The Treaty of Ripon

Thanks to the booklet published by the city's civic society, I came across the plaque in a Ripon backwater.

The Treaty of Ripon put an end to the Bishops' Wars of 1639-40 between England and Scotland. These were caused by Charlies I's attempt to impose an Episcopalian system of church government upon Scotland.

Defeat in these wars, and their expense, forced Charles to abandon his attempt to govern without a parliament and were thus a Cause of the Civil War.

The English puritans were sympathetic to the Scots' resistance to High Anglicanism but suspicious of what they saw as their attempts to interfere in English business. Again, this attitude prefigured the concerns of the Commonwealth era.

The late Conrad Russell writes: There was more to it than that.

Sarah Teather attacks welfare cuts and demonisation of the poor

Sarah Teather is interviewed by Toby Helm, the paper's political editor, in tomorrow's Observer:

She accuses parts of government and the press of a deliberate campaign to "demonise" those on benefits and of failing to understand that those in need of state help are just as human as they are. With vivid outrage she describes the language and caricatures that have been peddled. 

"Whenever there is any hint of opposition they wheel out a caricature of a family, usually a very large family, probably black, most likely recent immigrants, without much English, lots of children, apparently chaotic, living in a desirable neighbourhood that middle-class people would like to occupy. That is the caricature and of course it is a partial spinning of the truth and it allows the demonisation to take place. 

"I would really urge particularly Conservative colleagues but people in all parties to be careful. I don't think we can afford to preside over a society where there is a gradual eroding of sympathy for people at the bottom end of the income spectrum and a rapid erosion of sympathy for people on benefits." 

She returns to the theme of morality and politics, saying: "I think deliberately to stoke up envy and division between people in order to gain popularity at the expense of children's lives is immoral. It has no good intent. 

"There are all sorts of things you have to do when times are tight that have negative consequences but you do them for good purposes. To do something for negative purposes that also has negative consequences – that is immoral."

Why you should always vote for yourself

Lord Bonkers explains over on the new Liberator blog.

The final issue of Liberal Democrat News

The final issue of Liberal Democrat News arrived today. It is being replaced by a monthly magazine, Ad Lib. The first issue will be sent to all party members next month and to all Lib Dem News subscribers from January.

It is sad to see a title close, particularly when you have been writing for it for so long and when, if you add in the old Liberal News, it has been running for 66 years.

Still, I get a thank you and an anecdote on the last page:

I learnt a lot about journalism and what editors look for through writing for Lib Dem News – first for David Boyle and then for Deirdre Razzall. 

After sending in one of my early pieces I phoned the office (as nervous contributors do) to make sure it had been received. David said it had. 

“Sorry it wasn’t better,” I said, because I was a little disappointed with the way it had turned out. 

“Oh no,” David replied, “it was just the right length.”

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Beardies, weirdies, beardy-weirdies, weirdy-beardies"

A second day with Rutland's most popular fictional peer. This time thanks - or apologies - are due to David Nobbs.

Monday

In Brighton for the Conference of the Liberal Democrats, whom should I bump into but our own Nick Clegg? He kindly asks me to look at his main speech of the week: “I've already given the press most of it, but you may be able to tweak the odd line.”

Well, I have tweaked for every Liberal leader since Campbell-Bannerman, so I settle down in the lobby of the Grand with a pot of orange pekoe and a red ballpoint. And this is what I read:

“We are not the party for you. You know who you are: Socialists, Social Democrats, Social Liberals, social anythings, beardies, weirdies, beardy-weirdies, weirdy-beardies, flat-earthers, Friends of the Earth, friends of Vince Cable, Little Englanders, Len McCluskey, tree-huggers, bunny-huggers, beard and sandals, beards and scandals, Polly Toynbee, polly wolly doodle all the day. If people want just protest politics, if they want a sort of ‘I don’t like the world let me get off’ party, they’ve got one. They can all fuck off and join the Labour Party.”

The waitress has to replace the tablecloth after I lose a snootful of the pekoe, but she is Terribly Nice about it. The manuscript is a little damp, but I score through the passage and substitute some lines of my own about our becoming a party of government before hurrying off to return it to Clegg.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

• The King of the Badgers

Thanks to Jill Hope and how UKIP may help the Lib Dems

When she agreed to fight a by-election in Corby - a Conservative/Labour marginal with little history of Liberal Democrat activity - Jill Hope knew she was undertaking a thankless task. We owe her our thanks for doing so.

Like Neil Monnery I suspect UKIP's showing in Corby is encouraging for the Liberal Democrats. Neil believes UKIP will split the Conservative vote next time.

Maybe the mechanism is more subtle than that. The better UKIP does, the more large parts of David Cameron's party will be convinced that he failed to win the last election because he was too moderate.

So there will be pressure on Cameron to move to the right, and if he gives in to it this will open up the sensible middle ground for the Liberal Democrats to occupy.

Even if, as is quite possible, UKIP's support fades as the next general election approaches, they will have helped the Lib Dems in the years before then.

The end of the Ritz, Market Harborough

To think I watched Jaws and Monty Python and the Holy Grail here.

Photo by @solarpilchard - whom everyone interested in Market Harborough should follow.

Paddy Ashdown: Afghanistan is not worth the life of one more British soldier

PoliticsHome has the front page of tomorrow's issue of The Times.

The lead story trails an article inside in which Paddy Ashdown says the war in Afghanistan is lost and not worth the life of one more British soldier.

I find it hard to disagree with this - it is been hard for some years now to discern what we are attempting to achieve in Afghanistan.

Paddy's article will be find behind The Times' paywall. In any case, thanks to the Guardian core readership strategy, I find myself buying The Times more and more these days.

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"We need to broaden our idea of what constitutes proper evidence, and develop an understanding of where good old-fashioned human judgement and instinct is more appropriate, given its speed, responsiveness and ability to handle both complexity and individual variations." Thinking Liberal gets it exactly right in questioning the enthusiasm for 'evidence-based policy'.

Benedict Carey in the New York Times discusses the role that psychologists played in the campaign for the re-election of President Obama.

Sociological Images has a gallery of vintage postcards opposing women's suffrage.

Caroline Shenton tracks down some souvenirs made from the ruins of the old Palace of Westminster, which burnt down in 1834.

"Austin was a spiritualist, and a member of a Cardiff church, and ran séances (for which he charged). It was to one of these séances that Emily Libby headed in September 1942, and which led to a criminal case against Austin for 'unlawfully using subtle means by pretending to hold communication with deceased spirits to deceive and impose upon certain of his majesty’s subjects'." Dr Alun Withey writes about his wicked Uncle Austin.

This Was Leicestershire looks at Leicester Castle.

Headline of the Day features Cyril Smith and MI5

A clear win for the Daily Telegraph:

Sir Cyril Smith sex abuse dossier seized by MI5

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The King of the Badgers

The new issue of Liberator is with subscribers, so it is time to spend another week in the company of Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

I suspect apologies are due to T.H. White, the Revd J.P. Martin and even Kenneth Grahame.

Oh, and Liberator has a blog now.

Anyway...

Sunday

When in need of wise counsel, I take myself off to a woody bank beneath the Ornamental Arch I erected to mark the victory of Wallace Lawler in the Birmingham Ladywood by-election of 1969 and rap on a door half obscured by foliage. There, after much shuffling and snuffling from within, I am admitted to a dark hallway and then to the cosiest of studies. On its walls are shelves housing the works of our finest poets, a cricket bat signed by the 1948 Australians, an election address from Sir Alan Beith, an oar used by the victorious Oxford eight of 1954, a set of cigarette cards depicting the Presidents of the Liberal Party and a framed photograph of Dorothy Tutin.

There, before a crackling fire, I enjoy a modest supper of toasted cheese or angels on horseback and more than one tumbler of Auld Johnston (that most celebrated of Highland malts) while setting the world to rights with the King of the Badgers. This evening, I am sorry to learn that one of his granddaughters is unwell and is to be sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland to recover if the Wise Woman of Wing’s remedies prove ineffective.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West 1906-10.

Ripon & District Light Railway

So there I was walking the towpath of the Ripon Canal when, on the far bank, I saw what looked like the remains of an industrial railway.

I continued to the next bridge, crossed it and then worked my way back through some modern housing to find what I had seen. It turned out to be the Ripon & District Light Railway.

As its website says:

The permanent 2' gauge railway uses Hudson track and rolling stock and Lister locomotives. Its purpose is to move maintenance materials around a small development of houses and light industrial workshops - and to play trains!

The owner, Neill Clayton, was friendly and explained that all the track and rolling stock had been purchased elsewhere and brought to the site. He showed me some of the treasures in his collection - the wagons I saw across the canal had come from an old sewage farm railway system.

And the name? Neill's website explains:

Ripon & District Light Railway draws its name and inspiration from a 1904 proposal to build a 2'6" gauge line linking Fountains Abbey and Ripon town with the North Eastern Railway's main-line station at Ripon. 

The project was welcomed by the City Council - until they realised how much disruption would be caused by laying track through medieval streets. The North Eastern Railway played on these fears - and won approval for their novel 'motor bus' service as an alternative.

Compton for England

An article in an unexpected place - the New York Times - on the significance Nick Compton's forthcoming England debut:

After 55 years, one of the most evocative names in cricket is set to return to the highest level of the game as England begins its series of four five-day test matches against India. 

Nick Compton, a 29-year-old batsman, will be following in the footsteps of his late grandfather, Denis Compton. It is as if a DiMaggio or Mantle were once more to take the field for the New York Yankees.

Chris Heaton-Harris shows David Cameron's weakness

The Conservative leadership has already announced that Chris Heaton-Harris will not face disciplinary action after apparently encouraging James Delingpole to stand as an anti-wind-farm candidate in the Corby by-election.

Which is odd, particularly when you learn that Heaton-Harris is the agent for the Tory candidate Christine Emmett.

This failure to act looks like a reflection of David Cameron's weakness as Conservative leader. He is now openly despised by the party's right wing and dare not move against one of their favourite sons. The Guardian, incidentally, is also suggesting that the energy minister John Hayes may have had knowledge of the plan. Certainly, wind farms stands second only to Europe in the list of the Tory right's obsessions.

Heaton-Harris, of course, did not want to see Delingpole stand and take votes of his Conservative candidate/ He wanted him to say he was standing, make the issue of wind farms a prominent one in the campaign and, having done so, pull out.

This confirms a couple of things.

The first is that the Conservative right still thinks that its pet causes are shared by the electorate as a whole. Wind farms are controversial (though not, I suspect, as controversial as the Tory right believes), but they certainly stand lower in the list of voters' concerns than the economy.

And even where voters share the Tory right's view, the strength with which the right holds that view can make them seem a little strange and put voters off. This was the real problem with the party banging on about Europe under Cameron's predecessors.

The second is that Heaton-Harris and his allies are not as clever as they think (which is very clever indeed). I am reminded of Grant Shapps and his problems with the internet.

The irony of all this is that Heaton-Harris's candidate Christine Emmett lives in a windmill.

Encouraging news on encouraging chess in schools

In February I had an article on Comment is Free looking at the works of the charity Chess in Schools and Communities to restore the game in British state schools.

On Friday the Independent had an article detailing the progress that has been made more recently:

At Sacred Heart, a 180-pupil school in one of Liverpool's most deprived areas, all children have either an hour or 45 minutes timetabled chess a week except for the very youngest in their first year of compulsory schooling. There is also a chess club after school every Wednesday. 

The school won a Liverpool-wide schools’ chess competition - something which headteacher Charles Daniels, a keen chess player himself, is very proud of. “We're only a small one-form entry school - we don't win things like football and cricket competitions,” he said. “It's something the children will remember.”

And next month a contingent from the school will travel down to London's Olympia to watch the London Chess Classic.

The article goes on to quote Malcolm Pein, who runs the charity:

Meanwhile, Malcolm Pein is busy exorcising the myth that chess is a middle-class game. He has encouraged several pupil referral units (“sin bins”) and one young offenders' institution to take it up. “It has been popular in the pru's,” he said – possibly as a result of the calming influence it has on its players. In the United States, it is also widely encouraged in prisons.

You may also be interested in the piece on Judit Polgar, the world's strongest women's player by Stephen Moss in the Guardian. Judit will be playing at the London Chess Classic.

When I interviewed Malcolm Pein he mentioned that Polgar's father, who home-schooled his daughters and turned all three into strong players, would never allow her to play in single-sex tournaments. She always played with the boys. Ending single-sex tournaments, he suggested, was the way to produce more strong female players.

Just Cyril being Cyril?

I first heard of the allegations against Cyril Smith when I read them in Private Eye in 1979. The Eye had picked them up from the Rochdale Alternative Press (RAP - those were the days when any self-respecting town had an 'alternative' newspaper). Northern Voices reprinted the original RAP story in 2010.

My instinct has always been to assume that they were true, if only because I could not see why anyone would trouble to invent anything so tawdry - he "'told me to take my trousers down and hit me four or five times on my bare buttocks" - about someone who was then only a local politician.

Today Paul Waugh, who grew up in Rochdale himself, revived this story with further allegations, as did Simon Danczuk, the current MP for the town, in the Commons. In the current climate it was inevitable that someone would do so.

And when the alleagations did become public, the old Liberal Party's reaction was not exactly to deny them.

A quotation from 1979 - "It's not a very friendly gesture, publishing that. All he seems to have done is spank a few bare bottoms" - was attributed by Private Eye (at least in a piece following Smith's death in 2010) to David Steel. But it originates from the original RAP story, where it is attributed (one suspects more accurately) to Steel's press office.

Perhaps the Liberals and Cyril Smith are a bit like the BBC and Jimmy Savile. We had all heard the rumours, were not sure if they were true or what to do about them if they were. It was easier to believe the legend of Big Cyril and do nothing.

When Cyril Smith died I did my best to write an even-handed assessment of him. But these stories - if they are true, of course - do reinforce my view that local politicians who present themselves as Mr Rochdale (or anywhere else) and bigger than their party tend to be bullies and braggarts and are not to be trusted.

I also raise my eyebrows at David Steel's statement on Any Questions? last Friday: "I have never come across it [child sexual abuse] in all my years as an MP."

I'm a civilised person get me out of here

While I have been out this evening I gather that the Conservative member for Mid Bedfordshire has been eating ostrich anus on national television.

I don't like Nadine Dorries. I don't like I'm a Celebrity... And she is a fool for going on the show.

But I shall not be voting got her to eat any more anuses. Because I don't like the bullying inherent in the campaign to have her undertake every Bushtucker Trial.

And I have reached an age where I have sympathy for the words of the psychologist Professor Paul Gilbert, as reported in this morning's Independent:

"Reality shows are designed to hold your interest in people when they lose, and see them despair. The focus is on the emotional meltdown of losers. 

"We need to be studying in detail the effect of this kind of competitive culture in the media on the young people who are growing up on it. 

"Supposing all the young people watching The Apprentice thought this was the way people did business, with all the back-stabbing and attacking each other. Would you really want to live in a world where everyone did that?

"So much is going on that is making people angry. I think people feel a bit hopeless."

I will make one exception. If AntnDec ever fall on hard times and are obliged to go into the jungle themselves, I shall happily pay to vote for them to eat ostrich anus all evening.

The Ripon Canal meets the River Ure

The Ripon Canal runs for a little over two miles from its basin near the centre of the city, past the racecourse to the River Ure.

I walked the towpath and when I arrived at the far end of canal I found the Ure was very high - this was the summer of 2012, after all. The Ure has come from Wensleydale and flows down to York, by which time it has changed its name to become the Ouse.

Then a boat obligingly appeared. The photograph above shows it coming off the Ure and entering the canal. I helped with the first lock (named Oxclose Lock) and then walked back to Ripon.

Jersey child abuse: new readers start here

When the Haute de la Garenne children's home failed to yield up any bodies, the newspapers lost interest. Even though, as Nick Davies has showed, the more lurid stories about the home were largely generated by those newspapers themselves. And even though there clearly was a serious problem with child abuse on Jersey.

(Incidentally, a great deal of forensic evidence was retrieved and no one seems sure what became of it or whether it was even tested. Perhaps the papers should be asking about that?)

The newspapers may have lost interest, but what has happened there since is simply extraordinary. A post on photopol gives a good guide to the island's politics, the child abuse scandal and these subsequent events:

Jersey probably has more in common with a feudal state than with a modern democratic one. Particular families have long wielded effective power. There is no formal separation of powers such as one might expect in a modern democratic state. The executive, parliament, judicial system, and public prosecutor are all part of the same amorphous mass.

This makes for a highly politicised justice system, and it explains much of the tension between the police and the prosecution service during the tenure of [Graham] Power and [Lenny] Harper, officers who were attuned to the UK system and who were taken aback at the extent of political interference in the judicial and policing areas in Jersey. 

It is against this background that Stuart Syvret is attempting to involve Europe in the Jersey scene and that Power and Harper had to resort to stratagems to secure the prosecution of sex abuse offenders.

One of the things that happened after British newspapers lost interest was the summary dismissal of the island's police chief Graham Power - he was the superior of Lenny Harper, who was the officer who spoke to the media at the time that Haute de la Garenne was in the news.

Power has offered some thoughts to the Jersey blog voiceforchildren on the fourth anniversary of this sacking:

I have been reminded that it is now the fourth anniversary of my suspension from duty and subsequent "dismissal by stealth" from my position as Chief Officer of the States of Jersey Police.

Much has happened since that time. Nevertheless it is encouraging that a wide number of interested parties have continued the fight to obtain justice for the victims of the persistent abuse of vulnerable children which occurred in establishments operated by the Jersey Government. 

In spite of Establishment efforts to bury the issue it has remained firmly on the political agenda, largely due to the tireless work of a number of individuals committed to searching for the truth and giving the protection of vulnerable children the highest priority. These include the Jersey Citizens Media, a small number of Local Politicians, Investigative Journalists from outside the Island, and the many supporters wordwide who have nothing to gain from their endevours other than the knowledge that they are supporting a just cause. 

I am aware that much is happening at present and I do not want to distract anyone from their current efforts by re-opening the issues relating to my suspension in any great detail. I would however simply for the record, remind readers what has been established from a number of credible and independent sources and disclosures. Namely, that my suspension was based on falsified documents, fabricated evidence, misleading information provided to States Members and the public by Jersey Ministers, and the testimony of a number of senior individuals who have since been publically discredited. 

The events relating to Jimmy Savile and other revelations have heightened the general awareness of the issue of Historic Child Abuse, and the substantial difficulties which stand in the way of those who attempt to bring abusers to justice.They may also provide a further opportunity to return to the question of whether persons responsible for abuse or for failing to prevent that abuse, remain in positions of authority where they may still constitute a risk to children or the search for justice. 

The "shock and awe" of the suspension was intended to knock the fight out of me and lead to my quiet departure and subsequent silence. Among the many proven failings of those responsible for imposing and maintaining the suspension I think that we can now confidently add a decidedly poor judgement of character and a serious failure to anticipate the likely consequences of their actions. Not exactly the best characteristics for people who claim to be capable of running a government.

These, remember, are the words, not of a political activist, but of an experienced British police officer. Jersey is indeed a strange place.

Welcome to Liberator's blog

Many readers of this blog will be familiar with Liberator, the magazine where Lord Bonkers' Diary appears.

Now the magazine has its own blog. You can find it at Liberator's blog.

I may post there myself from time to time - and Lord Bonkers thinks it would be a Terribly Good Idea if he did too.

Leicester Labour helps Robert Wann avoid disqualification

On Friday I reported that Robert Wann, the former Lord Mayor of Leicester, faced disqualification from the city council for not attending a meeting in six months if he failed to find one to attend before 17 November.

Guess what happened next?

This evening the Leicester Mercury website tells us:

The Labour group's whip Councillor Barbara Potter arranged for him to sit in on tonight's Economic Development, Culture and Tourism Scrutiny Commission. Coun Wann is not a regular member of that committee but stood in for another member who was unwell.

Six of the Best 294

"Fortunately the Scottish Lib Dems have done their homework and produced an admirable document spelling out how it would work, including its possible and wholly positive implications for the rest of the UK.   It’s a huge pity that this blueprint for devo max, the completion of devolution, was not produced first by the Labour Party; but its Lib Dem parentage offers an excellent opportunity for Labour and the Lib Dems to join forces in defence of the survival of the United Kingdom." BrianBarder on LabourList is impressed by our contribution to the debate on Scottish independence and devolution.

Hoping for More than Slogans has had enough of Jeremy Paxman.

John Dickerson on Slate explains why Mitt Romney did not see his defeat coming: "Even on the morning of the election, Romney’s senior advisers weren't close to hedging. They said he was going to win “decisively.” It seemed like spin, but the Boston Globe reports that a fireworks display was already ordered for the victory. Romney and Ryan thought they were going to win, say aides. “We were optimistic. More than just cautiously optimistic,” says one campaign staffer. When Romney lost, “it was like a death in the family."

The New Yorker has a gallery of photographs showing "a divided country coming together to perform the single unifying act of going to the polls".

Did The Smiths warn us about Jimmy Savile? Cowan & The Stupid Dream investigates.

mikeyashworth on Flickr shows us some vintage advertising posters discovered in a disused passageway at Notting Hill Gate tube station.

Sam Carter: Jack Hall

A week ago I turned on Jools Holland's Later to hear a song about a highwayman being hanged. That's real folk music. And this performance is reminiscent of a young Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick.

[Later. That performance had disappeared from Youtube, so here is another - with no violinist]

Contemplations from the Marianas Trench tells the story of the song:

In 1701 a chimney named Jack Hall was hanged for burglary. When a child Jack Hall had been sold to a chimney sweep for a guinea. 

According to Sharp the song was written before 1719 because there is reference to a tune "Chimney Sweep" which has the same metre as Jack Hall in a publication that year ... 

The song was made popular in the 1850s with the adaptation Sam Hall by English comic minstrel, C.W. Ross, in the 1850's.

Sam Carter, who won the Horizon Award for Best Newcomer at the 2010 BBC Folk Awards, also sings more contemporary songs such as Dreams Are Made of Money.

For Remembrance Sunday

Ripon canal basin

For many years Ripon was the most northerly point on Britain's inland waterway system. The Ripon Canal takes you to the River Ure, and from there you can navigate via the South Yorkshire waterways to the Trent and the Midland canals.

In truth, this status was purely theoretical for much of the canal's history. According to Wikipedia, the Ripon Canal was impassable by 1906, officially abandoned in 1956 and not fully restored until 1996.

In 2002 Ripon lost its status, as the Lancaster Canal was connected with the main system by the construction of the Ribble Link.

So now the most northerly point on the system is Tewitfield, the current northern limit to navigation on the Lancaster Canal. However, there are plans to restore this waterway all the way to its original terminus at Kendal, even though this will involve some new lengths of canal to undo the damage caused by the construction of the M6.

Anyway, this is Ripon canal basin, which I found close to the centre of the city on a lovely sunny afternoon.

Danny Alexander launches Ginger Rodent beer

From BBC News:

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has helped to launch a new beer called Ginger Rodent, a nickname he was given by a political rival. UK Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman made the comment at the Scottish Labour conference in 2010. She later apologised.

The beer is made by Cairngorm Brewery in Mr Alexander's Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey constituency.

Paper Sun by Traffic - a mystery solved

Paper Sun by Traffic is one of the great psychedelic hits of the 1960s. But where was its distinctive video (as we would call it now) filmed?

At first I though it might have been the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill, South London. A couple of years ago I asked them via Twitter if they had been the venue, but they said no. They suggested it might have been filmed at the Powell-Cotton Museum at Quex Park in Kent.

So I asked the Powell-Cotton Museum, but they said they had not been the venue for filming either.

Then, a couple of days ago Slugabed left a comment on my post about this quest suggesting that the video had been filmed at the Musée Royal de l'Afrique Centrale in Brussels.

So I emailed them. And today Kristien Opstaele replied:

Yes indeed, it was filmed in our museum Some of the galleries are still the same, but not for long anymore. The museum will close mid 2013 for renovation.

So, thanks to Slugabed and Kristien, the mystery is solved. Take it away boys...

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Writing in the Guardian, Clare Allan draws an important moral from the Savile affair: "The various inquiries into how he was able to continue his behaviour unchecked are likely to take some time. We don't need to wait for an inquiry, however, to tell us the most immediate and obvious truth: it is crucial to listen to people whose word it is easy to dismiss."

On the Wired Danger room site Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan examine the Kremlin's increasing surveillance of the internet.

The writer of Feeding My Intolerant Child feels the NHS has let her down. So she wrote to her MP. Trouble is, her MP is currently in Australia appearing in a reality television show.

Five Chinese Crackers unpicks an article by James Delingpole to demonstrate a number of common logical fallacies.

"The Normans called the guerrilla movement that resisted them after 1066 the ‘silvatici’ — the men of the woods. The English, it is said, called them the same thing in their own language: green men ... How would you show your loathing of them without attracting a penalty? Perhaps you would carve the face of a green man inside the church: perhaps you would bring the spirit of the silvatici into the temple of the enemy." Writing on Aeon Paul Kingsnorth, fancifully but intriguingly, suggests that the Green Men you find carved in Medieval churches were a symbol of Saxon resistance to the Norman yoke.

Spitalfields Life presents some vintage photographs celebrating the high days and holidays of old London.

Former Leicester Lord Mayor faces disqualification

From the Leicester Mercury:

Former Lord Mayor of Leicester Robert Wann faces being kicked off the city council for not attending a meeting in nearly six months. 

The veteran Labour politician has not been present at any meetings since May 17, when he handed over the mayoral chains to Adbul Osman.

Under council rules, any elected member who does not attend a meeting for six months is disqualified from being a councillor. 

Yesterday's cancelled audit and risk committee meeting was the last he could have attended before the six-month deadline, November 17, passes. 

Coun Wann could yet attend the rescheduled meeting – for which a date has not yet been set – to avoid disqualification. 

However, his no-shows have already frustrated a number of party colleagues, who say his absence has been noted by residents of Thurncourt ward, which he represents.

Hawksmoor's obelisk in Ripon and the South Sea Bubble

The bus for Ripon leaves from opposite York railway station, takes you through Little Ouseburn and Boroughbridge and makes a stylish entry to the city by sweeping around the market square before dropping you at the bus station.

Ripon's market square is dominated by a stone pillar. Ripon Civic Society will tell you its history:

Pride in the city was behind the efforts of the city council, led by the MP John Aislabie, at the beginning of the 17th century, when they transformed the rough medieval Market Square into its concept of a Roman forum – the forum populi. They were led in their vision by one of England’s greatest architects, Nicholas Hawksmoor 

Hawksmoor was steeped in the architecture of classical times, so his plan to pave the Square was based on ancient and Renaissance precedents – among them public spaces like Rome’s Piazza Navona. And as they often – like Navona and St Peter’s Square – had obelisks at the centre, Hawksmoor was determined that Ripon should have the same feature. 

The result is Britain’s earliest surviving free-standing obelisk, erected in 1702 at a cost of £564 11s 9d – of which £334.3s 9d was paid by Aislabie. He was probably motivated by his political ambition; he later became Chancellor of the Exchequer, but resigned in disgrace.

John Aislabie was disgraced because - everything I know about history I learnt from Wikipedia - of the South Sea Bubble:

When in 1719 the South Sea Company proposed a deal whereby it would take over the national debt in exchange for government bonds, Aislabie was a very strong supporter of the scheme and negotiated the contract; he piloted the Bill through the House of Commons. 

The South Sea Company had been built on high expectations which it could never fulfil, and it collapsed in August 1720. An investigation by Parliament found that Aislabie had been given £20,000 of company stock in exchange for his promotion of the scheme. 

He resigned the Exchequer in January 1721, and in March was found guilty by the Commons of the "most notorious, dangerous and infamous corruption". He was expelled from the House, removed from the Privy Council, and imprisoned in the Tower of London.

His son William Aislabie had the obelisk restored in 1781, but the plaque he had erected at the time misleadingly implies that he was responsible for erecting it in the first place. Perhaps his father was still too controversial a figure to celebrate so publicly?

Sexual abuse in children's homes is not a new discovery

Channel 4 News this evening was a curious mix. It reported that:

From the initial investigation into north Wales child abuse in 1991 to the Waterhouse inquiry in 2000, Sian Griffiths has collated details of every allegation and document surrounding the scandal.

More than that, Sian Griffiths revealed something important about Sir Ronald Waterhouse's method of conducting his inquiry. Some insignificant local was accused of abuse, he was summoned to the inquiry to give evidence himself. But if a more prominent or influential figure was mentioned Waterhouse stopped the proceedings and refused to allow any further evidence on that point.

Perhaps that is what comes of putting a judge in charge of things?

But these revelations were framed by the device of "the past on trial", which sounded dangerously like something out of Brass Eye.

In particular, the talking heads interviewed took it for granted that, 20 or 30 years ago, no one had heard of the sexual abuse of children - in care homes or anywhere else.

I am old enough to remember Britain 20 or 30 years ago, and my recollection is that people were no more naive or stupid than they are today.

My impression, rather, is that there is a repeated process of discovery and forgetting about child abuse, or that it is known about by different groups and professions at different times - I have written a book chapter on this theme.

Certainly, the possibility of sexual abuse in children's homes was well understood in the 1950s.

Chris Arnot and David Brindle, writing in the Guardian in 2009, remembered John Stroud:

John Stroud's The Shorn Lamb is a novel that encapsulates the zeal and idealism of a generation of students training as social workers in the years after the second world war ...

Stroud had returned to the UK after service with the RAF in India, determined to make a difference. His book was first published in 1960. Two years later, it came out as a Penguin paperback, sold extensively and was eventually serialised on the radio by the BBC. Social workers had probably never been so widely popular before with the public at large. And certainly not since.

And what should we find in The Shorn Lamb but this passage?:

"Oh God, Charles, more trouble!" she said, beating her hands to and fro in her hair. 

"What?" 

"That hostel warden." 

"What, old Christmas?" I said. "What's the matter with him?" 

"The usual," she said. 

"Oh, no! Little boys or little girls?" 

"Little boys. Well, big boys - boys in the hostel. It's been going on for months." 

"Oh, hell!" I felt sickened, as I always did, though none of us was unused to this sort of revelation. You never saw it coming, and in someone you knew quite well it was always revolting.

No further questions, m'lud.

Headline of the Day involves Nottingham ferret

A win this time for This is Nottingham (aka the Nottingham Evening Post):

Disabled granny attacked by ferret as she rode mobility scooter in Bingham

Well, what do you expect in Nottingham?

The early days of The Spencer Davis Group and The Move

Untold Stories is a documentary produced by Birmingham Music Heritage that deals with the city and popular music since the 1960s. This is part one, which deals with the early career of the Spencer Davis Group and the Move. There are six more parts to enjoy on Youtube.

An earlier post of mine has a live performance of I'm a Man and a glimpse of the even earlier career of the Winwood brothers.

Headline of the Day features the BBC and alien life

A win for the Daily Telegraph with:

Brian Cox: BBC bosses feared alien discovery could breach editorial guidelines

Glebe Road flooding halts developers

The decision to build houses on Windy Ridge, Market Harborough, was always controversial, not least because the site can be seen from such a distance.

Harborough District Council did its best to resist this development, but the Planning Inspectorate eventually gave permission. Its report cannot be downloaded from the council website (despite what that page says), but if I recall it rightly it said something along these lines: No, it is not a good site to build houses on, but you haven't granted permission for enough houses to be built in the district, so we are going to allow building here to punish you for not meeting your centrally imposed target.

For the past couple of weeks there has been earth-moving equipment on the site as development begins. However, today came this news (from the Harborough Mail):

Builders have been ordered to down tools at a housing development in Harborough after flooding to nearby homes. 

People living in Glebe Road found themselves facing a heavy flow of muddy water on Sunday after the weekend’s rainfall. 

One home was left without power while sandbags delivered by Harborough District and Leicestershire County councils were used to prevent the water from further flooding houses. 

Angry homeowners turned on developers Redrow Homes, whose work on the Windy Ridge site next door they blame for causing the flood. 

Harborough District Council announced today (Wednesday) that it will be serving a temporary stop notice on contractors working on the development.

The report tellingly quotes the Environment Agency:

"We were, and remain, not satisfied that the surface water drainage proposals adequately address flood risk on and off site, in particular on Glebe Road. 

"Residents have also advised us that there are existing drainage problems in this area and they are concerned the development proposals would exacerbate them."

And, of course, the legend that is Harborough Lib Dems group leader Phil Knowles has been on site.

Permission to mourn Clive Dunn

I was very sorry to hear of the death of Clive Dunn. Performers who have been on television for as long as I can remember are rare creatures these days, though in Dunn's case that is chiefly because Dad's Army is still constantly repeated - not that anyone is complaining.

Beyond Corporal Jones, there are two ways I should like to remember him.

The first is this remarkably frisky interview from the Guardian, published in 2002.

The second is with a song from his album 'Permission to Sing Sir'. The Downstairs Lounge will tell you all about it.

Jefferies Land video from Swindon Viewpoint

When I visited the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate in the summer of 2009 I bought a DVD of a short film about Jefferies. I have now found it online at Swindon Viewpoint.

This video makes a good short introduction to Jefferies' work. If you want to know more, try the guest post that Rebecca Welshman wrote for this blog.

North Wales child abuse inquiry failed to hear important witness after gagging the media

The impression that the original inquiry was flawed is strengthened by the Rebecca website:

In 1997 journalists working for the HTV current affairs programme 'Wales This Week' were given a stark warning by the North Wales Child Abuse Tribunal. 

If they broadcast newly discovered allegations of child abuse dating back nearly twenty years they risked being held in contempt of the Tribunal. 

The broadcasters removed the allegations. But having gagged the media, the Tribunal didn’t go on to interview the witness and never heard his testimony. 

The story of how the Tribunal suppressed an important piece of evidence has never been told.

Until now...

I am not able to embed the videos, but you can watch part 1 and part 2 of a film about this missing witness on Youtube. The end of part 2 is particularly interesting.

David Parsons resigns from Leicestershire County Council Conservative group

From the BBC News Leicester pages this evening:

The former leader of Leicestershire County Council has resigned from the county's Conservative group. 

David Parsons stepped down ahead of a group meeting on Wednesday where he faced possible disciplinary procedures from the party.

An earlier post on this blog will remind you of the background to this resignation.

Leaving York at Walmgate Bar

I did not want to bid farewell to York with that grim post on the Rigg family monument, particularly as I found again my love for the city this summer. So here is something happier: Walmgate Bar.

When I was a student at the University of York the gatehouse over the roadway was home to a secondhand bookshop with sporadic opening hours. I did once manage to get in there and bought a David & Charles paperback called The Lost Roads of Wessex. I could not resist books with titles like that even then.

Today the gatehouse is home to a friendly coffee shop. When I climbed the stairs to look at the upper level, I found it full of young people bent studiously over laptops. I suspect they were from the University's Wentworth College, which is now a postgraduate college and has a building in Walmgate.

So, it's farewell to York. See you in Ripon.

The Waterhouse Report into abuse in children's homes in Wales

Yesterday David Cameron announced two new inquiries into abuse in children's homes in North Wales.

The was because the original inquiry, conducted by the late high court judge Sir Ronald Waterhouse, has increasingly come under question - see the post I wrote following Friday's Newsnight report.

Intentionally or not, that report has shifted the focus of public outrage from the Jimmy Savile and the BBC to shadowy Conservative grandees.

Lost in Care, as the Waterhouse inquiry report was called, can be found online over at the National Archives site. Whatever its inadequacies, it is worth looking at for the background to this affair.

David Dimbleby keeps it in the family

Four years ago, along with many other bloggers, I criticised the BBC's coverage of the USA Presidential election result in general and the choice of David Dimbleby as anchorman in particular.

We need not have bothered. Tomorrow night he will be doing the same job.

Back in 2005 I summed David Dimbleby up:

He is a public school boy of no great imagination or ability, projected on to the national stage by television fame and family connections.

In that post I mentioned that he made his first film for the BBC at the age of 17. His younger brother Jonathan was in it too.

Here he is a few years later, down for the summer vacation from Oxford and the Bullingdon Club, reporting for the newly launched Anglia TV.

And if you wonder what I mean by "family connections", read about his father Richard Dimbleby - "widely acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in British broadcasting history".

But should the BBC still be relying upon the hereditary principle?

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"Another of the advantages of the book is that it really does cover almost all of the available media openings – from blogs and email, through local radio and regional television, to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Its authors also genuinely get the often-misunderstood art of the effective press release." On British Politics and Policy at LSE, Paul Brighton reviews 101 Ways to Win an Election by Mark Pack and Ed Maxfield.

Mother Jones has a handy chart of Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever.

"Many casual home computer buyers give no thought to the fact that they are bringing a powerful surveillance tool into their homes, one that can eavesdrop on conversations, watch them walk about the room (and worse), and follow every move they make online." Ars Technica says a new computer virus from Georgia points wider lessons for online security.

In a photograph reproduced on Investors.com, a young Theodore Roosevelt watches Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession pass along Broadway.

Zythophile celebrates Shades, dives and other varieties of British bar.

All World Wars has some photographs of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton in 1855.

Taking down the Ritz

The old Ritz Cinema in Market Harborough was never a thing of beauty and has been derelict even since Kwiksave (who latterly occupied the building) closed their store in 2005.

As this photograph of the rear of the building shows, the demolition men moved in today. The site is to be redeveloped as a block of retirement flats, with shops on the ground floor.

Jimmy Savile, Edwina Currie and Broadmoor

One of the strangest aspects of the Savile affair was the influence he was given over Broadmoor special hospital.

And a written statement that Edwina Currie, who appears to have been the minister who appointed him to a role there, only added to the strangeness:

She told Channel 4 News in a statement: "What [Savile] did have, as I know for certain, is information which gave him a hold over staff. That could explain why they said nothing, even with their knowledge or suspicion of his misbehaviour. As a result ministers were never given the information, when we could have barred him from the place."

The video above is of her appearance on RTE's The Saturday Night Show on, er, Saturday night. It helps us understand what went on at Broadmoor, but still does not explain why Savile was apparently allowed to do as he pleased there.

Meanwhile, the Daily Telegraph suggests that Savile's original position at Broadmoor - honorary entertainments officer - was agreed by Dr David Owen when he was health minister.

The Rigg family monument, St Lawrence's, York

First a confession: I made two trips to St Lawrence's, York. The photograph of the tower was taken on the Sunday and I went back the next day, when I took the photograph of the plaque that was being placed on it.

I went back because on the Sunday evening because I had read about the Rigg family monument on York Stories:

Mr Rigg was a seedsman with premises on Fishergate. The sons and daughters of John and Ann Rigg went for a boating excursion on the Ouse on 19 August 1830, with friends. Their rowing boat met a keel near Acomb landing and collided with it, and they were thrown into the water. Six members of the family were drowned. 

Public grief in response prompted a subscription fund, to pay for this once grand memorial, with a sculpture in marble by William Plows, and a specially commissioned verse from Sheffield poet James Montgomery.

As you can see from the photograph above, the monument is now decrepit. But York Stories links to a photograph of it when it was maintained and also this description of it from 1839:

This affecting testimony of friendship has a very handsome appearance. The vault is covered by an entombment in form of a pediment, a squandril in front having a serpent in relief, coiled in a circle, as an emblem of eternity. Above this rises the basement of the ground-work of the monument, whereon stand two massy square stone pillars, elegantly carved in front with ivy leaves, expressive of friendship. These are surmounted by a fine Grecian cornice, designed after a monument erected over some youths at Thysillus, and which has stood there above 2000 years. Branches of palm and wreaths of laurel are introduced in the frieze. 

The interior work is wholly of marble, the ground of Italian dove. The tablet is of white marble, supported by water and ruffled leaves ... The tablet is surmounted by a bold cornice, which supports a massive urn, partially concealed by drapery, all wrought in white marble. The height of the monument is ten feet, and it is eight and a half wide. The whole is very well executed, and both the design and the sculpture are very creditable to the talents of Mr. Plows, of this city, by whom it was erected.

It looks as if this monument and the loss it records have been forgotten. Yet when I told the man putting up the plaque on the tower the tale - the six Rigg children were aged between 19 and 6 - he winced.

Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Chile

"And New York drowns as we hold hands."

For obvious reasons this lyric has been on my mind this past week. It comes from the great Jimi Hendrix track "Voodoo Chile".

And there is a mystique that surrounds this recording of it. The Winwood Fans site tells the story:

In the most famous recording involving Hendrix and Traffic members, Steve Winwood played organ on "Voodoo Chile", released on Jimi's album Electric Ladyland (1968) ... 

John McDermott, in his exhaustively researched book Jimi Hendrix: Sessions (1995), describes the recording session for "Voodoo Chile" on May 2, 1968, actually early morning May 3. He explains that Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell, Steve Winwood, and Jack Casady (of Jefferson Airplane) recorded 3 takes of the song. The third take was released on Electric Ladyland, and a composite of the 3 takes was later released as "Voodoo Chile Blues" on Jimi Hendrix: Blues (1994). The session took place at the Record Plant studio in New York City.

The recording session for this song has circulated on tape among collectors for years. The tape is billed as New York City's Record Plant studio, May 2, 1968, "Voodoo Chile - Slight Return" (incorrectly), with Hendrix, Mitchell, Winwood, and Casady. The session is mesmerizing in terms of the organic interplay between Jimi and Steve, as well as the overall chemistry of the ensemble. They really seem simpatico, and it's enlightening to hear the short evolution of the final product over just a few takes. "Voodoo Chile" seems to have amazingly sprung forth almost fully formed in less than an hour.

For a more recent performance of Voodoo Chile, and a great homage to Hendrix, watch Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood.

Jimmy Savile's brother was a Liberal parliamentary candidate

There is a photograph on the Getty Images site with the caption:

23rd February 1974: Actress Honor Blackman lends support to the Liberal Party as she joins Johnnie Savile, brother of broadcaster Jimmy and candidate for Battersea North, London, on a canvassing tour of the constituency.

Sure enough, the Wikipedia page for the Battersea North constituency reveals that a J. Savile stood there for the Liberal Party in the February 1974 general election. He finished third, polling 4683 votes.

And a recent Daily Mail report suggests that Johnnie was no more pleasant than his brother.

Those new Liberal Democrat committee co-chairs in full

Several new Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee co-chairs have been appointed by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg.

Paul Burstow has also been elected as chair of the parliamentary party. The former chair Lorely Burt stood down after being appointed as parliamentary private secretary to Danny Alexander.

The new appointments in the House of Commons are:

• Gordon Birtwistle - Business, Innovation and Skills
• Mike Crockart - Energy and Climate Change
• Julian Huppert - Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities
• John Leech - Culture, Media and Sport
• Greg Mulholland - Work and Pensions
• Alan Reid - Transport
• Mark Williams - Wales
• Roger Williams - Food and Rural Affairs
• John Thurso - Constitutional and Political Reform in addition to the role he holds for the Scotland committee.

The new appointments in the House of Lords are:

• Lord (Jonathan) Marks of Henley on Thames - Justice
• Lord (Monroe) Palmer of Childs Hill - Defence
• Lord (Mike) Storey - Education
• Lord (Martin) Thomas of Gresford - Wales

Thanks to the East Midlands Lib Dems site, which has the full list of Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party Committee Co-Chairs.

John Hemming "threatening to resign Lib Dem whip"

At least according to the Daily Express website he is - hence the scare quotes in my title.

Referring the failure of John's far-reaching (probably too far-reaching for its own good) private member's bill last week, the report says:

In his closing remarks at the end of that debate, Mr Hemming said: “The Government are being dangerously complacent about such issues as cover-ups, and my personal support for the Government will rest on a change of attitude by them to take such matters more seriously.” 

He confirmed last night that he was threatening to resign from the party whip.

Sir Archibald Sinclair departs Sheffield Park

Not the former Liberal Party leader and grandfather of John Thurso, but the Battle of Britain class locomotive. Sir Archibald had a locomotive in this class named after him because he served as  secretary of state for air during World War II.

The Bluebell Railway site says Sir Archibald Sinclair was rescued from Barry scrapyard in 1979. Again, I suspect that are talking about the locomotive rather than the Liberal leader.

When Jimmy Savile was an authority figure

The internet is full of people saying they never liked Jimmy Savile or understood his popularity. He was a strangely unhip disc jockey and a strangely creepy children's television presenter

But it is even stranger than that. There was a period between these two careers during the 1970s when Savile cut his hair (or at least bought a shorter wig) and became an authority figure.

If you wanted someone classless, down to earth and credible to front your campaign, Savile was your man. You can see him playing this role in his advertisements for British Rail and the Clunk Click campaign to encourage drivers to wear seat belts.

The moral is that the mania celebrity endorsement is nothing new and it was just as absurd in the 1970s as it is today.

Newsnight and the North Wales child abuse scandal

After the build up it received, yesterday's Newsnight was something of an anticlimax. The 'senior Conservative' alleged to have been involved in the abuse of children's in local authority homes in North Wales.

But the programme did at least one valuable service in revealing further shortcomings of the inquiry held in the late 1990s by Sir Ronald Waterhouse. [Later. You can read his report online.]

There had already been an internal inquiry conducted by Clwyd County Council. According to Newsnight, the findings were so damning that the council insisted all copies were returned to it and pulped. One suspects it would be harder to suppress such a report in the internet age - something for which we should be grateful.

For the Waterhouse Inquiry, the young people making accusations of abuse first made statements and were then questioned on the matters raised in the statements and those alone.

Yet according to more than one of them interviewed for Newsnight, it was made clear to them that there were some things that could not be included in statements, and they included the names of prominent individuals they claimed had abused them.

And this was not the only failing of the Waterhouse Inquiry. As Nick Davies wrote in the Guardian back in 1997:

When the tribunal was established last year, it had been assumed that the press could report its proceedings, using the laws of privilege which allow them to name names from court cases and public hearings without fear of libel actions. 

However, Sir Ronald then ruled that the media could not report the name of any living person who was accused or likely to be accused of abusing children in the North Wales homes unless they had previously been convicted of such an offence. Since then he has extended his ruling twice: he has granted anonymity to one man who died 16 years ago and to another who has twice been convicted of sexually assaulting boys from a North Wales home. 

Sir Ronald has argued that his ruling will encourage paedophiles to come forward and to give honest evidence without fear of retribution. Critics say that this is unnecessary since he has the power to compel witnesses to attend and that those who have come forward have done so to deny the allegations against them and not to make a clean breast of their alleged offences. 

One lawyer who has been involved with the tribunal said he feared that the anonymity ruling was actively discouraging witnesses. “Newspaper readers may well have information of potential value to this tribunal. They may themselves have been the victims of abuse, or they may have worked with the alleged abusers. But if the press is not allowed to inform them of the names of those against whom allegations are made, they will not learn that their information is important. So they will not come forward.”

This approach was not unique to Sir Ronald. The lawyer who conducted the inquiry into abuse in Leicestershire children's homes in the 1970s and 1980s conducted most of it in private and refused, beyond a prepared statement, to answer questions about its findings when it was published.

Leicestershire County Council was probably alone, however, in trying to avoid paying compensation to young people who had been abused in its homes by arguing it did not have a duty of care to them.

Later. Further evidence that the Waterhouse Inquiry was flawed.

St Lawrence's Tower, York

St Lawrence's in Lawrence Street, York, stands almost opposite the birthplace of Henry Scott Tuke. is a large Victorian church. I recall being a little intimidated by it when I cut through the neighbouring alley as a student.

In its churchyard stands this tower, a remnant of the earlier, church on the site where Sir John Vanbrugh was married in 1719. It dates from the 12th century, though its top storey was added in the early 16th. The Norman north doorway of the nave was re-erected against the east wall of the tower when the rest of the old church was demolished in 1881-3.

It is a valuable survival because, as York Stories says, this part of the city was badly damaged during the siege of York in 1644, so there are few obviously historic buildings in the area outside Walmgate Bar.

The tower has recently been restored, and while I was photographing it I met a man putting up the plaque to commemorate the end of that project.

East Midlands Trains says walk don't run

For the past few weeks East Midlands Trains has been playing a new announcement at its stations. It tells you not to smoke, that you are being observed by CCTV but should keep you luggage with you at all times, and "for your own safety" to walk not run.

It feels as though you have alighted at a high-tech Approved School.

Given the eye-watering cost of rail fares these days, I would like to be treated as a valued customer. But having heard this announcement several dozen times I will settle for being treated like an adult.

Why I am voting for Phil Knowles

The ballot papers for the selection of the Liberal Democrat candidates for the next European elections are going out. Here in the East Midlands I shall be giving Phil Knowles my first preference.

One reason for this is that I have known Phil for almost 30 years. We were members of Harborough District Council together back in the 1980s.

So I know what a good campaigner he is. It was Phil who taught me that three Liberals having a beer around the kitchen table could become "a meeting of concerned local residents" in a press release.

More recently, he has been prominent in the campaign to secure a new hospital for Harborough, proving himself an accomplished television performer in his many interviews.

In fact, with his warm Dudley accent, I could see Phil becoming something of a media favourite if he made it to the European Parliament. He would be a real figurehead for us East Midlands Liberal Democrats.

And he would make the interpreters earn their keep.

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Craig Brown writes on badgers, cows and evidence-based policy for the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists site: "The badger cull is rare in that it is one of the few policies for which real scientific field trials have been performed in order to establish its efficacy. Peer-reviewed journals detailing the results of these trials conclude that culling badgers is, for the most part, ineffective as a remedy for bTB."

"This British scientist, rejected by his short-sighted government, has written as good a handbook as one is likely to find." Jacob Silverman reviews David Nutt's "Drugs without the Hot Air" on Bookforum.

Green Economy says a UN report has found that cities will benefit greatly from more greenery as urban areas expand.

"At the very least, you have to admire a man who can get thousands of people to come to Wembley Arena to watch a twelve-hour PowerPoint presentation." James Ward listens to David Icke.

TalkYork introduces us to Nana Zheng, a Chinese postgraduate who has just completed a dissertation on “The history of the management of York city walls since the 19th century.”

"Dixon’s shooting is so shocking because it is unexpected. The Blue Lamp has a classical narrative shape that disrupts the order presented at the start of the film and reinstates it by the end." BFI Film Forever ponders Dirk Bogarde's shooting of Jack Warner.

Rewilding the River Welland through Market Harborough

Earlier this evening I went to a meeting held by the Welland Rivers Trust at The Angel, Market Harborough, to gain local views about its proposed £500,000 project to restore the riverscape and habitats along the River Welland through the town.

You can read more about the scheme on BBC News and on the Welland Rivers Trust website.

The project has come a long way since I went to a meeting about the Welland on the eve of the last general election, and there was a lot of support expressed this evening.

The middle reaches of the Welland suffered brutal flood prevention work from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s. As Dr David Harper said this evening, at the start of that period public policy was that we should grow enough food that we need not fear being starved by U-boats in the next world war. At the end of it we had signed up to the European Economic Community's common agricultural policy and its lakes and mountains of food.

So in rural areas the prevention work was designed so that farmers would be able to grow any crop they chose on the flood plain, even though the Welland Valley has traditionally been regarded as some of the finest grazing land in England.

And in Market Harborough the river was constrained, sometimes by concrete walls, to prevent the town flooding. Some flood prevention work here was necessary, but it would be done far more sympathetically today.

The good news is that there is much that can be done to reverse the worst excesses of that scheme. I asked about the River Jordan here in Little Bowden, which suffered at the same time, and the Trust has plans for it too.

One unlovely fact I learnt this evening is about the source of the Welland. It is somewhere near the village of Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire, but hard to find. I once spent an hour trudging around a muddy field where the Ordnance Survey map places it, but found nothing. One romantic tale had the river beginning in a spring that comes to light in the cellar of the village's vicarage.

The truth these days is that the Welland begins with the outflow from Sibbertoft's sewage treatment works. At least the forgiveness of nature means the water is a lot cleaner by the time it reaches Market Harborough.

I took the title of this post from a Leicestershire & Rutland Wildlife Trust leaflet about "Rewilding the Soar Valley". I like the idea of 'rewilding' - it is a concept we could extend to many areas of life. However, the man from the trust said that everything is being rewilded these days, so maybe I am a bit late with this bandwagon.

Hedgehog trapped in crisp packet in Weston-super-Mare

The BBC wins our Headline of the Day Award by a distance.