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Birkdale Focus looks at the historical battle against market fundamentalism in the Liberal Party and introduces us, via a letter from William Wallace, to Edward Rushworth, candidate in Harborough at several general elections: "He made little distinction between being a Liberal and being a teetotal nonconformist; his instincts were anti authoritarian and socially egalitarian."

We need a few more, but not too many, Steve Webbs, says Mark Pack.

"At the start of the 19th century some 2,000 miles of turbulent Central Asian territory – deserts, mountains and unstable Muslim khanates – separated Britain’s Indian territories from the edge of the Russian Empire; a hundred years later these same frontiers were just a few miles apart." History in an Hour on some modern echoes of the Great Game.

"Why on earth would anyone choose to live or work there? Today it’s been hot, smelly, noisy, bad-tempered and overcrowded everywhere I've been." Just One More Ten Pence Piece ... finds London is a miserable place.

My Tonight from Shrewsbury visits Pengwern Books, the town's independent bookshop.

Discover a secret tunnel under Whitehall with IanVisits.

Mike Brearley on cricket captaincy

listen to ‘Chatting Ashes captaincy with Mike Brearley’ on Audioboo

I once wrote:

When Brearley became England's captain in 1977 it was almost as though Jonathan Miller or Michael Frayn had been put in charge. Brearley was a representative of liberal North London in an age when cricket was still run by the Establishment. He was part of a more enlightened tendency within the game which embraced such figures as John Arlott and the Revd David Sheppard and had its finest hour when South Africa objected to the selection of Basil D'Oliveira for England's 1968-9 tour.

That was in 2007, when it was announced that Mike Brearley was to be the next President of the MCC.

He was at Lord's again today in a different capacity - ringing the bell five minutes before play started - the ground's website took the chance to record this short interview with him.

This is a chance for me to recommend Brearley's cricket books. The Art of Captaincy is the best known, but it is will worth seeking out his books on individual series too.

Still, it is shock to discover that one of my youthful sporting heroes is 71.

Summer Reading Round-up 1

I have invited some bloggers to nominate a couple of books they have enjoyed recently and write a few sentences about each. Readers are welcome to send me their own choices. I suggested one political and one non-political book, but (as you will see) I don’t insist on that. Just send me an email with your choices.


Alan Wyburn-Powell

Bringing the House Down by David Profumo (John Murray)

Before I read this book, I thought that it had a lot going against it. The son of a famous politician trying to cash in on a scandal which happened 50 years ago and which has been discussed so many times that everyone thinks they know all about it already.  How wrong I was. David Profumo manages a delicate balancing act and comes across as very fair to his father, Jack Profumo. That David emerged as a rounded individual, able to undertake the task of writing this book, is further testament to Jack Profumo’s character and that of his wife, Valerie Hobson. This book is very engagingly written and really does give new insights into the events around the Profumo scandal and its aftermath. The words of Jack Profumo, who lived into his 90s, ‘You know, I have enjoyed my life’, should give encouragement to us all, if things do not always go according to plan.

The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (Vintage Books)

I enjoyed this book from the start, but initially it was difficult to work out what was so good about it. In many ways it is to writing what David Gower was to cricket or Miranda Hart is to comedy – just a very elegantly executed version of something which other practitioners do with much greater fuss. As an historian, I enjoyed the insights into the research process which led to the book. It is well worth reading for the pleasure of the prose and as a painless way of sipping on European and Japanese history and the world of ceramics without really noticing you are imbibing. We can also thank Edmund de Waal for introducing the concept of the flaneur to otherwise-idle British saunterers.

Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell writes a blog on Liberal history. Follow him on Twitter.


Linda Jack

My political book has to be 'The Political Brain' by Drew Western - it is so absorbing it unusually, for a political book, makes great summer reading! In fact, if there was a reading list for Lib Dem activists it would be compulsory for me.

Understanding how we respond to political messaging, the fact that while the electorate say they hate dirty campaigning they actually love it. The advice that we have to respond to attacks immediately and that ignoring an issue is political suicide. Best example is how the NRA in the States progressed because gun regulation became a shield issue for the Democrats and they shied away from talking about it.

My usual summer reading has to be pretty light stuff. Would recommend anything by Barbara Pym if like me you are a bit nostalgic for the 50's and like reading about anthropologists and vicars.... Also anything by Maggie O'Farrell if you love jigsaw puzzles. I am currently reading 'Instructions for a Heatwave' (appropriately enough!) set in London in 1976 about an Irish family whose father suddenly disappears for no apparent reason, as the story unfolds so do the secrets - perhaps leading to the whereabouts of Dad, perhaps not? I can't tell you because I'm still only two-thirds of the way through.

But if you like to laugh while lounging on the beach - Lucy Kellaway's 'Who Moved my Blackberry' is a must, especially if you own, or have ever owned one. The book is a series emails between Martin Lukes, his wife and colleagues - but you really only get to read his emails and the odd one from his life coach Pandora.....you get the picture. Not only is it hilarious it also has a nifty sting in the tail.

Linda Jack blogs at Lindylooz Muze. Follow her on Twitter.


Gareth Epps

I have finally almost got around to finishing 'Bread of Heaven' by Jasper Rees.  A story of a Welshman born and bred the wrong side of the border, but brought up supporting that great rugby team of Edwards, Bennett, JPR, the Pontypool Front Row and the rest, it rings uncannily true.  It has also made me consider joining a male voice choir, though I'm not sure about birthing a sheep.

The other book I've been reading is the excellent biography of lost music legend Arthur Lee, 'Forever Changes' by John Einarsson. Phenomenally influential with the band Love in the 1960s and the albums Da Capo and Forever Changes before a long, slow slide, the real story of Lee was never really covered, even after his renaissance after several lost decades culminating in a 1990s jail stint.  This book shows the very human contradictions of a flawed genius.

Next off is an expedition into the writings of 'Rory the Tory' - as one of constituents described him to me recently: Rory Stewart.

Gareth Epps writes a blog. He does not like Twitter.

Maajid Nawaz chosen as Lib Dem PPC for Hampstead & Kilburn

From the Camden New Journal site:

Maajid Nawaz - the writer who turned his back on the agitating Islamist organisation Hitb ut-Tahrir – has tonight (Thursday) won the Liberal Democrat candidacy for the Hampstead and Kilburn parliamentary constituency. 

He won an internal vote at a private meeting in West Hampstead, and will now take on Labour's Tulip Siddiq and Simon Marcus for the Conservatives at the 2015 General Election. 

His back story is laid out in his memoir, Radical, in which he explains how he joined Hitb ut-Tahrir and shared its aggressive views in a leadership role. 

Arrested in Cairo in 2001, he spent five years in an Egyptian prison. Amnesty International described him at that time as a “prisoner of conscience”. He later resigned from Hitb ul-Tahrir and renounced its position after what he has described as a “democratic awakening”. 

Alongside writer Ed Husain, Mr Nawaz went on to co-found the Quilliam Foundation, which aims to deal with extremism in Britain.

The trippiest anti-drugs film you have ever seen

Thanks to the Open Culture Twitter feed (well worth following) for pointing me to this. Curious Alice was released in 1971 and intended for eight- to ten-year-olds.

If it seems remarkably trippy to us today, then it did to some at the time. The US National Archives page for the film says:

In the 1972 publication, Drug Abuse Films, the National Coordinating Council on Drug Education (NCCDE) criticized Curious Alice for being confusing and potentially counterproductive to drug abuse education. In the report, the NCCDE, an independent organization that received funding from NIMH, evaluated scores of films for scientific accuracy and effectiveness. 

The review panel classified Curious Alice as “restricted”, writing that young viewers “may be intrigued by the fantasy world of drugs” and that it should only be presented with a “very skilled facilitator” in order to “probe for the drug attitudes” of an elementary school class. (In other words, teachers, don’t bother trying to use this film to get kids to stay away from drugs because it’ll require way too much extra work on your part.)

And an article on Slate reminds us of the importance of Lewis Carroll to the drug culture of the 1960s - think White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane.

But then other key concepts of the decade, like 'getting it together in the country', also had roots in earlier children's literature.

Charlotte Henry and Comrade Richard Grayson

In the first post in the new Golden Dozen Charlotte Henry celebrates “Comrade” Richard Grayson’s decision to leave the Liberal Democrats.

After inveighing against “leading lefties” and “Socialist Liberal Forumistas”, she concludes:

“With another leading light of the the (sic.) Lib Dem social democratic left gone, the rest of us can get on with getting liberals elected to make the country fairer and freer.”

Perhaps this post was just a clumsy attempt at humour, but I fundamentally disagree with its reasoning.

Successful political parties bring together people and interest groups with divergent or even blatantly contradictory goals and interests. Unsuccessful parties tend to be interested in doctrinal purity, but I do not think Michael Foot’s Labour or Iain Duncan Smith’s Conservatives are a promising model for us to follow.

That is why, though his social democrat politics are not my own, I was sorry to see Richard Grayson leave the Liberal Democrats.

I share Charlotte’s wish to see the Liberal Democrats putting liberal policies into practice, but I believe this goal is more likely to be reached by bringing new people into the party than by encouraging existing members to leave.

A wise man once said that when two people violently disagree it can be because there is a false premise they hold in common.

I suspect something like that is happening here, with both Richard and Charlotte too worried about the total value of public spending when there are many more important questions to answer. What is it spent on? Where is it spent? And who gets to decide?

Ludlow: Hunger in the foodie capital of England

If you were looking for a moral critique of our unequal society you would not naturally look to the incoming head of Ludlow Rotarians. But the words of Michael Symonds, as reported by the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser, are spot on:

Michael Symonds, a former headteacher at Bedstone College, has pledged that two key commitments for the coming year will be to help tackle homelessness and people going hungry. 

The club has launched Ludlow Cares – an initiative that will culminate in more than 100 people sleeping rough in the grounds of Ludlow College in September. 

The event will raise the plight of homeless people not just within Ludlow but across the West Midlands. 

Funds raised will be shared by St Basil’s, a charity that helps homeless young people, Barnardo’s and Ludlow Rotary Club’s charities, the primary one of which this year will be Ludlow Food Bank. 

“We live in the midst of an agricultural paradise and arguably the ‘foodie’ capital of England so it cannot be right that local people should be short of food,” said Michael Symonds. 

“It is our aim to ensure that working together with other agencies, people in Ludlow are not in that position.”

Beautiful rural areas like the Shropshire hills often have a hidden poverty problem and I believe it is worse in Ludlow than most towns.

Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Savile

An interesting story from this morning's Independent:

Senior Whitehall mandarins repeatedly warned former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher against knighting Jimmy Savile because of long-standing concerns over his private life. 

Previously unseen Cabinet Office papers reveal that suspicions about the DJ’s “strange and complex” personality were known at the highest level for decades. 

Lady Thatcher – who invited the presenter to Chequers – made four attempts to appoint Savile to the knighthood before eventually succeeding in the final year of office in 1990.

This supports the impression that Mrs Thatcher was never very good at spotting a wrong 'un.

Like many people, I had heard rumours about Jimmy Savile in the last years of his life. But the idea that 'everyone knew' about him back in the 1970s is, as Simon Titley pointed out on Liberator's blog, contradicted by the fact that the government and British Rail were happy to use him in major advertising campaigns.

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"When the legislation is passed there will still be work still to do. No doubt the groups who have campaigned against the Bill will dig into their deep pockets to bring legal challenges. They must be opposed and reminded that religious organisations will, of course, be under no obligation to act in ways which are incompatible with their own doctrine." Liz Barker writes on the successful campaign for equal marriage for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Dr Alun Wyburn-Powell asks if 'safe seats' are safe only because no one attacks them.

At Gawker, Cord Jefferson sets out the lessons of the Trayvon Martin case: ""If you’re a black man and you don’t remain vigilant of and obsequious to white people’s panic in your presence ... then you must be prepared to be arrested, be beaten, be shot through the heart and lung and die on the way home to watch a basketball game with your family."

When interest rates start rising it will be a sign that the economy is healing and getting back to normal, says Hamish McRae on Independent Voices.

Is J.K. Rowling's hitherto pseudonymous detective novel any good? Malcolm Jones investigates for The Daily Beast.

Helenography has been on a Derelict London walking tour near Limehouse.

Market Harborough town centre 50 years ago

I did embed this slideshow here, but the advertisement that comes first is so irritating that instead I am sending you to the Harborough Mail website, where it first appeared.

Richard Jefferies at the Proms

This year's Proms opened with a new piece called "Harmony" by the British composer Julian Anderson.

The music blog 5:4 reveals, this turned out to be a setting of words from Richard Jefferies' spiritual autobiography "The Story of My Heart". The Proms programme does not reveal what those words, were but 5:4 thinks he knows:

Here this moment, by this tumulus, on earth, now; I exist in it. The years, the centuries, the cycles are absolutely nothing; it is only a moment since this tumulus was raised; in a thousand years it will still be only a moment. To the soul there is no past and no future; all is and will be ever, in now.

Fire at St Luke's hospital, Market Harborough

Remember the new unit at St Luke's hospital, Market Harborough?

The one for which Leicestershire County and Rutland Primary Care Trust paid £1.5m to the appropriately named Modcon UK, which was later wound up by HM Revenue and Customs, without making basic checks on the company and without obtaining a bank guarantee?

It caught fire today.

Lib Dems accuse Tories of Cold War fixation on Trident

From the Daily Mirror this morning:

Conservatives have a Cold War fixation with keeping Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Lib Dems will say today. 

The war of words with their Coalition partners comes as the party publishes its long-awaited review into the alternatives to Trident. 

The document is expected to recommend building two new nuclear submarines to replace the current four - ending the policy of having a continuous at sea deterrent (CSD). 

The Tories have already dismissed the report and have vowed to press ahead with like-for-like renewal despite the £80billion plus cost. 

But a Lib Dem source hit back saying it was time for all parties to end their “Cold War” mentality 

“We are throwing down the challenge to everyone. Let’s sit down and look at what the report says and let’s approach this seriously and not from the position that the Cold War days are still with us,” said a party source.

It will be interesting to see how much support the Lib Dem position gets beyond the party.

Any questioning of Trident has been a hard sell in the past, but the Conservatives' insistence on spending £80bn or more on Trident when money is so short looks increasingly ridiculous.

That insistence comes from a desire to make the other parties look weak by opposing the decision. But it also suggests that, deep down, the Tories fear they would appear weak too.

Trident needs a more modest replacement and the Conservatives would find it easier to do this than Labour. But they lack the courage to make that leap.

St Mungo's Medals: Glasgow in the 1950s

Dirty Modern Scoundrel writes:

Mungos's Medals is a 1961 film directed by John Elder for the Corporation of the City of Glasgow, following the array of Festival of Britain and Saltaire Society awards won by various postwar housing projects in the city. 

The film attempts to show the lives of a number of residents, and how they had been transformed by the postwar rebuilding. 'People behind this window have created a home in a hovel,' declares the narrator as we view a family eating their 'last supper' in their Gorbals tenement 

No attempt is made to interview them, rather the family is spoken about by the narrator with the familiar patronising tone of the midcentury documentary narrator: 'All she has wanted for years now was a door to shut on the world'; 'His ambition to build and build and build and build until, ooops, down they come!'. 

Despite the tone of the film, the footage is amazing.

Tories make their new policy on single mothers clear

Here.

Nick Clegg announces review of employment and training for young

BBC News reports that Nick Clegg has announced a review of employment and training options for 16 to 24-year-olds at the CBI annual dinner this evening:

In his speech, Mr Clegg told business leaders that school-leavers were faced with a confusing array of schemes designed to support them, with too many getting lost in lost in "a maze of different programmes". 

Companies considering employing young people also had to navigate a complex web of government initiatives. 

The review will look at how to simplify the system, although the government has already ruled out creating a single ministry dedicated to young people.

Later. Les Bonner has the full speech.

Roman Lincoln

I was in Lincoln yesterday and had a look at some of the Roman remains at the top of the hill near the cathedral.

The Newport Arch is a third-century Roman arch and reputedly the oldest gateway in Britain through which traffic still passes.

The Mint Wall, believed to have been the rear wall of the Roman basilica, is (like Leicester's Jewry Wall) a rare substantial survival of Roman civilian architecture.

More about Roman Lincoln on The Heritage Trail.

Sarah Teather goes rogue

Yesterday's Guardian had an interview with the former Liberal Democrat for children and families minister Sarah Teather in which she was extremely critical of Coalition immigration policy:

"What alarms me is that the immigration proposals feel as if they're hewn from the same rock as welfare earlier in the year, where a lot of that again was about setting up political dividing lines, and trying to create and define an enemy. 

"It’s got to a stage where it's almost unacceptable to say anything else, and it bothers me that there is a consensus among the three party leaders that they are all making, well not quite the same speech – there are differences, significant differences – but there’s a consensus. It's stifling the rest of the debate, making people afraid to speak. If you get to a stage where there is no alternative voice, eventually democracy’s just going to break down."

Good on Sarah Teather, as Stephen Tall says. But this interview will also be of interest to Lib Dem kremlinologists.

Because what struck me when I first me Sarah on the party's federal policy committee was that she was instinctively loyal to the leadership - this was still in Charles Kennedy's days.

And at the first hustings in the 2006 leadership campaign she and Nick Clegg went everywhere together, apparently both unwilling to let Ming Campbell out of their sight - young cardinals bigging up an elderly candidate for pope.

That Nick Clegg has lost the support of someone like Sarah reinforces my fear that Clegg loyalists are a diminishing group in the parliamentary party.

She may also be wondering why sacked male ministers get knighthood and she got nothing.

Devendra Banhart: Cripple Crow

A couple of summers ago I bought a copy of Electric Eden by Rob Young, which informed several Sunday music choices in the following months. This song by Devendra Banhart, right down to the mannered vocals, reminds me of some of those videos.

It seems I was on to something. Wikipedia says "Banhart's music is often associated with the New Weird America genre, along with Vetiver and Joanna Newsom".

And the entry for New Weird America says:

The musical style described as New Weird America is derived mainly from psychedelic rock and folk groups of the 1960s and 1970s, including American performers Holy Modal Rounders and English and Scottish groups, such as Pentangle, The Incredible String Band, Donovan, and Comus.

No further questions, m'lord.

Pratap Chitnis has died

The Guardian website has an obituary of Lord Chitnis, who died on Friday. It describes him as "one of the most prominent fixers in centre-left politics from 1960 to the end of the 1980s".

Pratap Chitnis was Eric Lubbock's agent when he won the 1962 Orpington by-election. The obituary also reveals that Chtinis fell out with Jeremy Thorpe in a pretty fundamental way:

When Thorpe went on trial in 1979 for attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, Chitnis and some Liberal friends persuaded the former MP Peter Bessell to return to England from the US to be a witness. Bessell claimed to have heard discussions about the murder plot. Thorpe was acquitted but he had to resign the party leadership.

An inevitable tribute to Alan Whicker

Labour's foolish opposition to private schools entering the state sector

Last summer I spent a few days in Tynemouth and shortly afterwards blogged about the plans of The King's School, Tynemouth, to enter the state sector:

Such moves ... are to be welcomed, but the left is always deeply suspicious of them. 

Sure enough, the area's Labour MP is quoted on the Evening Chronicle website expressing concerns about the move.

Sebastian Payne has more about this story in this week's Spectator and about the Labour council's opposition to the school's plan:

The Labour-run North Tyneside council is a bastion of resistance to the Baker/Blair/Gove reforms, and seems to be primarily interested in protecting its own territory. Allowing the King’s School to open to state pupils would, they say, upset the ‘feeder’ system that shepherds pupils in primaries into designated secondaries. Giving parents a choice upsets this careful plan. 

The opposition is being led by Ian Grayson, a National Union of Teachers official who doubles as the North Tyneside council member responsible for education. He believes that removing the Priory school from council control could ‘destabilise’ the entire education system in the borough. Giving parents choice, he told me, could ‘see a significant drop in numbers elsewhere in the borough and we have to plan for that’. A third of pupils might choose schools other than the ones the council has designated for them. To Mr Grayson, this is not something to celebrate, but a problem. 

Councillor Grayson has been trying to thwart King’s School by demanding a formal investigation into the effect the new academy would have on the borough. This is how school wars are fought in England: the opponents demand a bureaucratic assessment, hoping that a judicial review will delay the process long enough to stop the new school opening — in this case in September. 

Even taken at face value, Grayson’s arguments make no sense. North Tyneside council is building three new secondary schools and one new primary, so his ‘balance’ will be upset anyway. It appears Grayson and his comrades loathe the idea of not being in control. The real issue is that the unreformed left don’t want any new schools while places in old, inadequate schools remain unfilled.

Payne goes on to sat that the pro-reform left - people like Andrew Adonis - are almost as angry as the Tories about this, while Stephen Twigg, Labour's shadow education secretary, is on the fence but leaning towards the anti-reform side.

The kindest thing you can say about people like Councillor Grayson is that they display a typical Labour weakness: they are interested in a the overall system but far less interested in individual schools.

I shall leave you with the wise words of George Walden in his 1996 book We Should Know Better:

In no other European country do the moneyed and professional classes - lawyers, surgeons, businessmen, accountants, diplomats, newspaper and TV editors, judges, directors, archbishops, air chief marshalls, senior academics, Tory ministers, artists, authors, top civil servants - in addition to the statistically insignificant but eye-catching cohort of aristocracy and royalty - reject the system of education used by the overwhelming majority pretty well out of hand, as an inferior product.

In no modern democracy except Britain is tribalism in education so entrenched that the two main political parties send their children to different schools.

That is why we should welcome private schools entering the state system.

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Carl Minns draws on the experience of a scheme run in Hull to conclude that banning packed lunches in school may do more harm than good.

John Hyde, writing for The Law Society Gazette, believes Channel 4 was wrong to screen The Murder Trial: "If you really want to know how a court operates, go and sit in one."

"The Fukushima nuclear plant is likely leaking radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean and has been doing so ever since the disaster began in March 2011, the head of Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority revealed on Wednesday." Read more on Common Dreams

A plaque commemorating the Victorian cross-dressers Boulton and Park, a.k.a. Stella and Fanny, has been installed in Wakefield Street, London W1, reports Anterotesis.

The Renaissance Mathematicus introduces us to Roger Cotes, son of the rector of Burbage in Leicestershire, who was a Cambridge mathematician Roger Cotes at the age of 33 in 1716.

Adventures Close to Home discovers the remains of the Oakham Canal.

A defence of an 11 per cent increase for MPs in an age of austerity

From chapter 3 of Animal Farm:

The mystery of where the milk went to was soon cleared up. It was mixed every day into the pigs' mash. The early apples were now ripening, and the grass of the orchard was littered with windfalls. 

The animals had assumed as a matter of course that these would be shared out equally; one day, however, the order went forth that all the windfalls were to be collected and brought to the harness-room for the use of the pigs. 

At this some of the other animals murmured, but it was no use. All the pigs were in full agreement on this point, even Snowball and Napoleon. Squealer was sent to make the necessary explanations to the others. 

"Comrades!" he cried. "You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health.

"Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. 

"Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples."

Norman Baker praises Rutland's Shorelink tourist bus

Yesterday I reported that Norman Baker had visited Rutland to perform the official launch of the county's Shorelink bus service.

Thanks to My Rutland site I can now bring you Norman's thoughts on the new service:

"The Shorelink bus is a great example of an important connection being made in a small, rural county to help local residents, jobseekers and tourists get around. Running seven days a week, this is sure to be a popular service that will help people access jobs and key services, as well as letting visitors enjoy Rutland's many charms."

Medieval buildings in Weedon Bec

This is the Old Bakehouse in Church Street, Weedon Bec. Parts of it date back to the 16th century.

The village church is hemmed in between canal and railway embankments and suffers from an unsympathetic modern extension, but the west tower in Norman and its doorway and window are striking. The body of the church was rebuilt from 1825 and manages to look more interesting in this photograph than it did in the flesh.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

This is a reminder that I welcome guest posts on Liberal England. So far 33 have appeared.

And as you can see from the list of the 10 most recent guest posts below, I am happy to consider a wide range of subjects.

If you would like to write a guest post for Liberal England yourself, please send me an email so we can discuss your idea.

Spelling out the reason to vote Liberal Democrat - Andrew Brown

Tommie Smith - The man behind the image - Matt Roebuck

Don’t make the dull middle class go to university - Dr Anonymous

House of Lords reform in a 1950s whodunnit - Charles Beaumont

The difficulty of getting started in farming - Joshua Metcalfe

Why the British say no to new builds - Amy Fowler

The uncertain politics of railway preservation - Joseph Boughey

How Liberal Democrats can help fight for privacy rights in Europe - Peter Bradwell

Political defections: Storms of protest or signs of political climate change? - Alan Wyburn-Powell

Transition Town Market Harborough - Darren Woodiwiss

Norman Baker in Rutland

Norman Baker, the transport minister, was in Rutland today to carry out the official launch of the Shorelink bus service. This has been running around the shores of Rutland Water for a few weeks now and I intend to use it myself one day soon.

The photo is borrowed from the Department for Transport's Twitter feed. There are more from today's event on Martin Brookes's Facebook page.

Michael Gove appeared in a film with Christopher Lee and Robert Hardy

There is something about Michael Gove's appearance and views of education that puts you in mind of a chaplain at a dodgy prep school.

Which makes it appropriate that he played just such a part in the 1994 film A Feast at Midnight.

Visible Vinyl, Road Weedon

The village of Weedon - or Weedon Bec to give it its full name - has a complicated history and geography.

The medieval part is divided into Upper Weedon and Lower Weedon, while the settlement along the A5 is known as Road Weedon. The Royal Ordnance Depot once stood in fields between them.

I love the A5, with its hotels placed at every major junction - a relic of the days when a road journey from the provinces to London often included an overnight stop.

Road Weedon, which stands on it, was clearly once a major coaching centre. Today it is a centre for the antiques trade, which keeps most of the shops in its unexpectedly urban high street occupied.

I was particularly taken with the little building that houses Visual Vinyl. The owner (from whom I bought an Ashley Hutchings DVD) said it was once a bank, and that looks right to me.

Catford fox horror for man on toilet

Flushed with success, This is Local London wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Lord Bonkers looks forward to the first Ashes test

Hurry over to Liberator's blog to read his views.

Margaret Wintringham discussed on Woman's Hour

Because I was working at home yesterday I caught a Woman's Hour discussion on Margaret Wintringham, the first woman Liberal MP.

If featured Margaret Wintringham’s niece Patricia Moore and the historian Dr Helen McCarthy from Queen Mary, University of London.

You can read more about Margaret Wintringham and her career in a Lib Dem Voice article by Mark Pack.

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Blood & Treasure says Andy Murray does not come from Scotland or Britain: "Like every other modern tennis player his nation is the court, the training camp, the hotel room and the airlines that link them. One thing that struck me about today’s classic Murray mumble is that he sounded more or less identical to the man he beat, Djokovic."

Edward Snowden wants asylum in Venezuela, but Venezuela is a surveillance state, argues Isabel Lara on Boing Boing.

"Children and adults need nature, yet our technology shapes and defines us more and more. We are products of nature becoming confined by our technology. Our innate design skills, driven by our imaginative human mind, has allowed people to settle and to farm the land, further advances saw us leave the fields and villages for a contrasting urban life detached from the natural environment. We increasingly enjoy the natural world as observers – we are of nature, but not in it." Journeys of discovery are not just to wild landscapes, but can be found in simple places close to home says Miles Richardson on Outdoor Nation.

A. Barton Hinkle of the Richmond Times Dispatch writes on the increasing militarisation of the police in the USA.

Martin Cloake, on the New Statesman site, mourns the relegation of the Doncaster Belles: "The case appears to starkly illustrate all that is wrong with modern football – a successful club with strong community roots relegated because its commercial model didn't pass muster, in favour of a new team established by moneybags Manchester City."

Sefton Focus looks at an engineering gem on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.

GUEST POST Transition Town Market Harborough

Darren Woodiwiss outlines the ambitious plans of Transition Town Market Harborough.

What is ‘Transition’?  According to the Oxford dictionary it is ‘The process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another’.  Well to define what a Transition initiative is, such as Transition Town Market Harborough, we need to understand where we as communities are and where we would dream of getting to.

The Transition Network was established in Totnes in 2006 by a small group of people one of whom was Rob Hopkins who previously had been a lecturer in Kinsale, Ireland, in the design practice of permaculture. Most people perceive permaculture as a holistic way of land management for food growing purposes, but its main premise of closed loop systems, working with nature and observation are equally applicable to the design of towns and cities through its promotion of zoning ie., keep the things you use the most or that need the most attention closest.

So why Transition? While teaching on this course the concept of ‘Peak Oil’ and what could be done about it was raised and an interesting debate ensued, there was a realisation that ‘Climate Change’ and ‘Peak Oil (resource depletion in general)’ could not be treated in isolation as the mitigation of one could be at odds with the other.

'Peak oil' is a term first coined by Marion King Hubbert who was an eminent geologist in the USA during the oil boom of the 50s. In 1956 he shocked his peers of the time by announcing that US oil production would peak and inexorably decline somewhere around 1965 to 1971. This at a time when the general view was that oil would never run out.. it will, it’s a geological certainty!

Hubbert’s peak (curve) is a representation of the life-cycle of any resource deposit representing discovery, extraction, peak production and decline. These reserves rarely run out rather they are extracted until it is economically unviable to continue.

 The easiest to reach and process resources are developed first and then other resources are developed as time goes on. This is a pattern shared by many of the commodities we take for granted today. Indeed the US Oil production reached its peak in 1970 after which it transitioned from the world’s largest producer to its largest importer.

The Transition view is that in light of resource depletion a new way of thinking is required, one that re-empowers communities to plan their own destinies. At a time when globalisation has marched its course there is now a definite need and want for goods and services to be returned back to communities, returning quality jobs and wealth into local economies.

Transition is a bottom up approach that aims to use the collective genius of communities to self organise and agree what is best for them; this model of self-empowerment has made the Transition network the fastest growing grass roots organisation since the CND with nearly 1000 official initiatives worldwide.

Transition Town Market Harborough was founded in 2007 and is the 21st group in the network and has been busy trying to establish projects over the intervening period. We have shown films, had a series of speaker events, run two successful Apple days, purchased a community apple press for people to buy a share in and have a successful wholefood buying group running.

For the last year we have been working on a lottery bid for the ‘Big Lotteries – Communities living sustainably’ fund. We successfully transited the expression of interest stage (30 communities selected to bid from nearly 300) and with the help of the Rural Community council (Leicestershire & Rutland) became one of 12 communities to be awarded £1m.

This money will be used to run a sustainability project over the next 5 years with a remit to initiate projects that improve the sustainability (Economy, Social, Environment) of our community and share the learning’s with other interested groups. This project Is provisionally named the “Sustainable Harborough Challenge” and it is hoped that it will be formally launched in August this year.

This project has approximately 15 main project strands which include the following :

• Foundation of a community energy services cooperative to install community owned renewable energy infrastructure
• Energy clubs, self help DIY insulation
• Foundation of a local food hub to provide easy access to local food producers for customers at a reasonable price.
• Various food growing initiatives
• A local currency (Harborough pound) to positively promote local businesses and lock wealth into the local economy
• Community champions, a network of volunteers trained to advise on subjects such as water and energy conservation, food growing, composting and waste reduction.
• Managing tracts of land to increase local biodiversity
• Planting of managed woodland to increase biodiversity, local amenity, Green burial sites and to provide local sustainable, seasoned wood fuel. 
• A state of the town report that builds a reporting framework against which we can measure economic, social and environmental performance.

To bring this project to life we will need volunteers of all backgrounds to help so please register your interest by following us on Twitter or Facebook or visiting our website.

Darren Woodiwiss is co-founder, treasurer and steering group member of Transition Town Market Harborough and a partnership board member of the Sustainable Harborough Challenge.

Paul Burstow says social care needs fundamental reform

Paul Burstow has written an article for PoliticsHome to coincide with the National Health Service's 65th birthday. He looks at the Care Bill currently making its way through parliament and says demographic change means further radical reforms are needed:

The goal must be to make co-ordinated care the default rather than the exception. The best results for the individual and for the taxpayer come when care is co-ordinated around them and their family, when the home is the hub of care. The new Boards are well placed to commission this person centred care. 

A person born in the NHS’ founding year of 1948 can reasonably expect to live well into their 80s. When the NHS marks its 100th birthday, there will be over 100,000 people marking their own centenaries. It is this profound age shift that requires us to remake our health and care system, and ensure that the integration, prevention and asset-focused approach that the Bill promises really does become a reality.

Richard Grayson has left the Liberal Democrats

I am very sad to see this article by Richard Grayson on the Compass website:

Either way, the sad conclusion I have come to is that I have more faith in Labour and the Greens, than I do in the Liberal Democrats to put forward a package of policies which former Liberal Democrat voters can support. 

It is very much that – sad – to have reached the conclusions that I have about the Liberal Democrats. I do feel that if people like me who have been involved in the Liberal Democrats at many different levels for 25 years, have come to such views, as many have already done, then there are some serious problems for the party. 

I no longer know where the party’s real heart is and have serious doubts as to how far it could be effective in another coalition, with Labour even, let alone how far it could survive another with the Conservatives. 

However, I also feel a personal sense of liberation, at no longer having to feel that I need to have any sense of allegiance to the party, when I feel so utterly appalled by the way it has behaved since 2010.

Richard was at one time a central figure in the party, being Charles Kennedy's right-hand man. His more traditional social democratic politics are not mine, but we cannot afford to lose people like him.

I am worried that Nick Clegg has a much clearer idea of whose support he does not want than of whose support he does.

"Pass it on": Alan Bennett on The History Boys

"Pass the parcel. That's sometimes all you can do. Take it, feel it, and pass it on. Not for me, not for you, but for someone, somewhere, one day. Pass it on, boys. That's the game I want you to learn. Pass it on."

When the lovely actor Richard Griffiths died in March these words from the play The History Boys were widely quoted.

They constitute a wonderfully economical defence of learning for its own sake and also, to give it a political slant, of keeping to your principles even when that proves unfashionable or even dangerous.

But those words, of course, come not from Griffiths but from the play's author Alan Bennett. And here he is talking about The History Boys on American television around the time it opened on Broadway.

Andy Murray wins Wimbledon - That I should live to see this day

Today something happened that I genuinely did not believe I would live to see. A British man won the singles title at Wimbledon.

I can remember a time in the late 1960s when Mark Cox and Graham Stilwell could beat a lot of top players on their day. In 1973, when most of the best players were not playing, Roger Taylor got to the semi-finals. And Cox was still around to play doubles in the late 1970s when John Lloyd and Buster Mottram took us to the David Cup final. (Imagine that now!)

But we never really looked like have a men's Wimbledon champion. Lloyd got to the Australian final, but that was in an era when it was still played on grass, intercontinental travel was more daunting and many of the best players did not enter.

Greg Rusedski got to the US final and, with his big left-handed serve, should surely have done better than he did at Wimbledon. But for years Britain's hopes were on the shoulders of Tim Henman.

With his serve-volley game in an era of identikit baseliners, there was something magnificent about Henman. He was like a clean-cut young officer on a white horse riding into the machine guns of the enemy.

No wonder he lost. The truth is that, for a serve-volleyer, Henman did not have a huge serve and was forced to hit numerous volleys to win his points. And that is a difficult skill, however easy he made it look at his best.

But a British men's champion? Never.

We did better in the women's championship - a fact that a lot of this evening's coverage has ignored, whether out of sexism or ignorance.

I am a too young to remember two British women meeting in the final in 1961, though I know that the wrong one (Angela Mortimer) won, defeating the crowd's darling Christine Janes.

But I do remember Ann Jones winning in 1969 and beating the two best players in the world (Margaret Court and Billie Jean King) to do so. With her bustling attitude around the court, there was something of the housewife gone to war about Jones. You felt she had left her husband's supper in the oven or under a tea towel before setting of to play.

And then there was Virginia Wade. You did not support her so much as suffer with her. She was extraordinarily talented, but when things were going will you knew you were only a couple of points away from a crisis. Tim Henman had a little of that quality, but Wade was far more wringing to watch.

I remember 1977 when Virginia Wade won, beating Betty Stove - to whom Sue Barker had somehow contrived to lose in the semi final. I was at school in the lower sixth and saw the final in a classroom with a TV. The room gradually filled with pupils and teachers, none of whom had any right to be there, but no one worried about that as Wade won - after having lost the first set, of course.

So well done Andy Murray. You have triumphed over an awful lot of history.

Garbage: Only Happy When it Rains

I heard the local band The Sea Above play a good cover of this at Foxton Locks last Saturday and have had it on the brain all week.

Ed Miliband is reaping what he sowed

Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership by gaining the support of the unions. And you don't win that support without giving the impression that you are against pluralism in politics.

Now the excesses of Unite are filling the newspapers and Ed Miliband is suffering.

It would take a heart of stone no to laugh.

I am puzzled over Abu Qatada

So Abu Qatada is back in Jordan, to widespread rejoicing in Britain. But one thing puzzles me...

For years we have been told that Abu Qatada is "a fanatic who, everyone seems to agree, is hell bent on destroying our way of life".

Yet at no point in his nearly 20 years in Britain did he do anything that meant he could be charged and convicted of a crime in a British court.

How was this possible?

Royal Ordnance Depot, Weedon

I was so entranced by the glimpse of the long-vanished Weedon station at the end of my Deltic video that I went to see the village today.

The station has long vanished, but there are substantial remains of the Royal Ordnance Depot there and also traces of the railway and canal branches that served it. The village once had a barracks and 'pavilions' that were rumoured to be intended as a place of safety for the Royal Family if Napoleon invaded.

Modern housing development has encroached on the site, but the existence of public roads has the effect of making the far end of the site (where the explosives were once stored) easier to approach.

The first photo shows the gatehouse for the complex. I was pleased to find that its clock still chimes the quarters.

German bombing raids on England in World War I

Searching for a memorial to the Zeppelin raid on Loughborough a couple of years ago, I suggested their severity had been forgotten because the bombing in World War II was so much worse.

What I didn't realise then was that in World War I the Germans had launched bombing raids by conventional aircraft - Gotha and Giant bombers - that took a far higher toll than did the Zeppelins. firstworldwar.com has an article about them:

A group of four squadrons was established in Belgium, and they carried out their first bombing raid towards the end of May, 1917. This 22 plane sortie, against the town of Folkestone, caused 95 deaths. In mid June a force of 18 Gothas attacked London in broad daylight. They were met by over 90 British fighters, but not one Gotha was brought down. This bombing raid caused 162 deaths.

Something else to investigate. Anyway, this video tells the story of the Zeppelin raids on East Anglia. It was made when there were still plenty of eyewitnesses around to interview.

Archaeologists return to Greyfriars in Leicester

University of Leicester archaeologists have returned to the site at Greyfriars where Richard III's bones were found, says the Leicester Mercury.

I looked in at the Greyfriars site today and so - though its hard to make him out in this photograph - did the city's Lord Mayor.

The old school building on the left will open as a Richard III visitor centre in March on next year.

Paint It, Orange: The Jaggers and the Liberal Democrats

Today's papers are full of the Nick Clegg and Mick Jagger dinner date - Jagger even wore a gold sweater for the occasion.

But it should not be such a surprise to them. During the last general election campaign Mick's brother Chris was pictured with Tessa Munt and Paddy Ashdown.

The Jaggers are clearly a good Liberal family.

Stanley Unwin "Inside Victor Lewis-Smith"

A late (1993) appearance by the man whose grave I once went on a pilgrimage to photograph.

Six of the Best 366

Operating a spoof Twitter account during BBC Question Time gave Martin Belam a glimpse of the level of misogyny that women in politics face on social media every day.

On the Policy Network site, Peter Graefe and Simon J. Kiss look at the revival of the Canadian Liberals under Justin Trudeau.

Do Aussies like children more than Brits do? asks Rethinking Childhood.

Jade Wright, in the Liverpool Echo, shares some secrets of the city's workhouses.

"So I thought I would walk to all London's 'magnificent seven' cemeteries - the grand, doom-laden commercial cemeteries laid out in the late 1830s and early 1840s - Abney Park, Tower Hamlets, Nunhead, West Norwood, Brompton, Kensal Green and Highgate." Join Lee Jackson on his death march.

The View from Creeting St Peter channels Johnny Morris.

More4 tribute evening for Mick Aston, 13 July

More4 is planning an evening of programmes next Saturday (13 July) in memory of Professor Mick Aston, who died last week.

The evening, says the Channel 4 website, will see a combination of classic Time Team episodes featuring Mick Aston and his former colleagues sharing their memories of him.

And the site quotes Tony Robinson:

"Mick Aston was a great British eccentric; an atheist whose life's work was medieval monasticism, an anarchist who for many decades loyally fulfilled the labyrinthine requirements of his university and British television, and a grumpy old curmudgeon with the kindest of hearts and a great capacity for friendship. 

"His mission was sharing his passion for archaeology with ordinary people rather than keeping its secrets locked away behind the walls of Britain's universities."

Watch a video of Mick Aston in prime form.

Leicestershire councillor convicted of benefit fraud

From the Leicester Mercury earlier this week:

A Conservative councillor has been convicted of failing to declare he was working as a bus driver while he was claiming benefits. 

Councillor Chris Boothby appeared at Leicester Magistrates' Court to plead guilty to two offences, after he was prosecuted by the Department of Work and Pensions. 

The 47-year-old, from Ratby, is the Conservative member for Ratby, Bagworth and Thornton on Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, but has been suspended from the authority's group since he was charged in October.

With thanks to Rutland's own Martin Brookes.

Children's Receiving Home, Mill Hill Lane, Leicester

After my explorations of North Evington last week I wrote:

Maybe it is snobbery or an exaggerated fear of appearing racist - both faults endemic to the British left - but you rarely hear the question of what happened to the white working class who used to occupy these streets debated.

But I have found one website that is interested in the history of this part of Leicester. Highfields Remembered (taking a broad definition of Highfields) has history, reminiscences and old photographs of the area. And it has solved one mystery for me.

For as long as I have worked in Leicester I have been struck by this building in Mill Hill Lane. Today split into flats, it looks as though it was once a public building. But of what sort?

The Highfields Remembered site has the answer. A page "Highfields Now as seen by Hazel Jacques" has a photograph of the building with the caption:

This is the Recieving Home, Mill Lane, Leicester. A terrible frightening place for children who were just taken away from their parents. We arrived one week before Christmas. We were kept in the dayroom, which had bars on the windows, for 2 1/2 months.

And The Workhouse page on Leicester says:

On 20th July 1908, a new receiving home for sixteen boys and sixteen girls was opened in Mill Hill Lane. Its construction cost £1,916 plus £1,000 for the site. The building also contained officers' quarters and sick rooms.

Peter Mandelson and HS2: Beware of Mr Baker

I yield to no one in my admiration for Norman Baker, but I do not think his widely quoted response to Peter Mandelson will do:

"It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs; be a major boost to our economy, especially in the North of England; and will help us shift to the clean, green economy of the future.

"More and more people are using the rail network every year so we desperately need more North-South capacity – unlike Peter Mandelson we can’t all hop on a private jet."

We all enjoy laughing at Lord Mandelson, but this is a good example of the ad hominem fallacy. A man could spend his whole life flying on private jets and still be right about the railways.

And, incidentally, you have to be pretty wealthy to travel by train these days if you want to travel in peak hours. I doubt that HS2 will change that.

But the most important point is this. Where is the evidence that HS2 will be a major boost to the economy, particularly in the North of England?

Professor Danny Dorling calls for a 20mph speed limit in residential areas

Fawad Ahmed and the quest for the new Shane Warne

It is hard not to be cheered by the story of Fawad Ahmed, the leg spinner who fled Pakistan after facing religious persecution and has been granted Australian citizenship in time to be considered for the Ashes this summer.

Yes, the speed with which his case was waved through reminds one of the Zola Budd affair, but the England team has its share of players with exotic backgrounds. And Ahmed's treatment marks a welcome change from the way refugees have been treated in Australia in recent years.

But the enthusiasm for making Ahmed an Australian citizen does support the view that not all is well with Australian cricket.

We are on the eve of the next Ashes series, yet they seem to have no clear idea of what their strongest side is.

And they appear still to be obsessed with the idea of finding 'the new Shane Warne'. Ever since the blond genius retired, young spinners have been plucked from obscurity, written up as the next big thing and then discarded when, inevitably, they fail to live up to the hype.

A Conservative MP for Harborough was the father-in-law of a member of the Rutles

The Anglo-American Ronald Tree sat as Conservative MP for Harborough MP between 1933 and 1945. Penelope Tree, the daughter he had with his his second wife Marietta, was a celebrated fashion model in the swinging sixties.

And Penelope was married for a while to the musician Ricky Fataar who, among many other things, was a member of The Rutles.

A clear winner of Trivial Fact of the Day, I think.

Later. More about the Trees here.

Roman shrine found at Rutland Water

From BBC News:

Archaeologists have uncovered a Roman shrine at Rutland Water nature reserve. 

The team from Northamptonshire Archaeology investigated the site ahead of a 240-acre extension to the reserve by Anglian Water. 

They found the remains of an Iron Age farmstead, and a shrine dating from about AD100.

The report goes on:

The team discovered a circular stone building, about 10.5m (34ft) wide, with decorated red and white painted walls. 

They also found more than 200 Roman coins, pottery jars, part of a small bronze figurine and deposits of animal bone, probably from the ritual sacrifice of lambs and cattle. 

A skeleton of a man, aged about 30, was buried in a grave in the centre of the shrine.

When I mentioned this to Lord Bonkers he said that the shrine's proximity to Rutland Water must mean it marks the spot where the Romans first landed in Rutland.

For more on Lord Bonkers, Rutland and archaeology, see his recent diary entry.

Political correctness with bells on

Just another Market Harborough street scene, you will say, but there is a point of interest here.

On St George's Day last year I posted a video of Border morris dancers - "from the English-Welsh border: a simpler, looser, more vigorous style" - at Clun and discussed where their traditional blackened faces came from.

Another Border morris side was in town on Saturday and I noticed that its members had got around this ticklish debate by painting their faces blue - think Avatar or a bunch of Smurfs with a love of accordion music.

Political correctness gone mad? No, but it may be political correctness with bells on.

Nigel Farage learns from the Liberal Democrats

It is fun to laugh at the fruitcakes, but Nigel Farage is nobody's fool. Here he is talking to the Eastern Daily Press today:

"Whatever anyone thinks of Lib Dem politics, Ashdown was a brilliant leader of the Lib Dems and they focused on building up by winning by-elections, by building up clusters of district and county council seats and once you hold a number of council seats that you won on first past the post at county level, the perception that you are a wasted vote and you can’t win at Westminster goes. 

"The Lib Dems build up to 60 MPs using this approach and my approach is 'let’s build the clusters and use May 22 next year to do it'."

So he intends to learn from the Liberal Democrat playbook. The irony is that someone in Nick Clegg's circle recently briefed the media to the effect that we are about to throw those lessons away.

Here is what the Independent told us on the morning of Nick speech to the ALDC conference:

Before 2010, the only way the Lib Dems could get a foothold against the two biggest parties was through targeted, street-by-street campaigns. But he will argue this will not be an option at the 2015 election now that his party has been in government and demand a disciplined central message about a "stronger economy and fairer society". He will say: "The idea that in a general election we can be under a national spotlight and yet run the campaign as a series of loosely linked by-elections just isn't possible."

It's a good thing this briefing is nonsense, otherwise the threat UKIP poses to us would be even greater.

Is this why there are no Liberal Democrat defence ministers?

Last week the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond expressed surprise that the Liberal Democrats did not want to have a defence minister.

Though this Daily Telegraph interview suggested that Hammond is no fount of original ideas, he may be on to something here.

Because Nick Harvey's departure from the Ministry of Defence was not the only disappointing thing for Liberal Democrats about the last cabinet reshuffle. We also lost our hold on the Foreign Office when Jeremy Browne was moved to the Home Office. I, for one, was pleased and proud that we had Lib Dem ministers in these two important ministries.

Meanwhile David Heath, who was ideally placed as Deputy Leader of the House, received the ultimate hospital pass and found himself reinvented as Minister for Killing Badgers.

What was going on? My theory is that Nick Clegg was anxious to secure the return to office of David Laws. David is extremely able, but I suspect the odd role he was given - half schools minister, half Cabinet Office fixer - was a reflection of how small Nick's inner circle is.

In fact, I suspect that Nick was so anxious that David Cameron was able to exact quite a price in the negotiations over the reshuffle. Hence our odd retreat from Defence and the Foreign Office and the sacrifice of poor David Heath.