Richard Rorty foresaw the rise of Donald Trump in 1997

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My favourite liberal philosopher of recent decades is Richard Rorty, who died in 2007.

An article by Mark Danner in the New York Review of Books quotes a passage from Rorty's 1998 book Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America:

Watching him blather and mug as he casually leaned over the podium in Boca Raton, seeing him cultivate the applause as if directing a symphony and then raise his two hands in thumbs-up gestures as he surfed the waves of applause and the deafening shouts of “USA! USA! USA!,” I recalled a remark that the philosopher Richard Rorty made back in 1997 about “the old industrialized democracies…heading into a Weimar-like period.” Citing evidence from “many writers on socioeconomic policy,” Rorty suggested that 

members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else. 

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots…. 

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet. 

As Trump put it in Nevada, “I love the poorly educated!”

Simon and Garfunkel: America

The first LP I ever bought was Band on the Run by Wings. Though the title track and Jet were great singles, that rather embarrasses me today.

I suspect the second LP I bought was Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits, which does not embarrass me at all as Paul Simon is one of the great songwriters of the post-war era.

This recording of America is taken from their 1981 concert in Central Park, New York.

Disused railway stations in West Sussex

There are plenty more of these slideshows on this blog.

Leicester march to stop the badger cull

In Leicester today, as a citizen journalist, I went along to see people assembling for the march against the badger cull. Then I met someone I knew and decided to join in.

It's a good cause. The government's cull of badgers has more to do with placating the farming vote than it does with scientific evidence for the best way of eradicating bovine TB.

While we were waiting to set off there was a speech, which turned out to be chiefly about the junior doctors' dispute with the government, and a song. The latter, as far as I could tell, was about Liz Truss having blood on her hands.

One of the attractive thing about green campaigning is that it has the potential to decouple conservative voters from the Conservative Party. That possibility was far from the organisers of today's event, but then moderate conservative people do not organise marches.

We marched from Victoria Park down New Walk to the Town Hall Square and then Jubilee Square. In the two squares where we were addressed by Danny Dyer (Badger Trust) and Mark Jones (Born Free Foundation).

At Town Hall Square a couple had just got married and they insisted on having their photos taken with us.

Later, at Jubilee Square, someone was asked to the microphone to read a poem he had written. I became a citizen journalist again and slipped away.

Loading and hauling ironstone in Corby, 1968

Another glimpse of the industrial steam railways of the Northamptonshire ironstone belt in their last years.

The music is no better than before.

Tim Farron backs Kirsty Williams's cabinet post plan

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And he's right.

In the elections earlier this month Kirsty Williams was the only Liberal Democrat to win a seat in the Welsh Assembly.

She increased her majority over the Conservatives in Brecon and Radnor to more than 8000. It's strange to recall that the 1985 by-election, when the seat first turned Liberal, was a neck-and-neck contest with Labour. (I was there.)

Beyond Kirsty's victory, our results in Wales were universally dismal. We are firmly established as the country's fifth party - that rumbling sound you can hear is Lloyd George turning in his grave.

Though I can't find the figures, I believe we finished behind the campaign to abolish the assembly in a couple of regions.

So the opportunity for the only Lib Dem AM to take up a high-profile position like education secretary is a godsend.

The Welsh Lib Dems are holding a special conference tomorrow to vote on whether Kirsty should take up this appointment.

If they do anything other than welcome it with open arms, they are madder than Mad Ianto Ap Mad, the winner of this year's Mr Madman competition.

Before we finish, let us pause a moment to mark the defeat of Leighton Andrews, Liberal Gillingham Town fan turned Labour Cardiff City fan, in Rhondda.

Happy birthday John Stuart Mill

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Time to post a link to an old Liberator article of mine:

So read Rorty, Popper and Berlin. Read L.T. Hobhouse if you want and pretend to have read T.H.Green if you must. But above all read the Mill of On Liberty.

See the Little Bowden floods of 1912

I found this video on the Little Bowden Society website.

It combines photos of the village when it was flooded by the River Jordan in 1912 with photos of the same scenes today.

One from 1912 shows buildings close to my house that were long ago demolished. Strangely spooky.

John Creasey, creator of George Gideon, was a Liberal candidate

John Gregson as Commander George Gideon

Writing about the Gideon's Way police series from the 1960s the other day, I suggested that John Gregson played the hero as "a world-weary liberal".

I may have been on to something because, as an article by Ian Millsted from the Journal of Liberal History once revealed, the author of the books the series was based on was himself a liberal - and a Liberal

John Creasey, who wrote the books, once said:

I have been a political animal all my life. At twelve I was organising and speaking at street corners for the Liberal Party.

Creasey fought Bournemouth West for the party in 1950, finishing third with 17 per cent of the vote. This was a very respectable vote for a Liberal candidate in this era, though the party had come second in the seat in 1945.

In the second half ot the 1960s, though he was often seen in Liberal circles, Creasey fought a number of parliamentary by-elections to promote the All-Party Alliance, He had set this up himself in 1966.

Millsted says:

Its principal aim was to see elected a government of the best people from all parties in order to sort out the problems of the day.

In the last of these by-elections, Oldham West in 1968, he beat the Liberal candidate into fourth place.

The aim of the All-Party Alliance may sound naive, but Jeremy Thorpe was to call for something similar in the general elections of 1974.

Famous men behaving badly

Today the Supreme Court overturned a decision by Court of Appeal and ruled that an injunction banning the naming of a celebrity involved in an alleged extra-marital relationship should stay in place.

Over to John Hemming, the former Liberal Democrat MP:

The logical conclusion of this is that gossip about anyone with children will become a criminal offence subject to a potential penalty of 2 years' imprisonment. 

It is important to note that the injunction covers people talking in pubs, gossiping over the garden fence, or twittering on the internet. All of these could potentially see an application for committal for contempt of court. That comes with large amounts of legal costs and up to 2 years imprisonment. One would assume that it would not be assumed that this would only apply to claimants who have a large amount of money, but also everyone else.

And all this despite the fact that anyone who wants to find the identity of the celebrity, or of the married actor who slept with a prostitute and has taken out a similar injunction against the British press, can easily do so.

Delivering the court's judgment, Lord Mance did at least say:

“It is different if the story has some bearing on the performance of a public office or the correction of a misleading public impression cultivated by the person involved."

But there are those who question even that.

Over on Liberal Democrat Voice, Caron Lindsay has argued that there is "nothing of public interest in lurid headlines about SNP MPs".

I find this creeping doctrine that everything printed in a newspaper must be "in the public interest" rather sinister.

Who decides what is in the public interest? Somewhere in the shadows I detect the presence of a committee of the great and good - a retired cabinet minister, the headmistress of a leading public school, a celebrity chef and Dr Evan Harris - deciding what we should and should not be allowed to know.

At its lowest, the argument against the spread of this public interest argument is that laughing at the follies of rich and powerful has always been one of the consolations of the poor and weak.

At its highest it is that character matters immensely in politics. To many voters it is more important than the parties' detailed policy platforms, and I am not sure those voters are mistaken.

The spread of privacy law in recent years has been very much a judge-led initiative with little involvement from parliament. As John Hemmings says, it is time the politicians stepped in and set sensible limits on it.

The unanswerable case for the canonisation of Richard III

Our text for this evening is 2 Kings 13:21

And Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.

Miracles have long been associated with royal bones. So it is natural to see a connection between the reinterment of Richard III at Leicester Cathedral and Leicester City's miraculous winnig of the Premier League.

Just look at the evidence.

Richard was laid to rest in the cathedral on 26 March 2015 - I had been to pay my respects to the old boy the day before.

And how does Wikipedia describe subsequent events at the King Power stadium?

Despite the club being marooned at the bottom of the table for four-and-a-half months between late November and mid-April, the Foxes managed to put together a run of seven wins from their last nine fixtures to survive comfortably.

And they haven't stopped winning since.

To be canonised takes two miracles, so if count last season's survival as the first and this season's victory as the second, then Richard is home and dry.

A reader asks: Canonisation, eh? What about the Princes in the Tower? I don't call that very saintly.

Liberal England replies hurriedly: I'm afraid that's all we have time for.

Secrets of Croydon's tram system

Londonist heads to Croydon and the surrounding area to uncover the secrets of the tram network there.

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"His father was a foreign correspondent for The Times, and he was a great-grandson of civil engineer Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel, and a great-great-nephew of Liberal MP Stuart Rendel, the first Baron Rendel, a benefactor of William Gladstone." Paul Walter pays tribute to David Rendel, who has died aged 67.

Ferdinand Mount dissects the Brexiteers: "No one since Greta Garbo has said ‘I want to be alone’ with such feeling. Or perhaps it’s not so much Garbo as the chant sung by the fans of Millwall FC that I should be thinking of: ‘No one likes us, we don’t care.’ At the time of writing, Millwall are lying fourth in Football League One. For the uninitiated, this is really the Third Division."

Jeremy Corbyn is acting like the leader of a minor party and Nick Clegg acted like the leader of a major party, argues William Barter.

Memphis Barker says the next leader of the Greens should not be a water melon.

Lynne About Loughborough attended the commemoration of the centenary of the Zeppelin raid on the town.

The comma splice is becoming more common, Daniel McMahon will tell you why it is wrong.

Boris Johnson buried report on air pollution near London schools

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From the Guardian today:

An air quality report that was not published by Boris Johnson while he was mayor of London demonstrates that 433 schools in the capital are located in areas that exceed EU limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution – and that four-fifths of those are in deprived areas. 

The report, Analysing Air Pollution Exposure in London, said that in 2010, 433 of the city’s 1,777 primary schools were in areas where pollution breached the EU limits for NO2. Of those, 83% were considered deprived schools, with more than 40% of pupils on free school meals. 

A spokeswoman for Johnson’s successor, Sadiq Khan, said the new mayor could not understand why the research had not been published when it was completed more than two-and-a-half years ago.

This reminds me of the campaign to end the use of lead in petrol.

I remember once hearing Des Wilson, who spearheaded it, saying that the key to victory was getting the research published. So damning was it that, once it was in the public domain, the battle was effectively over.

It has been argued, incidentally, that the fall in juvenile offending in recent years can be put down to the removal of lead, and its damaging effect on the brain, from the environment.

Leicester Oral History Trail 7: Causeway Lane

The latest recording in this series covers the city's former maternity hospital.

Gideon's Way at Uxbridge Vine Street

The Londonist video on the lost GWR line to Uxbridge Vine Street shows that today there is nothing left of that station, which closed to passengers in 1962 and to goods two years later.

But it was still standing when a 1967 episode of my new favourite programme, Gideon's Way, was shot there.

The photo above is a still from How to Retire Without Really Working. The location is identified by Avengerland.

There are many more photos of Uxbridge Vine Street on Disused Stations.

The Zombies: Hung up on a Dream

Time for another track from the Zombies' album Odessey and Oracle.

And time again to quote the band's bass player and Chris White, who wrote half the songs on it:

Even till the late 70s we were seen as a curiosity - a band who never quite made it - and then slowly in the 80s and 90s you found young bands quoting it as an inspiration. It's quite surprising to me to find that this album nobody wanted 40 years ago has become an icon. Some people have said it's their idea of the perfect album. It's all quite strange for us to be honest.

Odessey and Oracle was the first album to be recorded at Abbey Road after Sergeant Pepper. The Beatles' mellotron was still in the studio, so the Zombies made good use of it.

All Saints, Brixworth - built with stone from Roman Leicester?

It turned sunny this afternoon, so I went down to Brixworth to have another look at its mighty Saxon church.

There I bought a copy of D.S. Sutherland's The Building of Brixworth Church. This shows that much of the stone used in the church can be traced to Leicestershire quarries and suggests that it was originally used in Leicester's Roman buildings.

I also got a cup of tea at the church heritage centre run by the Brixworth History Society.

Council leader accused of covering up a councillor's death to avoid a by-election

This morning I tweeted an extraordinary story from the Evening Standard:

The leader of one of Labour's biggest London councils faces a party investigation over allegations he tried to “cover up” a colleague’s death to avoid a by-election. 

A former Labour staffer claims Brent chief Muhammed Butt told her to keep the councillor's death secret to avoid the election, which sources claim was set to weaken his leadership. ... 

Councillor Tayo Oladapo suffered from a severe liver condition and was absent from meetings for months before dying on January 29. It took six weeks for the party to confirm his death, in which time most councillors believed him to be alive and even approved his allowances. 

But a whistleblower has now claimed that Mr Butt did know, and asked her to enquire about the death while keeping it secret.

The Standard also says that Butt denies the allegation and "insists it is part of a plot to topple him".

We may know more after the ruling Brent Labour group's AGM today.

Lord Bonkers tells me that he knows of at least one case where an MP died halfway through a parliament and was returned at the following general election. But then people were less demanding of their elected representatives in those days.

King Richard's Well, Shenton

This is King Richard's Well where, legend has it, Richard III drank before the Battle of Bosworth. You can find it close to Shenton station on the Battlefield Line.

The plaque reads:

Near this spot, on August 22nd 1485, at the age of 32, King Richard III fell fighting gallantly in defence of his realm & his crown against the usurper Henry Tudor. 

The Cairn was erected by Dr. Samuel Parr in 1813 to mark the well from which the king is said to have drunk during the battle. 

It is maintained by the Fellowship of the White Boar.

"Near this spot" may be optimistic: modern scholarship place of the battle a mile or so to the south west of Shenton and the Battle of Bosworth visitor centre.

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The Conservative Party's advice to agents in marginal seats at the last election contradicted official Electoral Commission advice, suggests Mark Pack.

Alwyn Turner remembers Michael Gove as a young Scotsman on the make: "No one could have behaved more naturally than he in a staffroom that looked as though it were unchanged since 1954."

Does Little Sheffield show small economics can revive a post-industrial city? asks Gareth Roberts.

Anthony Gottlieb on the rise and rise in the reputation of the philosopher David Hume.

Simon Kuper examines the reasons for England's World Cup victory in 1966: "Perhaps the men of 1966 really were a generation of giants who put all future English footballers to shame. Or perhaps what happened is simply that the fittest, luckiest and most sober team of that summer squeaked a narrow victory in a three-week tournament at home."

"When police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) tries to find material witnesses for the case, he comes up short. Even stranger: none of the Lake’s are mentioned on the passenger list for the ship they arrived from America on the week before...." The Retro Set watches Bunny Lake is Missing, an minor but intriguing British film from 1965.

The Great Market Harborough Gas Leak of 2016

On Wednesday afternoon news stated coming through on Twitter of a major gas leak in Market Harborough.

Great Bowden Road and Station Road in Great Bowden were closed to traffic, and people in that area were being evacuated from their houses. People said you could smell gas in the town centre.

More importantly, from a purely selfish point of view, the railway line through Market Harborough had been closed. Trains from Leicester to St Pancras were being diverted via Corby.

I left work at 5 sharp, found no sign of the promised rail replacement bus service and caught the scheduled X7 bus instead.

It can't be easy finding buses at the time of the school run, but I know from experience that if I had waited for a rail replacement to be arranged I might still be there now.

Anyway, the Leicester Mercury has the story of the drama as it unfolded.

When I came home from cooking for my mother, the chip shop in Coventry Road was full of triumphant gas men.

Discovering Gideon's Way

I have a new weakness - or rather I have revived an old one.

The Gideon stories were a series of police procedurals written, under the pen name J.J. Maric, by the extraordinarily prolific John Creasey between 1955 and 1976.

For some reason I took to them while I was at school even though they were already dating markedly by then.

Now I have discovered that the whole of the Gideon's Way TV series has been uploaded to Youtube. There were 26 of them made for ITV and broadcast in 1965 and 1966.

John Gregson took the title role, playing him as a world-weary liberal who sometimes had to reign in his keener subordinates - a sort of prototype for Morse and Wexford.

Gideon's family feature regularly. Political trivia fans may like to note that his younger son was played by Giles Watling, who was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate against Ukip's Douglas Carswell in the 2014 Clacton by-election.

One of the pleasures of Gideon's Way is spotting familiar actors in unfamiliar roles. I have watched only a few of the shows so far, but already I have seen Inspector Wexford masterminding a bullion robbery, Mrs Bridges from Upstairs Downstairs running a gang of pickpockets and fences, and Arthur Daley committing arson,

Then there are the pleasures of spotting actors on the way up.

This, for instance, is a young John Hurt on the run from prison. (You can see an even younger Hurt on this blog as an undergraduate in The Wild and the Willing.)

And this young man is now in the House of Lords. It's Michael Cashman, formerly of EastEnders and the European Parliament, in his first role. At this stage of his career his chief means of conveying emotion was hunching his shoulders.

Above all, though, there are the pleasures of the location footage. This is London before turbocapitalism and moral relativism. It's a city of quiet suburbs and decaying warehouses where the villains are cornered and the police inevitably round them up.

Church Stretton points the way forward for funding local services

From the Shropshire Star today:

Church Stretton Town Council has agreed to set up a “working group” to look at the services in the area put at risk by Shropshire Council cuts. 

It will launch consultation with people living in the town over whether to raise the council tax precept to help fund such services in the future. 

The move has come in response to Shropshire Council’s proposed budget for 2017, which suggests stopping all funding of services such as libraries and leisure centres.

This report reveals the scale of the cuts the government is inflicting on local government.

For decades the Liberal Democrats campaigned for local services, but then we adopted George Osborne's economic opinions during the Coalition years. When we start campaigning for local services again, as we must, we risk at best puzzling the voters.

But there may be something interesting at work here too.

When I was a councillor my impression was that people did not worry about the level of taxes so much as whether they got value for their money.

And maybe such judgements mean more when money is raised and spent locally.

So could Church Stretton, which you can see in the photo above, be pointing the way forward for local government?

It would go against the current thrust of policy in local government, which is all about the abolition and amalgamation of authorities and the appointment of regional mayors, but I would like to think so.

Mind you, such increases in hyperlocal taxation can be controversial, as the case of Desborough shows.

Electoral Commission takes Tories to High Court over election spending scandal

From the Mirror website today:

The Electoral Commission are taking the Tories to the High Court to force them to reveal documents detailing the spending on Battle Buses ahead of the 2015 general election. 

The Commission have already asked the Tories twice for the documents, but they have only provided "limited" disclosure. 

Political parties have a legal obligation to provide full spending disclosures to the Commission on request.

Later...

Tory Party yields up Election expenses documents only after Electoral Ciommission said they were asking High Courst to force their release

— Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4) May 12, 2016

Happy St Pancras Day to all our readers

As May 12 is both the feast day of St Pancras and Steve Winwood's birthday, it is a big deal here on Liberal England.

The blue bricks of East Langton

The other day I was wondering around East Langton, the village where this blog's hero J.W. Logan lived for many years.

As well as the cottages named for his daughters, the village hall he built and the former cottage home for the children of men injured on his works, I noticed a surprising quantity of industrial blue brick used to repair walls in the village.

I suspect that is what happens when a settlement enjoys the patronage of a major railway contractor.

Torbay Lib Dems raise questions over Alison Hernandez

From the Herald Express:

Torbay Lib Dems have lodged a question at Wednesday's full council meeting over the conduct of the new Devon and Cornwall Police Commissioner - former Torbay councillor - Alison Hernandez ...

Lib Dem leader Steve Darling wants to ask Conservative councillor Robert Excell: 

"As Torbay Councils representative on the Devon and Cornwall Police and Crime Panel, do you think it is right that Alison Hernandez remains in post whilst being investigated by the police for criminal offences, while a serving officer in the police would be suspended during such an investigation?"

However, the paper said the Lib Dems have been told that the question arrived too late to be considered for today's meeting.

You can watch Alison Hernandez's encounter with Michael Crick above.

Escaped llama, called Brad Pitt, captured after chase through Reigate

Headline of the Day goes to the Surrey Mirror.

Thanks to the mighty Mark Pack for drawing this gem to my attention.

The leader of Ukip in Wales dancing for fish thrown by Johnny Vegas

Thanks to Jim Waterson for tweeting this. He's well worth a follow.

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The former chairman of the United Kingdom's Financial Services Authority, Adair Turner, makes the case for helicopter money.

David Boyle is characteristically illuminating: "I have no problem in principle with contracted out services, but note that the contracts tend to be won by companies whose main skill is the delivery of target data to their commissioners."

"Labour’s new members have arrived at the expense of the Greens and the assorted Judean People’s Front parties of the far left. Those new members are still fighting their #1 enemy, the 'Blairites', some of whom have decided, for various reasons, that enough is enough and have left." Jake Wilde dissects zombie Labour.

"Hancock, Fawlty, Partridge, Brent: in my mind, they’re all clinging to the middle rungs of England’s class ladder. That, in large part, is the comedy of their situations." Zadie Smith on her father and British comedy.

Rob Baker nominates his Top 8 Swinging Sixties London Films. Groovy!

Laura Reynolds maps London's lost lidos.

"And there was a gorilla!" Why Royal Family has never been broadcast again

In 1969 - and I am so old I remember watching it - the Queen agreed to be the subject of a fly-on-the-wall television documentary - Royal Family,

It has never been aired since, and the first extract in this look back on it surely explains why.

Absurd claim from the Labour deputy leader of Croydon Council

As the second comment says, the Lib Dem candidate had the same name as the Labour candidate not the Tory. Oh well...

More evidence that the Labour Party is in a strange place at the moment comes from Croydon (hitherto best known as the land of inflammable trousers).

There, says the Croydon Advertiser:

A Labour politician claims the Liberal Democrats sabotaged his party's election chances - by selecting a candidate with the same surname. 

Stuart Collins, deputy leader of Croydon Council, claims the Lib Dems helped the Conservatives beat Labour hopeful Marina Ahmad in Croydon and Sutton by selecting Amna Ahmad to stand in the constituency. 

Ms Ahmad is less than impressed with the conspiracy theory and has called on Cllr Collins to apologise.

Given how low the Lib Dem base vote is at the moment, any confusion between our candidate and the one from the Conservatives is likely to harm the Tories not help them. It is an absurd claim

Remember how the Literal Democrat candidate robbed the Liberal Democrat Adrian Sanders of victory in the 1994 Euro elections.

Croydon Court Hotel in Thornton Heath evacuated after guest's trousers catch fire in room

Congratulations to Your Local Guardian for winning our Headline of the Day Award.

And thanks to the reader who nominated it.

Disused railway stations in Liverpool

If you enjoyed this then try a documentary on the Liverpool Overhead Railway.

A radio play on the dark side of Leicestershire village life

Photo of Hallaton © Colin Smith

These is a dramatised ghost story on the BBC iPlayer at the moment called The Parson.

What interested me at once is that it is clearly based on the traditional bottle-kicking and hare-pie scrambling that takes place in the Leicestershire village of Hallaton every Easter Monday.

Sure enough, the dramatist David Varela confirms that the play was:

inspired by the ancient pagan tradition of Bottlekicking in my parents’ home village of Hallaton. The reality is pretty horrific, so turning it into a horror story was easy.

I have not heard the end of it yet, but I do not fancy the chances of the meddling new vicar.

Police investigating alleged 'electoral malpractice' in Leicestershire PCC poll

On Thursday, helped by my second vote, Labour's Willy Bach was elected as the new police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire.

After the Liberal Democrat and Ukip candidates had been eliminated, he beat his Conservative opponent by 78,188 votes to 58,305.

This represented quite a turnaround on the result in 2012. Then the Conservative Clive Loader (who stood down at this election) won at the second stage by 64,661 votes to Labour's 51,835.

Over the weekend there was gossip about irregularities in the postal votes cast. Today's Leicester Mercury quotes a spokeswoman for Leicestershire police:

"We have received an allegation of electoral malpractice which is believed to have taken place during the Police and Crime Commissioner elections. 

"Inquiries are ongoing into the report and we are liaising with the Electoral Commission and the local authority."

The Mercury says this allegation has been made by the Ukip agent, but adds:

An East Midlands Conservative Party spokesman declined to comment but a number of activists left Friday's election count talking about 'anomalies'.

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"A Crosby-ified Toryism can eke out victories against average opponents, but it is no guide to winning well or winning at a time when the capitalist system is being questioned; when Thatcherite and Reaganite orthodoxies are being questioned or when, in such places as Scotland (and now London), the Conservative brand is weak and needs rebuilding." Tim Montgomerie on the defeat of Zac Goldsmith.

Lenore Skenazy condemns the use of parents' fears for their children as a marketing tool.

Tony Broadbent rediscovers a murder that scandalised postwar London: the shooting of Alec de Antiquis in 1947.

"As you visit the Polling Station today you may be struck by the rather anachronistic posters which identify those buildings designated as such. Some local authorities have held huge stocks of these paper banners for much of the 20th century, and in some parts of the country those on display today may have been printed many years before you were born." Bob Richardson examines election day typography.

Hope you enjoy this article by Katy Waldman on why we omit initial pronouns.

Kelefa Sanneh explores the benign ruthlessness of Paul Simon.

Jethro Tull: Cup of Wonder

I should have chosen this Beltane anthem last week, but I saw so taken with my discovery of Billy Fury singing David Bowie that I used that straight away.

This comes from Jethro Tull's 1977 LP Songs from the Wood. As I once blogged, when it came out I thought it was just about the best one there had ever been.

The Battlefield line in West Leicestershire

Yesterday I visited the Battlefield Line in the west of Leicestershire. Some heritage lines are preserved and polished to within an inch of their lives: this one is not like that.

Its slightly homely nature gives you an idea of what branch lines must have been like in the last days of their operation.There were no steam locomotives running yesterday - just a couple of ill-matched diesel multiple unit cars.

For that reason I recommend a visit to the Battlefield Line. It will also take you to within a short walk of the Battle of Bosworth visitor centre.

It was good to see the building from Leicester Humberstone Road station in its new home.

And it was sad to see 45015 mouldering away beside the line at Shackerstone. (It is not owned by the Battlefield Line people themselves.)

J.W. Logan's grave at Church Langton

I was in the Langtons this afternoon, so I visited the grave of my hero J.W. Logan. You can find it in the churchyard at St Peter's, Church Langton.

His son Hugh, who died from pneumonia in a casualty clearing station in Belgium in 1919, is remembered on the war memorial there.

Note that, like many such memorials, it gives the dates of the First World War as 1914-19. This is because an Allied expeditionary force intervened on the anti-Bolshevik side in the Russian Civil War.

Why Labour did surprisingly well in the South of England yesterday

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One of the features of yesterday's local elections in England was that Labour managed to hold on to what the Telegraph calls "key southern outposts like Exeter, Southampton, Crawley and Slough".

Earlier today I heard someone on radio or the television suggest that this was because Jeremy Corbyn's views go down better with university-educated Southern voters than they do with more traditional working-class voters.

And I thought of the Richmond and Barnes constituency in the 1983 general election.

This was a knife-edge contest between the Conservatives and the Liberal Party (or Liberal Alliance, as we called ourselves in those days).

I was to find myself arriving on a doorstep 10 minutes before the polls closed, just as a Conservative activist arrived there too. We compared notes and found we were chasing the same voter.

The Liberals were eventually to lose by 74 votes and I am convinced we would have won with a more dynamic candidate.

On the last weekend of the contest the young activists (this was a long time ago) were sent out to call on the Labour supporters identified in our canvass and ask them to consider a tactical vote for the Liberals.

This approach received two distinct reactions. Working class voters were generally happy to consider the idea, even if they had a Labour posters in their window.

Middle-class Labour voters, typically teachers, however, were often offended to be asked. You had to vote for what you believed, they told me, even if your candidate had no chance of winning.

It is this second group of voters, I suspect, that Jeremy Corbyn appeals to. Which means that he may well be surprisingly successful in maintaining his party's Southern outposts.

But it also means that he may struggle to resist the appeal of Ukip to working-class Labour voters.

Incidentally, the Labour candidate I was urging people not to support was Keith Vaz. I think I did the right thing.

Hinstock warehouse collapse: Worker freed after more than nine hours under cheese and shelving

The Shropshire Star wins Headline of the Day.

You will be pleased to know that Tomasz Wiszniewski has only minor injuries.

Visit the Hammond Arboretum, Market Harborough, on Sunday

Liberal Democrat councillor Barbara Johnson has tweeted the news that the Hammond Arboretum at the Robert Smyth Academy, Burnmill Road, Market Harborough, is open to the public on Sunday.

It will be open between 2 and 4.30pm - adults £4, children free.

The tree expert, Owen Johnson, has described the collection there as being of national importance.

I visited it and blogged about it back in 2009:

When I heard that the Hammond Arboretum was going to be open to the public last Sunday I was keen to visit it. Because the last time I went there I got sent to the deputy head.

Alan Moore on conspiracies

A convincing blend of paranoia and common sense.

Andrew Neil makes Grant Shapps squirm on Conservative election expenses

"You knew nothing about this?" asks @afneil about Tory election spending claims

"No" says @grantshapps #bbcdp https://t.co/1yXp8VOYkC

— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) May 4, 2016

From today's Daily Politics.

The Men from the Ministry, Jimmy Clitheroe and my sense of humour

These days I find something too premeditated about televsion comedy. The idea of sitting down to watch something for 30 minutes because it will be funny, feels odd. I much prefer wit in the pursuit of another goal.

But the comedies we watch when we were young don't just form our sense of humour: they form who we are.

As I have blogged:

When I was in the sixth form ... we conversed using lines from Fawlty Towers and Reginald Perrin in the way Victorian schoolboys are supposed to have swapped Latin tags.

Recently Radio Four Extra, my new favourite station, has stated repeating two comedies that take me back further than that.

When I was 11 my favourite radio comedy was The Men from the Ministry. I suppose its anti-Whitehall ethos has its roots in post-war resentment of socialism by the comfortably off - think of the fuss over the Tanganyika ground nut scheme - but it was immensely good natured.

The comedy was in the hands of pros like Derek Guyler and Richard Murdoch,* and it managed to be funny despite, even because of, its formulaic plot.

Their General Assistance Department would have two projects on the go, get them mixed up (perhaps sending the letter referring to one project to the other and vice versa) and there would be a news bulletin describing the resultant chaos.

They would fear the sack, but then discover that their boss was happy with it for some reason and live to cause chaos another week.

So ingrained is the show's comedy in my own sense of humour that I recently heard a joke that I stole for one of the first couple of Lord Bonkers' Diaries. (It is a sobering thought that those first diaries are nearer in time to my 11-year-old self than they are to me today.)

But I can go back further than that.

Radio Four Extra has started to repeat The Clitheroe Kid, which was my favourite radio comedy when I was 8.

You'll get a good idea of Jimmy Clitheroe's schtick if you watch the video above of him with George Formby. He was the ultimate precocious, cheeky schoolboy.

Except that Much Too Shy was made in 1942 and Jimmy Clitheroe was born in in 1921. Which means that he was already 20.

Because Jimmy Clitheroe - and that was his real name - suffered thyroid gland a birth and never grew after the age of 11, remaining 4ft 3in tall.

So by the time I fell in love with his show in 1968, he was 47. He still turned up for recordings in schoolboy cap and short trousers, but he had the face if a middle-aged man. That is why his television and film career had foundered by then.

Jimmy Clitheroe died in 1973, at the age of 51, after taking an overdose on the day of his mother's funeral.

And you thought Jimmy Krankie was disturbing.

* Richard Murdoch married into the family of Market Harborough's doctor. When he had his appendix out in the cottage hospital here he was plagued by urchins demanding to see "Stinker". He entertained them by putting his bare feet up on the windowsill and wiggling his toes.

Hedgehog Awareness Week 1-7 May 2016

This is Hedgehog Awareness Week. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society website explains:

Hedgehog Awareness Week is organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and takes place every year. It aims to highlight the problems hedgehogs face and how you can help them. 

This year efforts are focused on strimmers and cutting machines – every year we hear of many terrible injuries and deaths caused by garden machinery. BHPS is asking people to check areas carefully before using any machinery. They have produced a sticker to be placed onto machines and are asking councils and tool hire companies to get in touch and request the free stickers for their machines. 

As well as checking areas before cutting there are other things we can do to help too:

• Ensure there is hedgehog access in your garden – a 13cm x 13cm gap in boundary fences and walls.

• Move piles of rubbish to a new site before burning it.

• Ensure netting is kept at a safe height. 

• Check compost heaps before digging the fork in. 

• Stop or reduce the amount of pesticides and poisons used. 

• Cover drains or deep holes. 

• Ensure there is an easy route out of ponds and pools.

I was struck by the Society's address. Dhustone is a former quarrying hamlet on the top of Clee Hill that gives the feeling that it was once more extensive than it is today.

I wandered round it years ago and remember spotting an old shop that had obviously been the post office. (In those days there was a phone box in the alley that ran up the side of it, which helped the identification.)

With the help of Google Street View I can confirm that this shop is now Hedgehog House.

Latest Michael Crick report on 2015 Conservative elections expenses

Note that the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall was the party's election agent in one of the seats now under scrutiny.

Which could prove embarrassing for all concerned if she wins on Thursday.

Note too her reluctance to answer questions on the matter.

You can find earlier Michael Crick reports on this blog.

"Labour is standing up, not standing by"

Embed from Getty Images

That's what Jeremy Corbyn told the Welsh Labour Conference in February.

And that phrase has since been adopted as the party's slogan for this week's local elections.

But is it any good as a slogan?

Standing up for your principles or your friends is admirable. So is standing up to bullies.

Just standing up, however, is a pretty neutral act. (And it can be irritating to stand up if everyone else was sitting down.)

And then there is standing by.

Standing by while others suffer is a bad thing, but for the most part standing by is something positive. It means you are ready for action or there if you are needed.

If disaster threatened, you would be relieved to hear that the emergency services of the Army were standing by. It is what you would expect them to do. And, in the mean time, you wouldn't care if they were standing up or sitting down.

So "Standing up, not standing by" doesn't really work.

I suspect at the back of it there is an attempt to match Tony Blair's "I will not pass by on the other side."

But that a richness and biblical echoes (it came, after all, from Blair's early Son of God period) that Corbyn's slogan lacks.

Back to the drawing board, Christopher Robin.

Thomas Denny's stained glass windows for Richard III

After last night's events I had to go into Leicester today.

I cannot claim there were remarkable scenes, but the commemorative Leicester Mercury was selling out as fast as they could print it. This is the first time I have seen people queuing to buy a local paper.

So I went to the Cathedral to thank Richard III, the man behind it all. Since he was reinterred there, Leicester City have not stopped winning.

I found they were flying the club's flag. More than that, I found a former boss of mine from Golden Wonder in clerical garb. I was impressed that she recognised me from almost 30 years ago.

And I also found the wonderful new stained glass windows by Thomas Denny, which depict the life of Richard.

The Leicester Cathedral website will tell you all about them, but the illustrations in that PDF do not do justice to their wonderful, soft, crayon-like colours.

Hauling ironstone towards Corby in 1968

Apologies for the early-PC style of music, but this is lovely footage of an industrial locomotive in a Northamptonshire ironstone quarry.

Chelsea win the Premiership for Leicester

Congratulations to Leicester City on winning the Premiership.

For weeks I have been terrified that Leicester would go to Stamford Bridge on the last day of the season needing a point to be champions.

If that happened we would have beaten them with a late disputed goal - probably handled in from an offside position by John Terry while racially abusing someone - and everyone would hate us even more.

But tonight's draw with Spurs - we were two goals down at half time - has given Leicester the title.

It is great for the club, great for the city and a great relief to this Chelsea fan.

SNP candidate wrecks one of island's two phone boxes

A phone box yesterday

The Herald brings news of Danus Skene, who is challenging Tavish Scott for the Shetland seat at Holyrood:

Prize for the worst voter outreach effort of the whole election surely goes to the SNP's Danus Skene in Shetland. Canvassing Whalsay recently, the Old Etonian crashed his car into one of only two payphones on the island, wrecking it completely. 

The locals, who don’t have the world's best mobile coverage, are reportedly livid. "I didn’t wish to deprive them of it," sighs Danus. "I don’t have an excuse or an explanation."

And they said Alistair Carmichael was unpopular up there...

Lost lines: Harrow to Stanmore

Another video from Londonist.

I remember crossing the bridge at Belmont by bus on the way to see my mother's aunt in Wealdstone.

Six of the Best 594

"People who are not very bright have this terrible tendency to pick a side in major intractable geopolitical conflicts, and support it as if it was a football team." Dan Davies offers a fair-minded account of Labour's problem with antisemitism.

John Blake puts Ken Livingstone right on Hitler and Zionism.

"The evidence built into a startling indictment of South Yorkshire police, their chain of command and conduct – a relentlessly detailed evisceration of a British police force." David Conn on the lessons of Hillsborough and the longest inquest in British legal history.

The Shropshire Star collects local residents' memories of the filming of Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth in 1949: "I shall never forget Jennifer Jones’ feet. She did all the running up Pontesford Hill and up to the Devil’s Chair in bare feet, and her feet were bleeding. She was absolutely brilliant, a lovely looking girl."

James Curry remembers his grandfather, the Revd J.P. Martin, who wrote the immortal Uncle books.

Adam Gopnik reviews a new biography of Paul McCartney.

Billy Fury: Silly Boy Blue

It's a sign of how quickly music developed in the 1960s that Billy Fury and David Bowie seem to belong to quite different eras.

But here (played by Danny Baker yesterday morning) is an early Bowie song recorded by Fury.
Anorak Thing explains its genesis. Bowie's manager Kenneth Pitt:

managed to convince Billy Fury's manager Larry Parnes that Bowie had something to offer his client. By 1968 Billy Fury's hit days were long gone. Despite a switch from Decca to Parlophone in January 1967 he hadn't scored a hit on EMI's label. Game for a chance at anything Parnes agreed to record a version of "Silly Boy Blue", a track that had already graced Bowie's debut album, as Fury's next single. Sadly it did nothing for either the artist or the composer.

Which is a shame, because it was a good record.