Six of the Best 589

"Liberalism is dead. Or at least it is on the ropes. Triumphant a quarter-century ago, when liberal democracy appeared to have prevailed definitively over the totalitarian utopias that exacted such a toll in blood, it is now under siege from without and within." Read Roger Cohen in the New York Times.

Evan Harris claims Hacked Off are not hypocrites for their stance on John Whittingdale.

You can never have enough takedowns of Seumas "Christopher Robin" Milne. This one by Peter Wilby is particularly good.

Felicity Cloake asks why eating has become so complicated.

Backwatersman pays tribute to the England batsman James Taylor, who has been forced to retire because of a heart condition: "When he took on ... great lummoxes like Andre Nel and Tremlett he might have been Chaplin outwitting Eric Campbell with a deft swish of his walking cane. In fact, one of the many things I remain hugely grateful to him for is allowing me to recapture (quite late in life) that childlike pleasure of having a favourite player, one whom I liked more than I could ever quite rationally account for."

"The locks known as Caen Hill ... rise 237 feet over two miles – with 16 of them virtually back to back.Each trip up and down takes five hours." David Hencke and friends take on one of the inland waterways' greatest challenges.

Read More

Trivial Fact of the Week links Blow-Up and the Double Deckers

Nicholas Whyte has been ploughing a lonely furrow with a series of posts on the early 1970s children's television series Here Come the Double Deckers.

Although this fell precisely into my era, I fear I can recall disliking it at the time. Even then I sensed it was peopled with stage-school brats and aimed too shamelessly at the American market.

As a result I viewed the later careers of two of its stars - Brisnley Forde of Aswad and Peter Firth - with mild scepticism.

I struggled with Spooks in particular. MI5 just would not employ a former member of the Double Deckers and that is the end of the matter.

Still, I am the last blogger qualified to complain about obscure enthusiasms, and Nicholas's latest Double Deckers post has turned up a top piece of trivia. In fact he wins my Trivial Fact of the Week award.

That trivia concerns an episode of the show called Barney, in which the children befriend an entertainer down on his luck and (inevitably) put on a show with him.

Barney was played by Julian Chagrin, who a few years before had been one of the tennis players watched by David Hemmings at the end of Antonioni's Blow-Up. You can see this scene in the video above, which Nicholas included in his own post.

He calls it "the very odd 1966 film Blow-Up," but I think he meant to call it "a key moment in both the creation and the examination of the myth of Swinging London".

Nicholas also reveals that Chagrin appeared as the secret lemonade drinker in the R.White's television commercials.

The song in them was sung by Ross MacManus, the father of Elvis Costello.*

But you knew that already.

* I like Carl Wilson's observation that "a secret lemonade drinker" sounds like a line from one of Elvis Costello's own songs.

Read More

Lord Bonkers explains the dancing gorilla of Twycross Zoo

This video of a gorilla at Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire apparently dancing has been very popular on Youtube.

Here, exclusively for Liberal England, Lord Bonkers explains what lies behind it:

There is nothing the older residents of the Bonkers Estate enjoy more than the tea dances I host at the village hall. 

However, we have a problem. The toll taken by the local industries of Stilton mining and pork pie production mean that many more ladies than gentlemen survive to enjoy an active retirement. 

A couple of years ago the ladies prevailed upon me to provide them with more dancing partners. After no little thought, the solution sprang upon me: train the gorillas at Twycross Zoo. 

This initiative has proved a great success. When I proposed it some warned me of the danger of ravishment, but I am happy to report that to date no gorilla has complained of molestation.

Incidentally, Lord Bonkers gave his own recipe for long life in the foreword he contributed to the 2014 Liberator Songbook:

I strongly recommend that you either bathe regularly in the spring of eternal life that bursts from the hillside above what used to be headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors in Hebden Bridge or get your hands on the cordial sold by the Elves of Rockingham Forest.

Read More

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.

Read More

Individuality is not the opposite of belonging to social groups

I was rather pleased with my post "Why Twitter doesn't work, Labour won't win and the Lib Dems are irrationally cheerful."

But I was aware there was what looked like a weak point in its argument:

[Brooks] goes on to say we should "scale back the culture of autonomy," which makes my liberal hackles rise and suggests Brooks too is in danger of wanting the state to eclipse every other social authority. 

As a liberal I believe in individuality, and we express our individuality through the groups we choose to join. There must be a liberal route to the revival of social bonds.

What I had in mind there is something that turns out to have been written in 2004, the first year of this blog's existence.

There I said:

I am increasingly aware that what I value is not so much individualism as individuality - the flourishing of different sorts of people and different ways of life. (I believe I came across this distinction in Michael Ignatieff's biography of Isaiah Berlin. It is a useful one.) 

It is a concept that has something to do with the old schoolmaster's ideal of "character" and I suspect that the development of individuality requires strong institutions, such as schools that are not under central control. Teenage culture does suggest that individualism does not always produce individuality; and it is undeniable that one of the clearest ways we choose to express our individuality is through he groups we decide to join.

I should record that when I later flicked through Ignatieff's book I could not find any such passage. But whoever thought of it - it may even have been me - this is a useful distinction.

Last year I posted the video above, where the social psychologist Alex Haslam argues that you are the groups you belong to.

Read More

Disused stations in Powys

Time for another one of these videos, I feel.

Enjoy.

Read More

Jeremy Corbyn grows up 30 years overnight

"I knew him when we were 18 or 19, and his views have not changed. We are talking about the thick end of 50 years ago."

So said one of Jeremy Corbyn's old friends when interviewed by the Shropshire Star last year.

That planting a red flag on top of the Wrekin is the most endearing thing I have read about Corbyn, but his friend's comment did play into the fear that his politics do not represent an engagement with the world around him.

So it was good to hear him today accepting political reality and arguing Britain should remain in the European Union.

As Martin Kettle says:

The Labour leader finally caught up with the pro-EU shift that his party made under Neil Kinnock in the 1980s.

That pro-EU shift did arise partly out of despair at Margaret Thatcher's repeated victories, but it also recognised that the world was changing. Westminster was not the only seat of power, and battles that could not be won there might be won somewhere else.

Throughout this period, Jeremy Corbyn clung to his anti-EU beliefs. He was a supporter of the Labout left's 'alternative economic strategy' and its emphasis on import controls.

There is a danger in getting less radical as you grow older - "I used to be a bit of a firebrand when I was your age, but you can't change human nature" - but there is a greater danger in living inside your head and not engaging with contemporary problems.

Somewhere in the background of every young radical is the ghost of Billy Liar and his imaginary kingdom of Ambrosia.

So I was pleased to see Corbyn accepting reality and arguing for continued British membership of the EU.

For the result of Brexit would not be the socialist paradise of his dreams, but - as he recognised - a more right-wing government glorying in the opportunity to remove protection from British workers.

Someone should tell Jenny Jones the same thing when it comes to environmental legislation.

Martin Kettle goes on to say:

Meanwhile the feebleness belongs to David Cameron. He called this referendum. He always knew he would be campaigning to stay in Europe. But he did little to prepare the ground and has given practically no thought to the alliances that will be required to ensure a remain win. A reckless budget and an inept response to the Panama Papers means that Cameron comes to the campaign starting line like an athlete lining up for the race of his life after a night on the tiles. 

All of which adds up to the extraordinary truth that, for once, Cameron desperately needed Corbyn to rise to the occasion. Labour votes will be crucial on 23 June, and until now Corbyn has allowed the idea to get around that he is not massively bothered by the outcome of the referendum. That made Thursday a speak-for-England moment for a Labour leader who is an instinctive sectarian – yet it was one that he seized.

This is a little strong: I doubt that Corbyn will appeal to the sort of Labour voters who are or have been tempted to vote Ukip,

But he is right that Cameron has been feeble. And not just Cameron.

I wrote in Liberal Democrat News (remember that?) five years ago:

For years the main parties have engaged in something close to a conspiracy. The issue of Europe has been taken out of general elections, with the promise that it will be decided through a referendum. Those referendums never take place. The result has been an infantilisation of debate on Europe, as politicians are allowed to take up self-indulgent, extreme positions they know they will never have to defend to the electorate.

Well, that referendum could not be put off for ever and it is fast approaching.

The political class will survive it unscathed: it is the rest of us who will suffer.

Read More

Six of the Best 588

Malik Jalal on what it is like to find yourself living on a drone kill list.

Eight Labour candidates are standing for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Stephen Glenn asks if it is time for the Liberal Democrats to fight those elections too.

Anthony Painter explains his conversion to support for Universal Basic Income.

"At the time of its Berliner re-launch, the Guardian had a daily sale of nearly 400,000. Ten-and-a-half years later this has slipped to 165,000." Stephen Glover speculates on the future of what is, for all its faults, my favourite newspaper.

Chris Heather uncovers a sad tale of murder and suicide in the National Archives.

"Alighting from Swindon station in 1910, she hired a driver to take her to Coate but before arriving was dropped off so that she could amble to the farm and reservoir and immerse herself in the sights and sounds of so-called 'Jefferies Land'." Barry Leighton introduces us to Kate Tryon, an American artist and admirer of Richard Jefferies.

Read More

The missing apostrophes of Leicester

On the way to Filbert Street I photographed some lovely vintage signs.

One the thing they have in common is that none bothers with an apostrophe. Today there would be complaints that it was missing.

Since you ask, the boys had to make do with this.

Read More

Palmerston: From Battersea to the Foreign Office

A star is born.

Read More