Clive Stafford Smith on cricket and human rights

In April Peter Oborne and Richard Heller launched a podcast to help us endure what was then a world without cricket.

They are up to episode 25, which talks to the human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith about his work as well as his love for cricket.

Chess, cheating and Covid-19

How has chess been coping with the pandemic?

One development has been online tournaments between the world's top players, who play from home. As their opponents cannot see them, they are much freer in their facial reactions than they are when playing over the board. This makes it fun for the viewing public who can see the feed from both players' webcams.

Keeping a poker face, or at least a chess face, is one of the arts a top player needs to master. The young Boris Spassky decided he was revealing too much and cultivated what he call a "clown's mask" to avoid giving opponents encouragement.

It's said that he was unnerving to play because he never gave you the slightest clue as to how he thought the game was going.

At lower levels this is rarely the case. When I beat Simon Le Blanq, who had played top board in chess Olympiads for two different countries, I was encouraged by overhearing a conversation between him and a teammate while I was considering my next move.

"How are you doing?" asked the friend. "I'm being wiped out," came the reply, helpfully confirming my assessment of the position.

But now that computers are stronger than any human player, playing online raises all sorts of problems with possible cheating .

As a Guardian article yesterday reported:

At the heart of the problem are programs or apps that can rapidly calculate near-perfect moves in any situation. To counter these engines, players in more and more top matches must agree to be recorded by multiple cameras, be available on Zoom or WhatsApp at any time, and grant remote access to their computers. They may not be allowed to leave their screens, even for toilet breaks. In some cases they must have a “proctor” or invigilator search their room and then sit with them throughout a match.

Sutovsky has also suggested eye-tracking programs may be a way to raise a red flag if a player appears to be looking away with suspicious frequency.

And cheating is not a problem only in grandmaster chess:

Such controversies have been replicated even in the lower-stakes world of junior play. Sarah Longson, a former British ladies' champion who runs the Delancey UK Schools’ Chess Challenge, said at least 100 of 2,000 online participants cheated.

The cheating was blatant, she said, with mediocre preteens at the level of the world champion, Magnus Carlsen. "But only three of them admitted it, which is pretty disgusting." After realising the night before the final that the top three qualifiers had all been cheating, she said, "we stayed up till 3am deciding what to do" and nearly cancelled altogether.

As I once wrote a post entitled The public schools' greatest weakness is now the character of their old boys, I was intrigued by what Longson said next:

"It’s the children from the private schools, sadly," she said. "When I ring their parents they just get angry with me. They’re under such pressure to succeed."

Laura Nyro: Stoney End

Laura Nyro, who was born on this day in 1947 and died in 1997, never seems to have enjoyed the fame she deserved. This Guardian article by Laura Barton helps explain why that is:

While Nyro was one of the most important songwriters of the 60s and 70s, one who has exerted a profound influence on artists from Elton John to Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell to Carole King and Tori Amos, she also sidestepped celebrity, turned down offers to increase both sales and fame, and for much of her career put the song before the songwriter - allowing others to record the definitive versions of her own compositions.

Stoney End is better known from the version by Barbra Streisand and Nyro also wrote Wedding Bell Blues, which was a hit for the The 5th Dimension.

But she was a remarkable talent, as Barton goes on to say:

If Nyro’s story feels in some way confounding, all that turn-tailing on talent and success, all those steps to the left when the going looked so good, it’s perhaps consoling to consider that the unexpected twists that ran through her life were in some way an echo of her songwriting – full of rhythmic convolutions, free-form compositions, vocal variations. As Elton John put it: "The soul, the passion, just the out-and-out audacity of the way her rhythmic and melody changes came was like nothing I’d heard before."

More than anything, Nyro’s lyrics always felt lived. "Everything seemed exotic and heightened in her songs," Bette Midler said in the speech she made to posthumously induct Nyro into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. "She could make a trip to the grocery store seem like a night at the opera."

"Making the East End into the new West End" in 1970

The redevelopment of London's Docklands was not dreamt up by Margaret Thatcher or by Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday: it was already under way in 1970.

This film looks at the redevelopment of St Katherine Docks and their derelict, bomb-damaged warehouses. The tensions between the needs of existing inhabitants and the gentrifying ambitions of the developers are laid bare.

And where was the derelict tube station with the unfenced shaft that the mother complains about?

Click on the still above to play this film on the British Film Institute site.

Six of the Best 967

"The by-election team included Candy Piercy handling the media, Norman Baker (then a Lewes councillor) doing casework, John Ricketts in charge of direct mail, and Paul Burstow (then a staffer for the association of Lib Dem councillors) in charge of leaflets. One such leaflet gleefully pointed out that a hospital listed by the Conservatives’ media guide had just been demolished." Tides of History looks back at the Eastbourne by-election of 1990, where David Belotti's victory hastened the end of Margaret Thatcher's reign.

"Our national parks could be beacons of hope for natural climate solutions - brimming with native broadleaf woodlands, agroforestry, restored peat bogs and species-rich grassland." Danny Gross writes a briefing for Friends of the Earth.

Adam Kirsch reviews The Murder of Professor Schlick, David Edmonds' new book on the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who operated in the shadow of the rise of Nazism.

The antics in post-war Nordic children’s books - think the Moomins and Pippi Longstocking - left propaganda and prudery behind. Richard W. Orange says we need this madcap spirit more than ever.

"There’s definitely an undercurrent of class tension throughout the movie, a sense of knowing your place, even in a new town. See how Jamie feels out of place at the upper class gatherings and how uncomfortable he (and his mother) look when doctor’s daughter Mary comes to tea. The sixties was supposed to be the decade when the class system came crashing down. But even in a new town, everyone knew their level." Mod Culture reviews the 1968 film Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, which is being shown on Sony Movies Action (Freeview channel 40) late tomorrow night.

Eric Wark explores Suffolk's Shotley peninsula.

Peartree: The least used station in Derbyshire

Peartree lies a mile or so south of Derby station. Under its original name of Pear Tree and Normanton it was open between 1839 and 1968.

It reappeared with a streamlined new name in 1976 as part of the reopening of the Sinfin branch to serve the Rolls Royce works. This was not a success and the last train ran in 1993, though in theory you could present yourself at Derby station and demand a taxi to Sinfin North or Sinfin South until its official closure in 1998.

Peartree survived, though almost all trains from Derby to Crewe or Birmingham race through it without stopping.

The Sinfin branch gets a mention in this video, but there was another station between Peartree and Derby not so long ago.

Ramsline Halt, previously Baseball Ground Halt, was a single-platform station opened by British Rail in 1990 to serve the Baseball Ground, the former home of Derby County. Only four trains ever stopped there and it closed in 1997 when the club moved to its new Pride Park stadium.

Research shows bigger is not better in local government

Yesterday I wrote:

I believe local government should be local and that the idea that centralisation always leads to greater efficiency and lower costs is no more true today than it was in the 1970s when it was Labour's creed.

And then I discovered an expert report that says much the same thing. I am always happy to cite research when it supports my opinions.

That report is Bigger is not better: the evidenced case for keeping 'local' government. It's written by Colin Copus, Steve Leach, and Alistair Jones from De Monfort University and published by the District Councils' Network.

It assesses more than 300 pieces of research from around the world and is concludes that the size of councils does not make a difference to the quality or efficiency of services.

A second finding is that larger councils lead to falling public trust, falling engagement and a reduced sense of belonging to your local area and council.

Ombudsman finds Sheffield Council misled public over tree scandal

Remember the scandal over Sheffield's Labour-run council and tree-felling? The council had signed a ridiculous PFI contract that saw many healthy street trees felled.

When this caused an outcry the council turned on the protestors. They even tried to have an opposition councillor jailed for demonstrating.

There was a good article on the affair by George Monbiot.

Yesterday the Yorkshire Post covered a report on the affair by the local government and social care ombudsman:

A 25-page report by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman has recommended an unreserved public apology is issued by the council to the people of the city within the next three months over its handling of the controversial removal of thousands of street trees. ...

It concluded the council should “provide a public, unreserved apology accepting those findings of this investigation which draw attention to general failings in the implementation of its ‘Streets Ahead’ policy”, as well as providing a private apology to the complainant’s family.

The report added: “We ask it [the council] consider if there are wider implications for how it delivers services and lessons it should learn as a result of how it implemented its Streets Ahead programme. In particular, how it can embed the principles of openness and accountability across all its services.”

You can read the full report on the Ombudsman's website.

The rediscovery of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

In the 1960s the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were desperately unfashionable. A Canterbury Tale - on most days my favourite among them - was known only in a version cut and reshot for the American market and the same was true of the Shropshire-set Gone to Earth.

This BBC Arena documentary was made as their reputation was undergoing a remarkable renaissance.

Controversy over £85,000 grant to 17-year-old opera patron at Bonkers Hall

One of the beneficiaries of money from the Culture Recovery Fund hereabouts was Nevill Holt Opera.

It has its own little opera house in the former stables of Nevill Holt Hall, the stately home that many academics believe to be the model for Bonkers Hall.

So I was interested to see this from Norman Lebrecht on his Slipped Disc blog:

We’re hearing cries of ‘foul!’ over a £100,000 Arts Council handout to Nevill Holt Opera in the Midlands.

Nevill Holt was founded by Tory donor and Boris pal David Ross on his estate in Leicestershire.

Ross, 55, is chairman of the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Opera House in London.

Last month, he handed over the running of Nevill Holt Opera, giving the title ‘patron’ to his son, Carl, perhaps to avoid any suspicion of conflict with his own ROH role.

Carl is 17 and still at school. He has just accepted a lavish Arts Council cheque for £85,000.

Lebrecht concludes that "Something’s not quite kosher here."

I don't know about that - this Twitter thread from Nevill Holt Opera looks like a reply to critics of this grant - but it does sound more Darren Grimes than Peter Grimes.

A warning to libertarians: Abolish local government and your town may be taken over by bears

Conservatives in Leicestershire, as in many other parts of the country, are hell-bent on abolishing district and borough councils.

I believe local government should be local and that the idea that centralisation always leads to greater efficiency and lower costs is no more true today than it was in the 1970s when it was Labour's creed.

Support for my view comes from an article in The New Republic by Patrick Blanchfield. It is a review of the book A libertarian walks into a bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, which recounts the experience of the New Hampshire town of Grafton.

Grafton has a history of fierce independence, which I find admirable. The result, says Blanchfield, is that it has become "something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more".

So far it sounds like any number of towns on the Welsh border.

But then libertarians began to move in - Blanchfield says "the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns".

They were attracted by the Free Town Project promoted by John and Rosalie Babiarz and soon took power in Grafton:

The Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. 

Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat.

While all this was going on, bears left their usual activities in the woods to enter the town:

The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly “bold,” they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. 

One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Was there a connection between the assumption of power by the libertarians and the arrival of the bears?

Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? 

There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. 

I offer this case as a warning to Leicestershire's Tories and all who disparage local government.

At the end of the Central Line: A walk from West Ruislip into Buckinghamshire

John Rogers takes us on a walk from the end of the Central Line at West Ruislip through Ickenham, passing the River Pinn and down across the fields to the Grand Union Canal and Denham. 

We then pass Denham Aerodrome and, following the South Bucks Way, arrive at Chalfont St Peter. From here we cross Goldhill Common to Seer Green and Jordans station on the Marleybone line.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Christine Jardine makes the case for universal basic income

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Christine Jardine, Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West and the party's Treasury spokesperson, took part in a Westminster Hall debate on universal basic income.

The Lib Dems adopted the introduction of a UBI as party policy at their conference last month.

Here is part of what Christine said:

Coronavirus has changed everything. It has changed everything in much the same way—this metaphor has been used a lot—as the second world war changed everything for this society. When Beveridge put together his report in 1942, a lot of people said that it simply could not work, that it was not sensible and that the country could not afford it. What on earth was he thinking about? And yet, immediately post-war, the Labour Government set about putting that Beveridge report into action. 

What I say today is that what this country needs now is that kind of vision, and that kind of willingness to take on a challenge and to change society for the better for the next generation. It is not an opportunity that we asked for; it has come in the form of a challenge—probably the biggest challenge that any of us will face in our lifetimes. But we also have to see it as an opportunity to make progress.

Why UBI? The reason I became a convert, frankly, has been the number of phone calls and the number of people who have come to me since March this year—every day, every phone call, every person who thought they were financially secure, every person who spent decades building up a company, every person who was self-employed but now finds that they are without the support they need for the future: all that has convinced me that the only way to tackle the issue fully and to make sure that everyone gets the support they need is through a universal basic income.

Eoghan Quigg: Alive and kicking after 'the worst album of all time'

You probably won't remember Eoghan Quigg, who finished third behind third behind Alexandra Burk and JLS in the 2008 series of X Factor.

I remember him because I once posted a description of him by Charlie Brooker just because it was so striking:

Weird. Eerie. Like the spectral figure of an infant chimney sweep that suddenly appears in an upstairs window, gazing sadly at your back as you walk the grounds of a remote country mansion on a silent Christmas afternoon; alerted by an indefinable chill, you turn and, for the briefest moment, his wet, sorry eyes meet yours... and then he's gone.

And I remember him too because of a damning Guardian review of his first and only CD. It was not just damning of Quigg's talent but of the cynicism of the music business too and this evening I found it again:

Ironically, in 2009 we are so numb to hyperbole that totally appropriate phrases like "the worst album of all time" effectively divert attention away from how bad this album actually is. But this album really is phenomenally bad. 

On first listen it's tempting to say that no effort went into its creation, but on closer inspection it strikes a very clever balance. It is an album which at once satisfies demand for one Eoghan Quigg album and ensures that there will never ever be demand for a second. It's an important balance for X Factor albums like this. 

If produced cheaply enough (and the karaoke CD backing tracks show that this album has not been an expensive one) there's potential for modest profit on a debut album, but that profit would certainly turn to loss if ploughed into the promotion of a follow-up.

Despite this experience, Quigg has not given up singing - in 2014 he finished second in the contest to choose Ireland's Eurovision entry. But these days he is better known as a sportsman.

He has played soccer for Coagh United and Portstewart FC in the Northern Ireland Football League and now plays Gaelic football for Doire Trasna in the Derry county leagues.

How do I know all this? From Wikipedia and an article in The Irish News.

The new bridge at Tintagel Castle

Maybe Uther Pendragon never lived at Tintagel Castle, but recent archaeological investigations suggest that it did flourish as a high-status settlement just after the Romans left Britain.

And the Arthurian connection is one of the things that brings visitors to this spectacular site on the North Cornwall coast.

It used to be a difficult one for visitors to access or interpret. Sometime in the 14th or 15th century a natural land bridge collapsed here, taking part of the castle with it. What was left looked like two fortresses facing one another across a chasm.

In 2019 an elegant and spectacular bridge was thrown across that chasm. You can learn all about it in the video above.

I remember Tintagel as a welcome resting point on what is a brutal coast for long-distance walkers. I also recall slogging uphill to the modern village, only to find it dominated by establishments like the Morgan Le Fay Gift Shoppe and the Sir Galahad Fudge Bar.

The smug style in American liberalism

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A while ago a reader pointed me to the article The smug style in American liberalism by Emmett Rensin, suggesting there were lessons for liberals and the left in Britain.

I think he was on to something:

By the 1990s the better part of the working class wanted nothing to do with the word liberal. What remained of the American progressive elite was left to puzzle: 

What happened to our coalition?

Why did they abandon us?

What's the matter with Kansas?

The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.

The trouble is that stupid hicks don't know what's good for them. They're getting conned by right-wingers and tent revivalists until they believe all the lies that've made them so wrong. They don't know any better. That's why they're voting against their own self-interest.

As anybody who has gone through a particularly nasty breakup knows, disdain cultivated in the aftermath of a divide quickly exceeds the original grievance. You lose somebody. You blame them. Soon, the blame is reason enough to keep them at a distance, the excuse to drive them even further away.

Finding comfort in the notion that their former allies were disdainful, hapless rubes, smug liberals created a culture animated by that contempt. The result is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Financial incentive compounded this tendency — there is money, after all, in reassuring the bitter. Over 20 years, an industry arose to cater to the smug style. It began in humor, and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid.

There has always been a strong tendency in the British left that wants to reform the working class rather than liberate it, but I used to think there is also a clear liberal tendency that took the opposite view.

We need to rediscover that variety of liberalism if we are to succeed in disentangling ourselves from the attractions of smugness.

Vince Cable: Covid-19 incompetence could cost the Tories their Red Wall seats

Writing for the Independent, Vince Cable notes that the public health measures necessary to curb Covid-19 are falling most heavily on the Red Wall seats that gave Boris Johnson his majority last year:

Residents in these afflicted areas would have no particular reason to blame the government for their misfortune were it not for one piece of serious incompetence. In most countries where there are areas with rising infections there is an effective test and trace system to isolate clusters and super-spreading individuals. Germany, Korea, Sweden, China and Japan are, in different ways, controlling the disease in this fashion. Highly targeted action can then follow whether supported by rules or voluntary compliance.

But in the UK, the test and trace system is proving a disaster because of a combination of poor design, over-centralisation, defective software, inefficient and predatory private providers and poor management under the politically appointed leadership of Lady Dido Harding (some say that pop singers Dido and Lady Gaga would combine to do a better job).

It's a long and serious piece, but I like the joke and topical reference that ends this quotation.

Leicester and Leicestershire in the First English Civil War 3

The third and final part of this video deals with the Battle of Naseby, with starring roles for Market Harborough and Lubenham.

You can watch part 1 and part 2 on this blog.

IICSA evidence on Lord Janner to be heard mainly in private

The hearings for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse's strand on the treatment of allegations against Lord Janner opened this morning.

They will investigate the the actions of police, prosecutors, Leicestershire County Council and the Labour Party.

Most of the inquiry's hearing are livestreamed on its website, but most of those for the Janner strand will be held in private. The Guardian says some journalists are being allowed to watch proceedings, but will be restricted in what they can report.

The inquiry is not designed to rule on Lord Janner's guilt or innocence, but I am reminded of the way that the press had to go to court in 1991 to win the right to report the trial of Frank Beck, who was convicted of abusing children in several county council homes in Leicestershire.

Six of the Best 966

"The United Kingdom’s spiralling COVID-19 infection and death rates can best be understood as reflecting a tragic, and distinctly English, set of failures and delusions. The exceptionalism widely championed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other Brexiteers is proving fatal." Mary Fitzgerald and Peter Geoghegan tell it like it is.

The biggest myth about the Red Wall is that it was all about Brexit and that the Red Wall seats, which had voted Leave in the 2016 Referendum, fell to the Conservatives because of Boris Johnson’s repeated mantra that he would 'get Brexit done'." Joyce Quin looks at the myths and realities of the Tories' new seats.

Silviya Barrett makes the case for more and better public transport, walking and cycling for a successful, green recovery.

"There was little room for debate: if the first course of ECT did not work, I was expected to use another, and if necessary another." Pat Bracken on electroconvulsive therapy, depression and psychiatry.

James Wallace asks if English cricket has a class ceiling.

The Gentle Author bids farewell to Doorkins Magnificat, who was the incumbent cat at Southwark Cathedral until her recent death.

Matthews Southern Comfort: Woodstock

At the end of this month it will be 50 years since this single reached the top of the UK charts.

It was written by Joni Mitchell, who did not make it to the Woodstock festival, so it is based on what her then boyfriend Graham Nash told her about the event.

Matthews Southern Comfort were led by Iain Matthews, who had previously been in Fairport Convention, sharing vocal duties with Judie Dyble and then Sandy Denny. This is their own arrangement of Joni Mitchell's song.

Now based in the Netherlands, Matthews has appeared on more than 100 LPs and is still touring - see his website.

The whole of Malcolm in the Middle is on the Channel 4 website

Here is another public service announcement along the lines of my revelation that the whole of Waking the Dead is on the BBC iPlayer

Go to the Channel 4 site and you will find that all 151 episodes of Malcom in the Middle can be watched there for free.

This was a comedy about family life and coming of age, screened between 2000 and 2006, with none of the cloying scenes that such a description can suggest.

The parents - slightly larger than life and a little scary, like all parents - were briliantly played by Jane Kaczmarek and Bryan Cranston. The latter, of course, went on to find even greater fame in Breaking Bad.

Click on the image above to go to the index page for the series.

Congratulations to Roger Dunton MBE

Roger Dunton, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Harborough District Council, received the MBE in today's honours list.

He has been a member of the council since 1987 and was honoured for services to the community in Market Harborough.

Congratulations to Roger.

Rewilding the Somerset Levels

With things so grim at the moment, it's good to look for hope. And I find it in the Somerset Wildlands project:

The Somerset Levels were once England’s Okavango Delta. From pelicans to lynx, beavers to sturgeons, it would have teemed with wildlife. While what remains is wonderful, too much is now gone. We will buy land to create space for nature and natural processes, and support the reintroduction of lost species.

I had to look up the Okavango Delta and it turns out to be in Botswana.

A parallel closer to home might be Germany's lost Oderbruch, as described by Neal Ascherson:

Today, we would treasure the lost Oderbruch as one of the marvels of Europe. On its way to the Baltic, the river frayed into countless shallow channels and lagoons, into swamps, shoals and muddy islands. Twice a year, it flooded up to ten or twelve feet deep, nourishing a dense cover of waterlogged bushes. 

Here lived ‘an almost unimaginable range of insect, fish, bird and animal life’, including wolves and lynxes. Blackbourn has the sense to rely heavily on the travel writings of Theodor Fontane, the most lovable and observant of German writers, who explored the drained Oderbruch in the 1850s and collected memories of pre-reclamation times. 

Fontane was told of the enormous shoals of countless species of fish, of pike hordes so dense that they could be scooped up in buckets, of crayfish which escaped the hot summer shallows to swarm in trees from which they could be shaken down like plums.

And he wrote also about the old inhabitants. They were not Germans but Wends, Slavs who had survived in the marshes since the Germans colonised the fertile land almost a thousand years before. The Wends lived on mounds hidden in the swamp, their huts encircled by ramparts of cow-dung which kept out the floods and served as pumpkin beds.

Leicester and Leicestershire in the First English Civil War 2

Here is the second instalment of Jim Butler's latest Hidden Histories series. It shows just how much Leicester suffered in the civil war.

Part 1 was posted on Tuesday. Part 3 will be along soon.

Market Harborough coach park plans put on hold

Eighteen months ago - you can't have forgotten - I blogged about plans to provide extra parking in the centre of Market Harborough to cater for visiting coaches.

But today Harborough FM, which these days provides the best local news service, reported:

Plans to build a coach park in Market Harborough town centre have been put on hold because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Council bosses have taken the decision in light of the downturn in the coach tourism industry, potentially impacting on demand for such a facility.

They had set aside £400,000 to build it on land off Northampton Road in a bit to boost visitor numbers, as part of a new car park, but are instead to prioritise support can be offered to tourism and travel business in the District at the current time.

It's good that coach parties now think of stopping in Market Harborough for lunch or tea, but I am pleased that my favourite patch of waste ground in the town centre will survive for a bit longer.

Lib Dems slip behind Greens in latest opinion poll

It's only one poll, but this is far from encouraging.

The latest YouGov opinion poll shows the following levels of support for the parties:

                                    %   

Conservatives             41   
Labour                        38
Green Party                  6
Liberal Democrats        5

The messages the vaguely interested voter will have heard from the party in recent weeks is that we have not been listening and that we have watered down our commitment to the EU. So perhaps this poll finding should not be such a surprise.

Meanwhile Ed Davey continues his listening tour...

Billingsgate Roman baths

First discovered in 1848, these are London's best Roman remains and its only accessible Roman house.

The remains comprise a late 2nd-century house with a 3rd-century bath house in its courtyard.

This is one of a series of short films about notable but lesser known London buildings - Open House Films.

The Brexit revolution continues to devour its children - now it's Steve Baker

Steve Baker didn't just want Brexit: he wants the European Union to be "wholly torn down".

But that is no longer enough for the revolutionaries who have taken over the Conservative Party.

Hence this denunciation on The Conservative Woman blog:

Baker blames his critics for misunderstanding him, but is sounding more like a Labour frontbencher than the sensible Tory backbencher we thought him to be.

It is indeed odd that he positions himself as the champion of the white working classes yet at the same time lambasts them for being ‘racists’ and not realising how very ‘privileged’ they are. Baker epitomises disjointed thinking by championing causes which help these dispossessed Britons yet simultaneously insults them with spurious denunciations of racism.

He is tearing up all of his good work. He can’t position himself as a ‘moderate’ yet partake in race-baiting. Baker may think he is a unifying force but he is being divisive. Thanks to the government’s fear campaign and economic damage Britons are worried and scared. They don’t deserve to be harangued like this by Baker or anyone else.

Prioritising feelings about racism above evidence, as Baker has done, feeds the fragile, childish identity politics zealots, for whom emotion rules all and reaching the highest echelons of victimhood is a legitimate, and lucrative, goal. Is this why Baker now resembles the contemporary Tory, a post-liberal Puritan masquerading as a conservative, seeking publicity while insulting his core voters? Or is his recent woke awakening a way to distract from the fact that he capitulates and then grovels at the first opportunity when confronted by the government?

With its championing of the working class and its opposition to any curtailment of liberty, even because of the Covid-19 pandemic, The Conservative Woman has more in common with Class War than it does with the traditions of the Conservative Party.

Six of the Best 965

"A quarter of all England’s children’s homes are located in the North West, and that London children who go into care are quite likely to be sent far away from home. It seems likely that a big factor in this is property prices. If you were setting up a children’s home for profit, would you buy an expensive property in the South East, or a cheap one in the North West? So, children in care are shunted around the country." Bernadette Meaden says we need to stop our children being monetised.

Richard Murphy argues that the greatest beneficiaries of freeports are tax abusers and organised crime.

Jennifer Thomson reviews The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Political Thought in Modern Scotland by Ben Jackson.

"They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." Ian Prasad Philbrick on that quote from The Great Gastby.

A London Inheritance admires the London County Council's Millbank Estate and finds relics of the 19th-century prison that previously occupied the site.

Good Boye or devil dog? Frances Owen will help you judge Prince Rupert's poodle.

Roger Blackmore and the death of Imperial Typewriters

The old Leicester firm of Imperial Typewriters has cropped up on Liberal England before. I came across its impressive old factory in 2013 and last year I went to an exhibition about the 1974 strike that helped bring about its demise.

Click on the still to the right and you will be taken to the Media Archive for Central England site and an ATV report from 1975 about redundancies and attempts to keep the factory open.

That still shows the leader of the action group formed to try to save the factory. Unexpectedly, he turns out to be a young Roger Blackmore, who was to become Liberal Democrat leader of the city council from 2003 to 2004 and again from 2005 to 2007.

Roger was also a parliamentary candidate several times and in 1983 fought Jeremy Thorpe's old seat of North Devon for the Liberal Party.

As to Imperial, the whole typewriter industry was soon to be swept away by technological advance.

The bridge over the Trent that allowed horses to cross between the Nottingham and Grantham Canals

The old horse bridge used to cross the River Trent and link the Nottingham and Grantham Canals pic.twitter.com/twBRZZzY7I

— RailwayManiac (@LeeElkWright) October 6, 2020

One day in 2018 I discovered the entrances to the still navigable Nottingham Canal and the derelict Grantham Canal almost opposite one another on the banks of the Trent.

What I learnt yesterday is that there used to be a wooden bridge over the river here to allow horses hauling narrow boats to cross from one canal to the other.

It was swept away in the floods of 1875, but you can see it in the tweet above.

Poor children tend to avoid school on Christmas Jumper Day

This is so sad.

The TES reports a finding from a new initiative from the Association of School and College Leaders that pools data from across schools to allow trends to be discerned:

Duncan Baldwin, deputy policy director of ASCL, outlined one trend that was identified when groups of schools pooled their attendance data.

"We were looking at disadvantaged pupils particularly, and there was this dip on 14 December in several of the schools", he said.

"We were looking at each other, saying 'what’s special on 14 December? No idea'.

"Look on Google and, lo-and-behold, it’s Christmas Jumper Day.

"What we’ve identified, which is bleedin' obvious if you think about it, is that days that are 'fun' and for good causes are not necessarily fun at all if you don’t have a Christmas jumper.

"The net result is that a noticeable proportion of disadvantaged youngsters didn’t come to school that day.”

He described the finding as "poignant", and added: "We had heads immediately ringing their schools saying 'get it off the calendar'."

Another finding suggests that poor children are more likely to miss school on their birthdays.

Leicester and Leicestershire in the First English Civil War

The latest video in Jim Butler's latest Hidden Histories series looks at Leicester and Leicestershire in the First English Civil War and is split into three parts.

Here is the first.

Over 100 East Midlands Lib Dem councillors back campaign to save boroughs and districts

As part of the campaign to defend district and borough councils, more than 100 Liberal Democrat councillors from the East Midlands have signed a letter to Robert Jenrick, the local government secretary.

Derbyshire Live quotes from the letter:

"We believe that these proposals are fundamentally wrong in every respect. They would mean that all the councils involved would spend the next two and a half years arguing over and concentrating on, the expensive business of large-scale closure, merger, defining and reapplying for jobs, redundancy and closing down sites. This is the last thing we need when tackling Covid-19, and its economic fallout should be the number one priority.

"District and borough councils are rooted in and represent the interests of their local communities in a way which large unitary authorities cannot remotely do.

"Most recently this has been clearly shown during the Covid-19 outbreak when the flexible, local knowledge and expertise of district and borough councils has provided the cutting edge of distributing local business support grants, delivering food parcels to the local shielded population, advising their local retail businesses on social distancing strategies and much else."

Two Shropshire successes for community land trust

Good news from Shropshire: the Middle Marches Community Land Trust has succeeded in raising the money to buy Norbury Hill - I blogged about this bid the other day. 

A member of the trust told the Shropshire Star:

"We are completely astonished really – this was not something we expected. We heard on Thursday that it was all going to happen and we are sharing the land with one of our supporters, who pledged the other half. The process of buying the land is under way.

"What really made a difference to me was when people actually came up to my house and knocked on the door and gave me a cheque, because they didn't want to miss out on the deadline. It was incredible. We are just so grateful to everybody."

The star also carries the news that the same trust's appeal to raise the money to buy a meadow in Church Stretton has reached its target.

Tom Brake is the new director of Unlock Democracy

Tom Brake, who was Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington in London between 1997 and 2019, was named today as the new democracy of Unlock Democracy.

This pressure group declares on its website:

We want a democratic society that centres equality and justice for all, and a political system that reflects and upholds the values we collectively share.

We want our democratic society protected by a new and codified constitution that is built and owned by the people.

Oscar Wilde, Vaughan Wilkins and Dangerous Exile

I have mentioned the historical novelist Vaughan Wilkins, whose career flourished for 20 years or more from the mid 1930s, a few times here.

One post was about his first novel, And So - Victoria, which the censors of the day thought far too disrespectful of the royal family to be filmed. And I also went to a Nottinghamshire village to photograph his grave.

A film was later made of one of his books: Dangerous Exile was an adaptation of the novel A King Reluctant.

You can find Dangerous Exile on YouTube. Richard O'Sullivan, the hardest working British child actor of the 1950s, plays the Dauphin, the young son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, who has been smuggled out of his prison in revolutionary France.

It's not a great film, but I did spot something interesting in the opening titles the other day: Vyvyan Holland is credited as historical adviser.

Vyvyan Holland was one of the sons of Oscar Wilde. He turns out to have several such credits on IMDB, including one for The Trials of Oscar Wilde, in which Peter Finch played his father.

At start of the 19th century Europe was alive with tales that the Dauphin had escaped his captors and with young men who claimed to be him. 

They even reached America - think of 'the dolphin' in Huckleberry Finn.

But recent DNA analysis of what has always been thought to be the boy's heart confirmed that he had died in France in 1795.

What is it with revolutions and killing children?

A Conservative MP who's willing to talk about class

David Johnston, the Conservative MP for Wantage and Didcot, has written a valuable article on diversity and social mobility for the Unherd website.

Here are some of his insights:

When I ran social mobility charities, I would watch professional service firms and banks fall over themselves to hire black graduates if they were privately educated and from professional families. These young people were deemed to have the requisite social capital they claimed their "clients expect from us". If, however, you were the sort of black young person my organisations typically helped – poor and from a council estate – enthusiasm waned.

Countless companies in my experience would talk much on their websites about valuing diversity, but diversity of social background did not tend to be high on their agenda. You could be black or white so long as you were suitably middle class. I think this points to a real problem in the UK. And it is just one example of why I think when we talk about race, we also need to talk about class.

And:

At my charities, we did encourage employers to spread opportunity. Some firms struggled: "Our clients need us to have worldliness and you get that by travelling the world. So how will the young people you work with be able to demonstrate it?" This was a genuine enquiry from someone who did want to work with us. Skin colour didn’t matter, but background certainly did.

Then there was the offer of work experience from another firm that came with the warning: “They’ll be alongside the children of high net-worth individuals who we’re teaching how to invest the assets their parents gave them, so you’ll have to send us someone suitable”. Most of the people we helped were eligible for Free School Meals. It was like she lived on a different planet.

I know from my own experience that it is in the area of life experience and social capital that someone from a poor home who gets good qualifications can be lacking. Which suggests to me that the downgrading of anything in education that does not lead to exam success will not help social mobility.

You can also argue that all you really lack if you come from such a home is knowledge of the subtle signs by which people from a privileged background identify one another and exclude everybody else.

Still, it's good to see a Conservative who's happy to talk openly about social class. I wish there more Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs doing it too.

Sadopopulism: How Trump governs America

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder explains how Donald Trump can govern without policy and while causing pain:

"These are policies that are deliberately designed to administer pain, to add to the total amount of pain in American society.

"If you hurt people you create a resource of pain, of anxiety and fear which you then direct against others.

"If, in the long run, the way that you govern is by hurting people who don’t mind being hurt because they think other people are hurting worse, what you will tend to do is take the vote away from people who expect more from government, what you will tend to do is try to suppress the vote and keep the vote down to the people who accept that government can do nothing except for administer pain. And then that moves you away slowly from democracy."

Welshpool Raven Square and beyond in 1963

It's hard to credit if you visit Welshpool today, but the Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway used to make its way through the town from its modern Raven Square terminus to the main line station.

This beautiful footage from 1963 shows a train on this lost line. It would be something to be cherished just for the colour views of Welshpool back streets.

Click on the still above to view it on the British Film Institute site.

Six of the Best 964

James Baillie blogs on the Liberal Democrats' first virtual annual conference and Ed Davey: "His charge of the party 'failing to listen' came across poorly to those in the membership who feel that over the past decade, it has tended to be the leadership in which Ed has often featured, not the membership, who have often failed to address the reasons why the party lost many voters’ trust and to move forward effectively from the party’s time in government."

"For all of the country’s flaws, Britain is not America. Trying to understand its racial dynamics through the lens of another country’s does more to obscure than to illuminate the situation that black Britons like myself actually face." Tomiwa Owolade argues that its time to stop imposing American views about race on Britain.

The anthropologist James Suzman believes is is the perfect time to rein in our unsustainable work habits. Elle Hunt looks at the case she makes. 

Rosie Lindsay says Leicestershire needs a green recovery.

Paul McParlan examines the tragedy of Albert Johanneson, the pioneer who paved the way for Black footballers at the top.

"England’s Co-operative Movement is the first book to tell the intriguing story of England’s co-op architecture, from much-loved corner shops through huge department stores to the factories and warehouses that supplied them." Lynn Pearson selects her 10 favourite Co-op buildings.

Helen Reddy: Angie Baby

I'd been thinking of including a Helen Reddy song here for some time and then came the news that she had died.

Though she is more or less forgotten now, she sold a lot of records in the Seventies and was even cast in a leading role in a Disney family film, Pete's Dragon.

Most of the coverage this week was about Reddy's feminist anthem I am Woman, which was all the more effective for sounding middle of the road and Radio 2 friendly.

But some of her hits, such as this and Delta Dawn, had a surprising edge.

On not making a fuss about big cats in the British countryside

If you are looking for a cosy rabbit hole to disappear down, I recommend researching the possibility that there are big cats living in the British countryside.

I have twice blogged about the podcast Big Cat Conversations. There was a post about big cats in Leicestershire and Rutland and another about an interview with the Liberal Democrat peer and former Cornish MP Paul Tyler.

And if you want an introduction to the field, I recommend the interview that the head honcho of Big Cat Conversations, Rick Minter, gave to Howard Hughes for his The Unexplained podcast.

What emerges from all this is a picture of sober country people and professionals coming across big cats in the countryside but not making too much fuss about it. They don't want the press or trophy hunters descending on them and they don't want officialdom snooping around their farms.

It is an appealing picture that reminds me of the mood that permeates Detectorists.

I'm reminded of a passage in David Cecil's 'Visionary and Dreamer: Two poetic painters', which is a study of Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones.

Cecil mentions that the Burne-Jones loved the story of the tribe that said: "We know there is someone who walks in the forest by night, but we never talk about it." He said this closely mirrored his own attitude to religion.

Leicestershire Tories still intent on curbing local democracy

Leicestershire Conservatives are pushing ahead with their plan to abolish the county's seven district and borough councils.

Opposing the Tory plans, the Liberal Democrat county councillor Michael Mullaney has said:

"A unitary authority for Leicestershire, scrapping districts and boroughs like Hinckley and Bosworth and creating one authority for a large and diverse county like Leicestershire would I believe be wrong at anytime. However to undergo such a disruptive process during the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic is particularly mistaken.

"Research has shown that large unitaries tend to make local government less local whilst at the same time there is mixed findings on whether it actually makes any significant cost savings. A single unitary authority for 700,000 people spread across over 800 square miles of villages and Towns in Leicestershire would I believe lead to many communities on the edge of the county, like mine in Hinckley, being cut off from decision making. I hope the Conservative bosses at County Hall rethink and drop these centralising, disruptive, plans to abolish the Leicestershire districts and boroughs.

"Rather than abolishing districts and boroughs the Tory county council and our counties seven Tory MPs should be lobbying their government to bring in fair funding for Leicestershire. At present we are the worst funded area for local government by the Conservative government. This is understandably putting pressure on our local services. It's time for Tory county council leader Nick Rushton to abandon the Unitary plans for Leicestershire and renew efforts to get his councillors and county Tory MPs to deliver the fair funding from government people in Leicestershire deserve."

If you are wondering why Tories across the country are so taken with this socialist idea of centralising power, a report in the Guardian earlier week gave the game away:

Abolishing district councils could help bolster Conservative MPs in former Labour strongholds by reducing local opposition, a leading Tory has suggested to the prime minister in a leaked letter.

Boris Johnson has been urged to scrap the midsized local government bodies in part to help Conservatives in the so-called “red wall” seats that were gained in the December 2019 general election from Labour in its former northern strongholds.

The call comes from David Williams, the leader of Hertfordshire county council, who heads the Conservative group at the County Councils Network. It reveals a party political dimension to plans to simplify local government by removing district and borough councils, leaving only very local parish and town councils and larger unitary authorities like county councils. ...

In the letter, seen by the Guardian, Williams told Johnson not to "ignore the political implications [of reform] for both Conservative councillors and MPs ... and in particular our new red wall MPs".

Frank Windsor (1928-2020)

The death of the actor Frank Windsor was announced today.

In the 1960s he was, if not the most famous police officer on television, then the most famous sidekick. His character John Watt accompanied Stratford Johns' Charlie Barlow through the popular series Z Cars and Softly, Softly.

You can view them both in this clip from a 1968 episode of Softly, Softly. We first see Frank Windsor with my early hero Norman Bowler as Detective Sergeant Harry Hawkins and then the mighty Stratford Johns comes in.

BBC Genome tells me that this episode (Take Them in Singles) was first broadcast at 8pm on 10 October 1968. Which explains why I have memories of lying in bed, hearing the theme music for Softly, Softly and wishing I could watch it.

Community land trust bids to buy Norbury Hill in Shropshire

From BBC News:

Norbury Hill, situated between the Stiperstones and Long Mynd in Shropshire, has an asking price of about £200,000.

The Middle Marches Community Land Trust wants to bring the 94 acres back into public ownership and has raised most of the funds it needs.

The trust is appealing for pledges to find the last £50,000 in 24 hours.

Oliver Goode, from the land trust, said: "It [the hill] used to be wonderful flowerage meadow, which has gradually diminished over time.

"What we want to do is bring the whole meadow back into its former glory so it can provide the biodiversity, so that plants and insects can come together to improve it."

This is clearly a good cause, though I don't see how it can involve bringing the land "back into public ownership". Surely it has always been privately owned?

I walked over Norbury Hill when I was on my way from Bishop's Castle to see the Stiperstones for the very first time.

In those days I sometimes took a radio with me, so I can date this walk precisely. It took place on the day England beat Poland 3-0 at Wembley, taking an important step towards qualifying for the 1990 World Cup.

And that was 3 June 1989.

Vote for Hobbes

Wendy Chamberlain is the new Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife and her cat Hobbes is competing to be Westminster's top cat

You can read his manifesto and vote for him on the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home website.

Hobbes, I am informed, is named after Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes and not after the philosopher.

Rawcliffe: The least-used station in the East Riding of Yorkshire

We've not had any of these engaging videos for a while.

This one also takes us to Goole's docks (45 miles from the sea) and to the Dutch River (a canalised outfall of the River Don) and the Aire and Calder Navigation.

The politicking around the Lib Dem conference vote on the EU

On Sunday the Liberal Democrat conference voted to make rejoining the EU a long-term objective of the party.

The objective was hedged about with all sorts of qualifications - "at an appropriate future date to be determined by political circumstances, subject to public assent, market and trade conditions and acceptable negotiated terms".

Mark Pack has the text of the motion that conference passed. The bit about rejoining the EU is right at the end.

In order to make even this commitment, conference had to amend the motion put before it by the party's federal policy committee (of which I was a member in an earlier life).

An article in the Independent published the day before the vote suggested that the committee was expecting the conference motion to sound warmer about rejoining, In the event the unamended motion just spoke of all options being on the table.

The Independent quotes FPC memeber Olly Craven:

"We thought we had agreed one thing at the FPC meeting and then it was written up by officers, I suspect with a slight nudge from the leadership, as something much weaker.

"There has been a considerable rebellion over it. About half of the entire committee have signed up to the amendment to restore the original wording we thought we were approving. I don’t think I’ve ever seen members of the committee amending their own motion before.

"It does feel like a stitch-up. There was considerable anger when we saw what had been submitted, and emails have been flying back and forth ever since."

Despite what the leadership loyalists were pretending last weekend, no one in the party was demanding that a rejoin the EU campaign should begin the next day.

But if we want to gain support if the public turns against Brexit after it becomes clear what it means, then we must not be afraid to mention Europe now. A good Twitter thread by Nick Barlow explains why.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Britons never will be slaves

Sadly, despite Lord Bonkers' patronage, the Glee Club didn't take place this year - on The Zoom or anywhere else. So I am still to hear my extra verse of On Exmoor Baht 'at sung.

This entry completes are latest visit to Bonkers Hall. If you have been, thanks for reading. You can also read this diary in the current issue of Liberator, which can be downloaded free from the magazine's website.

Sunday

Call me a dangerous Radical, but I have some sympathy with the sentiment that Britons never will be slaves, so I have always been one to defend the mafficking at the Last Night of the Proms. (Besides, I have made a neat profit from the European Union flags bought by the Promenaders outside the Royal Albert Hall in recent years.) Equally, I defend our own Glee Club at Conference from those who would replace it with a discussion on equality in the workplace with only carrot juice served. (It would be invidious to mention Jo Swinson in this context.)

How we shall manage this year when everyone is attending virtually on The Zoom I know not, but I look forward to seeing you there.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Haddock and chips (hold the mushy peas)
• The little inmates hung upon my every word
• When teddy bears terrorised Britain
• Lunch with Freddie and Fiona
• The occasional bulk order from a gang of armed robbers
• The Stilton Strike of 1919

The Victorian Society names its 10 most endangered buildings

The Victorian Society has published its annual list of the 10 most endangered buildings. It includes the Brighton Hippodrome, which you can see in the photo above.

Griff Rhys Jones, the society's president, says:

Many of our Victorian gems have a depressing recent story. Often profit takes priority, and buildings are neglected until they have reached a complete state of dereliction. These buildings were built with great skill, and they brighten their urban environment. We know that restoring heritage of this kind adds value to an area. Never has there been a time, with the retail sector dealt another blow and the town centre fading as a business hub, for us to recognise that if we want our city centres to continue to be useful, visited and adored they had better look great.