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.

Marlborough House, Leicester, to be demolished

This is Marlborough House, which stands next to Leicester City Council's offices at the New Walk Centre. Those offices are to be demolished and - what do you know? - Marlborough house is too.

A few days ago the Leicester Mercury said:

Work to demolish a council office block is almost ready to go ahead. 

Leicester City Council announced a year ago that Marlborough House, in Welford Road, had failed a surveyor's inspection. 

The 125 children's services officers based in the 1970s block were moved out in November. 

The city council put up a concrete barrier outside due to fears that a vehicle striking a column at the front could bring the building down.

The Mercury also says that the city council bought Marlborough House "as an investment" in 1988. Maybe it will show a profit when the site is redeveloped, but it is hard not to smile.

Meanwhile the 19th century public and industrial buildings in the surrounding streets seemed to be doing just fine when I took the photograph above this afternoon.

Facebook more help than the fire brigade to a cat up a tree

Last year I contrasted two news stories to ask if you are more likely to be saved by volunteers than professionals. If you are a cat stuck up a tree in the Scottish Borders, the answer is yes.

Over to The Berwick Advertiser:

Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade has refuted [sic] claims that it didn’t come to the rescue of a cat stranded 60ft up a tree due to healthy and safety reasons, insisting it is against policy to rescue small animals.

Eighteen-month-old Diesel was stuck up a tree near to his owner’s house in Foulden for five days. After the fire and rescue service said it wouldn’t attend and a tree surgeon couldn’t reach the cat, it was left to 15-year-old Kyle Watkinson from nearby Chirnside to come to the rescue.

After hearing of Diesel’s plight via Facebook, the teenager, who is an experienced climber, made his way up the tree to reach the frightened animal.

I suggest Diesel considers moving to Little Bowden. Here you may still see cats being retrieved from trees by the emergency services at all hours of the day.

Lord Bonkers' "Fifty Shades of Earl Grey"

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

In recent weeks my guide to tea making Fifty Shades of Earl Grey has been selling gratifyingly well. This morning I gave orders for it to be reprinted.

A ghost of the Market Harborough to Rugby line

This advertisement was painted to snare travellers on the Market Harborough to Rugby railway line. That line closed on 6 June 1966, but the advert is still there on the rear of premises behind Nithsdale Avenue.

And if you go to my post on Britain from Above and follow the lnk to the aerial photograph of Harborough from 1926 you can see this building. It is the one towards the bottom right of the photo with its long side running parallel with the railway.

Six of the Best 259

Ben Summerskill of Stonewall suffers from selective amnesia when it comes to equal marriage rights, as Stephen's Liberal Journal shows.

"The Liberal Democrats need a contest for President because the party urgently needs a debate about how to regain its identity in the eyes of the general public." Gareth Epps on the forthcoming internal party election.

Alan Geere Online finds a teacher undergoing a sex change receiving civilised treatment from local school, newspaper and community.

"On the subject of ballet children there is also a great deal of wasted sentiment. All sorts and descriptions of children are employed in theatres, from the respectable tradesman’s child to the coster’s child in Drury Lane; but the larger proportion are certainly of the very poorest class, and it must be remembered that these children would not be tucked up safely in their little beds, if they were not earning a few badly-wanted shillings; they would be running about he London streets." The Victorianist reprints a fascinating 1891 article on working children from the Strand Magazine.

The British Pathe Blog ponders the disappearance of the lost aviatrix Amerlia Earhart.

"Completed in 1908, the tramway was large enough to handle single height trams, but later demand for double-decker trams meant the tunnels had to be substantially altered in 1929. These works ripped out the tube tunnels at the northern end of the subway and replaced them with a continuation of the cut-n-cover concrete box. They also substantially altered the southern entrance by moving it to underneath the Waterloo Bridge instead of beside it, and deepened the cut/cover concrete box floor to cope with the taller trams.
The last trams in London ran in July 5th 1952 – so today is exactly 60 years since the Kingsway Subway tunnel closed to traffic." IanVisits ventures into London's abandoned Kingsway tram tunnels.

David Parsons inspires our Quote of the Day

Courtesy of the Hinckley Times come Cllr Ruth Camamile's gnomic words on the resignation of David Parsons:

"I can’t say I was expecting the news but on the other hand I’m not surprised."

Ludwig Wittgenstein adds: Can I get back to you on this one?

Fred Perry's father was Labour/Co-operative MP for Kettering

This afternoon Andy Murray became the first British tennis player since Bunny Austin to reach the Wimbledon men's single final. But the last Briton to win the title, of course, was Fred Perry. And that gives me the excuse to impart a little piece of political trivia.

Fred Perry's father was Labour and Co-operative MP for Kettering.

Samuel Perry came from Stockport and was involved with Co-operative movement in that town and then Birkenhead. On the founding of the Co-operative Party in 1917, he was appointed its first national secretary.

He moved to London and lived in Brentham Garden Suburb in Ealing, which was managed on Co-operative principles. There his young son was able to benefit from the sporting facilities provided to become the best table tennis and then lawn tennis player in the world.

Wikipedia says of him:

Perry's success attracted the adoration of the crowds at Wimbledon particularly as he contrasted sharply with the privileged background of most patrons and players associated with the All England Club at that time.

Before it formed an electoral non-aggression pact with Labour in 1927, which allowed for a limited number of joint Labour/Co-operative candidates, the Co-operative Party stood its own candidates and even saw a few MPs elected. The first of these was Alfred Waterson, who won Kettering in 1918.

Waterson lost to the Conservatives in 1922, but Samuel Perry won Kettering back for the Co-operative Party in 1923. He lost to the Tories in 1924, but won the seat back in 1929 as a Labour/Co-operative candidate. He was defeated at the 1935 general election, again by the Conservatives.

For a glimpse of a later general election campaign in Kettering, see the British Council film of the 1945 campaign.

Bob Diamond and Robert Maxwell

Andrew Neil's tweet reminds me of Auberon Waugh's comment on Robert Maxwell:

I do not understand why he was ever considered a good businessman. His saintly wife, Elizabeth, whom he married in 1945, brought with her a dowry of £150,000, say £2,400,000 at today's values ... 

In a lifetime of business activity he managed to convert this modest fortune of £2,400,000 into a debt of $2 billion. Is this the sign of a good businessman? 

When I ask why the beautiful and blameless Elizabeth stayed with such a ruffian for so long, my ever-practical wife suggests that she was hoping to get her money back.

Plans to demolish former Royal British Legion hall in Market Harborough

This is the old British Legion premises in Market Harborough. I photographed it on the very damp day that the town was visited by the Olympic torch - perhaps you need sunshine to bring out its full beauty.

The hall may not be there for much longer, reports the Harborough Mail:

Msquare Architects, based in a rented property in Abbey Street, Harborough, is in the process of buying the former hall site, in Talbot Yard at the back of the town’s High Street, to build its own purpose-designed premises. 

A detailed planning application has been submitted to the council for the demolition of the former hall and the construction of a new two-storey office building. 

The hall is now unoccupied but was last used by the Legion as its clubhouse and, before that, by Harborough Operatic Society as a costume store. 

The building has been uninhabited for some years and there have been several incidents of vandalism, fly-tipping, attempted break-ins and arson.

Talbot Yard lay behind The Talbot, for many years the roughest pub in town. It closed some years ago and is now a Wildwood restaurant.

New study suggests children are not getting enough physical activity

The Newcastle University Biomedicine pages report on a new study of the physical activity levels of 500 8- to 10-year-olds. It is widely thought that children are not getting enough exercise today, and this study - which saw the children wearing activity monitors, provides some objective evidence of that.

The researchers found:

Children spent only 4% of awake time in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity, this is about 20 minutes per day while the recommended amount for health is 60 minutes per day. 

At age 8, girls were already less active than boys - something known to occur at secondary school - but this study has shown that the difference in physical activity between boys and girls starts much earlier on. 

Older fathers tended to have less active children. 

Children who took part in sports clubs outside of school were significantly more active than those who did not. 

Parents who restricted access to television were actually shown to have children who were less active.

The whole paper can be read on the PLoS ONE site.

How Liberal Democrat Conference has changed

There have been two significant changes to Liberal Democrat Conference since I started attending them when the Liberal Party and the SDP merged. The changes are even more pronounced when I think of the Liberal Party Assemblies I used to att...

Come to think of it, there has been another important change. These days Liberal Democrat Conference is patrolled by police officer with guns and you have to get the nod from the police before you are allowed to attend. Apparently it is all designed to 'send a message'. Oh, and if you use the party's democratic machinery to object to these new arrangement then those you elect to run the conference will imply that you do not care about the staff at its venue.

Where was I?

Two changes to Liberal Democrat Conference.

The first is the enormous emphasis on training. When I was a young activist you generally learnt by doing - you visited other people's by-elections and learned organisation, campaigning and Focus design by seeing it done and then helping do it. After that you joined the ALC or ALDC, armed yourself with their artwork sheets and some Letraset and got on with producing your own Focus.

No doubt part of my feeling is simple nostalgia - I particularly miss the smell of Cow Gum - but I do think the recent emphasis on training tells us something about the way that the party has changed. Now wisdom is not seen as being distributed evenly across the country: it is held at the centre and shared in discrete lessons.

The advent of information technology, which could have made more distinctive local campaigning possible, has coincided with, if not caused, a centralisation of the way that we learn to campaign.

The second change - and I seem to have commented on this in most recent Conference issues of Liberal Democrat News - is that almost all the fringe meetings are organised by outside pressure groups. This does not suggest there is a great deal of original thinking going on in the Liberal Democrats - we seem to be 'buying in' ideas from outside the party.

The danger is that we shall find ourselves talking to much the same outside experts and campaigners as the other parties and be saying much the same thing as the other parties as a result. Certainly, this is part of the explanation for the similarity of view between the Liberal Democrats and Labour during the Charles Kennedy years.

So let's have less of the police, a different model of training and a bit more Liberal Democrat ideology.

Britten's War Requiem 50th anniversary performance

The Space - a free website funded by the BBC and the Arts Council - has the full recording of the 50th anniversary performance of Britten's War Requiem given in Coventry Cathedral earlier this year.

Andrew Tyrie is not up to chairing a banking inquiry

There was a feature of Bob Diamond's appearance before the Treasury select committee that said much about the authority and judgement of its chairman Andrew Tyrie.

Diamond addressed MPs by their first names throughout. I would have bridled at that when I was a young district councillor. Why middle-aged MPs put up with it, I cannot imagine. Tyrie should certainly have stepped in early to stop him doing it.

His failure to do so was damaging because he and his committee were on trial. The government wishes the committee to conduct the inquiry into banking rather than a judge. According to Sue Cameron on the Daily Telegraph website:

Word is that it was Mr Tyrie who went to Mr Osborne suggesting a select committee inquiry. “Everyone is wondering what the implications will be,” said one Westminster insider. “Virtually nobody thinks it’s a good idea apart from Tyrie and Osborne – and Osborne doesn’t understand Parliament.

By failing to curb Diamond's overfamiliarity Tyrie at once made himself look weak and, as a Conservative, too close to the bankers.

My own view remains that there should be a judicial inquiry into banking and I am sorry that Liberal Democrat MPs have not taken this line. Certainly, although John Mann and John Thurso made a reasonable fist of it, most select committee members suggested they lack the skills to question witnesses effectively when those witnesses are not inclined to be forthcoming.

Not that they or Andrew Tyrie are alone in being a limited performers. This morning the Today programme introduced Lord McFall as some sort of hero of the banking crisis. In fact, as John McFall, he was a worse chair of the Treasury select committee than Andrew Tyrie.

I fear the moral is that our MPs, like our bankers, are just not very good at their jobs.

Jewry Wall Museum, Leicester

On the other side of the Roman bath remains from the Jewry Wall stands the Jewry Wall Museum. In fact it was partly built on those remains in, as the photograph suggests, the era of concrete, underpasses and pedestrian walkways - 1966, to be precise.

Still, it is well worth a visit, as it houses Roman mosaics and wall paintings found under the city, floor tiles and masonry from Leicester Abbey and the 'prehistoric families' made for the Festival of Britain in 1951.

How often does Vince Cable have to be right before they make him Chancellor?

That's what Matthew Norman asks in this morning's Independent:

He warned about unsustainable cheap credit and the consequent risk of a crash, and no one paid a blind bit of notice. He pinpointed the structural weakness at Northern Rock and called for its nationalisation, but until it was almost too late a Labour government faffed about in virtual paralysis. For inadvertently declaring war against a Murdoch media stranglehold, he was ridiculed and fined a chunk of his portfolio. By then, he had already spoken about casino banking in general, and Bob Diamond's appointment as Barclay's CEO in particular, in terms that were rather less in vogue in polite political society than than they are today. 

He spoke about the banks presenting a graver threat to this country than the trade unions, and of the dangers of the non-interventionist approach to capitalism. "Markets are often irrational or rigged," he said with wonted prescience, long before most of us were world experts on Libor. "Capitalism takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can." 

In another speech, he said: "We are worried about this combination of the casinos and the traditional banking. Mr Diamond illustrates in a particularly graphic way what happens when you have an extremely highly paid head of an investment bank taking over one of these major international banks."

Front Page of the Year

And prophetic too. The Sun from four days ago...

Six of the Best 258

Alex Smethurst has a good article on Liberal Democrat Voice: "Social mobility and paid internships are connected. But I’m concerned with a culture that expects ‘experience’ before employment; a culture that expects you to work for free, afford rent with no income and have zero job security. This is stopping social mobility, not increasing it."

"The Conservatives are beginning to get the treatment that the Liberal Democrats had in the first two years of the coalition. We had the moral fibre to cope: I wonder if the Tories do too?" The past few weeks have not shown the British Conservative Party in a very good light, argues Cicero's Songs.

"A regional pay system would take tens of millions of pounds out of Cornwall's economy and lead a downward spiral of pay as the public sector levels help to keep private sector pay up too." Today Cornwall Council backed a Lib Dem motion opposing any move towards regional pay or regional benefit levels, reports A Lanson Boy.

io9 has some remarkable photographs of the Statue of Liberty on display in Paris before it was shipped to New York.

There’s something obscurely odd about Brixworth's cricket ground, finds Backwatersman - before meeting me on the bus home from Long Buckby and Stanley Unwin's grave.

Viennalife visits the Kaiserdom in Königslutter am Elm, Lower Saxony, which turns out to be a beautiful cathedral with no bishop but some strange rabbits.

David Parsons resigns as leader of Leicestershire County Council

David Parson's long drawn out and very public attempt to retain the leadership of the ruling Conservative group on Leicestershire County Council failed today. Reading between the lines, he resigned when it became clear that he would not win a vote of confidence within his own group.

The BBC report reminds us of the concerns that led to today's events:

Last month the council's standards committee censured Mr Parsons over an independent report which found he had delayed repaying money to a body called East Midlands Councils (EMC). 

It had initially paid for official trips to the continent, but the EU then paid Mr Parsons directly. 

Mr Parsons apologised but initially refused to step down as leader, a post he had held for nine years. 

Last week the county council referred the issue to Leicestershire Police. 

In addition to this, a body called the Corporate Governance Committee is to consider further allegations that Mr Parsons used the council's chauffeur-driven car to attend private functions.

The really surprising thing is that it has taken so long for Parsons and the Conservatives to recognise that his position had become untenable. The county's Liberal Democrats have been on his case since 2009.

I have suggested in the past that the reason for this may be that the Tory group is desperately short of alternative candidates. But I have a helpful suggestion for them.

One of Parsons' less dignified attempts to get himself out of hot water was telling the council's standards committee that s wife Liz was "totally" in control of his financial affairs. Not so impressive coming from the mouth of a man responsible for an annual budget of £400m.

Still, if they have no one else suitable, why not ask Mrs Parsons to take over for the time being?

Nick Clegg helps clean up Beauchief Gardens in Sheffield

On Sunday Nick Clegg pitched in to help clean up a Sheffield beauty spot, reports the Friends of Millhouses Park site:

Nick and local Lib Dem councillor Colin Ross joined the Friends of Millhouses Park at Beauchief Gardens to help with gardening duties. 

The work is part of the Friends on-going commitment to maintain the Gardens, which were donated to the city by the J. G. Graves Trust in 1935 and are situated next to Beauchief Dam. 

The level of care had declined up until the 1990s, until the Friends of Millhouses Park stepped in to restore the Gardens.

It goes on to quote Nick:

“It was a pleasure to help the Friends of Millhouses Park and Park Ranger team at Beauchief Gardens. 

“It is easy to take Sheffield’s many green and open spaces for granted. But it is worth remembering that we only have these beauty spots because of volunteer’s hard work right across our City. 

“They all deserve our upmost gratitude and there is no better way to show support than getting your hands dirty and joining in.”

Beauchief Gardens can be found close to Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, which I am keen to visit one day.

Unwinesque advice on Europe for David Cameron

In the light of the prime ministers travails over Europe yesterday, the following sentence from my turn at the 2007 Liberal Revue seems pertinent:

In or out, matey? That’s the question. We can’t shakeabout any longer, despite the poply song with the knees up and bunting.

The Jewry Wall, Leicester

Writing about St Nicholas, Leicester. I said that the church stood next to Leicester's most substantial Roman remains, the Jewry Wall.

Wikipedia says the wall is :

an impressive example of standing Roman walling, is nearly 2000 years old. It measures 23 metres (75 ft) long, 8 metres (26 ft) high and 2.5 metres (8 ft) thick. It is the second largest piece of surviving civil Roman building in Britain (the largest being the "great work" at Wroxeter). 

The structure comprises alternate bands of Roman brick and coursed masonry. In the centre of the wall are two large arched openings about 3 metres (10 ft) wide and 4 metres (13 ft) high; there are further arched alcoves on the eastern side. ... 

The remains of the town's public baths, lying immediately west of the wall, were excavated in four seasons from 1936 to 1939 by Dame Kathleen Kenyon and date from approximately 160 AD. The wall and some of the foundations of the baths are now laid out to public view.

I gather that later excavations have suggested that the baths were only the last of several Roman uses of this site. Today you can wander over the remains of the baths unchecked - an unexpected pleasure in a part of Leicester badly affected by demolition and road schemes.

The Olympic torch in the rain

The Olympic torch visited Market Harborough today. Schoolchildren were given the afternoon off, the Market Hall was opened specially and entertainment was laid on.

Sadly, the weather did not co-operate.

It is customary to tell a white lie in such circumstances and say that the rain did not spoil things - the reporting of the Jubilee pageant on the Thames was a blatant example of this. But, of course, the weather did spoil things to an extent and I felt sorry the local people who had put so much work into the day.

But I like the British 'mustn't grumble' spirit - especially when I remember the origins of the Olympic flame. As I once wrote for the New Statesman:

Like most Olympic traditions, it was invented for the Berlin Games of 1936. Albert Speer was in charge of the pageantry there, and he decided to repeat the 'cathedral of light' effect that had gone down so well at the Nuremberg rallies.

When the flame came through Market Harborough it was rather dominated by police outriders and commercial sponsors.

More and more, the idea that spending billions of pounds on staging the Games was the best way of encouraging the youth of Britain to be more active seems the ultimate Blairite absurdity.

Later. I liked the comment of Sharron Allen to the Harborough Mail, discussing the celebrations in nearby Dingley:

"Then the Morrismen came out, even though it was raining. I got them a cup of tea, they deserved it."

Headline of the Day

This is Lincolnshire walks away with the award for its:

Mayor of Louth's sausage costume to greet Olympic Torch 'looked like a penis'

With thanks to @alexfoster on Twitter

Stanley Unwin on Whitby

As my post about Stanley Unwin's grave proved so popular, I thought I would offer a glimpse of the great man at work...

US journalist banned from Britain for investigating Jersey child abuse

Last week the Guardian ran a series of articles on the Channel Islands, covering both the lack of a proper response to allegations if child abuse on Jersey and the Barclay brothers' apparent attempt to dominate life on Sark. They featured our own Tom McNally in the role of a governor general paying a rare visit to a remote and troublesome archipelago.

Perhaps the most serious topic raise was the allegation that an American journalist has been banned from the UK and the Channel Islands because she was writing a book about child abuse on Jersey.

Leah McGrath Goodman tells the story on her own blog:

A couple years into my research, my trips to the UK were becoming frequent enough to justify my renting a flat for overnight stays and an office for my paperwork. Jersey has strict rules about outsiders renting property, so I arranged to meet with Jersey’s Customs and Immigration officials in July 2011 to make sure my accommodations passed muster. I was told they did. The first officer I met with, Jim Griffiths, told me not to worry and that as long as I did not intend to live in Jersey or take a job there – and my trips did not exceed the six-month time limit for visitors – I could proceed with my work. 

When he asked what I was researching, I was completely honest. He quickly excused himself and then returned with his superior. The two men proceeded to shout at me. I was told that I needed to get a long-term entry visa to conduct my work on the island. I asked if they had changed their minds due to the nature of my research. The two men would not answer the question and immediately escorted me out. 

A week later, I went home to the States to do other work and did not return to the UK until early September. I was on my way to speak at a bank conference in Salzburg, but had meetings in London and Jersey with other journalists. This time, the border check at Heathrow Airport asked me if I would go to a waiting area to answer additional questions about my stay. This had never happened to me before, but I was not very concerned and agreed. 

No one asked me any questions, though. Instead, a second border official took me to an empty room beneath the airport and simply locked the door behind me. I did not at any time consent to being imprisoned. My luggage, wallet, phone, bank cards and my identification were taken from me. If I’d been turned out on the street at that moment, I would have been utterly helpless to feed myself or prove who I was. There is no way to explain what this feels like until it happens to you, but until then I never realized the razor-thin line between feeling secure and feeling endangered. 

I asked the guards what was happening and I was handed a piece of paper that said, “You have been detained under paragraph 16 of Schedule 2 to the 1971 Act or arrested under paragraph 17 of Schedule 2 of that Act.” What did this mean? Was I being arrested? No one would say. I was fingerprinted and photographed. I asked the personnel watching me if I could call my solicitor or my consulate. “That’s what people always say,” one of the staffers said. I asked: What are my rights? A second staffer answered: “This is the border. You have no rights.” 

It got worse from there. For several hours, I waited for any concrete information about how long I would be trapped in a basement. The border guards repeatedly told me they needed time to go through my luggage and papers before deciding what questions to ask me. This struck me as an attempt to reverse-engineer a case against me. I demanded to return to the States unless there were grounds to keep me there. I was told by the border officials they could make things much more painful if I did not cooperate. 

At this point, I wanted to call my family to let then know where I was, but this, too, was denied. None of the officers would provide their full names and the paperwork they signed and occasionally handed me was indecipherable. Closed-circuit TV cameras were everywhere ... 

In all, I was there from 0645 GMT to 1900 GMT, 12 hours without food or sleep on the back of a redeye flight. Ultimately, I was denied entry to the UK and sent back to the U.S., the black stamp of death I’d always heard about, but never seen, punched in my passport. 

The two officers who interrogated me later that day asked very personal questions - some of them about where I lived, my exact addresses in New York and the Channel Islands, and some of them about the people who were closest to me. I was deeply reluctant to discuss my personal relationships or my addresses, as I got the feeling security and safety were not high on the UK Border Force’s priority list. Once the questions had ended, there was another hours-long wait, after which I was informed that I was being ousted. .... 

As I later found, the UK was not accusing me of doing anything wrong. My big mistake, apparently, had been to meet with the Jersey officials. According to a subject access request filed with the UK Border Agency after I’d returned home, Jersey’s officials flagged me well before I arrived at the border. 

I filed a second subject access request with Jersey itself, but received a form letter stating that information had been withheld for “the purposes of the prevention, detection or investigation of a crime; or the apprehension or prosecution of persons who have committed an offence.” I can only assume this refers to me – a journalist who, until last summer, held a clean record in the UK and a Tier-1 visa. .... 

At the border, UK officials encouraged me to file for another long-term visa but when I did, I was slapped with a two-year ban from entering the country in January. My legal team in London said they had never seen the UKBA act with such swift malice.

Thanks to John Hemming.

Union Inn sold as Bulgarian ambassador visits Market Harborough

As widely expected, the Union Inn in Leicester Road, Market Harborough (which will always be the Six Packs to me), has been bought by Brooke House College to provide student accommodation.

Confirmation of this comes at the end of a Harborough Mail story about the college also buying and converting the town's old Trades and Labour Club.

Rather improbably, this new facility was opened by the Bulgarian ambassador to Britain.

Pluto: Dat

Some of the first reggae songs to trouble the UK singles chart were novelty records. There were, for instance, Boris Gardiner's Elizabethan Reggae in 1970 and this one from Pluto Shervington, which made no. 6 in 1975.

Dat sounds very jolly, but what is it about?

Go to SongMeanings and Yabba - I instinctively trust someone called Yabba - will enlighten you:

OK this is the real meaning and trust me this is what the song is about... 

Ozzy is working out his grocery bill to see if he has enough money to buy some weed, he cant afford to buy expensive meats if he buys some weed he can only afford pork but he wants to keep it quiet as his rasta friends are against eating pork. 

He visits the butcher who lists all his meats to which ozzy replys he cant afford, 'goat?....no i might kill i queen' meaning no that will use all my money ' fish?...i got children out of that range' i need to feed my family fish is out of my price range. 

The butcher then tells him to take the cheaper pork and ozzy tells him to be quiet as his friends might hear instead he just points at it and chooses to call it 'dat ting der' he then bumps into one of his strict rasta friends while carrying his pork home in a bag and worrys he might discover he has pork in his bag, his friend then gives him a joint and suggests they share the food in the bag.

Headline of the Day

From the Northamptonshire Telegraph:

Northamptonshire hawk that patrols Wimbledon is stolen

Later. Good news - the hawk has been safely returned.

Jo Swinson tipped for promotion to Cabinet

Maybe it is only Sunday paper talk, but Scotland on Sunday has an article by David Maddox tipping Jo Swinson (currently Nick Clegg's parliamentary private secretary) for promotion to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland:

According to a source close to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Swinson, the MP for East Dunbartonshire, who from 2005 to 2009 was the youngest MP in the House of Commons, has impressed the party leadership since the Tory-Lib Dem coalition came together in 2010. 

In particular, her decision not to rebel over the coalition decision to increase university tuition fees, despite building a political career on trying to get them scrapped, marked her out for promotion with the leadership of both parties.

This is accompanied by some vague damning of the current incumbent, Michael Moore - apparently he is seen as "a safe pair of hands," but his approach to fighting the SNP’s referendum plans is "over cautious".

The other candidate mentioned if there is to be a new Secretary of State for Scotland is Alistair Carmichael:

who is seen as being a tough and likeable option to take on the Nationalists and is well regarded by both coalition parties in his role as deputy chief whip.