite newspaper begins:

One in four office workers complains of “chronic boredom”, turning to coffee and chocolate to lighten up their day. 

People are also more likely to have an alcoholic drink at the end of a boring day at work, a study of office-based employees showed. 

Four out of five of those surveyed by occupational psychologist Sandi Mann said boredom caused them to lose concentration, and half believed it led to mistakes.

Which is rather pleasing, because that story originates from a press released I sent out in the course of my day job.

All media professionals will agree. It doesn't get much better than getting a story into the Shropshire Star.

Richard Reeves discusses John Stuart Mill's On Liberty

This is an issue of the excellent Philosophy Bites podcast devoted to an interview with Richard Reeves, author of John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand.

The interview concentrates on Mill's On Liberty. Note in particular Reeves' important point that the widely quoted 'harm principle' is not the core of Mill's argument in the book.

If you enjoy this interview you may want to watch a video of a lecture Reeves gave on Mill at the University of Richmond, Virginia, in 2009. You could even read an old Liberator article of mine, Why John Stuart Mill is the greatest liberal, that owes a lot to Reeves' arguments.

Charles Kennedy set to lead pro-Union campaign in referendum

A report in tomorrow's Guardian claims:

Alistair Darling, Charles Kennedy and the former Tory leader in Scotland, Annabel Goldie, are being lined up as the main faces of the pro-union campaign in the referendum on Scottish independence, sources in the three parties confirmed Wenesday [sic] night.

The report also says that Labour and Liberal Democrats have expressed the hope that David Cameron will adopt a lower profile in future.

Will Charles and co. be enough to save the Union? Certainly, the rise of the SNP has been greatly eased by the way that almost all the considerable figures in the other parties have chosen to make their careers at Westminster rather than Holyrood. He may now face more formidable opposition.

But, having been told when young that the future lay in great conglomerates, I grew up into a world more notable for the break up of multinational states - Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union. It is hard to resist the feeling that the tides are at present in favour of the SNP.

Another question is how hard the Conservatives will try to save the Union. It used to lie at the heart of their identity, but in this way - as in so many others - the modern Conservative Party has little connection with traditional British Conservatism.

I doubt that David Cameron will want to be the prime minister on whose watch the United Kingdom broke up. But it is hard for him to resist the calculation that it would be much easier for the Conservatives to win a majority at Westminster if there were no Scottish members there.

And, as we were reminded in King's Lynn, to the average Tory member the Scots are just a bunch of ingrates who take more than their share of public spending.

The SNP, equally, is convinced that an independent Scotland would be much more prosperous. They cannot both be right.

My own suspicion is that the end of the Union would make surprisingly little difference to Scotland or England, which is why I find that I am not dismayed at the prospect.

Six of the Best 215

"I know that some people who agree with me that Thatcher was a divisive and damaging Prime Minister are boycotting the film.  My advice to them is swallow your pride and go and see it." The Liberal Democrat MP Stephen Williams, our man in the front row of the stalls with a bucket of popcorn, has been to see The Iron Lady.

If you take Stephen's advice then you will probably want to read a three-part survey of the development of Margaret Thatcher's voice and oratory by Max Atkinson.

The Slog casts a scathing eye on the career of shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy.

"The underground remains of Northampton Castle could be brought to the surface under new proposals to regenerate a historic area of the town," reports the Northampton Chronicle & Echo. The picture here shows the only portion of it currently to be seen above ground, and that has been moved from its original position.

Spitalfields Life pays tribute to Ronald Searle by reprinting some drawings he made there in 1953.

"There are places that touch the soul so deeply it hurts." Diary of a Desperate Exmoor Woman on the home of the children's writer Alan Garner.

The restored Hallaton Helmet is coming to the Harborough Museum

The ceremonial Roman helmet found at Hallaton in Leicestershire in 2000 has been restored and was revealed to the press today.

BBC News quotes Dr Jeremy Hill from the British Museum explaining its significance:

"You can't underestimate the shock and surprise this had when it was first found - Hallaton really transforms our understanding of the Roman conquest of Britain." 

He added: "Even if it went into the ground in 43, 44, 45AD, that is changing what we normally think is happening in the Roman conquest. 

"We normally think of the Roman conquest of Britain as Romans versus us. Here you probably have a situation where local Britons are fighting on the Roman side."

The Hallaton Helmet will be displayed permanently at the Harborough Museum from 28 January alongside the other finds from the site.

Guardian wins Weak Diary Story of the Day

The Guardian Diary used to be one of the best things about the newspaper, breaking and pursuing substantial stories of its own.

Those days are a couple of decades past. Even so, an item Hugh Muir gave us today stands out for its vacuity.

Here it is in full:

Historians, meanwhile, continue to be fascinated by our ruling coalition. And they wonder, what other examples are there of questionable figures going out of their way to propel Tories to power? My man in the archives discovers that in 1899, the aspiring Conservative politician Winston Churchill stood as the Conservative candidate in the Oldham byelection. Posters sprung up around town urging electors to vote for Churchill, who was "top of the card" – and would surely be "top of the poll". And who printed and published those posters? One "WE Clegg". Send for the genealogist.

David Dimbleby and the demise of Nationwide

As I am not a great admirer of David Dimbleby - his career surely owes more to family connections and bladder control than talent - I was intrigued to come across this account of the demise of the popular BBC1 programme Nationwide under the editorship of Roger Bolton.

It was written by Ian Jones in 2002 and a revised version now appears on Off the Telly:

The climax of this, however, and the twist which in hindsight sealed Nationwide’s fate, was the enlistment of David Dimbleby as a new host in January 1982. This was solely Bolton’s doing. Dimbleby had been wooed by former Nationwide producers before, but turned them down; now he made the move, impressed with the expressed intention of Bolton to jettison the frippery and promote hard-nosed investigative journalism. 

“I think it displays rather a narrow vision for a programme like Nationwide not to cover events in, say, Israel or Poland,” Dimbleby sniffed. Regardless of the merits of this perception, what was arguably of far greater importance was whether Nationwide itself, with its very particular character, history and legacy, was and ever could have been the vehicle for such a stern-lipped agenda. 

Viewers certainly didn’t think so. “Nationwide is the only programme that covers matters of interest about Britain which do not necessarily warrant coverage by the national news or even national press. Hands off Nationwide, Mr Dimbleby,” an angry correspondent wrote to Radio Times. “Face the facts,” declared another, “it is all a dreadful mistake. Return the chubby chap to ‘Miserama’ and give us back Frank and Sue and the rest with their everyday stories of real people.” 

There was indeed a perversity in filling up a programme structured to “present the facts, the people, and the background of the country we live in” with a stream of foreign news stories. Dimbleby himself displayed a singular lack of charm and viewer rapport that was a trademark of the programme. He was even billed, controversially, above Frank Bough in Radio Times. 

If that wasn’t enough, his arrival was marked by yet another makeover with a further “new” theme – an acutely irritating synthesiser-heavy concoction with little trace of a tune – plus a title sequence that bizarrely harked back to that first ever “here’s-your-region” effort of 1969. Ratings slipped still further; and though Dimbleby’s “temporary” departure in April ‘82 became a permanent one, the damage was done. Management decreed the programme unsalvageable.

Later. And, thanks to TV Ark, you can hear the theme and even see a little of Dimbleby in Nationwide action. Scroll down to Nationwide 1982.

The Black Beast of Harborough

This is the lead story on the front page of the current Harborough Mail:

A large black panther-like creature was spotted running across a field at Foxton in the latest sighting of the infamous ‘black beast’. 

Schoolgirl Sarah Burdett had a shock when she saw the beast from her bedroom as it moved from the cover of a hedge off North Lane in the village. 

She rushed to the field with her dad’s partner Lora Cannon, but the large cat was no longer anywhere to be seen. 

However the pair found what they believed were its prints and droppings, which they photographed as evidence. 

The incident is the latest in a series of sightings of ‘black beasts’ stalking the Harborough countryside which go back as far as the 1990s.

The Hounds of Baskerville and Saucers Over the Moor

Last night's Sherlock gave us a secret research station on Dartmoor.

A novel idea?

Not quite. Here are trainee journalist Dan Sturt and his mother talking in Malcolm Saville's 1955 children's book Saucers Over the Moor:

Mrs Sturt put down her cup.

"You know as well as I do, Dan, that there's some secret place atop of the Moor. Folk round here all know it but they don't talk about it." 

"That's true enough. It's something to do with atomic stuff, I b'lieve. I asked one of the warders from the Prison in the train once but couldn't get much out of him. Said it was built in the war but that people were still working there . . . Then I asked a chap in the office and he said we'd never be allowed to mention it. I thought I'd told you about it before." 

"You did son. I'm just trying to help you. Seems to me that if a lot of crazy scientists are shut up in that place then there's something interesting going on. Do you know where it is?" 

"Somewhere high above the source of the Swincombe Brook."

You can read a little of the background to Saucers Over the Moor in an earlier post on this blog.

Now Eleanor Burnham is on reality television too

What is it with Welsh Liberal Democrats and reality television?

The other day it was Lembit Opik (again). But Eleanor Burnham, AM for the North Wales regional constituency until May 2011, was also on S4C over Christmas.

She appeared on Dudley: Pryd o Sêr. Cheat by clicking on the English button and you learn:

Over four nights between 27 and 30 December, Dudley: Pryd o Sêr sets a culinary challenge for a group of celebrities that would make the most experienced chef tremble.

Eleanor is quoted as saying:

I am quietly competitive and although the tasks were hard it was nowhere near as hard as working in politics!

U2 and Johnny Cash: The Wanderer

I have long been resistant to the bombast of U2, but I love Johnny Cash and this, the final track from the band's 1993 LP Zooropa, still sounds good.

It reminds me of bombing around the Stiperstones in an open-topped car. The spoil heaps at Snailbeach had been landscaped by then, but the words still fitted the area's strange post-industrial landscape.

And there was cricket on the radio. A youngster called Ben Hollioake was hitting the Australians all round Lord's on his one-day international debut which means I can date this experience precisely to 25 May 1997.

John Arlott: Cricket's Radical Voice

Earlier this evening I listened to this superb documentary on BBC Radio 4.

John Arlott is remembered as a cricket commentator - except that it is more than 30 years since he retired as a commentator and 20 years since his death, so I fear that many followers of the game today have hardly heard of him. Suffice to say, he was the greatest cricket commentator there has ever been.

But there was far more to him than that. He was twice a Liberal candidate and, in the days when the party was at its lowest ebb, he was probably the best known Liberal in the country, thanks to his appearances on Any Questions? He was also one of the foremost British campaigners against Apartheid in South Africa

You can hear John Arlott: Cricket's Radical Voice on BBC iPlayer for the next week. By the time it has finished, the programme has gone a long way to substantiate its claim that he was "one of the great radical liberals of the 20th century".

Tim Farron to benefit from cross-party deal on Cumbrian boundaries

Last year, in the process of paying Tim Farron some backhanded compliments, I commented that he had:

turned Westmorland and Lonsdale into what looked very like a safe Liberal Democrat seat until the Boundary Commission got hold of it.

When I wrote that, it looked as though Tim would have to stand in a very much altered constituency against the Conservatives' Rory Stewart (aka Lawrence of Belgravia).

Tonight, courtesy of Michael Crick on his blog for Channel 4 News, comes news that the major parties appear to have agreed upon alternative proposals that would overturn the Commission's proposals:

The cross-party deal would overturn the boundary commission’s controversial plans to create a new seat which would have joined Windermere with Whitehaven. Most Cumbrians thought the plans were crazy, since the new seat would have been a geographical nightmare in terms of transport links, straddling England’s highest mountain range. 

Under the alternative cross-party plan, two of Cumbria’s five seats would be centred around its biggest urban areas – Carlisle and Barrow. Another would take in the industrial towns of West Cumbria – Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport. A fourth, likely to be Stewart’s seat, would include Penrith, Keswick and Cockermouth. And Tim Farron, the president of the Liberal Democrats (and possible next leader) would be left with a Westmoreland seat around Kendal, Windermere, Ambleside and the southern Lake District.

Crick goes on to note that the Commission is not obliged to accept this alternative plan, but a decision to reject the views of the three main parties, as well as important local groups, would face a strong risk of being overturned in a judicial review.

So it looks as though Tim Farron's faces less of a battle to keep his Westminster seat.

Michael Brown arrested in the Caribbean

From the Guardian website this evening:

The Liberal Democrats' biggest donor, who has been on the run for three years after being convicted of a multimillion pound theft, has been arrested by police in the Dominican Republic, the Guardian can disclose. 

Michael Brown, who bankrolled the party with £2.4m of stolen money, was detained near the resort of Punta Cana on the easternmost tip of the Caribbean island this week. Interpol has been informed.

The report suggests that this development could lead to renewed legal efforts by his victims to seek compensation from the Lib Dems and Brown through the British courts.

The Simpsons: The Monorail Song

Roger Helmer and Rupert Matthews latest

This affair seems to have come down to a Mexican stand off.

Roger Helmer won't resign from the European Parliament until it is confirmed that Rupert Matthews will replace him. And the Conservative Party says it will not consider the selection until he has resigned.

Richard Gadsden, commenting on my most recent post on the subject, suggests that the most highly placed unelected candidate from the same political party as the retiring MEP does not automatically take the seat. It is up to the party.

This provides yet another argument against the list system. But then, when faced with the inevitability of a proportional system, Jack Straw chose the list system precisely because it is was the worst one on offer. He did not want PR to become popular and threaten Labour's power bases.

And Roger Helmer has some trenchant words on the subject:

at a personal level I should be very angry indeed if a loyal, long-term Conservative Party Member and activist, who has worked his socks off for the Party, not least in the 2009 euro-elections, and who has already missed out on a seat in Brussels because of the Party’s positive discrimination policy, should now miss out again because CCHQ can’t quite get its head around the regional list PR system, and seems inclined to set aside a legitimate democratic decision in favour of some modish prejudices. I should be very angry, and so, I suspect, would a great number of East Midlands Conservatives.

Stiperstones School to remain open

Early last year this blog was much concerned with the fate of Stiperstones primary school in my very favourite part of Shropshire.

Now the BBC News pages for the county confirm that the school is to remain open after agreeing to enter a federation with another primary school.

And a big Liberal England hello to Councillor Cecilia Motley, now the cabinet member responsible for schools in Shropshire. She is not quite Aggie Caesar-Homden, but she does confirm that you need a faintly exotic name to land this role at Shropshire Council.

The IRA bombed Leicester station in 1939

Take out your copy of Leicestershire's Stations: An Historical Perspective by Andrew Moore and turn to page 46.

What's that?

Really, if you are not prepared to do the reading there is no point in your coming to these seminars.

Let me try a different tack. I bought Moore's book some years ago and was intrigued by what I found on page 46:

From the [booking] hall, passengers pass the site of the ticket barrier, in use until the station became 'open' on 1 October 1984. At this point a large IRA bomb exploded in July 1939, causing much damage, especially to the show-cases (advertising Leicester's diverse trades) which were once a permanent feature on the adjacent, enclosed bridge that spans the lines.

I tried to research this terrorist attack on the net, but could find nothing about it. The Wikipedia entry on the S-Plan (the IRA campaign of which the Leicester explosion formed a part), for instance, quite wrongly says the attack of 3 July took place in Birmingham.

But I have now found that a full account of the events of that day was published in the Leicester Mercury in 2010.

After detailing the earlier bombings in the campaign, the report says:

Then, early in the morning of Sunday, July 3, the IRA strike here. 

A suitcase had been left in the ticket collector's cabin by a man from Birmingham at 7pm the previous evening, the Mercury reported. 

No-one, despite the IRA's activities, seemed to think too much of it. Until it started smoking. 

A second before the bomb went off, ticket collector Charles Venn was standing nearby, talking to a Mr C Thompson, of Willow Street, said the Mercury account. 

Mr Thompson was awaiting the arrival of an excursion from Brighton. 

He looked down and felt a lurch of shock as he saw his shoe being seared by flames. Puzzlement gave way to panic. This was no stray flicked fag end. It was a fuse sizzling into the suitcase. 

"Neither man had time to do anything but fly for his life," said the Mercury. "As they ducked out of the door, speeding in opposite directions, the cabin became engulfed in smoke and flames. 

"Almost simultaneously, there was the deafening explosion that echoed and re-echoed through the building while fragments of woodwork, slot machines and windows hurtled through the air. 

"Holes gaped in the high ceiling of the hall and whole sections of boarding were torn from the train times and departures board. 

"Windows high in the walls and in the roof in all parts of the booking hall, blown out by the concussion, crashed in fragments on the floor. 

"Of the collector's cabin, where a moment before the two men had stood talking, nothing was left but a pile of debris barely visible through the suffocating clouds of dust and smoke." 

A taxi driver on the rank outside heard the hissing of the bomb and went to investigate. 

"He got no further than the entrance when everything was blotted out by the explosion and glass crashed down from a window above him. 

"Two companions were just behind him and for a second all three stood rooted to the spot, unable to move. "Literally deafened by the terrific noise, which still buzzed in their eardrums, they conquered their panic and ran for help.

"Not knowing whether the whole building was about to collapse or not, someone set about moving the motors out of the yard while one taxi driver drove with all haste to the City Police headquarters."

An IRA bomb in Coventry the following month was to kill five people and wound 50, but casualties in Leicester that day were few:

The blast gouged huge chunks out of the station and its fittings, sending glass, wood and metal flying towards staff and passengers. 

Lucky ticket collector Mr Venn escaped with a severe gash across his back, a cut across the bridge of his noise, and a couple of bad bruises. 

"My cap has gone and I haven't seen it since, so I suppose that must have been blown to shreds," he told the Mercury after being released from hospital. 

Everyone else was walking wounded. 

It could have been worse, much worse, had it not been for a stroke of good fortune. 

The station should have been packed with holidaymakers climbing off the Brighton train. It was 45 minutes late. "Lives saved because it was not on time", said the Mercury. 

Children returning from a trip to Southend had just left the building.

IRA bombs were not to return to Leicester until February 1990. Then, for reasons best known to himself Keith Vaz, still one of the city's Labour MPs today, suggested the bomb may have been planted by the Army at its own recruiting office.

My illustration shows the old bookstall from Leicester station, which would have been in place in 1939. Ticket barriers were restored to their old position some years ago.

Stilton wars

"A row over the ownership of the name of Stilton cheese could end in court," reports BBC News.

As the website goes on to explain, Stilton is made in a handful of dairies in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. And since 1996 the cheese has enjoyed Protected Designation of Origin from the European Union,  so it cannot be made anywhere else.

Which is odd, because the village of Stilton is in none of those counties. It was originally in Huntingdonshire and is now in Cambridgeshire as the smaller county has been abolished.

The conventional wisdom is that the cheese became famous and gained its name in the 18th century because it was sold at the inn in Stilton, which was on the Great North Road (now the A1).

But, says the BBC report, campaigners in Stilton say there is a long history of cheese making in the village, so they should be entitled to use the name too.

You can find more about this on page 8 of the October 2009 Stilton Community Association Newsletter.

It is interesting that they have turned up a reference to the 'famous' Stilton cheese being made in the village. But in those days cheese was being made in every village in England. Whether what was produced in Stilton in the 18th century had much to do with what we know as Stilton today must be doubtful.

And if Stilton did used to come from Stilton, how did the name come to be attached to cheese made 30 miles away?

Headline of the Day

Well done to the Independent for:

Mystery over dead herring

We liberals have our myths too

For years, right-wingers have kept their indignation levels bubbling away at an enjoyable level by inventing myths. Labour councils want to ban Christmas and nursery rhymes; the European Union wants to ban everything else - unless they plan to make them compulsory.

These stories are usually false and liberals often take great pleasure in demonstrating this. But we have our myths too.

I expect you are outraged at the way the Sun ran a countdown to Charlotte Church's 16th birthday - the point being that it would then be legal to have sex with her.

Except that, as a post on Heresy Corner shows, the Sun never did any such thing. Do read the comments too. They will leave you thinking less of the BBC and the Guardian rather than worrying about the Sun.

And then there was the paediatrician who was forced out of her home by a mob that thought she was a paedophile.

Except that, as I discussed back in 2006, no such incident has ever taken place.

Is Euro realism breaking out in the Liberal Democrats?

An article in tomorrow's Guardian will claim that talks are planned between Tory Eurosceptic MPs and centrist Liberal Democrats to see if a common agenda can be formed on Europe.

The newspaper says:

The talks, involving mainstream Eurosceptics opposed to an EU membership referendum, had been planned ahead of David Cameron's decision to wield a UK veto at the EU summit in December, leading to a public split between the two coalition parties. But the Tory sceptics are determined to revive the plan insisting a section of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party are desperate to avoid the label of Europhiles.

Without saying they have been involved, the report goes on to name Alistair Carmichael, Jeremy Browne, David Laws and Nick Harvey as having "warned their own party must not be seen as starry-eyed uncritical supporters of the EU".

And they are right. Support for co-operation at a European level need not decay into uncritical support for the current structures and policies of the European Union. Liberal Democrats should be known for demanding reform in Europe - as we do everywhere else.

It is also worth pointing out that, as Nick Clegg himself has always been something of a Euro realist, they may be pushing at an open door. I also share the suspicion of Eaten by Missionaries that such views are more widely held in the party than is often supposed.

The report also suggests that the Eurosceptic Tories are also hopeful of working with Ed Davey. As an employment minister, he has been pursuing a deregulation agenda in Europe.

 

Six of the Best 214

David Maclean, political correspondent of the Leicester Mercury, explains why the Freedom of Information Act is vital to his work.

Max Atkinson presents 12 video clips that he used last year to illustrate points about the art of making a political speech.

Why are carrots orange? Slugger O'Toole explains.

On ZD Net, Violet Blue looks at the relationship information technology has with depression, suicide and Asperger's syndrome: "My hope is that in reflecting on the losses so many of us have suffered this year, we can take a close look at what makes tech and the startup world a prime environment for incubating and overlooking these issues."

If you have been watching the reruns of Top of the Pops from 1976 with mingled horror and derision, you will be interested in a guest post on Yes It's Number One. There Former Saint Etienne member Bob Stanley offers a limited defence of the year's music - or at least argues that 1975 was worse.

Cinebeats looks at Live It Up! and Be My Guest - the mod musicals of Lance Comfort: "Live It Up! provides viewers with a brief but unforgettable glimpse of a more innocent time just moments before pirate radio, drugs, shorter skirts, Beatlemania and the merseybeat sound would transform the capital city into 'Swinging London.'."

Irrefutable Prediction of the Day

Well done to Jackie Ashley, writing in tomorrow's Guardian:

I don't expect the coalition to fall this year, though we should rule nothing out.

Aloe Blacc: I Need a Dollar

I heard this on Jools Holland's Hootenanny last night and it sounded good. Though, to be honest, another reason for choosing it is that Aloe Blacc's real name turns out to be Egbert Nathaniel Dawkins III.

Happy New Year

Benjamin Britten's A New Year Carol, with the Corpus Christi Carol as a bonus.