Quote of the Day

It comes, appropriately enough, from the Bridgnorth Journal:

Because of the huge interest in the issue, the council has advised the public that space in the council chamber will be limited.

Well, I think I know what they mean.

In a lane near Abdon Burf

A couple of days ago I was walking along a narrow lane near Abdon when I met a Shropshire Star van coming the other way. I stepped on to the verge, the driver slowed and waved, and all was well.

But it did strike me that, if we had both been thinking of other things, this could have been a bitterly ironic way for me to die.

A. E. Housman adds:

Wenlock Edge was umbered,
And bright was Abdon Burf,
And warm between them slumbered
The smooth green miles of turf;

God's own county

I am in Bridgnorth library. Not only do they have free internet access: they have the Shropshire Star as one on the Favourites in the drop-down menu. What more could you ask?

And when in Bridgnorth, be sure to visit the Severn Valley Railway.

Children: Over Surveilled, Under Protected

Later. The conference has now taken place, and there is a full record of the proceedings on its website.

The Daily Telegraph's lead story today is one long plug for tomorrow's "Children: Over Surveilled, Under Protected" conference at the London School of Economics:

Dr Eileen Munro, of the LSE, said that if a child caused concern by failing to make progress towards state targets, detailed information would be gathered. That would include subjective judgments such as "Is the parent providing a positive role model?", as well as sensitive information such as a parent's mental health.

"They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure," she said. "The country is moving from 'parents are free to bring children up as they think best as long as they are not abusive or neglectful' to a more coercive 'parents must bring children up to conform to the state's views of what is best'."

Holiday time

I am off for a week's holiday where you can buy the Shropshire Star every day.

Unless I find an unattended computer, posting will be light for a while.

"Dykes, on the other hand, are evil"

I hope the Mayor of Kingston will forgive me.

When I saw the pictures in this posting on Mary Reid's blog, I couldn't help being reminded of The League of Gentlemen and their Legz Akimbo Theatre Company.

Take your hands off our Ming

Worrying news in the Daily Telegraph: the Liberal Democrats have called in outside experts to relaunch Sir Menzies Campbell. Among them is Gavin Grant, the European public affairs manager at the leading PR firm Burson-Marsteller.

The paper reports:

A Liberal Democrat MP said: "During our conference, Gavin [Grant] went up to see the leader in his hotel room, where he was preparing for a speech, and found him with a plate of fish and chips on his lap watching Strictly Come Dancing. That is the side people never see.

The trouble with this is that it cannot be true, though it is hard to tell whether the inaccuracy originates with the journalist, the unnamed MP or Gavin Grant.

For Iain Dale has gone to the lengths of examining the TV schedules during the Lib Dem Spring Conference this year and finds that Strictly Come Dancing was not being shown - and nor was Strictly Dance Fever. Nor can imagine Elspeth taking kindly to fish and chips in their hotel room although, with a PhD in Coronation Street, she clearly has a taste for demotic television.

Gavin Grant is also a name that will make some hackles rise: he was one of the loudest cheerleaders for the Alliance project back in the 1980s. It never seemed likely to me that standing down in the half the seats in the country was the way for the Liberal Party to march to power, but that is all ancient history now. Even so, I may dig some forgotten gems out of my Liberator archive one day.

I have also heard it suggested that Grant is not unconnected with the rather painful campaign to rehabilitate Mark Oaten through the media. The latest instalment is in today's Daily Mail - thanks to Paul Walter for the link.

There is a need to present Ming Campbell as a rounded character. He has plenty of hinterland - to use Denis Healey's word - and the public should know about it. The trouble is that fish and chips and Come Dancing is such a limited idea of ordinary life - something with which, in any case, people who hold important jobs in public relations generally have little connection.

It also plays to the prejudice that has cheapened public life in Britain: the idea that being educated or having a taste for the finer things in life makes you "posh" and is therefore a guilty secret that should be hidden away.

The campaign envisaged by the Telegraph is such a blatant piece of spin that I cannot see it working. The danger is that the Lib Dem are becoming image conscious just at the point that the public has learnt to see through all that and craves a little reality. At least David Cameron has been more subtle in the way he presents himself.

As I have said before - and shall no doubt say again - we should let Ming be Ming. Iain Dale puts it rather well:

The truth of the matter is that you can't make a silk purse out a sow's ear. They should play to Ming's strengths and not try to turn him into something he clearly isn't. It won't work and people will see through it.

Except that as some of the comments on his blog say, we are trying to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

The blue-rinse maiden aunt

Today's House Points from Liberal Democrat News. You can find a fuller extract from Roger Scruton's memoirs on my anthology blog Serendib.

Bad News

Child pornography. Binge drinking. Under-age drinking. Paedophiles. Rape. Knives. Sexual assault. That was the bill of fare on Monday.

If you believed everything you heard in the Commons, you would be sure Britain is going to hell in a handcart – or to the dogs at very least. Fortunately, life is never as black as it’s painted at home office questions.

It’s not just that the British Crime Survey shows the number of offences is falling: it’s that ministers insist on putting the worst slant on anything to do with the subject.

Take the fact Joan Ryan unwrapped: “The majority of 10 to 17-year-olds who have drunk alcohol in the past 12 months reported that they had obtained that alcohol from their parents.”

She was obviously proud of this. We were supposed to find it striking – even shocking. Yet a little thought reveals it is good news.

As the Tory Andrew Turner pointed out – and another minister Tom McNulty agreed – the best place for children to learn to drink is in the home. Would Ryan rather they learnt it from their friends?

But leaving parents to raise children as they think best is the one thing New Labour cannot do. Hence Ryan’s confusion at the dispatch box.

* * *

With all this talk of the Conservatives’ ‘A List’, let’s look at how they used to conduct things. In his Gentle Regrets, the Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton recalls his attempts to become a candidate.

He found himself confronted with: “A veteran Member of Parliament, Dame Something Something, who conformed exactly to the image of the blue-rinse maiden aunt.”

She looked him up and down “with angry sniffs” as he answered her questions. What had he done for the Party. Had he joined the Young Conservatives? Spoken in Union debates? Attended Party Conferences?”

Scruton had done none of this. Instead, he told her, he had founded the Conservative Philosophy Group, reviewed for the Spectator and written a book on aesthetics.

“Her stare became suddenly vacant. She closed the file containing my application and turned to her colleague, a young MP who had remained silent throughout, occasionally sending out a pitying glance in my direction.

“‘I suppose he could apply for this new European Parliament thing, could he?’”

No paediatricians on this estate

Whenever someone proposes introducing Megan's Law to Britain, the case of the mob that attacked a paediatrician is sure to be mentioned by those who oppose the move.

An article by Brendan O'Neill on the BBC website suggests that this story has grown a great deal in the telling.

I am opposed to Megan's Law because it will not make children any safer but will certainly make parents even more nervous and restrictive. But this whole debate does raise difficult questions for Liberals. Aren't we supposed to be on the side of transparency and the freedom of information?

Charles Kennedy on Question Time

I was going to add "tomorrow", but I have just noticed that it is now today.

Charles Kennedy will be on the panel for Question Time this evening (Thursday). The programme starts at 2245. Also on the panel are Alan Johnson, Oliver Letwin and Germaine Greer. The programme comes from King's Lynn.

Thanks to Iain Dale.

Criminalising the young

In our essay Cohesive Communities David Boyle and I wrote:

much of the impetus for the introduction of curfews arises from a lack of contact between the generations. Groups of teenagers hanging around can seem threatening to older people, but if communitarian policies and blanket restrictions lead to less contact between the generations, then such groups will come to seem even more threatening and there will be calls for curfews to be made even more restrictive.

As I recall, this paragraph was mine and I borrowed the argument from Stuart Waiton's Scared of the Kids?

With this in mind I was interested in this story on the BBC Leicestershire pages:

People are lying to the police about anti-social behaviour to get groups of children dispersed, police have said.

A senior policeman admitted there was an increasing trend of residents calling to complain about innocent behaviour, like playing football.

Inspector Andy Ramsey, from Leicestershire Police, said incidents were exaggerated or even invented to ensure officers intervened.

The danger is that official measures to combat antisocial behaviour will not strengthen communities nor even replace what a healthy community does for itself. The danger is that they will destroy community.

Another Rutland peer

Will Howells reports the welcome news that the Lib Dem peer Lord Avebury (who as Eric Lubbock won the historic Orpington by-election for the Liberals in 1962) has started writing a blog.

Intriguingly, Lord Avebury reveals that Eleanor Paston his 13 times great grandmother married Thomas Manners, the first Earl of Rutland.

The Manners family are now the Dukes of Rutland, which reminds me of the following entry in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

I was sad to read of the death of my old friend Thor Heyerdahl. No one gives him much thought now, but in his day he was Quite The Thing. If he thought a set of chaps in one place had come from another place then he jolly well set out to prove it. He was not afraid to sail a papyrus raft from Easter Island to Egypt (or perhaps it was the other way round?) if that would aid him in his pursuit of the truth. It happened that some years ago I had a dispute with the Duke of Rutland over the boundary of our estates. I shall not bore you with the details here: suffice to say I was clearly in the right. Nevertheless, to prove my point at Law I had to demonstrate that my ancestors has settled the northern shores of Rutland Water. With Heyerdahl's help I was able to construct a vessel from Stilton rinds and recreate their voyage. There was a spring tide running and Ruttie was in playful mood, but we made landfall and the Duke settled out of court.

They ge' a lo' o' money

I missed Tony Blair's appearance on BBC Radio Five Live's 6-0-6 phone-in last night. Having read Martin Kelner's account in the Guardian, I am rather glad I did:

When Mike in Leamington Spa asked him about footballers' wages, the reply came in a flurry of dropped t's. "They ge' a lo' o' money, bu' I'm no' sure we can do much abow i'."

But then the idea of Tony Blair as a football fan has never been convincing.

World Cup advertising

Ten years ago, during Euro '96, Coca Cola ran an advertising campaign with the slogan: "Eat football, sleep football, drink Coca-Cola". Every time I saw it I wondered a little more grouchily what an American company knew about football.

Budweiser have learnt from this. Their campaign with the two newsreaders, like their earlier "You do the football, we'll do the beer", trades on precisely this prejudice. It won't make me drink their product, which is like gnat's piss (a gnat writes: Isn't that rather unfair?), but I do feel warmer towards them.

By contrast, if I hear someone say "Where do they get their energy from?" once more, I shall do something violent to someone high up at eDF Energy.

David Boyle on modernism

David Boyle has an article in the May issue of Town & Country Planning and has reproduced it on his website.

He considers the legacy of modernism in the light of two exhibitoins: Modernism: Designing a New World at the Victoria and Albert Museum until 23 July, and Albers and Moholy-Nagy: From the Bauhaus to the New World which was on at the Tate Modern until recently.

David writes:

We need our cultural institutions to start re-examining the accepted truths of modernism. Does an international style, shorn of its human, cultural and historical roots, really benefit our cities – or does it impoverish them? Was there ever anything to the idea of ‘progress’, the modernist incantation that could justify any abomination in the 1960s and 1970s? Did it mean anything except "change"?

Brock around the clock

Richard Huzzey has just returned from the Green Liberal Democrats Conference and has posted about the case against a cull of badgers to control bovine TB.

He points us to the side of the Badger Trust, and their powerful campaign on the subject. It also tells us that yesterday was National Badger Day, which explains all those parties in the woods - though I expect there were none in Southend.

Read all about it

Tim Worstall is busy this weekend, so you can find the latest Britblog Roundup in the Devil's Kitchen.

The First Post has put together its usual roundup of the Sunday papers. The most striking story is this one from the Telegraph:

British students could struggle to win places at university because of competition from European applicants who have "better English", the head of a leading college has claimed.

Kennedy: I was right to force contest

The BBC's Devon pages report an interview with Charles Kennedy by Chris Rogers, their South West Political Editor. Kennedy met him when he was in Newton Abbot to open new Lib Dem offices.

The most interesting part runs as follow:

"I haven't written any memoirs, but looking back there was an assumption that maybe we should have a change of leader without having a leadership election," he said. 

"In an area like the South West, with such a big membership and with one member, one vote, I think that would have been very demoralising. 

"The penultimate decision I took as leader was to trigger a leadership election. I was very pleased when that happened because it gives legitimacy to the new leader and the election re-invigorated the party.

Who was assuming that a new leader should be crowned without an election? I have not spoken to any party members who thought that would have been a good idea.

But perhaps there is a clue. At the time of the leadership crisis I was contacted by the Evening Standard. They were publishing an article by Sir David Steel and, having seen this blog, wanted to know if I would like to write a letter in reply. (It does make you terribly cynical when you find out how the media work.) I did so, though not living in London I do not know if it ever appeared.

They sent me a copy of what Steel had to say. Besides some ungracious remarks about the Lib Dem membership being enough to drive anyone to drink, it contained a clear call for Sir Menzies Campbell to become leader without a contest.

From this and Charles Kennedy's comments I deduce that there was a strong feeling against a contest at the top of the party. Put it down to a combination of presumption and panic. So all credit to those who stood against Ming to force a contest.

Charles Kennedy obviously believes he should have stood in the contest himself. That still seems to me a misjudgement as he had clearly lost the confidence of the larger part of his parliamentary party.

Looking back, it is clear that Kennedy should have stood down immediately after the last general election. He would then have been remembered with respect and affection across the political spectrum. And if he had later sorted out his personal problems and returned to the fray, he could have enjoyed the second political career that now looks rather unlikely. (Though never say never.)

Another intriguing question is whether Ming Campbell would have been a candidate if there had been a contest in May 2005.

Suddenly next Friday

Looking through the films on television next week, one stands out. Suddenly is a moody thriller from 1954 starring Frank Sinatra as the leader of a gang plotting to assassinate the President.

The film is on BBC at 0035, so really it is on Saturday morning.

The story goes that Lee Harvey Oswald watched this film a few days before he shot President Kennedy. When Sinatra learned of this, he had the film withdrawn to protect his reputation.

Reader's voice: But Oswald didn't shoot Kennedy.

House Points replies: Go away and take your silly conspiracy theories with you.

Does Sure Start harm poor families?

Sure Start "harms children who need it most"

says the Guardian website. But the words in the quotation appear nowhere in the report below. And if Sure Start does harm some children, then it is the last thing they need. So it was an odd headline to use.

My feeling has always been that playgroups, nurseries and the like are excellent institutions and should be encouraged by the state, though there is no reason why it should run them all. But I have been wary of the New Labour attempt to give them an explicit therapeutic purpose.

I have read too many social and healthcare papers in my time to give much credence to one study, but could it be I have been right all along? More research is needed, as people paid to do research always say.