"Only 1 per cent of new fathers are taking shared parental leave" WRONG
This morning's news was full of stories about the failure of Nick Clegg's pet policies when he was deputy prime minister: shared parental leave.Story that 1% of new dads taking shared parental leave: nonesense. Survey asks employers for % of ALL male employees pic.twitter.com/I2J9foRDpO— Sarah O'Connor (@sarahoconnor_) April 5, 2016
Here is an example from the Evening Standard:
Only 1 per cent of fathers have taken up the opportunity to share parental leave a year after the option was introduced, a survey of employers and parents has found.
According to research by My Family Care - which advises businesses on being family-friendly - and the Women's Business Council, 55 per cent of women said they would not want to share their maternity leave.
The survey of more than 1,000 parents and 200 businesses found that taking up shared parental leave ... was dependent on a person's individual circumstances, particularly on their financial situation and the paternity pay on offer from their employer.But as the tweet above from Sarah O'Connor, employment correspondent for the Financial Times, shows, these stories were nonsense.
When David Cameron said Jimmy Carr's tax avoidance was "not morally acceptable"
"I know what irony is, but I can't explain it," a friend's bright young daughter once said to me frustratedly.
This is the sort of thing she probably had in mind.
I expect Cameron was told to attack Jimmy Carr because he was a "left-wing comedian".
As I blogged at the time, he is nothing of the sort:
Some on the right have been pleased to see Carr get his comeuppance, seeing the affair as confirmation of their belief that lefties are all hypocrites. But if anything, Carr was recruited to 10 O'Clock Life as a balancing right-wing voice.
Certainly, as I argued in a post last December, there is nothing particularly lefty about Carr's comedy:
Left-wing politics is based in a belief that things could be better. Carr's schtick, by contrast, is to imply that he is wiser than us. Life is shit, and he has seen through it.
I don't see much hope there.
Former prisoner of war camp, Gaulby Lane, Billesdon
Billesdon's Woodland Pool nature reserve can be found just outside the village on Gaulby Lane.
With woodland and a pool it is a pleasant spot, but it has a surprising history.
Because the reserve occupies the site of a wartime prisoner of war camp that held first Italian and then German prisoners.
The remains are labelled and, according to Derelict Places, there is a hut still standing (which I failed to find). Another is said to have gone to Thurnby to be used by a youth club.
And the pool was dug out on the site of the camp's football pitch.
After the war the camp housed people displaced by the war.
It is a sobering thought, on a day when refugees are being bundled out of Europe, that they once found a home among the green hills and ridge-and-furrow fields of High Leicestershire.
Six of the Best 585
"Gould had long carved out an alternative viewpoint to that of Kinnock and Smith, putting forward arguments that were to look much wiser in retrospect than many were prepared to credit at the time." Alwyn Turner on Bryan Gould, who contested the Labour leadership with John Smith in 1992.
Niall Meehan on Morris Fraser, child abuse, corruption and collusion in Britain and Northern Ireland.
Toni Airaksinen says you shouldn't report your professors' microaggressions.
The Hwicce of Rutland? Caitlin Green speculates on a possible Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
"Every paradise is lost. That’s kind of the point. Loss is the diagnostic feature of every paradise ever lived or imagined. But for five miraculous years and 120,000 miraculous words Gerald Durrell sustained a vision of paradise with joy in every day and every page." Simon Barnes praises My Family and Other Animals.
Greville Janner was allowed to lie about the Kirkwood Inquiry
So runs the headline on a story on BBC News. I suppose it is a polite way of saying he lied to the Kirkwood Inquiry, which we already knew.Lord Janner 'misled inquiry' over link with abuser Frank Beck
What is more remarkable, as revealed by documents from inquiry the BBC has obtained via a Freedom of Information request, is that Janner was permitted to lie about the inquiry:
The 1992 documents released to the BBC also reveal that, following his questioning by the inquiry, Lord Janner asked chairman Andrew Kirkwood if he could tell the media waiting outside that he had not been asked about allegations of child abuse against him.
Andrew Kirkwood replied: "Of course, Mr Janner."
Lord Janner left the hearing and told a BBC camera crew: "I have the chairman's permission to tell you that there was questioning about the social services and their operation, and none whatever concerning the allegations made against me."
The documents show this was not true, and the revelation that the real substance of the inquiry's questioning was withheld from the media will further fuel allegations of a cover-up.Indeed it will. As I blogged last year, the authorities were remarkably keen that the public should know as little as possible about Frank Beck's offences and the inquiry into them afterwards.
Press cutting from Spotlight on Abuse.
Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill in 1984
A look at the former Great Western main line from Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill.
This film was shot in 1984, when the line lay derelict.
How Sherlock Holmes anticipated Lord Bonkers
One bright April morning the 11:15 for Northampton Castle left Nottingham London Road Lower Level as usual, but it never reached its destination. It was seen to call at Melton Mowbray North, and there were unconfirmed reports of it reaching Clipston and Oxendon, but one thing is sure: it never arrived in Northampton.
Extensive searches were undertaken and reports of sightings from as far afield as Bodmin Road and Leeming Bar were followed up, but not a trace of the train or its passengers was ever found.What I didn't know then was that this is strangely reminiscent of a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle called The Lost Special.
It is not a Sherlock Holmes story, but he surely makes an appearance as the writer of a letter about the affair to The Times.
You can listen to a reading of it by David Schofield on the BBC iPlayer for the next four weeks.
A final thought... Can I be sure that Lord Bonkers was not pulling my leg?
The Pogues: A Rainy Night In Soho
"This is Shane MacGowan before the shambling drunk routine took over completely," says Tom Conoboy.
In the comments below there is a debate about whether the song is about whisky, as Conoboy argues, or about romantic love as its surface suggests.
The truth, surely, is that it is both at once. Poems and songs can do that. It's why people write them rather than essays.
