Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Nottingham

Today I visited Nottingham and had a pint in Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. Sitting beneath the city's castle, it claims to be the oldest pub in England.

At the bar the locals were discussing cricket with a barman from Australia or New Zealand. All was right with the world.

Happy New Year.

Paddy Ashdown, Malcolm Saville and eating hedgehogs

Today in someone's review of the year I came across an interview Nick Clegg gave to the Evening Standard on the eve of the general election:

Looking back at the campaign, it is the comic moments he remembers. For instance, his first visit was to a hedgehog sanctuary, with Paddy Ashdown. Ashdown muttered under his breath to Clegg: “When I was in the Special Boat Service we used to eat hedgehogs.”

Talk of eating hedgehogs inevitably reminds those of us who grew up on Malcolm Saville of his second Lone Pine story Seven White Gates.

At the beginning of the book Peter (Petronella) Sterling is cycling to her mysterious uncle' farm under the Stiperstones.

On the way she comes across a Gypsy caravan whose horse is running away with the little girl driving it (Fenella) after being frightened by a tank (the book was published in 1944). Peter risks her life to bring the horse under control.

Later she eats with the Gypsy family:

Peter stood by and watched the other gipsies rake away the hot embers of their wood fire, until two cylinders of baked clay were exposed. Fenella ran for a dish from the Reubens' van and one of the glowing cylinders was poked on to it. Then, with mutual expressions of good will, the cooks and the Reubens with their guest parted. 

Round their own fire, Peter watched how the baked clay was cracked and peeled off, bringing with it the spines of the hedgehog and leaving him bare but beautifully cooked. From the pot came a stew of gravy and vegetables, a generous helping of which was piled on to the plate of the guest of honour.

She didn't see how Reuben divided up the hedgehog, but her share was certainly tasty - something between rabbit and chicken - and she was so hungry that she finished her plateful almost as soon as Fenella.

I don't know if that is how they cooked hedgehog in the SAS. And, though this method would deal neatly with the spines, Saville does not mention what has happened to the giblets.

As to the taste of hedgehog I am reminded of Jonathan Meades' comment:

People say frogs' legs taste of chicken. They are wrong. They taste of frog.

Read more on Malcolm Saville and Gypsies.

Liberal Democrats will compromise and do want national power

Embed from Getty Images

Miranda Green has an article in the Guardian looking at the prospects for Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the coming year.

I was struck by this passage:

For the Lib Dems, polling day was cruel: not only a massacre of MPs, but a rebuke to the very idea of power-sharing. Coalition had blunted the party’s identity and destroyed at a stroke its appeal to anti-establishment protest voters. 

Tim Farron, never a minister, has chosen “a fresh start” as his new backdrop: while careful not to disown the Clegg era, he is more at home with the Liberal tradition of dissent than the necessary compromises of government. 

Activists in both opposition parties have dug out dog-eared copies of the old scripts: the one (Labour) rehearsing traditional scenes of internal feuding, the other (Lib Dem) doggedly clawing back council seats and denouncing Westminster as a distraction from local campaigning.

There are two questionable assumptions here: that Liberal Democrat members do not grasp the necessity for compromise in politics and that there is a conflict between local campaigning and winning power nationally, with those members' hearts being in the former.

First, compromise. For the 1983 general election the Liberal Party agreed to form an alliance with the SDP, standing down its candidates in half the constituencies.

A few years later the Liberals voted to merge with the SDP to form a new party that its leader hoped would be known as the Democrats. The SDP voted the same way, with a larger minority against.

And after the 2010 general election the Lib Dem members voted to join a governing coalition with almost no one against.

When I wrote my post saying we should "accept David Cameron's offer in some form" I thought a) I was being terribly daring and b) that we would go in for some variety of confidence and supply arrangement.

But it turned out that I was being timid and, for better or worse, the membership was keen to endorse Nick Clegg's wish for a full coalition. No sign of an unwillingness to compromise there.

On the contrary, at least in those Alliance years of the 1980s compromise had an almost mystical attraction for Liberals. Many gave the impression of believing that, if only we compromised on enough things, we were bound to win power.

Looking back, this may have been a generational difference. Many of the older Liberal activists I met had been brought into the party by Jo Grimond and were tired after years of campaigning. Not surprisingly, they welcomed the short cut to power that the Alliance appeared to offer.

Me? I was young enough to have energy in those days and stupid enough to find ideological purity appealing.

Second, national power and local campaigning. That enthusiasm for coalition in 2010 does not suggest any ambivalence about taking power nationally.

Nor is there any necessary opposition between the local and national. What was remarkable in the early years of the Lib Dems, particularly under the influence of Chris Rennard, was the way that local success was afterwards turned into victories in Westminster elections.

Besides, local campaigning is also about power - there was as a time recently when the Lib Dems ran many large cities across the country. If some party members became disenchanted with Nick Clegg it was in part because they felt he had lost them that power.

Nor was the party a stranger to power before Nick came along. We were in government at Holyrood before he was even elected to the European parliament.

The great problem with the Liberal Democrats is not the two discussed above: it is (and I suspect Miranda would agree with me here) is that we have failed to establish a clear identity in the public mind.

But this post has gone on long enough and I will write about that another day.

Later. Miranda has kindly replied:

@lordbonkers I don't disagree with any of your blog. My preoccupation in this piece is more with what voters want and how they judge LDs

— Miranda Green (@greenmiranda) January 1, 2016

Welcome to the new Liberal Democrat bloggers

Or in this case blogger, as only one new blog appeared on the LibDemBlogs aggregator in December. Thanks to Ryan Cullen as ever for sending me the details.

LibDemAlex is written by Alex Hegenbarth and has been running since the summer.

Recent posts have forecast that the Liberal Democrats will become the official opposition by 2035, advocated something called "multipotentialsim" and looked at the role of the party's MPs after the carnage of May's general election:

In May the party lurched dramatically overnight from an established parliamentary entity of over 50 MPs with an experienced leadership to a handful of parliamentary representatives. 

This means that the Liberal Democrat’s parliamentary party can no longer function in the same way that the Conservatives and Labour parties do. 

The size and hierarchical structure of these two organisations, based on the carrot of promotion to [shadow] ministerial position and the stick of enforcing the whip no longer make sense to a group of (what are ultimately) electoral survivors.

If you have a new blog you would like to appear here next month, please add it to LibDemBlogs.

20’s Plenty: The Move to Safer Speeds in the UK

A video by Streetfilms:

For those watching in the United States, this film is like a road map to how to get public support and your community energized around lower speed limits. 

New York City may have recently set it's city speed limits at 25 mph, but to keep driving down serious injuries and fatalities, we should be following the example set by the UK.

Lord Bonkers in 2015

You can find a selection of the old boy's wit and wisdom over on Liberator's blog:

[The Revd Hughes] tells me he has arranged for a locum vicar to take Divine Service and visit the sick whilst he is away. 

“He’s young and keen and believes every word of the Liberal Democrat manifesto is the literal truth.” 

I eye him levelly: “It’s not Farron, is it?”

You may also enjoy these two posts from 2010:

• Twenty years of Lord Bonkers: Part 1
• Twenty years of Lord Bonkers: Part 2

Liberal England in 2015, Part 4

October

A pioneer of rock singing on a suburban Manchester railway station? It doesn't get any better than Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

I pondered the significance of Charlotte Church on Question Time and posted an alarming recording of Elizabeth Butler-Sloss interviewing a victim of Bishop Peter Ball.

It turned out that Leicester thought it had found the body of Richard III back in 1935.

I was able to show that I had never believed in Camila Batmanghelidjh before asking why so many wanted to do so.

Quite by accident, I listened to Dapper Laughs.

In a happier accident, I discovered film of a little Black girl being crowned Queen of the May in a Northamptonshire village in 1944.

November

It transpired that, after cutting council tax by £7 before the local elections, Harborough Tories were to charge £40 a year for collecting garden waste.

I expressed my fears for bloggers who suddenly disappear and was annoyed by a London primary school that told its pupils to walk with their hands clasped behind their backs.

The Liberal Democrats were right to contest the Oldham West and Royton by-election seriously, or so I argued. I also said that we need more good third places in council by-elections.

I boasted that I once drew with a player who had come second in the British chess championship and insisted that J.K. Rowling is not the sole arbiter when it comes to interpreting the Harry Potter books.

Photo: Scottish Republican Socialist Movement

December

I traced the journey of Alistair Darling from the International Marxixt Group to a directorship at Morgan Stanley - that's him holding the banner above.

My defence of underage drinking was published by the Leicester Mercury.

The Liberal Democrats held a council seat in Market Harborough with an increased majority.

I explained how Thatcherites and Blairites had buggered up Britain between them. I also found the Shropshire roots of The Knights Who Say "Ni!"

A young Paddy Ashdown turned up in a video of British troops in Sarawak.

I detailed the evidence that Greville Janner would have faced in court and ended the year by praising BBC Radio 4 Extra;


Now read...

Liberal England in 2015: Part 1
Liberal England in 2015: Part 2
Liberal England in 2015: Part 3

Jonathan Meades vs Jackie Ballard

Embed from Getty Images

A paragraph in a 2013 interview with Jonathan Meades intrigues:

He loathed the Taunton public school to which his parents managed to send him, a "philistine place" he has described as "hell". It took him, or so he says, 27 years to return to the town, and when he did, he got his revenge by sending it up in one of his restaurant reviews (he was then the offal-scoffing and somewhat porcine restaurant critic of the Times). The locals and its liberal democrat MP went nuts.

Can this be true?

A 1998 story from BBC News shows that it is:

His article has angered residents so much that the MP has demanded an apology. 

Meades asked in The Times article if the restaurant would thrive in the town. 

He questions whether the "three headed sheep shaggers" would come down from the hills to support the establishment. 

And if they did, he continues, where would they park their combine harvester or tie up their cow?

And who was the Liberal Democrat MP who went nuts?

Local reaction to the article has led the town's Liberal Democrat MP Jackie Ballard to table a Common's (sic) motion seeking an apology. 

She said: "I think its a disgraceful slur on the county town of Somerset and also Mr Meades made some crude comments on the natives of Somerset who he thinks are not sophisticated enough to enjoy a good restaurant. 

"I can assure him they are."

And Jackie Ballard really did table an early day motion on the subject. It ran:

That this House deplores remarks made by Jonathan Meades in The Times Magazine of Saturday 4th July regarding the people and town of Taunton; knows that Taunton is the county town of Somerset and it has many natural and man-made assets including the River Tone and the recently enhanced, thriving town centre; recognises that Taunton is at the heart of a rural community and is also the home of Somerset county cricket, the Charity Commissioners, the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, The Castle Hotel and many other nationally known organisations and businesses; and calls on Mr Meades to apologise specifically to the people of the Somerset levels and the Blackdown Hills for his obscene and offensive comments and to the people of Somerset for his unwarranted slur on their county town.

There were 11 signatories: Jackie, nine loyal Liberal Democrats and, for some odd reason, Ken Livingstone.

Meades's reaction to the affair? According to BBC News:

Mr Meades said he will not withdraw his comments as they were meant light heartedly . 

He said: "She has no sense of humour, she is after all a Liberal Democrat."

People can be so unfair.

A cat playing Jenga

Liberal England in 2015, Part 3

July

These days I have caring responsibilities for my mother, so it is harder to get away. I did manage a few days in Canterbury this month, only to be derailed at Chilham by cows.

In other news, Tim Farron was elected as leader of the Liberal Democrats (with my help).

With attention turning to the Labour contest, I suspected that Dan Jarvis was benefiting from Kieron Dyer Syndrome.

And I suggested that the fault line between David Cameron and George Osborne runs through Eynsham Cricket Club.

I explored the remains of Leicester Central railway station, while an old film about Hemel Hempstead provided some unexpected connections to my childhood.

August

I travelled to Sheringham in Norfolk and back in a day to see The Lone Pine Club a play based on the children's books by this blog's hero Malcolm Saville.

I suggested five likely consequences of Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader and posted evidence that the Liberal Party was all too award of the activities of Cyril Smith.

Posts on Reculver and Dungeness drew on my holiday snaps.

Most notable of all, the nation mourned Stephen Lewis.

September

Another Arts Fresco street theatre festival was held in Market Harborough.

The press tried to manufacture a row about the Glee Club at the Liberal Democrat Conference.

Eric Joyce won Twitter and a water main burst to spectacular effect in my old ward.

Apart from that it was all sport...

After Frank Tyson died I found some footage of him bowling at one of Northamptonshire's outgrounds,.

David Miliband invented cleverball and Lord Bonkers introduced us to the film 'Straight Outta Nick Compton' and the controversial song 'Fuck tha Selectors'.


Now read...

Liberal England in 2015: Part 1
Liberal England in 2015: Part 2
Liberal England in 2015: Part 4

Six of the Best 562

There is still crucial work to do on the campaign to reform the pub trade, says Gareth Epps.

"Dickensian would not only be inspired by Dickens’s novels: in its alternating layers of melodrama and comedy, like the ‘streaky bacon’ effect he wrote about in Oliver Twist, its style would also be truly Dickensian." Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is literary adviser to the BBC series.

"The heritage minister, Tracey Crouch, announced that Clouds Hill, the tiny home of T E Lawrence , near Wareham in Dorset has been given Grade II* status," reports David Hencke.

Alwyn Turner introduces us to William Charles Boyden-Mitchell, better known as Bill Mitchell, and better known still as Uncle Bill of British Forces Broadcasting Service.

A Lady in London discovers Eel Pie Island.

"The churches of mostly rural Suffolk ... harbour a curiosity - woodwoses (literally 'wild-men-of-the-woods'), hirsute manimals brandishing clubs." Matt Salusbury on creatures that make Jacks in the Green look tame.

Record-breaking year for road repairs in Lincolnshire

We have our Headline of the Day, courtesy of the Rutland & Stamford Mercury.

The opening night of Oliver!

Embed from Getty Images

9 July 1968 - Many belong to a species of stage boy, only related to childhood by their small size. All the other attributes of boyhood - youth, gaiety, innocence - have long since gone. Squat creatures, seemingly weaned on Woodbines, they are the boys who have been in Oliver! Lionel Bart has cut a swathe through the nation's youth like the 1914-18 war. They are the new Lost Generation.
Alan Bennett Writing Home (1994)

There is at present a good documentary from 2002 on the BBC iPlayer about the opening night of Lionel Bart's 'Oliver!' It includes interviews with the late Ron Moody and Tony Robinson, who was one of Fagin's gang.

I suspect a young Robinson is second from left in the photograph above. Holding the cake is Keith Hamshere, the original Oliver, who want on to become one of the leading stills photographers in the film industry.

The Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway

Built to service the Crystal Palace exhibition and opened in 1865, the Crystal Palace and South London Junction Railway ran between Nunhead and Crystal Palace. It closed in 1954.

There is more about Crystal Palace High Level station on London Reconnections.

Liberal England in 2015: Part 2

April

I visited Burton Overy and founds its telephone box was now a library.

Keeping tabs on the general election campaign, I reported that the contest in Hampstead and Kilburn would go ahead despite death of a former Eurovision entrant.

Lord Bonkers remembered the making on Bomb on the Buses:

"Who could forget the scene where poor Olive is rescued from the speeding bus? Lines of dialogue such as 'Blimey, Stan, keep your foot down' and 'Don’t you dare touch that brake, Butler' were on everyone’s lips.

Two journalists recalled being in Leicester for the trial at Frank Beck, where allegations against Greville Janner were first heard in public.

I found a priceless fragment of my past in a 1978 issue of Antiquarian Book Monthly Review.





May

"The general election was bloody awful for the Liberal Democrats," I wrote in the Leicester Mercury with characteristic perspicacity.

I was cheered up by discovering the video above - a profile of the Spencer Davis Group from a 1966 programme called 'A Whole Scene Going'.

I passed the Homophobic Monk twice in one day and went to see the tomb of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats were recruiting a surprising number of new members and I asked what the party could offer them.

I brought the world the first pictures of Tim Farron as a would be pop star and went to Pitsford to search for the Jack in the Green.

June

The Liberal Democrats mourned the early death of Charles Kennedy.

Wandering the back streets of Loughborough (as one does), I came across a memorial to the 1916 Zeppelin raid on the town.

Ron Moody, the original and best Fagin in 'Oliver!' had also died. I was pleased to discover that he had studied under Karl Popper.

Not for the first time, a batsman was out c Bairstow b Willey in a limited overs international.

Closer to home, I found the Aylestone Road ground in Leicester where the county played between 1901 and 1939 - see the photo above.

I also examined Norman Lamb's sudden enthusiasm for the right to die.


Now read...

Liberal England in 2015: Part 1
Libearl England in 2015: Part 3
Liberal England in 2015: Part 4

Lenore Skenazy and free-range kids

I spent a day at the Battle of Ideas in October partly so I could hear Lenore Skenazy speak.

Skenazy is an American journalist and campaigner who writes the Free-Range Kids blog. (Having no children of my own I am, of course, an expert on such matters.)

She was an entertaining speaker, but I cannot find a video of the session she took part in. So instead here is a brief one where she sets out her ideas.

Liberal England in 2015: Part 1

January

Lord Bonkers remembered the first Liberal Democrat leadership election and a zinger from Paddy Ashdown:

"Beith be not proud, though some have called the
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so."

I forecast that the forthcoming general election would be more boring than people expected. I badly misunderestimated the SNP surge, but was right to be sceptical about Green and Ukip advances.

The Black Beast of Harborough was sighted again, this time along the canal between Laughton and Lubenham.

I pondered globalisation and the death of Pigling Bland:

If your goal is to produce a book that is inoffensive in every culture, it is not surprising if you come up with something rather anaemic. 

Back in the 1970s, good Liberals wanted a greater role for the market as a counterweight to centralised power. We wanted choice and innovation. 

Today, however, things are more complicated than that. What the market often gives us is homogenisation.

I discovered Cleaners from Venus and their 'Illya Kuryakin Looked at me.'

Sadly, the election victory of Billy Brooke (pictured above) as Purr Minster 2015 did not turn out to be an omen for the Liberal Democrats.





February

The New Walk Centre, Leicester, bit the dust.

I explained why Nick Clegg would hold Sheffield Hallam and also - without having the courage to join all the dots - why many Lib Dem MPs would lose in a post on the Eastleigh by-election.

Why haven't tuition fees deterred young people from going to university? I suggested some reasons.

I also explained why every politician always receives "a great reception on the doorstep".

One of my favourite railway videos of the year showed the Stamford to Seaton shuttle in 1966.

March

I spent my birthday paying my respects to a King of England who died 475 years before I was born - Richard III.

Another notable demolition - Greyfriars Bus Station in Northampton - took place.

The Liberal Democrats unexpectedly revived the kerb drill as part of their general election campaign, while I suggested that Parliament should move to Arkwright's Mill, Cromford.

Two of my photographs were used by the BBC and I blogged about sources of free images for bloggers.

I paid tribute to the Yorkshire and England bowler Bob Appleyard and found a video of Bobby Henrey, child star of the 1948 film The Fallen Idol, giving a talk about the film 66 years on.


Now read...

Liberal England in 2015: Part 2
Liberal England in 2015: Part 3

The Byrds: Chestnut Mare

This has the Byrds' characteristic jingle-jangle sound and there turns out to be an interesting history behind it.

Chestnut Mare was written by Roger McGuinn and Jacques Levy for Gene Tryp, a proposed country rock musical based on Peer Gynt. That show never materialised and the song was included on the Byrds' Untitled album.

A shorter version made no. 19 in the UK singles chart early in 1971, though I am not convinced I remember hearing it from then,

Six of the Best 561

"New research from Leeds University into the impacts of permitted heather burning on upland peat bog shows that for the 20% biggest storms, the flow of water over land is higher than in areas where the moorland has not been burnt."  A prophetic post from Upper Calder Valley Plain Speaker back in August.

A little unexpectedly, David Boyle's take on A Christmas Carol appears on Philosophy Football.

Matt Crowley pays tribute to Malcolm in the Middle: "Far from the wistful nostalgia of The Wonder Years or the chummy bickering of Home Improvement, Malcolm In The Middle presents a childhood that basically sucks. Bullies rule the school, teachers are indifferent, and being smart is akin to being radioactive."

There are still 1500 gas street lamps burning in London. Maev Kennedy meets the people who light them.

Sam Roberts chooses his top 10 London ghost signs.

Judging by its place names, the landscape of Medieval Lincolnshire was haunted monstrous creatures, says Caitlin Green.

Call for sculpture to commemorate the Barwell Christmas meteorite

Embed from Getty Images

From BBC News:

A stone sculpture should be erected to commemorate a meteorite which hit the UK on Christmas Eve 50 years ago, campaigners have said. 

The meteorite, which was the size of a "Christmas turkey", exploded into thousands of pieces over Barwell, Leicestershire, on Christmas Eve, 1965. It was the biggest recorded meteorite to hit the UK.

Read more about the Barwell meteorite on this blog.