Anne Scott-James was the women's editor of Picture Post during most of the second world war. This photograph of her dates from 1941 and was published as part of a feature with the headline Should Women Wear Trousers?
I don't know if this was a serious piece on wartime clothes rationing or just a bit of fun, but it's a wonderful photo.
Throughout my boyhood Anne Scott-James was, together with Dilys Powell, Frank Muir and Denis Norden, one of the regular panellists on the BBC Radio 4 quiz show My Word.
She was the daughter of the Liberal journalist Rolfe Scott-James and the mother of another journalist, Max Hastings.
George Foulkes says broadcasters are warping our politics by failing to subject Nigel Farage to the scrutiny that other politicians rightly experience.
"Along with restoring trust in the church’s safeguarding processes, Mullally must also heal divisions within the church’s hierarchy over leadership culture. In the weeks leading up to Welby’s resignation, both he and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, were accused of using 'coercive language' by the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley." George Crozier on the many challenges facing the new Archbishop of Canterbury.
"Today, Denmark's wolf population is estimated to be just over 40 wolves, with at least seven breeding pairs known to have produced cubs. Yet even this small number has sparked fierce debates over livestock and public safety in one of Europe's most intensively farmed countries, with views on wolves seeming to reflect wider political divides across Denmark." Kristian Kongshøj and Troels Fage Hedegaard explain why 40 wolves have shaken Danish politics.
My memory of the Eighties is that Peter Wright was seen as being obsessive about Soviet infiltration of British intelligence. But didn't Karla arrange things to make Control look like that?
And in this programme from 1984 Wright cuts an impressive figure. No Percy Alleline he.
Let's end with a couple of pieces of trivia.
Malcolm Turnbull, the future Australian prime minister, who embarrassed the British government in court while fighting to allow Wright to publish his memoirs, is related to both Angela Lansbury and Oliver Postgate.
And Roger Hollis, whether he was a spy or not, was the father of Adrian Hollis, who was a correspondence chess grandmaster.
At present they are run by the Ironbridge Gorge Museums Trust, which was set up in 1967. The National Trust is also assuming responsibility for the upkeep of 35 listed buildings and scheduled monuments, including Blists Hill Victorian Town, the Coalbrookdale Museum of Iron and the Old Furnace.
When I visited Ironbridge back in 2011, I didn't bother with any maps or guide books, I just set out for a stroll along the river. The first attraction I came to was the Jackfield Tile Museum, which I wouldn't have planned to visit, yet it turned out to be fascinating.
I hope the National Trust can keep this unique collection of attractions thriving.
The Guardian reports:
Councillors voted on Thursday to approve a new parking plan for the city whereby owners of larger vehicles will be charged more for parking permits because their cars "take up more parking space and are a danger to other road users".
The plan states that vehicles that weigh more than 2,400kg fully laden will be subject to a surcharge "to encourage drivers to switch to smaller vehicles"; this will later be reduced to 2,000kg for non-electric vehicles.
Dan De'Ath, the cabinet member for transport on the Labour-run authority, is quoted by the paper as saying that SUVs (sports utility vehicles) are:
"much larger than your average car, they produce far more wear and tear on our roads, but fundamentally if you hit a child while driving a heavy SUV the chances of that child dying are grossly inflated.
"We don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask people driving those kinds of vehicles to pay a little bit more for road wear and the extra space they take up. We’re not talking about SUV-shaped cars, we’re talking about very heavy American-style vehicles."
No doubt there will be protests, and those protests will be widely reported. But Sadiq Khan's ULEZ (ultra-low emission zones) schene in London, and his refusal to bow to a noisy minority, provides a good model for Cardiff Council to copy.
Two years ago the Conservative Party was convinced that opposition to ULEZ was going to win them the coming general election, Today they never mention them.
Photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash
Alan Robertshaw looks at the Crown Prosecution's decision not to pursue the case against two men who were charged with spying on behalf of China.
Reading between the lines, he is puzzled by it.
He gives links to the three witness statements the government supplied on YouTube, and he has also posted an earlier video on the case there.
Alan's YouTube account is well worth following for topical discussion of legal matters.
The Guardian says the meeting took place in March between Farage and a delegation from Trump’s state department. According to the New York Times, it was overseen by the US embassy and brokered by the Alliance Defending Freedom group. The meeting discussed abortion rights, free speech and online safety laws.
The Guardian reports goes on to say:
In response to the meeting, the Liberal Democrats accused Farage of working with Trump officials and anti-abortion campaigners who want to water down women’s rights and urged him to explain what was discussed.
Daisy Cooper, the party’s deputy leader, also called on the government to summon the US ambassador to get to the bottom of "what looks like a blatant attempt to interfere in the UK’s domestic laws".
"Nigel Farage needs to come clean … and explain if his party would weaken women’s rights if he came to power," she said.
"The Liberal Democrats will stand up against these attempts to turn Trump’s America into Farage’s Britain and roll back the clock on decades of progress."
Thanks to a nomination from a reader, the Hastings Independent wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award.
Clive Simpson says the Lincolnshire Fens desperately need new flood defences: "Most of the area’s pumping stations and sluices were commissioned in the 1960s and recent Environment Agency studies show what would happen if those pumps stopped: vast swathes of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire would be under 1.5m of water. Combine this with rising sea and tide levels, and it’s clear why the issue is urgent."
The Riyadh comedy festival was an ultimately doomed attempt by the Saudi government to buy the kind of authentic grassroots culture it is unwilling to countenance, argues Jonathan Liew.
"For centuries, such creatures were cast as messengers of fate, straddling the boundary between the natural and the supernatural. Yet today, the omens these animals bring are no longer warnings of ghosts or witchcraft, but of something far more tangible: their own survival." Jessica Lloyd May and Matthew Jones find the medieval folklore of Britain’s endangered wildlife – from hedgehogs to nightjars – is developing a new meaning.
Nicola Skinner finds pet-sitting provides the ideal single-parent holiday.
Ben Finlay chooses ten autumnal British albums – I strongly approve of his number 1.
Lord Bonkers isn't going to like this, because he's convinced that Rutland Water has always been there. How else, he would ask, do you explain the presence of the Monster?
But Jay Naylor made this film a month ago, before the reservoir began to fill again. He introduces it on YouTube like this:
Today we explore some long forgotten structures, forests and buildings which have laid submerged under Rutland Water for many years, revealed by drought this summer. The remains of the Burley on the Hill fish ponds, the lost buildings of Hambleton and the graves of Hambleton Wood are all on show at the moment for anyone willing to look!
Like and subscribe – just don't let Lord Bonkers catch you doing it.
Under plans approved by the city council two years ago, the Mercury reminds us:
Just the facades of the former public house as it looks into Albion Street and Chatham Street were to be retained and a new five-storey building built behind these.
Now, says the paper:
That proposal now appears to have been abandoned, however, and a new project has been put forward for the site. This latest plan would instead see the Black Boy "preserved" and "restored", maintaining its "strong presence" on the street corner, planning documents state.
It also reports that planning documents say the scheme was discussed with the city council and the civic society before it was formally submitted, and positive feedback was received from both bodies.
More ley line adventures in Shropshire with Third Rate Content. This time they're at All Saints', Worthen and, though they don't find her grave, tell the tale of Mary Anne Talbot, an Englishwoman who wore male dress and became a soldier and sailor during the French Revolutionary Wars.
If you want some scepticism about ley lines, see my first post on this one and the comments.
There are three names on the list:
Luvell Anderson explains why authoritarians like Donald Trump are afraid of satire: "Although humour can seem trivial to some, we should not underestimate its power to shift cultural agendas. Contempt toward elites in the form of satirical mockery can be cathartic and a demonstration of solidarity for those of lower status. Humourists can have a deep impact on the public imagination."
Joe Wilkins on scientists' confidence in AI: "In a preview of its 2025 report on the impact of the tech on research, the academic publisher Wiley released preliminary findings on attitudes toward AI. One startling takeaway: the report found that scientists expressed less trust in AI than they did in 2024, when it was decidedly less advanced."
"Children's books are personal. 'Often', he writes, the authors 'are writing from a wound – whether a wound sustained in childhood, or the wound of having had to leave it behind in the first place.' They are psychologically complex, too, 'a document not of how children are, but how adults imagine children to be, or how they imagine they want them to be'." Jeremy Wikeley review Sam Leith's The Haunted Wood.
Sean Burns looks back at Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers.
"In a rational world, this remarkably resilient church would be celebrated, rather like the old bombed out cathedral in Coventry. It would be a tourist attraction, perhaps decked out with a few posters setting out its history and celebrating its fortitude. But no. The dour town planners in Plymouth instead implemented a far more cunning plan. They built a roundabout around the church ensuring no one could to wander round its walls staring at the sky and possibly think about their god and his purpose." Christian Wolmar on one church's sad fate.
A wonderful find on the Classic British Telly YouTube channel – everybody like and subscribe, please.
Patricia Routledge was born to play Maggie Hobson, but Michael Caine's Northern accent is very much a work in progress.
Click on the video above for a short scene that features them both.
You can see more early Michael Caine on this blog in The Ship That Couldn't Stop.
Nick Cohen's guest on the latest edition of his podcast The Lowdown is the novelist and historian James Hawes, who reminds us that history has shown that there are no lengths the Conservative Party will not go to in pursuit of power.
Hawes forecasts a pact or even a merger between the Conservatives and Reform UK, and Cohen points out that no Conservative leader since David Cameron has mounted a serious attack on Nigel Farage and his parties.
If these is hope of keeping the far right out of power in Britain, Hawes concludes, is lies in the Liberal Democrats winning even more Tory seats in the South of England.
It's not the most optimistic podcast I've heard, but it's well worth a listen.
The Frogs of Portland challenging Trump's goons and their occupation of the city remind me of the tactics adopted by the opposition of the Communist regime in Poland.
The quotation below comes from the East European supplement included in issue 7/8 of Here and Now, a Situationist magazine published in Glasgow between 1985 and 1984. The article is written by Danny Branchflower and issue 7/8 appears to date from January 1989:
During the referendum on social policy held on November 27th, Orange Alternative demonstrated and called for Wroclaw to be the city with a 200% turnout; "Vote 'yes' twice". 150 people were arrested and detained for a number of hours.
Again on 7th December the streets were flooded with Santa Claus's: "Bring Christmas decorations, fir branches to decorate the subway. Let's help the administration in this noble task ... Let the new existence shape the new consciousness!!! Only Santa Claus can save you from poverty".
Confusion reigned as the police tried to round up the Santas, arresting many official Santas in the process. A crowd of more than 2000 called for the release of Santa and pressed in on the police, later surrounding the district Police HQ, before being dispersed.
Leo Litra and Gabrielė Valodskaitė say the success of Maia Sandu’s pro-EU party in Moldova’s parliamentary election holds three valuable lessons for protecting votes from Russian meddling in the future – whether in Moldova or in other vulnerable democracies.
"The Librarians, directed by Kim A. Snyder and recently released in the UK, is a documentary about the crackdown on American school libraries that began in 2021 in Texas and soon spread to other states. Ordered to remove 850 books from their shelves ... several librarians resisted. Some were fired; some received death threats." Anna Aslanyan on the battle against censorship.
Kenan Malik reviews a new book that challenges accepted views of the appeal of the arts: "Today, much of that working-class culture has not just slipped away but also been lost to memory. It is partly the result of the changing relationship between the state and the arts. Thatcherite free market ideology of the 1980s combined with New Labour’s stress on 'social impact' both to commodify the arts and to instrumentalise it – the worth of any work of art lay not in the work itself but in its capacity to promote economic growth, .urban regeneration and, most importantly, 'social inclusion”."
Natasha A. Fraser looks back on the cinematic legacy of her stepfather, Harold Pinter. She remembers his understanding of actors, the yellow legal pads he wrote his scripts on, his Hollywood flirtations and disdain for the clutter of Academy correspondence.
"It would have been fascinating to see where Tey's pen and her ingenious mind would have taken her. As it stands, a headline from the Scots newspaper, The Herald, from 2022 rather seems to sum it up: 'Josephine Tey,' it declared, 'the best crime writer you’ve never heard of'. Quite possibly. And it’s high time that changed." Alec Marsh champions the forgotten queen of crime fiction.
Jerskin Fendrix (AKA Joscelin Dent-Pooley) is an English composer and musician best known for his film music.
Beth's Farm is a track from his second album, Once Upon a Time in... Shropshire, which was released on Friday. He described its genesis in an interview with The Quietus:
"I wanted to write about Shropshire for a long time. And because I was living there from a very young age, I felt so strongly and so sensitively about just the place itself, the nature of it. The forests, the landscapes, the nature of light there, and the animals. But it was all a lot of artistic feeling that didn’t have much of a proper spine to align itself to."
But then things changed in a most unwelcome way. During 2020 he received a phone call that kicked him in the gut. One of his childhood friends had committed suicide. In an attempt to process the events, he endeavoured to write a new album which would be dedicated to his friend.
He says: "And then I realised that I wasn’t able to write about it divorced from the context of where we grew up and what the entire place was like." He adds: "It evolved into things like wanting to write about my childhood and my friends and our adolescence and all these shared things. And I realised that nothing that I was trying to get across actually meant anything without the context [of Shropshire]."
Lovers of Shropshire agricultural pop will also enjoy We Make Hay by The SY6.
BBC News reports:
Donald Phillips, from the Dawlish Waterfowl Centre, said Reggie had "settled in very well" and had already found a mate.
He explained: "I'd put him into the enclosure with two females and he just walked up to them and they sort of followed him around and there was no aggression at all ... he was just as good as gold." ...
"I selected one of the females and I moved him on to a farm where they've got a big lake and ducks and he settled in very well. I think he's picked his swan, his wife-to-be."
One of the judges was heard to blow his nose loudly.
It's worth noting that Reggie was moved from a Liberal Democrat constituency to a Liberal Democrat constituency. Manuela Perteghella could have handed him over to Martin Wrigley at a service station on the M5.
Iain Sinclair wrote about it for the London Review of Books when it was first published in 2003:
His book, the first to do justice to the transcendent weirdness of this boot of land that isn’t London, should be treasured. By living so long in the immediate past, by digging and listening and making the phone-calls, Seabrook has hallucinated an alternate English history.
Margate Sands as the pivotal moment for Modernism, nothing connected to nothing. The Mystery of Edwin Drood not so much solved as rewired: John Jasper as schizophrenic dreamer, the paradigm for Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde, the divided man of future gothic. Artist/driller killer. Choirmaster/opium addict. A De Quincey stalker who rehearses his crimes in drugged sleep, thereby infecting Richard Dadd. So that the site of the murder is more significant that the identity of the murderer.
Dig through the rubbish of seaside junk pits and pinball arcades, Seabrook suggests, read the shilling-shockers, and the pattern will reveal itself. English fascism hidden in the pages of John Buchan. A schoolteacher living in retirement who remembers William Joyce as a benevolent father.
You can see David Seabrook in Sinclair's short film The Cardinal and The Corpse (from 11:40).
What are the books from your childhood you'll never forget?
All of Malcolm Saville’s books. He wrote mysteries, but quite classy ones – definitely a step up from the usual Enid Blyton! I can remember writing him a fan letter and getting a handwritten letter back. It was very exciting. He had something called the Lone Pine Club, which you could join, and I recently found out that the crime writers Elly Griffiths and Mick Herron were both members too. So we all loved his books.
James Heale has just posted this on the Spectator website:
The Spectator has seen a leaked memo drawn up by Dave McCobb, the Lib Dems' campaigns director. Addressed to senior staff in party HQ, it sets out plans for 'Operation New Home'. This initiative aims to ‘reach out’ to liberally-minded 'Conservative councillors across the country who would be open to joining the Lib Dems.'
The Liberal Democrats are now trying to copy a model that Reform has exploited to great effect: luring Tory defectors to their side.
According to McCobb, the party's troops have received intelligence that ‘One Nation Conservatives on the ground' are 'feeling more and more alienated by their party' with plans to leave the ECHR and overhaul the Climate Change Act two factors being cited. 'We need to be ready for more Conservative councillors to cross the floor to us in the coming months', writes McCobb.
Staff are therefore being instructed to identify and contact 'current Conservative councillors who are open to joining us.' Sir Ed’s aides are being ordered to support council groups ‘in talks with potential defectors’ and attract waverers into the fold.
There's little here that will surprise someone who has been looking at the Liberal Democrat Bluesky feed this week. Still, it's good to have this placed in the Spectator, as potential defectors reading it will get the impression they are assured of a good welcome.
Could this be a case of a mundane document being marked 'Top Secret' and left on a photocopier at Westminster to ensure the press report it?
This is just the sort of television that they don't make any more - there's now a strong aversion to "talking heads". But if the heads are interesting enough, there is nothing more riveting. And what are podcasts but talking heads?
They've even proved that two is the ideal number for the format. A podcast with one person is ultimately just a guy reading something out, and if there are three people (certainly if there are three men) they get excited and interrupt each other too much.
I remember watching Magee's earlier, similar series Men of Ideas – and they were men: the only woman guest in the 15 programmes was Iris Murdoch – while I waited to go up to York to being my philosophy degree. It was the best possible preparation.
What I didn't know then was that Magee had been evacuated to Market Harborough during the war and had lived literally round the corner from our house. I only worked out after my mother died that the "poor old Kath" she used to talk to was the daughter of the family Magee stayed with.
Jago Hazzard explores sites and stations on the Central Line that are significant in its history. I, for one, shan't rest until I've visited Gants Hill.
You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page. And why not subscribe to his YouTube channel? I know I do.
Christopher Ketcham argues that the powers the British and American governments are using to suppress demonstrations have their origin in the War on Terror: "The question now is whether the Trump administration will continue to expand the use of terrorism material support statutes to go after protest of all kinds – whether for Palestine, for racial justice, or for climate and the environment."
"Business is all about risks and some people will inevitably fail. But the problem is that too many aspiring business owners are floundering unnecessarily. The task for government, business groups and others is to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background, has the chance to realise their entrepreneurial potential." Ben Dellot explains why entrepreneurship is still the preserve of the privileged.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead reports on the Open Spaces Society's call on Emma Reynolds, the new environment secretary, to prioritise legislation for wider and fairer access to nature.
"Andy and Piper are real in a way characters in even upmarket horror films often aren’t: they have history, catchphrases, a spiky-yet-devoted relationship, and neither asks for special treatment because of their circumstances." Kim Newman was impressed by this summer's horror release Bring Her Back.
Jason Watts on the remarkable Anderton Boat Lift and his family's connections with it.
Photograph by Mike Peel.
You'd never know it from the debate on immigration today, but:
In 2016, the official Vote Leave campaign actively advocated for more immigration from non-European countries. This wasn’t a fringe message – it was a central pillar of the campaign.This is a quote from an excellent article by Sam Bright, who reminds us that "every element of the Brexit campaign advocated for more non-white immigration – including Nigel Farage".
He backs this with quotes from a contemporary Financial Times report on Leave strategy and from Saqib Bhatti (now a Conservative MP and shadow education minister), Gisela Stuart, Priti Patel, Daniel Hannan, Boris Johnson and Douglas Carswell.
And here's what Nigel Farage had to say during the referendum campaign:
A Daily Mail headline on 8 June 2016 stated:
"More black people will be allowed into Britain if we leave the EU and immigration will become a ‘non-issue’, says Nigel Farage."Farage claimed that Britain had:
"been stupid to turn our backs on the Commonwealth in favour of EU membership."He argued that EU freedom of movement had made it "very difficult" for "qualified and skilled migrants from India and Africa" to come to Britain.
According to The Mail, after the Brexit vote, Farage favoured implementing an Australian points-based immigration policy, which would lead to “more black people” qualifying to enter the UK.
Ironically, Boris Johnson’s government – now the whipping boy of the far-right – implemented a points-based immigration system that directly reflected Farage’s favoured position prior to the vote.
That none of this is ever mentioned is a condemnation of the British media and of our politicians.
One of the pleasures of watching old episodes of Softly Softly: Task Force is the people who turn up in the non-police roles. You may find British stars of the Forties or now-famous actors on their way up.
From the former category, in recent days I've seen Megs Jenkins and also Ralph Michael, who played the husband in the mirror section of Dead of Night.
And in the latter category... Press play on the video above to see a young actor with nice hair making his screen debut in 1976. Hello, Bill Nighy.
They attended a briefing at the council offices before visiting the rewilding site, which lies to the north and east of Great Bowden.
The Harborough Mail quotes Cal Hatley, Harborough DC's director of communities and wellbeing:
"Establishing effective partnerships is going to be the key to making this rewilding project successful. I am looking forward to welcoming these organisations and showing them that we are taking action to address the nature crisis in the region with the engagement of local communities."
And Mat Carter, chief executive of Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust, said:
"This project is an opportunity to restore nature and create a landscape where people and wildlife can thrive. We work best together and are delighted to welcome our partners to see this project."
Harborough DC is run by a Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green administration - my old Liberal and Lib Dem council colleague Phil Knowles is its leader.
The wildlife trust owns land adjacent to the council's land at Great Bowden and I've walked that land with one of their team. I intend to write something about Rewilding Harborough when I've got my head round the project properly.
We have our Trivial Fact of the Day and our Name of the Day.
Clive Wilson, who played on the left side of midfield in the late Eighties, was christened Euclid Aklana Wilson.
Thanks to A.V. Deggar.
Despite the rather triumphalist headline, I've done my best to be objective.
It's not so much a stunt as a photo opportunity, but there's something to be said for Ed Davey's approach to politics.
While Robert Jenrick drags the Conservative Party further into blatant racism, Ed has been harvesting pumpkins with young carers, along with Wendy Chamberlain and Willie Rennie.
There are more photos of the event on Getty Images.
Thanks to General Boles.
Richard Ovendon says libraries are palaces for the people that must be defended: "More than a decade of austerity has ... ravaged the public library sector in many parts of our nation. There are fewer palaces for the people, many are open for fewer hours than before 2010, and some of them are in dire need of physical repair."
"The challenge for anyone trying to bring propagandists to trial has always been connecting vile words to horrific acts." Peter Pomerantsev on holding Putin's propagandists to account.
Liz Green says that support for councillors is vital to democracy: "Within months of being elected, many are already wrestling with exhaustion, frustration or a sense of being out of their depth. For those stepping into cabinet or committee chair roles, the pressure intensifies."
"Another picture here, 28 London Streets, is a gallery of evocative street names from their neighbourhood – Princelet Street, Henriques Street, Chudleigh Street. Instead of gurning or cavorting as in their other self portraits, the artists here are two misty, spectral entities: the ghosts of Gilbert & George, haunting their old streets for ever." Jonathan Jones enjoys the G&G exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.
We've seen Ladybower reservoir in the drought, and now it's time to cross the Pennines and have a look at what has been emerging from the water in and around Manchester.
If you enjoy this sort of video, then Martin Zero is well worth following on YouTube.
One of my favourite writers is Neal Ascherson. Among many other achievements, it was he, and not Tony Benn, who came up with the well-known quotation above. (There's chapter and verse on this blog.)
Here is Ascherson reviewing The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany by David Blackbourn for the London Review of Books in 2006 - Frederick is Frederick II (Frederick the Great) of Prussia:
In Frederick’s time, marshlands were regarded as sinister, useless places, breeding malarial vapours and sheltering not only dangerous wild beasts but primitive human beings beyond the reach of law. 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.
There's more about The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape and the Making of Modern Germany on the Penguin website.
Here's Dan Harrison, the Reform leader of Leicestershire County Council, talking to BBC News the other day:
The Reform UK leader of Leicestershire County Council has said a "deep dive" efficiency drive will be carried out to try to cut the authority's costs.
Dan Harrison said he wanted to bring in specialists from international firms to find ways of reducing the council's annual £1.3bn spend. ...
"They [the specialists] come from big companies. They know what they are doing.
"I'm looking for maximum efficiency that will have an effect on our budget."
When asked how much it would cost to employ the specialists, the council leader said he was unable to say because contracts had yet to be signed.
"Whatever they charge, it will be a hundred times to the benefit of the authority," Harrison said.
That gurgling sound you can hear is public money disappearing down the drain.
Quite why international companies would want to loan members of staff to an English local authority is never explained. Nor is there any recognition that any such project would have to be put out to competitive tender. You can't just call in someone you met at, say, the Reform conference.
So it looks as though the ruling Reform group in Leicestershire will eventually be dragged kicking and screaming into the real world.
Should you wish to, you can listed to the whole of the interview with Dan Harrison on the BBC website.
And not more votes, as the Independent headline has it. Either they don't employ subeditors any more or this one has not read the article properly.
Anyway, here is John Curtice speaking at a Conservative Party Conference fringe meeting today:
The polling expert told a fringe panel at the Conservative party conference in Manchester that the party needed to make it to "base camp" before they could even think about climbing the electoral "Himalayas" of getting back into government.
Recent YouGov polling showed the Liberal Democrats on 15 points, one behind Kemi Badenoch’s party on 16. Reform led on 29 per cent.
Addressing Tory members at the event run by thinktank Demos, Sir John said: "The Liberal Democrat vote is now much more geographically concentrated than your vote, and the electoral system is now treating you like it treated the Liberal Democrats.
"And so the Liberal Democrats are just behind you in the polls, they are going to almost undoubtedly win more seats than you."
It's just a shame that Reform UK will also benefit from the Tories' deep unpopularity.
"Labour’s former tough talk on sleaze and lobbying has largely melted away. Aside from tinkering with rules on MPs’ second jobs, there has been no sign of meaningful reform – despite the lobbying industry’s own trade body, the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, calling for it." Peter Geoghegan went to the Labour Party Conference.
Fiona Harvey fact checks the arguments Kemi Badenoch used in support of her vow to repeal Climate Change Act if her party wins power.
Hilary Cremlin, reports Varsity, has called for the "rewilding" if the school system: "Despite decades of reform, I think the school system as we presently configure it may be beyond redemption. This isn’t an attack on the idea of education, or on the thousands of brilliant teachers who give the job their all. But government after government has tinkered with education when the basic model is obsolete."
"The London Stadium was conceived as a world-class athletics venue and perhaps the kindest thing you can say about it today is that it remains a world-class athletics venue. The shallow rake efficiently disperses the noise up the back straight; the high distant seats offer a magnificent view of the javelin competition. There is a nice canal alongside and as much boutique street food as you can eat. But a walled fortress it is not, and can never be. And frankly it is the most visible symptom, if not the underlying cause, of modern West Ham." Jonathan Liew smells loss and dislocation at the famous London club.
Bearded vultures often pick up human artefacts to build or repair their nests, and those nests can remain in use for centuries. The result, reports Andrew Paul, is a gold mine for archaeologists.
I heard this a couple of weeks ago on one of BBC4's numerous Friday reruns of vintage editions of Top of the Pops.
The Tourists were the band Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart were in before they formed Eurythmics.
Before she formed The Tourists, Lennox had been the flute player with a folk rock band called Dragon's Playground – she left before they appeared on the TV talent show New Faces. And before that she had been studying flute, piano and harpsichord at the Royal Academy of Music.
Maybe I'm being fanciful, but I detect both the academic in her voice here (think Julie Covington) and a folk influence (think Polly Bolton).
The Loneliest Man In The World stalled at no. 32 in the UK singles chart, but The Tourists did have two top 10 hits before they were subsumed into the prehistory of the more celebrated Eurythmics.
Another passage from Rumer Godden's An Episode of Sparrows, the novel filmed as Innocent Sinners:
It was a strange thing that up to the age of seven children were noticeable in Catford Street; the babies in their well-kept perambulators and the little boys and girls in coat and legging sets were prominent, but after the age of seven, the children seemed to disappear into anonymity, to be camouflaged by the stones and bricks they played in; as if they were really the sparrows the Misses Chesney called them they led a different life and scarcely anyone noticed them.
At fourteen or fifteen they appeared again, the boys as big boys that had become ha become somehow dangerous – or was it that there was too much about them in the papers? – the dirty little girls as smart young women, with waved hair, bright coats, the same red nails and lipstick as the dancer in the bus queue; they wore slopping sling-back shoes and had shrill ostentatious voices. The Street prickled with the doings of these boys and girls, as it had admired and petted the babies, but the children were unnoticed … not even experienced mothers like Mrs Malone knew all they did.
An Episode of Sparrows was published in 1956. When I read these observations, I was reminded of two things.
The first was that my mother used to say that when she was a child – this would have been the Thirties and Forties – if you saw an adult you were likely to be told to have a wash or run an errand, so you tended to avoid them.
The second was an episode from the Children's Film Foundation presentation Operation Third Form (1967). In this film, a gang of children (with John Moulder-Brown and Roberta Tovey to the fore) help an old scrap dealer who is their friend when he's accused of stealing their school bell. Exploiting their invisibility, they trail the real thief.
At one point their activities threaten to attract the attention of the police, whereupon they form themselves into a crocodile and march along the with scrap dealer apparently in charge of them. A crocodile of schoolchildren with a teacher? They can't be up to anything, reason the police. As soon as they've gone, the children make themselves invisible again.
That would – the world of An Episode of Sparrows – has gone, but every change brings both gains and losses.
Northamptonshire Police are reviewing the circumstances surrounding a free event co-hosted by a Reform UK election candidate in Corby, at which members of the public were supplied with a 'generous and tasty' buffet.
Lee Duffy, who already represents Lloyds ward on Corby Town Council, is Reform UK’s candidate in October 9 election for the vacant Lloyds and Corby Village seat for North Northants Council (NNC).The by-election for the seat had been triggered by the resignation of Corby Reform UK councillor Robert Bloom after serious racism allegations.
Recorded in 2006:
"It's as much music hall as it is lecture hall, the stuff I do, I think. I might want to be Geoffrey Hill, but part of me also wants to be Benny Hill. And it's not a question of pushing the Geoffrey out or pushing the Benny out, but of finding a way of combining them."
What I value in Meades is not any organised body of opinion, but his attitude.
Carole Cadwalladr investigates the opaque workings of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, its funding from friends of Israel – including billionaire Larry Ellison – and an emerging right-wing media takeover of the global information space.
Timothy Garton Ash talks to Catherine E. De Vries about writing, freedom and the lost art of disagreement.
"If the BBC had kept the Boat Race and paid more for the privilege, the Telegraph’s angle could well have been to talk about a waste of money on an event whose viewing figures have been in decline over the years. The key thing with any story about the BBC in the right-wing press is that the corporation must always be in the wrong." Mic Wright on the way the Boat Race's move to Channel 4 was used to attack the BBC.
In 1873, a choir of formerly enslaved African American students from the newly established Fisk University, Tennessee, embarked on a fundraising tour of the UK during which they sang for both Queen Victoria and Mr Gladstone. The National Archives tells the story of the Jubilee Singers.
Madeleine Brettingham discusses her favourite situation comedy: "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is an early crack in the post-war sitcom’s floral wallpaper. The protagonist, Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, is a restless, self-directed twenty-first century man trying to break out of a claustrophobic twentieth-century show."
Nottinghamshire county council, which has been led by Reform since the local elections earlier this year, said it was “committed to the principles of openness” after lifting the sanctions it had placed on journalists from the Nottingham Post and its website, Nottinghamshire Live.The newspaper will now again be invited to public council events and will be added to the council’s distribution list for press releases. The ban had been in place for more than a month and had been condemned by Keir Starmer and local MPs.
“I’m pleased this unprecedented ban has been lifted and the situation finally resolved so that we can continue to get on with our jobs as we always have done.“That means asking questions of elected council officials, having access to publicly funded information and events and holding them to account on behalf of our communities in Nottinghamshire.“This sends a firm message that journalists will not back down if our freedoms are attacked.”
This is a lovely walk – I've done the stretch from Rye to Camber Castle myself.
John's blurb on YouTube says:
This walk takes on a journey into England's medieval history on the south coast in East Sussex. Starting at Rye, one of the ancient Cinque Ports we follow the Saxon Shore Way past Camber Castle to the medieval walled city of Winchelsea. Originally planned by Edward I in 1288 it replaced the old port of Winchelsea which was swept away by the sea but had once been one of the most prosperous ports in the whole of England.
This is part of a series of walk in places within easy reach of London by train and one of the best day trips from London.
And he even finds the blue plaque on Chelsea Cottage, which was Malcolm Saville's last home.
John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.
A black swan has been removed from a historic town after it spent nine months "terrorising" other birds and tourists.
The bird - named Reggie by locals - was captured by swan warden Cyril Bennis in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire and will be rehomed at a centre in Devon.
Mr Bennis said the capture was "what has to be done" after the bird's behaviour, which included disrupting nesting swans.
A town resident added: "He's terrorised everyone else but we love him so it will be sad to see him go, but it's probably better for the river that he's gone."
A friend of Reggie told this blog: "He's a real gent. He never attacked kids nor nothink like that. They framed him up something rotten."
Jo Elvin writes about her experience of applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain: "It took the Home Office four weeks to come back to me and tell my application had been rejected. I was informed of this in a short, cold letter stating that they were not satisfied that our marriage was genuine. The last sentence of the letter told me I had four weeks to get my affairs in order and vacate the country for good."
Owen Sennett finds that YouTubers are earning up to £20,000 a month by making provocative videos that have targeted a Norfolk hotel used to house asylum seekers.
"In 1981, the tide turned for Lethbridge when she was able to return to the bar. 'It seemed like the end of a nightmare – it had been 20 years in which I couldn’t work in the profession I loved. It turned out a lot had changed while I’d been away. I was astonished: there were black faces, and women, in chambers. I couldn’t believe it – it was wonderful.'" Joanna Moorhead talks to the magnificent Nemone Lethbridge.
"Edge-of seat perils, Bond-style gadgetry, a dash of espionage, a villain both hissable and hilarious, and Tracy Island: the coolest playground in the world with its movable swimming pool and lift-and-slide rocket entries. What kid didn't love all that?" Mark Braxton on his lifelong engagement with Thunderbirds.
lachlansimages visits Ludlow on market day.
I feel no shame at having liked Wizzard when I was 13. They made great singles, Roy Wood is a genius and they were the continuation of The Move by other means.
