Six of the Best 604

Alistair Carmichael writes on the Commons debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill: "The Bill is rotten to its core and I wish we could have blocked it as we did in Coalition when faced with the Communications Data Bill. Dealing with Tories in government was difficult. Dealing with Tories in government and Labour in opposition is impossible."

The Sports Direct scandal is the result of successive governments desperate for jobs, says Conrad Landin.

"If I ever see you in the street, I hope you get shot." Dawn Foster on her experience of moderating comments on the Guardian website.

Steve Parnell looks back at the work of the angry and passionate Ian Nairn, the outspoken critic of England’s 'subtopian' demise.

The Birmingham Conservation Trust takes us to Moseley, where 1945 prefab houses can still be found.

"I think these were the first books where I really had a sense of place from them, whereas Blyton’s descriptions don’t tend to be of anywhere specific and nicely pleasantly general, Saville’s descriptions of location were precise and taken from real life. It made me want to visit Shropshire and since I was 16 or 17 I have done, frequently. Its become one of the places I love to be most in the world." A contributor to World of Blyton recalls discovering the charms of Malcolm Saville.

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Michael Winner on the Stiperstones

Another film from the BFI's Britain on Film site. As ever, click on the image above to view it there.

This is a 1961 travelogue taking in haunted sites across Britain. What interests us most is the opening, where David Jacobs (in a suit) is seen with a young lady on top of the Stiperstones, before Edric and his wild hunt put in an appearance up there.

The superstition I know is not that it will rain if you sit in the Devil's Chair. Rather it is that if those rocks are shrouded in cloud then the old boy is sitting there himself.

Edric and his followers also put in an appearance in Malcolm Saville's Seven White Gates:

Suddenly Jenny gave a stifled little scream and pointed up the track which led to to the mines. Shadowy in the thickening mist, the two girls seemed to see a figure on horseback waving ghostly arms but no sound of hooves came to their straining ears. Then, far away on the hilltop, it seemed to Peter than tiny, gnome-like figures flitted in uncanny procession. 

Jenny turned and wailed into Peter's shoulder. 

"Peter. It's true. It's them. They're riding again. What shall we do. Peter? We must hide our eyes. We mustn't even see them. Don't Look. Peter."

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Bridgnorth and the Long Mynd in 1954

Another gem from the BFI's Britain of Film collection. This one shows a photographic society, apparently from Atherstone in Warwickshire, on a trip to Shropshire in 1954.

There is good footage of Bridgnorth and its cliff railway and also of the Long Mynd.

Click on the photograph above to view it, though that signpost on top of the Mynd has long ago disappeared.

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Church Stretton points the way forward for funding local services

From the Shropshire Star today:

Church Stretton Town Council has agreed to set up a “working group” to look at the services in the area put at risk by Shropshire Council cuts. 

It will launch consultation with people living in the town over whether to raise the council tax precept to help fund such services in the future. 

The move has come in response to Shropshire Council’s proposed budget for 2017, which suggests stopping all funding of services such as libraries and leisure centres.

This report reveals the scale of the cuts the government is inflicting on local government.

For decades the Liberal Democrats campaigned for local services, but then we adopted George Osborne's economic opinions during the Coalition years. When we start campaigning for local services again, as we must, we risk at best puzzling the voters.

But there may be something interesting at work here too.

When I was a councillor my impression was that people did not worry about the level of taxes so much as whether they got value for their money.

And maybe such judgements mean more when money is raised and spent locally.

So could Church Stretton, which you can see in the photo above, be pointing the way forward for local government?

It would go against the current thrust of policy in local government, which is all about the abolition and amalgamation of authorities and the appointment of regional mayors, but I would like to think so.

Mind you, such increases in hyperlocal taxation can be controversial, as the case of Desborough shows.

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Hinstock warehouse collapse: Worker freed after more than nine hours under cheese and shelving

The Shropshire Star wins Headline of the Day.

You will be pleased to know that Tomasz Wiszniewski has only minor injuries.

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Hedgehog Awareness Week 1-7 May 2016

This is Hedgehog Awareness Week. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society website explains:

Hedgehog Awareness Week is organised by the British Hedgehog Preservation Society and takes place every year. It aims to highlight the problems hedgehogs face and how you can help them. 

This year efforts are focused on strimmers and cutting machines – every year we hear of many terrible injuries and deaths caused by garden machinery. BHPS is asking people to check areas carefully before using any machinery. They have produced a sticker to be placed onto machines and are asking councils and tool hire companies to get in touch and request the free stickers for their machines. 

As well as checking areas before cutting there are other things we can do to help too:

• Ensure there is hedgehog access in your garden – a 13cm x 13cm gap in boundary fences and walls.

• Move piles of rubbish to a new site before burning it.

• Ensure netting is kept at a safe height. 

• Check compost heaps before digging the fork in. 

• Stop or reduce the amount of pesticides and poisons used. 

• Cover drains or deep holes. 

• Ensure there is an easy route out of ponds and pools.

I was struck by the Society's address. Dhustone is a former quarrying hamlet on the top of Clee Hill that gives the feeling that it was once more extensive than it is today.

I wandered round it years ago and remember spotting an old shop that had obviously been the post office. (In those days there was a phone box in the alley that ran up the side of it, which helped the identification.)

With the help of Google Street View I can confirm that this shop is now Hedgehog House.

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The Long Mynd and Stiperstones shuttle bus starts tomorrow

Running every Saturday, Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday until 2 October, this service connects Church Stretton with the remote country around the Long Mynd and Stiperstones - and with some very good pubs too.

A sad paragraph at the bottom of the Shropshire Hills Shuttle Buses page says:

Unfortunately, Castle Connect, which ran between Ludlow, Knighton, Clun and Bishop’s Castle will not be running in 2016. This route was set up three years ago as part of Shropshire’s Sustainable Transport Project. Now that funding has ceased, the cost of running this service for another year was in danger of putting the future of the Long Mynd & Stiperstones Shuttle at risk. Thank you to all who supported this route over the last couple of years. We are looking at other options to better link the towns with the hills, and will be applying for new grants to support this.

My photo shows the shuttle bus near the car park beneath the summit of the Stiperstones, with the Long Mynd in the distance behind it..

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Jonathan Coe on the Long Mynd

Photo © Dave Pickersgill 

Thanks to A Portfolio Life for posting this passage from Coe's novel The Rain Before it Falls:

Places like this are important to me – to all of us – because they exist outside the normal timespan. You can stand on the backbone of the Long Mynd and not know if you are in the 1940s, the 2000s, the tenth or eleventh century....It is all immaterial, all irrelevant...You cannot put a price on the sense of freedom and timelessness that is granted you there.

Coe is right and there is something of this quality to much of the Welsh Border.

I remember once walking from Kington in Herefordshire up to Offa's Dyke. I had the feeling that if I met a Dark Age warrior coming towards me we would just nod to another and continue on our way.

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Shropshire gags councillors over Church Stretton Library case

St Laurence's, Church Stretton

On Wednesday I blogged about Shropshire Council's decision not to contest the judicial review of their decision to move Church Stretton Library to a less central location in the town.

The mighty Andy Boddington, a Liberal Democrat member of the authority, tells us what happened next:

We had a high court case over libraries last week. The council withdrew and lost the case. 

Since then it has launched a vitriolic campaign against the local campaigners in three press releases. 

Late on Friday, the chief monitoring officer and chief executive slammed a gagging clause on all councillors. The gagging memo is phrased as a “request” but I know that if any councillor ignores this request is ignored, flack will fly in their direction. 

We are told we cannot comment in any way on the case. That probably means that I can’t comment on the council reaction. Or why it has decided to attack a local community at the same time it is planning to work more closely with local people.

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BBC says Church Stretton library campaigners have won

A year ago I blogged about Shropshire Council's plans to move Church Stretton Library to a less central location.

After that local residents sought judicial review of the council's decision.

Today, at 12:40 on its Shropshire Live page, BBC News reported that:

Campaigners fighting plans to move Church Stretton's library say they have won their legal battle against Shropshire Council. 

They say the authority conceded the case moments before it was due to be heard by a court in Birmingham.

The report in the Shropshire Star is more guarded, and I suspect that is wise, but at least I have a chance to use my photo of the library again.

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The Line That Never Paid: Memories of the Bishop's Castle Railway

This treasure found on YouTube this evening combines footage of the remains of the Bishop's Castle Railway with the memories of people who remembered it in operation. It closed in 1935.

When was this film shot?

The 'Craven Arms and Stokesay' running in board at the end dates it to before 1974 and the first photo of the station without any buildings, as it appears here, dates from 1972 - see the Disused Stations site.

However, the start of the film shows the Six Bells in the town and it is a Wrekin Brewery pub. A story on the revival of the name says that brewery closed in the early 1960s.

I suspect that that early footage of the town is some years earlier than the footage of Craven Arms station at the end.

Whatever the truth of this, it is a wonderful find.

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This Land: A Pentabus Theatre play on fracking

You may remember (how could you forget?) my day trip to Sheringham to see the Lone Pine Club.

That play was staged by Pentabus Theatre. Their latest production, This Land, looks at fracking and is currently touring the country.

It has already played Bishop's Castle and Snailbeach, and will soon be over in Northern Ireland before returning to the mainland.

You can find a full list of performances on the Pentabus website, where you will also find this video.

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The Stains: Bored

I came across a tweet the other day that suggested the actor David Hemmings had lived briefly in Shrewsbury High Street. That is hard to reconcile with what I know of his life, but it did lead me to this record.

The Stains were a Shrewsbury punk band whose original vocalist was Dom Estos. And Dom Estos was Dominic Hemmings, the adopted son of David Hemmings.

His mother was Genista Ouvry, who acted under the name Jenny Lewes. Dominic had already been born when Hemmings met her during  a two-week repertory engagement in Leicester in 1960 and they fell in love. They married shortly afterwards and Hemmings adopted Dominic, but the marriage did not last.

A few more snippets...

The band turn up in a letter to the Guardian by Mark Webb in 2010:

I was amazed to read of Kevin ­Rowland's antipathy towards ironed creases in jeans ... In the 70s, playing drums in Dom Estos And The Stains, we got a gig supporting Dexys ­Midnight Runners at Shrewsbury Music Hall. Dexys got the bigger dressing room, but we had the electric socket. A knock on the door and Mr Rowland appears: "Hello, lads. Can I plug in my iron to do my trousers?"

Dom Estos appears still to be making music, under the name Dominic Ouvry, as part of Liquid Vision.

And a little googling suggests Genista Ouvry used the name Jenny Lewes because Lewes was her mother's maiden name.

Not only that: it suggests she was a direct descendant of George Henry Lewes, Victorian man of letters and partner of George Eliot (or Mary Ann Evans).

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The Lark Ascending and Snailbeach lead mines

Now do you see why I am always going on about this place?

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Rabbit hutch stolen from Shropshire field - but the rabbit is left behind

Our Headline of the Day comes from the Shropshire Star.

The judges were unanimous, but I can't help thinking this is rather embarrassing for the rabbit.

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Ronnie Lane and Eric Clapton at the Drum and Monkey

The Drum and Monkey today

I have just listened to the BBC Radio Shropshire programme on Ronnie Lane and Eric Clapton that I blogged about on Monday. (It was broadcast today at lunchtime.)

Far from exploding the myth that you could once hear rock and roll aristocracy playing at remote Shropshire pubs it proved the stories were true.

It also includes a rare interview with Ronnie Lane's widow Kate. Well done, Johnty O'Donnell.

You can listen to the programme for the next month on the BBC website. It occupies the second hour of Paul Shuttleworth's show.

There are also some photographs from the most celebrated concert at the Drum and Monkey on the BBC Radio Shropshire Facebook page.

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Shrewsbury in colour in 1959

There's no sound, but there is plenty of great colour footage in this 1959 film of the last day of Smithfield cattle market in the centre of Shrewsbury.

Click on the image above to go to the film on the BFI site.

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Eric Clapton and Ronnie Lane in the Shropshire hills

Abel's Harp - once the Drum &; Monkey

I have blogged before about the stories that it used to be possible to wander into pubs in the Shropshire hills and find the likes of Eric Clapton and Ronnie Lane giving unadvertised concerts.

The journalist Johnty O’Donnell, with whom I have recently swapped emails on the subject, has pinned down the truth of these stories.

As, of course, the Shropshire Star tells it:

God, Slowhand . . . all nicknames for the guitar legend Eric Clapton. 

And indeed he did appear, playing along with Ronnie Lane, previously of The Faces, to a packed house at a country pub in a night which has gone down in pop folklore. And all for just £1 on the door. 

Some fans were turned away. Others were rumoured to have climbed in through the toilet windows at the Drum & Monkey at Bromlow. 

The date was Friday, March 4, 1977.

Memories of that night will be recalled in a special programme on BBC Radio Shropshire on Sunday 7 February from noon to 1pm,

It is called The People’s History of Pop and forms part of a BBC project collecting people’s pop memories and memorabilia from the 1950s to the 1980s. Johnty O’Donnell has been overseeing the project for Shropshire.

The Star reports ends by saying "the Drum & Monkey ... has passed into history".

Yes and no. When I first went there, more than a decade after this concert, it was the Callow Inn and resembled a little bit of suburban Birmingham set down in the Shropshire hills.

Last time I was there it had turned into a boutique hotel - Abel's Harp - which I am told is currently closed for refurbishment.

Later. According to its Facebook page, Abel's Harp reopened on Saturday 13 February:

Pop in for a drink with Vicky, stay awhile and sample Jude's delicious food or cosy up for one of our vintage afternoon teas!

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Row over the 'African grave' at Bishop's Castle

There are some remarkable graves in Bishop's Castle churchyard in Shropshire.

One of them, as this video from the Shropshire Star shows, is currently the cause of controversy:

A wood and perspex cover protecting the Grade II-listed “African grave” may have to be removed as it does not have permission to be there. 

But the locals who made the cover and put it there to save the 200-year-old monument say action needs to be taken now to stop it eroding further. 

The grave belongs to a man only identified as ID, who is said to be a native of Africa who died in Bishop’s Castle on September 9 1801.

Such monuments have to be looked after, but the locals say the cover is only temporary.

It is hard not to see this incident as a new Ealing Comedy. An inspector, perhaps played by Raymond Huntley, is dispatched to Shropshire to call the locals to heel.

Once there he is plied with beer from The Three Tuns, shown the wrong churchyard and sent back to Whitehall defeated.

And this part of Shropshire is one of the few places in England where you can still imagine this happening.

I recently saw an old episode of The Green, Green Grass of Home, which is set in the county. An American who had been stationed there as a serviceman decades before wanted to go round the village to see how it had changed.

"Oh it's not changed, sir," came the reply. "If anything it's more like it was now than it was then."

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Conservative councils protest against the scale of spending cuts

Leicestershire's Conservative MPs  were busy retweeting this photograph last week.

It shows them and the Conservative leader of the county council Nick Rushton meeting the local government minister Marcus Jones to press the case for more generous funding for Leicestershire.

The Leicester Mercury quoted Sir Edward Garnier, MP for Harborough:

"The difficult financial situation for Leicestershire County Council means that unless we get an improved funding arrangement, the services that vulnerable people need the most will have to be cut. I know the Minister fully understands the case we made and took into account our concerns as Leicestershire MPs and those of Coun Rushton. We will wait to see what transpires over the next few weeks."

I would love to see a more generous settlement for Leicestershire, particularly if Rushton is right to say that we are the lowest funded county council.

But we are not the only Tory-run county asking for more.

Over to the Shropshire Star and the new leader of the council there:

Shropshire Council leaders today called for Government help to stave off the impact of multi-million pound budget cuts. 

Council leader Malcolm Pate and the authority’s chief executive Clive Wright warned that without assistance they face a considerable reduction in the county’s services. 

They have urged either an increase in the amount they can raise in council tax or an alteration of the formula by which councils receive central Government funding.

The formula cannot be unfair to everybody, so It looks as though Conservatives are really complaining that central government funding is not generous enough. Even David Cameron has been at it.

And they are right. It is not just the slightly quaint things this blog has a weakness for that will suffer - rural bus services, branch libraries - but central services like adult social care.

If there is a country vs court rebellion in the Conservative party, with their council leaders rebelling against the cuts they are being compelled to implement, all Liberal Democrats should welcome it.

For the time being, tax cuts should be off our agenda.

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