A walk down the Brampton Valley Way

The Brampton Valley Way, which runs for 14 from Market Harborough to the edge of Northampton, follows the route of a railway line that closed in 1981. I was on the last train and have a few photos from that day that I will post on this blog sometime.

Over the years the hedges have grown larger and the path narrower, which makes if feel less like and old railway.

On Saturday I walked its first mile or two to reach a new cafe in a tent off the main road in Great Oxendon, passing the occasional dog-walker, enjoying the autumnal afternoon and later the dramatic skies,

As you may recall, I saw a remarkable rainbow before I got there.

Hearings on Lord Janner put back until February 2020

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The Leicester Mercury reported earlier this month that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) will not now hold its public hearing into child sexual abuse allegations against the former Leicester MP Greville Janner until 2020.

This, says the IICSA, is because new lines of inquiry have emerged in the Independent Police Complaints Commission's investigation of Leicestershire Police's response to the allegations against Janner.

When the hearings do take place, the IICSA website reveals that they will investigate the allegations of Lord Janner and then, if it finds some or all of them to be well founded, consider:

• the adequacy and propriety of law enforcement investigations and prosecutorial decisions relating to allegations falling within paragraph 1 above, including whether any public authority hindered or prevented the effective investigation and/or prosecution of allegations of child sexual abuse by Lord Janner;
• the extent to which Leicestershire County Council was aware of the allegations of abuse and the adequacy of its response;
• the extent to which the Labour Party, government departments, and/or the security and intelligence agencies were aware of the allegations of abuse and, if so, the adequacy of their response;
• the extent to which any other public or private institution may have failed in its duty to protect children from sexual abuse;
• whether the Kirkwood inquiry was conducted adequately and whether the mission of any mention of Lord Janner in the Kirkwood report was appropriate.

In light of those investigations the Inquiry will publish a report setting out its findings and recommendations to improve child protection and safeguarding in England and Wales.

The IICSA is being largely ignored by the media, even though it has already led to the resignation of one council leader, but I suspect the hearings on Lord Janner will attract renewed attention.

Six of the Best 830

William Wallace says Britain's security depends upon our co-operation with others. He also reveals that his father served in the Gordon Highlanders in the first world war. I had a great uncle who did the same.

"The BBC is an Anglican broadcaster, which faces the same conflict of purpose. It follows the highest journalistic standards, yet it feels it must also reflect the national mood. Britain voted to leave the EU. The nation spoke, and in respecting 'the people’s verdict,' the BBC has done what every enemy of free inquiry wants reporters to do." Nick Cohen shows how the BBC has lost the plot on Brexit.

Damon Linker reviews a book by Max Boot, a conservative who has left the Republican Party in disgust over Donald Trump.

"Over the last ten years, research has demonstrated the importance of creative practice in the arts and humanities. They can help maintain health, provide ways of breaking down social barriers and expressing and understanding experiences and emotions, and assist in developing trust, identities, shared understanding and more compassionate communities." Paul Crawford argues that the arts are a shadow health service.

James Oliver revisits the controversy over video nasties from the 1980s.

In 1916 5000 people watched Jack Hobbs faced Sydney Barnes in the Bradford League. Crispin Andrews examines the first world war and cricket politics.

Listen to James Hawes on the history of Germany

James Hawes is one of my favourite contemporary novelists. His Speak for England, as well as being hugely enjoyable in its own right, can claim to have anticipated Brexit.

He is also a historian. I can recommend his The Shortest History of Germany - and not only because it does what is says on the dustwrapper.

The unified Germany of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he argues, was largely the result of conquest by Prussia. And Prussia was a military state with a  very different outlook from the emerging democracies of Western Europe.

It was Germany's - and Europe's - tragedy that the new nation took on the semi-colonial practices of Prussia.

You can hear Hawes discussing the history of Germany in a podcast with Dan Snow.

Market Harborough to Northampton bus service to be halved

By the time I had finished chasing rainbows at Great Oxendon yesterday, it was threatening to get dark. So I abandoned my plan to walk home and caught the bus instead.

Even before I checked the timetable, I knew there wouldn't be too long to wait. There are two buses an hour between Northampton and Market Harborough.

That is soon to change. 

A service update from Stagecoach says it has been through a 

process of reviewing its entire bus network across the Midlands. Over this period detailed analysis has taken place to review passenger numbers on each route and ways of tackling services which are not commercially viable.

And when you get to the detail, the update says:

On Mondays to Saturdays service X7 will run hourly between Leicester - Market Harborough - Brixworth - Northampton - Milton Keynes. 

Additional journeys will run between Leicester and Market Harborough & between Brixworth and Northampton to provide two buses an hour on these sections of route during most of the day. 

The X6 & X7 combine to provide two buses an hour between Northampton, Grange Park and Milton Keynes.

In other words, there will continue to be two buses an hour on the route except between Market Harborough and Northampton (or, more precisely, between Market Harborough and Brixworth).

This is a commercial decision by Stagecoach and there is, of course, no prospect of Northamptonshire County Council stepping in to maintain the service.

Shirley Bassey: Burn My Candle

This is Shirley Bassey aged 19 and she is amazing.

Burn My Candle was deemed so suggestive by the BBC that they refused to play it. You can see their point.

Remarkably, it was written by Ross Parker, who had co-written the wartime standards "There'll Always Be an England" and "We'll Meet Again".

Maybe the 1950s were more exciting than we think?

A rainbow at Great Oxendon

I had planned to go into Leicester and watch Mike Leigh's Peterloo. But the trains had been replaced by buses and, at least between the showers, it was a golden late autumn day.

So instead I walked along the Brampton Valley Way (the old Market Harborough to Northampton railway) to try out a new cafe at Great Oxendon.

Judging by the rainbow that appeared, the President of the Immortals approved of my decision.

The final photo here, despite my playing about with it, does not capture the extraordinary effect produced by the last, broad scrap of the rainbow over the trees.

When the Monastery in Rye was a pottery

In 2014 the Monastery in Conduit Hill, Rye, was up for sale. The Rye & Battle Observer told us:

The Monastery building was once ear-marked as potential site for a new theatre by the Fletcher Group but the Group is now set to open a new two screen cinema in the former Further Education Centre in Lion Street later this year. ... 

In 1903, the then Vicar of Rye, the Rev. Howes, interested himself in the chapel building, and proposed its conversion into a Church House. It had been the Salvation Army Barracks for some time. 

During the last war it was used for community events, dances and films.

The paper also said that the Monastery was once a pottery, and my 1967 Rye guidebook shows it was right.

The Young Liberals were infiltrated by an undercover police officer

Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (gedditt!!???!!) reported back in March:

A new spycop has been named – Special Demonstration Squad officer ‘Michael Scott’ infiltrated the Young Liberals, Anti-Apartheid Movement, and Workers Revolutionary Party, 1971-76.

It's hard not to feel nostalgic for the days when the secret state thought the Liberal Party worth keeping under surveillance.

Six of the Best 829

"Brexit has been a sobering experience for believers in Britain's constitutional arrangements. While in principle we have parliamentary sovereignty, in practice we have an over-powerful executive." Alexandra Runswick on how 'the will of the people' shattered our constitution.

Sam Knight explains how the Conservatives bankrupted Northamptonshire: "The plan ... involved cutting the number of staff directly employed by the county from four thousand to a hundred and fifty. At the same time, officials set up a number of external companies to look after the county’s old people and neglected children. The companies would, in theory, turn a profit. The project cost millions of pounds and never got off the ground."

Wearing the poppy has always been a political act. Sam Edwards sets out its history.

"I had another reason to fear psychiatry; the usual alarmist warning to anyone who misbehaved in the 'fifties and 'sixties was, 'You’ll end up in Saint Nick's,' the bin on Great Yarmouth sea front. And an imposing place that was. My beloved grandma spent two nights there – but more of that later." Why Craig Newnes has written a book on electroconvulsive therapy.

We need to take action to stop Sheffield architecture being destroyed, says Owen Hatherley.

Graham Duff looks back over 45 years of Lindsay Anderson's brilliant film O Lucky Man!

Fleet House: A threatened Leicester ghost sign

This is Fleet House in Fleet Street, Leicester, which was the headquarters of British Steam Specialties Lrd until a few years ago.

Derelict Places has photographs of the surprisingly contemporary interior and records that the company was bought out by Travis Perkins and moved to a new head office closer to the M1.

This part of the city is up for redevelopment, and a Leicester Mercury article from earlier this year reveals the disappointing news that Fleet House could be a victim of it.

So enjoy the buildings signs while you can.

Should South Shropshire be a national park?

The idea that South Shropshire should be a national park seems to be gaining momentum.

The Shropshire Star reports that the man tasked by Michael Gove with look at whether any new parks should be created, thinks so.

Julian Glover, a former speechwriter for David Cameron and the first person to commission me to write for the Guardian, says:

"I know Shropshire very well. 

"I partly grew up in the Shropshire Hills, and they are as beautiful as anywhere in a national park."

Indeed they are. Someone once described them to me as being like the Lake District without all the visitors.

Andy Boddington, the Lib Dem councillor from Ludlow, also supports the idea.

He writes on his blog:

We live in one of the most beautiful areas of the country. We have so much beauty surrounding us that we often forget its there. It is ordinary to us but astonishing to people who come here. 

My view is that national park will be beneficial for South Shropshire. It will promote the economy. But there could be downsides like too many visitors or rising house price. There could be upsides like more affordable housing. More businesses within and around the national park.

And he concludes:

My view is that we should at that point submit a bid for national park status. 

A national park that stretches from Ironbridge to the Mortimer Forest. Embracing the Titterstone Clee, the Long Mynd, the Stiperstones, Bishop’s Castle and Clun.

He urges people in the county to attend a debate organised by the Shropshire Council's Ludlow and Clee local joint committee on 29 November.

I welcome the idea, but I can think at once of a couple of problems that need to be tackled if it is to be a success.

The first is affordable housing. When I discovered the county more than 30 years ago I used to wonder at how cheap houses were. Then the weekending classes discovered the restaurants of Ludlow and everything changed.

Two years ago it was announced that Hope primary school near the Stiperstones was to close. Heather Kidd, the Lib Dem councillor for the ward, saw no alternative because young families cannot could to move to the area - see her comment on that post too.

The second issue is bus services, which being cut in Shropshire just as they are everywhere else.

The Secret Hills shuttle bus that runs at weekends is a shadow of what it was a few years ago, when you could use it to reach Bishop's Castle, Clun and Much Wenlock.

And the bus from Shrewsbury to Bishop's Castle is under threat of withdrawal.

I support the idea of giving my favourite landscape national park status, but unless something is done about these and other issues in the area, I am not sure how much it will really achieve.

Lib Dems call emergency board meeting for Tuesday

PoliticsHome reports a development in the story about redundancies at Lib Dem head office that broke last week:

Lib Dem bosses have been summoned to an emergency board meeting amid a financial crisis in the party that is set to see up to quarter of staff laid off. 

Board members are expecting an “angry” exchange of views at the summit next week, with some blaming the current turmoil on bungled financial management.

The meeting, called by the party's president Sal Brinton, will take place on Tuesday evening.

In an article for Lib Dem Voice last week, Nick Harvey (the party's chief executive and former MP for North Devon) spoke of a "reorganisation" and of politics being a cyclical business where parties consolidate after an election and later build up for the next.

However, sources quoted by PoliticsHome suggest bad financial planning is to blame for the redundancies.

That is in line with the rumours I heard before this story broke.

More churches at risk placed on Historic England's register

St Peter's, Belgrave

Five Leicestershire churches have been added to its list of at-risk heritage buildings by Historic England.

They are, says the Leicester Mercury, St Peter’s Church in Belgrave, Leicester, and little-used village churches in Loddington, Owston, Garthorpe and Great Stretton.

Over in Shropshire a further five churches have been added: Alberbury, Newscastle on Clun, Stockton, Worthen and Condover.

What is to be done?

It is easier to imagine a new use being found for an urban church like St Peter's, Belgrave, than it is for churches in remote villages. But even St Peter's has been on the market for a long time now.

I wonder, too, if any of these additions to the list is due to the theft of lead from the church's roof. this is now an epidemic in rural areas.

Cheating scandal at Shropshire chess tournament

There's another chess story in the Shropshire Star. This one is not about the death of a stalwart of the game in the county but about a teenager being expelled from a tournament there for receiving electronic assistance:

The teenager was taking part in the inaugural Four Nations Chess League international congress in Telford and racked up an astonishing – and ultimately judged literally incredible – eight straight wins in the first eight rounds of the nine-round competition. 

The schoolboy from Surrey was in the lowest section, for players with an international Fide rating of 1825 or below. ... 

But despite a personal rating of a very modest 1286, the competitor was not only beating much stronger opposition but blowing them out of the water. 

His lead as the final round approached was already unassailable, but he was not given an opponent. 

Chief arbiter Alex Holowczak said: “During a routine anti-cheating check a player was found to have used electronic means to assist them with their games. That player was subsequently disqualified from the tournament.

Players who are receiving computer assistance are usually not hard to spot. Either, as in this case, they suddenly start playing way above their usual strength, or they play in a very unhuman fashion. They will go in for an apparently risky sacrifice in a position when they are already well on top. Any normal player nurses such an advantage home to score a calm win.

Let's end with the good news.

The Star says:

On a more positive note, the Telford venue for the first-ever event, held at the Park Inn in the town centre, came through with flying colours, and the international competition attracted 10 Grandmasters – surely a record for any Shropshire chess competition – among a total of 109 entries across three sections.

 

A Market Harborough Green Man

Look what I noticed the other day - and near the railway station too.

Vic Marks provides our Trivial Fact of the Day

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Today Ben Foakes made his England test debut, becoming the side's third different wicketkeeper in consecutive tests. Jos Butler kept in the fourth test against India this summer and Jonny Bairstow in the fifth.

In the Guardian Vic Marks reveals that "this has not happened since 1963 when AC Smith was followed by Keith Andrew and Jim Parks".

Foakes rescued England with his batting and is 87 not out overnight, so we now have yet another natural number 7 batsman to accommodate. Half our current team should be batting there and three of them want to keep wicket.

But if he gets a run in the side it may bring about the thing all England fans want to see: a team containing Stokes, Woakes and Foakes.

Harborough would now vote Remain

This evening Channel 4 screened Brexit: What The Nation Really Thinks, suggesting there has been a significant shift in public opinion from Leave to Remain.

So much so that 54 per cent of the population would vote Remain if there were a second referendum.

Of course, before there were a second referendum there would have to be a campaign and Remain would have to make its case far more effectively than it managed to last time. There would be the same problem of outside interests trying to affect the result too.

Still, that is a significant shift in opinion.

The polling was done Survation, who has made the results for each local authority available.

They show that the Leave vote in Harborough has fallen from 50.75 per cent at the referendum to 47.06 per cent now.

A small change, but one, of course, that changes Harborough from a Leave area to a Remain one.

Other local authorities in Leicestershire have shown larger swings.

Up the road in Liberal Democrat Oadby & Wigston, the Leave vote has fallen from 54.58 per cent to 48.61. And in Charnwood (which is centered on Loughborough) it has fallen from 53.81 to 47.62.

Street art in Leicester's cultural quarter

So there I was in Leicester's cultural quarter, taking pictures of the streets around the Phoenix arts centre (where I saw The Little Stranger the other day).

I got talking with someone who enthused about the street art around us. Picturesque decay is more my bag, but I can see the quality and the fun in much of it here.

Giant lizard rescued in wheelbarrow from Nottingham Cattle Market fire

NottinghamshireLive wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The cattle market is close to Notts County's ground and Meadow Lane Lock, where the Nottingham Canal joins the Trent.

According to the BBC News report, the fire brigade "had problems with the water pressure from the fire hydrants and had to use a high pressure pump to get water from the canal".

That report also says:

The only injury reported was one man - who was reportedly bitten by a snake while moving livestock from the exotic pet business.

Which explains the headline.

The Goons: Heroes of comedy?

What to make of the Goons? I grew up knowing they had been wonderfully funny, but when I watched The Last Goon Show of All on television as a 12-year-old I was hugely disappointed.

Lately, though, I have been listening to the Goons on Radio 4 Extra in the mornings (it sure beats John Humphrys) and found myself warming to them.

You sense the studio audience's delight when Bluebottle makes his appearance and I find that things thought avant garde in the Sixties, like dragging the continuity announcer into the proceedings, had been done by the Goons long before.

Peter Sellers, though apparently an awful human being, was a comic genius and a great actor. Harry Secombe is still hard to forgive for If I Ruled the World and Highway, though it seems his ingenuous geniality was the show's heart.

Spike Milligan? I have always had problems with Spike Milligan. I found his Q television shows in the Seventies, which are now lauded, horribly self-indulgent.

This documentary, which features a notably high class of talking head, goes some way to explaining the Goons' importance in Fifties Britain.

Six of the Best 828

Peter Black on claims that Arron Banks misled parliament.

"On Monday, 29th October 2018, the occupiers of Tidemill Garden were evicted by heavy-handed bailiffs and security guards ordered by Lewisham Council." Anita Deptford has the story.

"We need a theory that tells us not only what we may do but also what we are obliged to do: when is standing by in the face of injustice simply not morally permissible." Chris Bertram reviews Candice Delmas's A Duty to Resist: When Disobedience Should Be Uncivil.

"It’s all here anyway: the lack of adult oversight; the suck-up press; the growth-at-any-cost mentality; the loyal employees, by turns abused and abusive (memo from management: “You do realize you were talking about penises for 90 minutes, right?”); the defense of horrendous behavior as “free speech”; the jettisoning of “free speech” when it served corporate purposes; the way no one seeks permission but all expect forgiveness." David Streitfield has been reading Christine Lagorio-Chafkin's book on Reddit.

On An Overgrown Path says classical music must die and be reborn.

More than 65 years since its release, Carol Reed’s The Third Man is still a marvel to see, experience and learn from, argues Cinephilia & Beyond.

Wilfred Owen died 100 years ago today

Wilfred Owen, now the most celebrated of the war poets, died on 4 November 1918, a week before the end of the first world war.

Benjamin Britten set eight of Owen's poems, along with words from the Latin Mass for the Dead, to form his masterly War Requiem. It was commissioned for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and first performed there on 30 May 1962.

This clip features Britten's setting of Owen's At a Calvary near the Ancre. The photographs is uses are unusually well chosen.

You can find a wonderful recording of Britten rehearsing the many forces involved in the work for its first recording the following year. It reveals a sense of humour that the biographers often mention, but is rarely found in the public record.

I learnt this afternoon, thanks to someone on Twitter, that the granddaughter of Owen's mentor Siegfried Sassoon lives in Kibworth.

Freddie & the Dreamers: I'm Telling You Now

Why isn't Mitch Murray better known? In the Sixties he wrote or co-wrote hits for Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, Manfred Mann, Georgie Fame and Cliff Richard.

He also wrote for Tony Christie - including Avenues and Alleyways - and in the Seventies helped the Nottingham band paper Paper Lace to twice top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm Telling You Now was one of his too. Co-written with the band's leader Freddie Garrity, it reached number 2 in the UK and number 1 in the US. (Freddie and the Dreamers were from Manchester, but somehow got lumped in with the Merseybeat craze.)

The song itself is rather sweet and could pass for an early piece of McCartney whimsy. And it's all done in two minutes.

How to explain the silly dance? Garrity did not have the looks of a pop star and even shaved a few years off his age to heighten his appeal.

But he was a natural comedian and was latter to have his own show for children, Little Big Time, on ITV.

In the US there was even an attempt to launch a dance craze. Hence the band's release of a record called Dance the 'Freddie'.

Malvern Tipping wins Name of the Day

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The judges were delighted to learn from the Shropshire Star that the director and owner of the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway is called Malvern Tipping.

They asked if Malvern Tipping worked at tipping quarrying spoil at Malvern before moving to the passenger set up at Bridgnorth.

A.G. Macdonell was twice Liberal candidate for Lincoln

High Bridge and the Glory Hole, Lincoln

A.G. Macdonell is remembered today, it at all, for his book England Their England and its description of a village cricket match.

An old post on Lion & Unicorn (retweeted today because Macdonell was born on 3 November 1895) shows that there was far more to him than that.

In particular, he was a Liberal and twice fought Lincoln for the party at general elections:

He was also involved in political campaigning at home, standing as the Liberal Party candidate in Lincoln in the general elections of 1923 and 1924. The seat had been Liberal until 1918, but winning it back it was a pretty hopeless prospect by this stage, and he was unsuccessful, coming third on both occasions. 

Championing the League of Nations was obviously a key plank in his platform. He described the League’s charter as "a treaty of mutual guarantee", and believed that the organization was the only way to transcend the rivalry that lay at the heart of international politics: "The whole world is in the shadow of the Franco-German quarrel."

His domestic concerns were evident in a 1924 speech, in which he said that "there was much talk of co-operation between Conservatives and Liberals, but he was absolutely against anything of the kind. There was a tendency to say too much about the Socialist menace and forget the Conservative menace."

Macdonell polled 23.8 per cent in 1923 and 17.6 per cent in 1924. At last year's general election the Liberal Democrat candidate polled 2.6 per cent.

The old canal in Melton Mowbray

The Inland Waterways Association explains:

The Melton & Oakham Waterways Society aims to promote the restoration of the Melton Navigation and the Oakham Canal. 

The two waterways are quite different in that the Melton Navigation was based on the rivers Wreake and Eye, and as such has remained in water with many of the lock structures being converted to weirs for flood control and maintenance of water levels.  A 3-mile section above the last lock in Melton Mowbray has been used as a recreational waterway since the closure of the navigation in 1877.  

Little remains of the Oakham Canal, which has been largely filled in except where sections that remained in water have been used for fishing.

The Melton Mowbray Navigation ran from the River Soar north of Leicester to a canal basin in the centre of Melton. The site of the basin is now more or less occupied by the council offices near the railway station.

It was from there that the Oakham Canal left. One day I will see if any trace of it remains in the town.

These photographs show the last mile or so of the Melton Mowbray Navigation as it enters Melton Mowbray. Restoration does look a possibility here.

Lord Bonkers sends his best wishes to Paddy Ashdown

Lord Bonkers writes exclusively for Liberal England:

My friends, tenants and the Well-Behaved Orphans join me in sending their best wishes for a full recovery to Sir Paddy Ashplant.

I recall what I wrote in my Diary when he resigned his illustrious leadership of our party in 1999:

I first met Sir Paddy Ashtray in the library at Bonkers House in Belgrave Square. Shortly preceded by a stun grenade and an impressive quantity of smoke, he had burst in through the French windows. 

After I had picked myself off the floor, dusted down the butler and pointed out that he probably wanted the embassy next door, he was all apologies. 

This, I reflected even then, was the sort of chap one could do with on one's side in a closely fought by-election.

Subsequent events only proved the rightness of my judgement.

Redundancies planned at Liberal Democrat HQ

At a Liberator lunch a couple of weeks ago I heard rumours that not all is well with the Liberal Democrats' budget.

Their truth was confirmed today by the news that there are to be redundancies among the party's head office staff.

As Buzzfeed tells it:

During a staff meeting at the party’s Westminster HQ on Great George Street this week, employees were told around 20 redundancies would have to be found, according to two sources who were present at the meeting. 

Lib Dem headquarters has a staff of around 60, with another 20 working in the field on party contracts. That means 25% of the party’s total workforce are set to lose their jobs.
Staff were told they would be offered voluntary redundancy, with compulsory redundancies to then take place if required. 

According to one Lib Dem source who was present at the meeting, they were told the party has a hole in its budget amounting to several hundred thousand pounds. .

We must all send our commiserations to those who are losing their jobs. Buzzfeed says any redundancies will take place before Christmas.

The move is being spun by party sources as a reform to enable the party can concentrate on campaigning.

And it is true that some have asked whether a party in our reduced circumstances needs an expensive head office in Westminster.

But this does make it feel like the party is still on the road away from power and has yet to turn the corner.

A by-election in Doctor Who's home ward

The polls have closed in today's local by-elections, so while we wait for the results there is time to read Andrew Teale's previews.

One of the three contests is in a Conservative-Labour marginal ward on Kirklees: Denby Dale.

When I first heard of it, my ears pricked up. Because Denby Dale was where the branch to Skelmanthorpe and Clayton West diverged from the line from Huddersfield to Penistone and Sheffield.

Sure enough, both those stations would have been in Denby Dale ward if the Clayton West branch had not closed in 1983.

These days Skelmanthorpe is a place of pilgrimage as the birthplace of Jodie Whittaker, the new Doctor Who.

I do not have a picture of the Tardis, but I do have a picture of Clayton West signal box on its last day of operation.

Centrist Granddad: We shouldn't be shocked Corbyn is timid on tax

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This evening 20 Labour MPs voted with the Lib Dems to oppose the Conservatives' tax cuts for middle and high earners.

The rest did what they were told by their party's leader and abstained.

Labour's sea-green incorruptible keeping his head down so as not so upset affluent voters?

Indeed so. And this is not the first time Jeremy Corbyn has been uneasy about increasing taxation.

There is no more spanielesque supporter of Corbyn than Chris Williamson. So public is his undying loyalty that his comrades have forgiven him for running Derby through an arrangement with the Conservatives.

But when Williamson suggested that council tax bills for the highest value homes in England should be doubled, he was gone from his shadow ministerial post before he could wag his tail.

Labour's mood music under Corbyn is very left wing, largely because defending his policies has been subcontracted to a WhatsApp group of media commentators and social media stars.

When shadow ministers are called upon to do the defending they don't sound half so assured. Can the programme of rebuilding those media commentators really be financed without increasing taxes for the average voter?

Labour activists talked with awe of their manifesto at last year's general election. But its slogan 'For the many not the few' was a retread of an old Tony Blair slogan, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies confirmed that the Lib Dem manifesto for that election was far more generous towards benefit claimants.

So we should not be surprised that Corbyn's Labour was so timid tonight. Deep down, he's a bit of a centrist granddad.

In which I help Leicestershire win the county championship

These days I spend my time surfing the net looking for proof that I existed.

Reader's voice: Well you certainly don't spend your time writing about politics.

The other day there was a story in the Shropshire Star about a stalwart of chess in the county, Jim Samworth, who had died in Church Stretton aged 102:

Jim was one of the players in Shropshire’s historic win against Worcestershire in 1969 when his win against G. Elwell contributed to our first county-team win since 1916.

It made me realise I had taken the strength of Leicestershire chess rather for granted.

We won lots of games. In fact, I twice played in county finals - once for the second team (we won) and once for the third (we lost).

I have clear memories of the latter match, but few of our victory.

So thanks to the Southern Counties Chess Union bulletin for 1995-6 for immortalising it. I see we drew with Kent despite being outgraded on most boards and won on tie break. One of our winners, Romilly Ilersic, was also from the Market Harborough club.

I was on the way down by 1996. Ten years earlier, before I got on the council, my grading was a good 20 points higher.