Nick Clegg announced the Stonehenge tunnel in 2014, but the local Lib Dems weren't keen

Here's a cutting from the Salisbury Journal nine years ago:

The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was at Stonehenge this morning to announce the long awaited £1.1billion tunnel under Stonehenge as part of one of the biggest road building plans in living memory. ...

Mr Clegg said: “The A303 as anyone who lives in the South West knows is a very important route and it is blighted by bottlenecks.

“The traffic slows to a walk past the stones and we do not just want to rebalance the books we want to rebalance the British economy and that means linking different parts of the country.

“The money is not only there but we are going to legislate on it and it will become part of law.”

But not everyone was pleased with the announcement:

Despite the fact it was announced by the leader of the Liberal Democrats the local party remain sceptical about the project and have called for a local referendum something that was ruled out by Mr Clegg.

The parliamentary candidate Reeten Banerji said: “We are not keen that the tunnel plan is being linked with improvements to the whole A303.

“We would like the money to be used for road improvements all the way from Somerset to Amesbury. We suspect that linking the money is going to be a reason to kick the entire project into the long grass.

“The local Liberal Democrats are going to stand up to the national party and would like to see the tunnel option on a local referendum with other alternatives.”

As the person who tweeted this cutting pointed out, there was little sign of gratitude for Clegg's announcement among West Country voters at the following year's general election.

There should be a blue plaque: Jim Dale's birthplace in Rothwell

He is remembered in Britain as the star of 11 Carry On films and, if you really know your stuff, as a pop star of the 1950s who was recorded by George Martin, but there is more to Jim Dale than that. Olivier recruited him to the National Theatre Company, where they acted Shakespeare together.

In the US he is a massive Broadway star and famous for his readings of the Harry Potter books. It would be interesting to know why Stephen Fry's versions were not thought suitable for the audiobook market there.

Dale was born in 1935 in the little Northamptonshire town of Rothwell. As it was a sunny afternoon and a bus bound for Rothwell passes down my road every hour, I thought I would go there and photograph his birthplace.

So here it is. Sure enough for this part of the county, there is a former shoe factory standing opposite.

Later. It's been pointed out to me that there are a couple of problems with this post.

First, you don't qualify for a blue plaque until you are dead, and Jim Dale is happily still with us.

Second, despite what my source said, this is not his birthplace. Dale was born in a cottage in Fox Street, Rothwell, that has since been demolished, and grew up with in Jubilee Street. That house is still there.

Apart from that...

Protect your children from the National Elf Service

I have long suspected I shall live to see the fall of Western civilisation - possibly by next Thursday.

Two Christmases ago, Liberal England linked to an article on the sinister side of the sudden rise of the Elf on the Shelf - or Santa's Nark, as I prefer to call it:

Through play, children become aware about others’ perspectives: in other words, they cultivate understandings about social relationships. The Elf on the Shelf essentially teaches the child to accept an external form of non-familial surveillance in the home when the elf becomes the source of power and judgment, based on a set of rules attributable to Santa Claus. Children potentially cater to The Elf on the Shelf as the “other,” rather than engaging in and honing understandings of social relationships with peers, parents, teachers and “real life” others.

What is troubling is what The Elf on the Shelf represents and normalizes: anecdotal evidence reveals that children perform an identity that is not only for caretakers, but for an external authority (The Elf on the Shelf), similar to the dynamic between citizen and authority in the context of the surveillance state. Further to this, The Elf on the Shelf website offers teacher resources, integrating into both home and school not only the brand but also tacit acceptance of being monitored and always being on one’s best behaviour--without question.

By inviting The Elf on the Shelf simultaneously into their play-world and real lives, children are taught to accept or even seek out external observation of their actions outside of their caregivers and familial structures. Broadly speaking, The Elf on the Shelf serves functions that are aligned to the official functions of the panopticon. In doing so, it contributes to the shaping of children as governable subjects.

You laughed, didn't you?

But look what I saw in a local shop the other day. That's right, an Elf Surveillance Camera.

The packaging says 'Shh! It's a dummy!' - presumably you're not meant to tell your children that. But how long before real cameras are sold under the Elf banner, linked to Ofsted HQ and hacked by the Russians and Chinese?

Be Bop Deluxe: Ships in the Night

Be Bop Deluxe were formed in 1972 by Bill Nelson from Wakefield. Discogs says of them:

Musically restless Be Bop Deluxe never actually played Be-Bop music, and dabbled instead with genres that ranged from prog rock to proto-punk and new wave. 

Ships in the Night, their only UK hit (it reached no. 23 in 1976), displays some of that restlessness. It starts off as though it is trying to turn into Mama Mia by Abba, and goes through other twists after that.

It seemed this song was never off the radio in 1976, so I was surprised to find it hadn't been a bigger hit. But then the years between glam and punk weren't kind to the singles chart, so any single this interesting would have stood out to mainstream radio DJs with good taste in music. There were a few, even on wonderful Radio 1.

Searching for PC Bodger

Back in the Fifties, before I was born, my mother worked as a secretary for the police in Somerset. Many of her stories of those days involved a particular officer: PC Bodger.

There was the time he stopped the Suffragan Bishop of Bath and Wells and his wife because their car was going so slowly. "What's the matter? You drunk or summat?"

My mother saw the resultant letter of complaint; "Such a lifelike imitation of the Gestapo one never thought to see in England."

And there was his finest hour: the opening of the Chew Valley Reservoir. 

The stories of his controlling the crowds with a megaphone - "Make way for Her Majesty the Queen" and "You boys! Stop playing with your balls there in the street" - went round the force.

So I thought I would see if I could find PC Bodger in the British Newspaper Archive. And it turned out that I could.

In July 1957 the Bristol Post reported that a George Chambers had received 12 months probation, subject to his seeking medical help, after being convicted of assaulting Bodger:

For Chambers Mr Roger Stokes recalled that at the original hearing the assaulted officer PC Jack Bodger, of Montacute, had said he had always known Chambers as a peaceful citizen, The assault been completely contrary to his character. Although he had been struck two blows, the officer said they caused him no injury.

Now I knew Bodger's first name and that he was a thoroughly decent sort.

So I was pleased to find that when he retired from the police in 1964, it was with the rank of Sergeant. There are several report from that time, and we learn that he had been variously stationed at Weston-super-Mare, Street, Minehead, Taunton, Montacute and Yeovil.

He also served in the Army between 1939 and 1945 with the Royal Tank Corps and the RASC Amphibious Corps.

But Sergeant Jack Bodger hadn't finished with public service. As a story from the Bristol Evening Post reveals, he served as Yeovil Town Council's macebearer from his retirement in 1964 until 1984.

In 1984 the new officeholder told the Post that Bodger's uniform fitted him, but the following year a report in the same paper said the council had been obliged to shell out for a larger one.

Clearly, it was hard to find a man of Jack Bodger's calibre.

The Joy of Six 1185

Nick Harvey and Paul Tyler talk to Arthur Snell about their book Can Parliament Take Back Control? He says they have "produced a short, easily readable book which contains a set of clear proposals, around elections, parliamentary procedure, reform of the upper house and standards in public life. Although it’s just about parliament, this book could be titled How to Fix Britain, because if its recommendations where followed, our national life would be improved immeasurably." 

Post-Covid transport recovery, supporting the night economy, from-the-ground-up regeneration, harnessing Smart Cities tech. It's all in the Liberal Vision for Urban Britain from Matthew Pennell.

"'Discipline has broken down completely and the party feels ungovernable,' a senior Tory adviser told HuffPost UK. 'The PM has managed to anger pretty much all sides of the party, which is quite the achievement.'" Kevin Schofield on Rishi Sunak's impossible job.

Moheb Costandi argues that while the neurodiversity movement has empowered many people with autism, it favours the high-functioning and overlooks those who struggle with severe autism.

Julian Barnes reviews a book on Monet, but what he has to say about corruption in the world of art criticism is the real eyeopener.

"Egged on by manager Stephen Woolley (who would go on to produce British films such as Mona Lisa and Scandal), its programming exuded arthouse cool, the wired, insurgent energy of post-punk music, and the filthiness of American grindhouse." Sukhdev Sandhu watches a documentary about the Scala cinema, which flourished in King's Cross between 1978 and 1993.

The Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb

The Night of the Hunter, Charles's Laughton's only film as a director, is a masterpiece. But it's wonderful Southern Gothic atmosphere is all there in the novel by Davis Grubb on which it is based.

A post at Thoughts on Papyrus examines the novel's appeal:

To instil a sense of horror, Davis Grubb relies on atmosphere, general eeriness and the persistent sense of danger, rather than on explicit scenes. When reading the novel, there is a feeling that danger is ever present all around, lurking somewhere very close and waiting to strike.

The horror is almost subtle, and it helps that children are involved since few great effective horror stories can bypass children (for example, see Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw). 

The sense of horror comes from one charismatic character – Harry Powell – The 'Preacher'. When his character comes to the scene in the very first chapter when he talks to Ben Harper in prison, there emerges one terrifying image of a man so psychopathic and ruthless it will be the substance of everyone’s nightmare. 

One of the most disturbing aspects of Powell’s personality is that he can present the appearance of normality, decency and respectability, and he relies on his own twisted logic and reason (including the word of God) to justify his every action. 

There are two sides to Powell’s external presentation, just like his tattooed fingers, one arm spelling L-O-V-E and another – H-A-T-E. When Powell gets the hint from doomed Harper than his children may know where their father hid the money, Powell finds himself released from prison and gets close to Harper’s widow, trying to make friends with Harper’s children. 

Will the children be able to see through 'Preacher‘s' fake smiles and friendliness, not disclose their father’s secret, and finally make their escape? The deadly game begins.

It happens there are three copies of the novel in Waterstone's, Market Harborough, at present. I'd get down there and grab one.

And the film? Go on then.

Nottingham Symphony: The city in 1971

I went to Nottingham yesterday - you'll be amazed what I get up to these days - and was reminded of this film. So I'm sharing it with you.

Click on the image above to view Nottingham Symphony on the Media Archive for Central England site.

It's a wonderful scrapbook of they city, and the MACE site tells you what you are seeing scene by scene, but the date of 1969 it gives the film must be wrong, at least for some of the footage.

At 4:10 we see a cricket game at Trent Bridge. Rather wonderfully, the two Nottinghamshire batsmen at the crease are Gary Sobers and Derek Randall, but Randall did not make his county debut until 1971.

Add in the urchins collecting '1p for the guy" at 35:45, and a 1971 completion date is conclusively proved. 

Paddy Ashdown didn't have a British passport when he died

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"I was a passionate European, I still am and so was Paddy. In fact when he died he didn’t have a British passport. He had an Irish passport - like John Le Carré, who was a friend. I can’t tell you how much that saddens me."

In 2021 Jane Ashdown, the widow of the former Liberal Democrat leader, gave an interview to Seth Dellow for the Marshwood Vale Magazine. She talked candidly and emotionally about her life in and around the world of politics.

Listen to the interview.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Whoever wrote that never employed Meadowcroft

Where else to end out latest week at Bonkers Hall but beneath the slender spire of St Asquith's? There was time for a stiffener at the Bonkers' Arms before lunch at the Hall too.

Sunday

To St Asquith’s, where the Revd Hughes takes as his text Matthew 8:9: “For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.“ 

All I can say is that whoever wrote that never employed Meadowcroft.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• We have talked of little but Europe ever since
• "Beelzebub’s Brownies"
• I toss the volume aside
• A feathered headdress on state occasions
• All over the herbal tea market like a boss
• A foul-smelling bird of uncertain temper

Keir Starmer was right: How Margaret Thatcher bankrolled a generation of left-wing entrepreneurs and artists

I don't subscribe to the Telegraph, so I may not have read everything Keir Starmer had to say about Margaret Thatcher earlier this week. But what I did see was wholly unobjectionable.

Starmer was quoted as saying Thatcher had "set loose our natural entrepreneurialism".

Well, that was what she dreamed of doing. Most Conservative measures to help small businesses turn out to help large businesses rather more, but in one area at least Thatcher's policies did have a positive effect. And it often involved young entrepreneurs with very unThatcherite views.

A Guardian article from this summer remembered the summer of 1983:

That same month, a new government initiative was rolled out nationwide. The Enterprise Allowance Scheme was the brainchild of a Treasury civil servant called Peter Kemp and had been trialled over the previous two years. 

Despite its bland name, it was a daring concept. If citizens wanted to set up a small business, the government would guarantee an income of £40 a week for up to 12 months, and an escape from dole checkups. 

If your business plan and a savings test passed muster – and for three-quarters of applicants it did – you were good. For the decade or so that it ran, more than half a million people ended up using it. Many were under 25.

And the article continued:

There was one unlikely side-effect, almost certainly unplanned by Treasury mandarins – the birth of an entire generation of British creatives. Successful EAS alumni included Alan McGee of Creation Records, Laurence Bell of Domino, and Julian Dunkerton, who founded Superdry; musicians such as Jarvis Cocker and Shaun Ryder; artists including Tracey Emin, Jeremy Deller and Edmund de Waal.

Forty years after the scheme was rolled out, it’s a faintly astonishing thought: would Britpop and the YBAs have happened without a hardline Conservative government? Was Thatcherism, widely detested by the arts establishment, actually good for culture? When I put these questions to the artist Rachel Whiteread, she chuckles. “Yeah, it’s a little bit strange, the whole thing. I don’t think they had a clue what would happen.”

Well that's the good thing about markets: they can overturn the existing order. It's why we Liberals support them.

Labour was at pains to associate itself with the arts in the run up to its victory in 1997, but mutual the love affair didn't last. 

This report appeared in the Herald in March 1998:

Tony Blair has lost his cool. According to a band of leading figures in the music world, the Prime Minister has betrayed the principles on which he was elected and should no longer be regarded as an honorary member of the ''Cool Britannia'' movement.

The ''band'' is fronted by two Glaswegians, Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream, and the head of Creation Records, Alan McGee, who gave £50,000 to Labour's General Election fund.

And McGee's complaint?

Alan McGee said the Government was making it harder for musicians. Mr McGee serves on Government task-force committees - but refused to go to a meeting with Employment Minister Andrew Smith a fortnight ago in protest at Labour's Welfare to Work policy.

He said he wanted the Government to introduce a scheme to allow young artists to by-pass requirements to take the first job on offer so they could develop their musical skills.

The NME went so far as to produce the front page and report you see above. An account of Tony Blair's response to it says of the paper's original report:

Singled out for heaviest objection were Government policies on curfews for young people, the abolition of supplementary allowances for those without work, imposition of thousand-pound tuition fees for university students and a total rejection of any debate on repealing Britain’s outdated drugs laws.

This just suggests that someone at the paper had got round to reading Labour's 1997 manifesto.

My memories of Labour's polices on youth unemployment from this era are summed up by this BBC News story:

A pilot scheme in Coventry to remove unwanted tattoos from the unemployed has received a £2m government grant.

Many jobless people believe their colourful designs put off employers, but tattoo removal costs between £500 and £1,000.

The employment service in Coventry is considering removing tattoos for nothing as part of a broader programme to help jobseekers become more employable.

A generous policy in its way, but it was all about fitting people into existing employment opportunities. It was never going to give rise to new artistic movements or musical styles.

Under the Conservatives (and under the Lib Dems during the Coalition years) unemployment problem has been about using poverty to force people off benefits one way or another. And there are few signs that Labour will be much different after the next election.

There are many among the young employed who would benefit from a revival of Thatcherism.

Shane Warne watches a 13-year-old Rehan Ahmed bowl

Leicestershire's Rehan Ahmed was England's most economical bowler in today's 50-over international against the West Indies, with 2-40 off his 10 overs. As I write, Brook and Buttler are knocking off the runs after an earlier wobble, but who knows with England at the moment?

Ahmed was bowling in the nets to England batsmen when he was 12. This video shows Shane Warne watching him the following summer year and being impressed.

One notable thing about Ahmed is that, like Warne and unlike many other wrist spinners, he has a simple and classical bowling action. Here's to the future.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A foul-smelling bird of uncertain temper

Lord Bonkers loses no opportunity within the party's inner counsels to oppose any move for us to have a new logo. The reason, I now realise, is that he doesn't want to be faced with playing host to "that wretched creature" for the rest of its days.

Saturday

Libby, the Liberal Democrats’ mascot, is, as I have observed before, a foul-smelling bird of uncertain temper. When I give her the run of the Bonkers Hall Estate over the summer recess so she can breathe some fresh country air, it generally proves more of a duty than a pleasure. Of late, however, Libby has revealed an unexpected sense of humour. She has taken to impersonating a vulture and circling the skies above the constituency offices of Conservative MPs with small majorities. Already, more than one junior minister from Surrey has handed back his portfolio after being haunted by her. This evening I tell mine host at the Bonkers’ Arms all about her exploits in the hope he will reconsider his decision to bar her after that affair with the pickled eggs last year.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• We have talked of little but Europe ever since
• "Beelzebub’s Brownies"
• I toss the volume aside
• A feathered headdress on state occasions
• All over the herbal tea market like a boss

The Joy of Six 1184

Armenia is facing its most precarious moment in three decades. The loss of Karabakh, a region with a centuries-old history of Armenian habitation and heritage, will reverberate for generations, says Thomas de Waal.

The two unitary authorities forged out of the wreckage of the bankrupt Northamptonshire County Council are run by many of the  Conservative politicians who did the wrecking, Now, reports Sarah Ward, those unitaries are in dispute about where the debts should land.

"Anyone working in journalism has received letters from people claiming to have evidence of a vast conspiracy against them, often handwritten in tiny scrawls over many pages. They are terribly sad, and they go straight into the bin. HarperCollins, receiving such a missive, instead decided to write the author a large cheque." Robert Hutton dissects The Plot by Nadine Dorries.

Thomas Pluck says goodbye to Shane MacGowan: "Shane also sang a duet with Sinéad O’Connor, a couple years after her protest of the Catholic church child sex abuse scandal made her persona non grata in the media. ... Shane was low in '95 as well, so it makes me smile that he worked with her when she was hated, and she lifted him up after he’d been kicked out of his band."

The Duke of Wellington reviews Napoleon.

"There are still a lot of strong feelings associated with crop circles. There are some people who believe none of them are hoaxes and all are caused by some supernatural, alien means. Other people are resolute that every single one of them across the world, with the majority popping up in Wiltshire, are human creations. And then, there are some people who have been researching the crop circle phenomena themselves for years, and they believe not all circles can be attributed to high jinks in the countryside." Weird Wiltshire looks at the crop circle action in the county this year.

Garry Kasparov visits Bobby Fischer's grave

Bobby Fischer's victory over Boris Spassky in their 1972 match in Reykjavik put chess on the front pages of the world's newspapers. And, though Spassky was always his own man, the contest was seen as a symbol of the Cold War.

Fischer never defended his title, and his life was to become a long descent into paranoia. He and Spassky played a second match 20 years after their first - Fischer won this too, but neither player was the force he had been,

The match was played in the short-lived Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which was under United Nations sporting sanctions. For this reason, the United States issued a warrant for Fischer arrest. He was never to return there.

Eventually it was Iceland that stepped in to offer Fischer asylum, in both senses of the word. He died there in 2008.

This film shows a later world champion, Garry Kasparov. visiting Fischer's grave. 

Writing this, I realise that these two players represent two strikingly different kinds of chess genius. 

Fischer's play was so clear and logical that he made you feel that you could play that way too, whereas Kasparov's brilliant sacrifices seemed to come out of a clear blue sky. You had to play over his games more than once to work out what had happened.

Kasparov held the world title for 15 years, which is one reason I rank him above Fischer. But I wonder if their two different kinds of genius can be found in other fields - the arts as well as sport?

Lord Bonkers' Diary: All over the herbal tea market like a boss

One day we may discover what befell those nuns to cause the sudden closure of the Bonkers Hall Safari Park. I have, incidentally, never been wholly convinced that all the animals were rounded up that day, as I still hear tales of visiting teams' boundary fielders suddenly disappearing when they take on Lord Bonkers XI here at the Hall.

For the time being, I shall merely observe that there is nothing like the Dukes of Rutland suffering misfortune to brighten the old boy's day.

Friday

To London for the annual general meeting of the National Trust as I am seriously considering opening the gardens at the Hall to the public next year. The ill-feeling occasioned by the sudden closure of the Bonkers Hall Safari Park appears at last to have abated – really, you have one coachload of nuns involved in an unfortunate incident and you never hear the last – so perhaps it is time to dip a toe in the stately home racket again. 

I have brought Cook with me so she can place herself abreast of the latest developments in scone technology – the Wise Woman of Wing is all over the herbal tea market like a boss, so I need not worry about that side of things. 

Me? I am, at Meadowcroft’s insistence looking for information on security fencing – he keeps going on about the possibility of visitors harming his cherished Rutland flytrap. To be candid, I am more anxious to see that the thing does not get loose and give the gutter press something else with which to blacken my name.

First, however, come the results of the Trust’s internal elections and the news that the Duke of Rutland’s daughter, together with the rest of her miserable slate, has been defeated. Reader, I simply roared.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• We have talked of little but Europe ever since
• "Beelzebub’s Brownies"
• I toss the volume aside
• A feathered headdress on state occasions

Santa facing eviction amid planning row with local council

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Our coveted Headline of the Day Award goes to the Bristol Post for this seasonal story from Frome.

Ho ho ho!

The part-abandoned Tooting, Merton & Wimbledon Railway

Jago Hazzard is our guide to this South London line. Parts of it are still in use, and more remains of the abandoned stretches than you may expect.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A feathered headdress on state occasions

Lily Gladstone is related to William Ewart Gladstone on her mother's side, while on her father's side she is descended from Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief who was a signatory of one of its treaties with the Canadian government.

The opportunity was too good to miss, even if my knowledge of American Indian culture has not progressed much since I read Little Plum in the Beano - and even that now removes the word "um" if it reprints old strips.

Gentle humour at the expense of foreigners is a sin I must confess, but I do think a feathered headdress would have suited the Grand Old Man.

Thursday

You may have read that Lily Gladstone, the star of Killers of the Flower Moon (‘Goes On A Bit’ – High Leicestershire Radical), is the great, great granddaughter of a cousin of the Grand Old Man and grew up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation until she was 11. 

For some reason, the historians rarely touch upon William Ewart Gladstone’s American Indian heritage, but I can reveal that Queen Victoria’s animus towards him was partly occasioned by his insistence on wearing a feathered headdress on state occasions and his habit of calling her “paleface” when she failed to agree with him. My own father told me that the occasional “heap big” cropped up in his conversation to the very end. 

All I shall add it is that it’s a great shame that the disputants of the Irish Question did not agree to “smoke um pipe of peace” when he urged the idea upon them.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• We have talked of little but Europe ever since
• "Beelzebub’s Brownies"
• I toss the volume aside

Euro 2024 draw: Uefa investigates after sex noises disrupt broadcast

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BBC Sport wins our Headline of the Day Award and the judges suggest your read the story below:

Uefa says it is investigating after sex noises were transmitted during the broadcast of the Euro 2024 draw on Saturday.

Lewd noises could be heard as Switzerland were drawn in Group A with Scotland, Hungary and hosts Germany.

A similar incident occurred on the BBC in the build-up to January's FA Cup tie between Liverpool and Wolves.

YouTube prankster Daniel Jarvis claimed responsibility for both that and the latest prank