I came across the story last year when I found a folder of press cuttings I had saved back in the Nineties - think of them as pre-internet bookmarks. Today's news comes from the gofundme page set up to raise money for a new memorial.
Here's the opening of the magazine's interview with the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells:
"I’ve been sitting in private committee briefings with senior officials, and they say there’s a good chance we’ll be in a war before the next election. I think that’s right, that’s my view,” Mike Martin, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, elected to parliament in the 2024 election, tells me. “There’s certainly more than a 50 per cent chance we’ll be involved in a war before 2030."
Great. This is the prediction of a politician with more than a passing interest in military matters. Martin is a former British Army officer who served multiple tours of Afghanistan, picked up a PhD in war studies and has authored books including 2023's How to Fight a War.
It’ll all be professional soldiers and drones though, you might think. A modern war for modern times. "Obviously if we got into a big war, we’d have conscription straight away," says Martin. The Ukraine war has shown how, despite all the high-tech advances, modern wars still involve soldiers digging trenches like they did in the First World War.
“Would we need to conscript? Yeah, we would. Because ultimately, we’re not at a stage yet where you can replace people with drones,” says Martin. “We’re a long way off from that. Drones are fine, as far as they go, but you still need people to occupy villages, hold ground, and all the rest of it. And that’s not going to change for quite some time.”
The great danger, as I see it, is that British troops form part of an inadequate peacekeeping force in Ukraine, while Russia misses no opportunity to draw that force into skirmishes. Meanwhile, the US sits on the sidelines and Trump makes interventions that are sympathetic to Russia.
Trouble is, at present that seems to be the sort of peacekeeping force most likely to emerge.
Huey Long, who was governor of Louisiana from 1928 to 1932 and one of its senators until his assassination in 1935, was mentioned here the other day.
He was a populist Democrat, but unlike Donald Trump he really did care for the people of the state and was prepared to take on big business. Comparison to Lyndon Baines Johnson, another who used the political dark arts to progress a laudable agenda, might be more enlightening.
This video takes you through Long's career and the cases for and against him.
There are whispers that Nigel Farage intends to row back from his support for Donald Trump. So here's a reminder of the slavish adoration he has for years poured upon that grotesque figure.
You may also remember that Farage was once very keen on being filmed and photographed with British veterans of the second world war. But it seems none of them was as brave as Donald Trump.
I don't want to alarm anyone, but here's an extract from an article looking back on the coming of the first world war that Charles Masterman wrote for the Daily Chronicle in 1915:
It was a company of tired men who for twelve hot summer nights, without rest or relaxation, had devoted their energies to avert this thing which had now come inevitably to pass. No one who has been through the experience of those twelve days will ever be quite the same again.
It is difficult to find a right simile for that experience. It was like a company of observers watching a little cloud in the east, appearing out of a blue sky, seeing it grow, day by day, until all the brightness had vanished and the sun itself has become obscured.
It was like the victim of the old mediaeval torture enclosed in a chamber in which the walls, moved by some unseen mechanism, steadily closed on him day by day, until at the end he was crushed to death.
It was most like perhaps those persons who have walked on the solid ground and seen slight cracks and fissures appear, and these enlarge and run together and swell in size hour by hour until yawning apertures revealed the boiling up beneath them of the earth's central fires, destined to sweep away the forests and vineyards of its surfaces and all the kindly habitations of man.
And all this experience - the development of a situation heading straight to misery and ruin without precedent - was continued in the midst of a world where the happy, abundant life of the people flowed on unconcerned and all thoughts were turned towards the approaching holidays and the glories of triumphant summer days.
The Liberals and then Liberal Democrats have held the Orkney and Shetlands seat ever since Grimond won it at the 1950 election.
Thanks to Caron Lindsay for flagging this up on Lib Dem Voice - follow that link to see a photograph of a very young Alistair. He is his usual engaging self in the podcast.
I never met Jo Grimond. The nearest I came to it was in the 1983 general election, when he did a public meeting for us in Kew. Being a good activist, I went canvassing instead - and there were no certificates and medals from Mark Pack in those days.
He gave his speech, I was told later, and then said, looking at the timetable he'd been given:
"It says 'Questions' here, but as I'm stone deaf these days, that's no use. I'll just come round the hall and meet you all."
And so he did, charming everybody.
But I did meet Laura Grimond, a significant figure in the party in her own right in her day, and also the wife of Jo, daughter of Violent Bonham Carter, the gender-fluid gangster even the Krays feared Violet Bonham Carter and granddaughter of Mr Asquith.
She came to Market Harborough a couple of times in the Eighties, and I've found a photo from those days in the British Newspaper Archive. It shows Laura Grimond, Phil Knowles (the current leader of Harborough District Council) and me. One day I'll share it with you.
This is the first of a series of four videos from the Trekking Exploration account - like, share and follow now!
That series follows the former Woodhead route from the eastern portal of Woodhead tunnel to Deepcar, which good trains from Sheffield reached until recently
I don't intend posting all four here , but you can find them on YouTube.
When I posted a Trekking Exploration video of the line on the other side of Woodhead tunnel last year, I wrote:
At Penistone you could watch a constant stream of goods trains taking coal from the South Yorkshire coalfield to a power station at Widnes or returning empty.
The class 76 locomotives were unique to this line and you could tell they had been designed in the 1930s, before the war put a temporary stop to electrification.
And I did manage to ride on the whole route shortly before it closed. In the winter of 1980/1 the Hope Valley line, the alternative way to Manchester that all Sheffield trains now use, closed for engineering works on Sundays and passenger services were diverted via Woodhead.
I thought Vance's spech was good - a provocative but thought-provoking prod for us in Europe - 'what are you trying to defend'? https://t.co/fGAXgDR3DE
— Neil O'Brien (@NeilDotObrien) February 15, 2025
Neil O'Brien is my MP - the Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston. On Saturday he shared his thoughts on J.D. Vance's speech in Munich.
I could construct an argument that he has to talk like this to hang on to his shadow ministerial (not shadow cabinet) post. He was at one time close to Kemi Badenoch, but backed Robert Jenrick in last years's Tory leadership contest, and she does not strike me as one to forget a slight in a hurry.
But I'm more inclined to conclude that he now believes this stuff. How the Conservative Party has fallen.
It's quite hard to find the full text of the speech, but RealClear Politics has it.
Dani Garavelli writes on the suicide of a 16-year-old in state custody: "At some point on Saturday or early Sunday, he wrote three long letters to his family. 'It's night-time now,' he wrote. 'I've only been in here for two sleeps.' 'Been crying a lot'; 'Everyone’s terrorising me'; 'Please help me.' Then he hanged himself from the top bunk."
"Now we appear to have a secret request by the home secretary to Apple by the British government to have, in the words of the Washington Post, 'a blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, [which] has no known precedent in major democracies'." Alan Rusbridger says it’s time to say no to the government spying on our secrets.
Paul Casciato has some good news: "Research published in the journal Bird Study, found that - hectare for hectare - solar farms situated in agriculturally dominated East Anglia contained a greater number of bird species and overall number of individuals than surrounding arable land."
"As hotel proprietor-cum-town accountant Urquhart (Dennis Lawson) makes clear, it’s easy for outsiders to romanticize a place that’s difficult to survive in. Forsyth derisively referred to this concept in the wider culture as 'the Brigadoon thing'." Sara Batkie marks the 40th 42nd anniversary of the release of Local Hero.
The Politico website quotes him as saying:
"Keir Starmer should bring back Parliament to debate his plans to support Ukraine.
"We have just days for the U.K. to lead in Europe and save Ukraine from a shoddy deal cooked up by Trump and Putin."
Politico says this comes from an interview of theirs with Davey, but I can't find it on the website.
Later in this report we read:
Davey ... offered flexibility about the timing of any vote, but insisted a check by parliament is needed as Starmer presses ahead.
Asked if it was essential that MPs should get a vote before any troops head to Ukraine, Davey said it was !too early to say. We’ve always been happy with retrospective votes. It’s about getting the balance right between Parliament making its voice heard and government doing what it thinks it needs to in order to protect the realm."
Davey said he welcomed Starmer attending Macron’s mini-summit in Paris on Monday as a good start. "But we need to do even more," he said. "For instance, it is time that the UK and Europe look at spending frozen Russian assets on protecting Ukraine."
Ed is often to be heard calling for a recall of parliament - he's as fond of recalls as the England cricket selectors were when I was a boy - but this time he is surely right.
If the US is no longer prepared to underwrite the security of Western Europe, then we are entering a new and frightening world. Our politicians going to have to step up and, in the case of the Conservative front bench, grow up.
I don't believe that Russia has designs on Western Europe, but it is an imperialist power with a near racist belief that anyone who speaks Russian should be its subject. This means that in future the Baltic states, for instance, will be in serious danger of a Russian invasion.
But then I was warning about Russian imperialism 20 years ago.
Later. The Liberal Democrat MP Mike Martin has also contributed his thoughts in a Twitter thread.
With Labour holding only 30 of the 60 Senedd seats, it needs the support of one more MS to get its 2025-6 Budget passed.
Nation Cymru says Labour has been discussing with Ms Dodds, the only Lib Dem Senedd Member, what concessions it could make to secure her vote.
Jane sets out her thinking in the email, which you can read on the Nationl Cymru website (if you have not already received a copy yourself).
The website also quotes the inevitable "prominent Welsh Liberal Democrat" disagreeing with her approach:
"We should not be going into next year’s Senedd election having propped up a failing Labour government, That will not go down well with the electorate.
"It’s also pretty shocking that Jane Dodds is informing the party membership about what she intends to do rather than consulting us. At one time parties consulted their members before deciding on a course of action. That seems to be a thing of the past, certainly so far as the Welsh Lib Dems are concerned.
"This all started when Kirsty Williams was appointed to the Cabinet as Education Minister. She may have been a good minister, but her position in government did nothing for the party."
Jane Dodds was in the news last November, when Ed Davey hinted that she should resign over her part in the mishandling of allegations of abuse made against the late Bishop of Chester, Hubert Whitsey.
She did not act on his hint, but earlier this month she agreed that she had let survivors of abuse down.
Post Office Limited has announced the unplanned closure of hosted outreach services in Minsterley, Hope, and Shawbury.
They say the closure, from this week, is due to unforeseen circumstances preventing the Pontesbury postmaster from continuing to operate these outreach locations.
Last year, nearby Marton, Longden, Stiperstones and Wentnor lost their weekly outreach post offices.
Reader's voice: And the rather plain building above?
Liberal England replies: That's Hope village hall, where the outreach post office was housed. Find me another blogger - or podcaster, come to that - who has a photo of it.
Republican politicians from the poorer states are already having doubts about Trump and his team. This is from the Guardian:
Bill Cassidy, the Republican US senator, has said his home state of Louisiana’s recent decision to cancel the promotion of mass vaccination against preventable diseases is a disservice to parents who want to keep their children healthy.
Nonetheless, before those remarks, the medical doctor-turned-politician who has clashed with Donald Trump joined 51 of his fellow Republicans in voting to confirm anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of the US’s health and human services department.
This led me to wonder how Huey Long (1893-1935), the populist governor of, and then senator for, Louisiana, approached vaccination.
The answer is to be found on a website devoted to his memory and career:
Through the Board of Health, Long tripled funding for public healthcare. The state’s free health clinics grew from 10 in 1926 to 31 in 1933, providing free immunizations to 67 per cent of the rural population.
I find Long a fascinating figure and, while I know we're supposed to disapprove of populism, I miss the days when it was part of the varied ideology behind community politics.
Liberals then saw themselves as the people who looked after the run-down end of the borough and who made Town Hall listen to local residents.
But then much of our campaigning at the last election - on the health and on water - had an element of populism. But has the Conservatives had succeeded in uniting pretty much the entire nation against them on these issues, it was hard to accuse us of being divisive.
How do radical ideas go mainstream? Alice Evans studies the women's magazines of the 1970s to help her understand the rise of feminism.
How well did Queen Elizabeth II get along with her prime ministers? Rebecca Cope has the answers: "It would be easy to think that as a Labour Party leader from a northern middle-class background, Harold Wilson would not have gotten on well with the Queen, but quite the opposite was true. A regular at Balmoral, he was frequently asked on picnics with the wider family, and reportedly enjoyed the informality of the occasion, mucking in to help clear up after the Duke of Edinburgh’s famous barbeques."
Ellie Robson on the philosopher Mary Midgley: "In the 1950s, the philosopher Mary Midgley did something that, according to philosophical orthodoxy, she wasn’t supposed to do. In a BBC radio script for the Third Programme (the precursor of BBC Radio 3), she dared to point out that almost all the canonical figures in philosophy’s history had been unmarried men."
Writing in Country Life of all places, Lewis Winks demolishes the case against allowing wild camping on Dartmoor.
Michael Wood goes to the movies and thinks about Brady Corbet’s films: "How brutal or damaging does your childhood have to be to make you a great dictator or a memorable pop star? Are the connecting words ‘because of’ or ‘in spite of’? Or is there no causality here at all, just a sort of baffling coexistence? Are the films in love with an ugly idea of chance? This possibility seems especially relevant to The Brutalist."
John Major was a figure of fun to many while he was prime minister, but compared to any leader the Conservative Party has come up with since, he is a titan.
Here he is talking about J.D. Vance's speech on the World at One earlier today:
That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world. It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off very dangerous signals.
It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr. Putin.
In Mr. Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, on the statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.
You can listen to the whole thing on BBC Sounds - Major's interview begins at 12:20.
One interesting point Major makes is that his own father was brought up in the United States.
Cat Stevens was a big name in his early days, as both singer and a songwriter. He is one of the central figures of David Hepworth's 1971 – Never a Dull Moment: Rock’s Golden Year.
He even took Morning Has Broken from our school hymn book into the top 10.
My image of a male singer-songwriter of this era involves long hair and an acoustic guitar, and there are plenty of pictures like that of Cat Stevens. But here he is on a West German TV show in 1967 as a teenage dandy.
I have a couple of DVDs of performances from that show - Beat! Beat! Beat! Because its video tapes didn't get reused, its archives are a valuable record of this golden age of British pop and rock.
Cat Stevens was born Steven Demetre Georgiou to a Swedish mother and Greek Cypriot father in London. In the late Seventies he converted to Islam and left the music scene, returning 20 years later using the name Yusuf Islam.
I knew that Adrian Slade had died because I saw we were discussing commissioning an obituary of him for the next Liberator. But I had not found any announcement of the sad news until this morning, when I saw this notice in The Times:
ADRIAN SLADE
Adrian died peacefully on 24th January 2025, aged 88. CBE, cabaret performer,adman and Liberal politician. Husband of Sue. Father of Nicola and Rupert. Much loved by friends and family.
The notice also links to a memorial page for him.
Discussing comedy with Adrian was one of the perks of helping out with production of Liberal Democrat News at party conference - I have mentioned his memories of Peter Cook, whom he auditioned for the Cambridge Footlights, here more than once.
But Adrian was also a politician. He won Richmond at the GLC elections of 1981, defeating Edward Leigh in the process. to become its only Liberal member.
What was impressive was how well known he was. When we went down to the bar after a Liberal meeting, there were always people who came up to him to sat hello or ask for advice. If Adrian had been the parliamentary candidate, we might well have won Richmond earlier than 1997.
That GLC victory was not without cost for Adrian, as the Conservatives contested the election lodged an election petition, contesting the result because of technical errors in Slade's return of expenses. The election result stood, but he was left with potentially ruinous legal expenses. His showbiz friends organised a comedy evening to help pay the bills - sadly the link in my post that told you who was there no longer works.
His experiences of Ken Livingstone were more pleasant. When he went to see Ken, the GLC leader as a new councillor, and was asked which committees he would like to be on. They then fell to discussing where Adrian should sit so as to upset the Tories most.
So farewell to Adrian Slade. We shan't see his like again.
As I once wrote:
I love Milton Jones's comedy. He doesn't just use puns and word play. If that was all he did, he's be Tim Vine.
It's because every funny line of his creates an alternative world. And that world exists for a second or two on stage with him until its bubble bursts and it is no more.
Here Jones talks to the always likeable Rob Brydon about his career and approach to comedy.
The party's autumn conference is in Bournemouth this year. I doubt I'll have the self-control to resist stealing Jones's joke about the Japanese attack on Poole Harbour for Lord Bonkers.
Rushden Lakes shopping centre is welcoming the first beavers to be seen in Northamptonshire for four centuries.
Boudicca, Alan and their six kits - I don't know if there is a class system among beavers, but I can't shake off the suspicion that Boudicca married beneath herself - will be living in a 42-acre fenced enclosure there.
But if it's true that, following escapes from such enclosures, there are now hundreds of beavers living wild in Kent, it won't be long until Boudicca and Alan, or their friends and relations, turn up on the River Jordan here.
Anyway, Katie King-Hurst, education and communities manager for the Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, told the BBC:
"They're incredible. "They ... create other habitats that the other animals thrive in. There's been a few beaver releases around England, but these beavers share their fences with a shopping centre with millions of visitors a year, so it really is an opportunity to see an inspirational species right on people's doorsteps."
Josh Graham writes on politics.co.uk:
The Lib Dems, after a historic general election campaign under Ed Davey’s buccaneering leadership secured 72 MPs, have found their voice in a crowded UK political scene as the prime critics of Trump’s revolution.
The Lib Dems have assumed this anti-MAGA mantle largely by default, that said. The Labour Party, a natural ideological opponent of Trumpism, has been silenced by its government duties and diplomatic responsibilities. The Conservative leadership has positioned itself as supportive of Trump’s general initiative. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is MAGA’s British spin-off. Meanwhile, the Green party - whose criticism might even trump Davey’s - still struggles to cut through the Westminster noise.
The bottom line is this: political circumstance, on both sides of the Atlantic, has conspired to carve a neat niche for Ed Davey’s party - one it is excitedly exploiting.
The video shows the first of Ed Davey's two questions to the prime minister on Wednesday.
