The naming of trains

Spurred by Boaty McBoatface, Ian Jack devoted his Saturday Guardian column to the naming of things:

The naming habit probably reached its zenith between 1920 and 1950, when the four big railway companies produced thousands of steam locomotives that carried brass nameplates, variously honouring army regiments, public schools, battleships, Derby winners, famous shipping lines, country houses, aristocrats, remote colonies, old kings, young princesses and holders of the Victoria Cross. 

No other railway system in the world named nearly as high a proportion of its engines. The brass plates represented what seemed most solid, singular and enduring about British life – and also what was most conservative. 

New ways of travel shrank the tradition of individualising the means of transport. The Spirit of Saint Louis took Charles Lindberg across the Atlantic; the Enola Gray dropped the bomb on Hiroshima – but how many other aircraft are remembered by a name rather than a flight number? The Lusitania sank, flight MH370 vanished, and memory says it was Pan Am 103 that blew up over Lockerbie, rather than a 747 called Clipper Maid of the Seas. 

As to trains, I think I’ve seen one called Penny the Pendolino. Others are named after Thunderbird puppets – Virgil Tracy, Brains, Parker. There’s a lot to be said for plain numbers.

This afternoon I came home from Leicester aboard a train called 'Invest in Nottingham'. He has a point.

I was also reminded of Nicholas Whittaker's Platform Souls - a book that, in a just world, would have done for trainspotting what Fever Pitch did for football.

There he wrote about seeing his first Great Western steam locomotive, Freshford Manor, on the line beside Dudley Zoo:

I underlined the number in my ABC Combine as soon as I got home, and for weeks it was my proudest exhibit. I'd sit staring at it for ages, but the more I looked, the more taunted I felt by its uniqueness; one thin red line in an otherwise unused section of the book. 

What about all those other GWR locomotives with such quintessential English names: Witherstock Hall, Tudor Grange, Cadbury Castle, Hinton Manor? To the bookish child that I was, it conjoured up a weird and wonderful England populated by Agatha Christie colonels, Wodehouse aunts and Elizabethan plotters.

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Liberator on the Gurling review

My copy of the new Liberator arrived this morning. I have already started serialising Lord Bonkers' latest diary, but I thought I would share some of Radical Bulletin with you too.

The lead item looks at the Gurling review of the Liberal Democrats' performance at the 2015 general election:

James Gurling and his colleagues have pulled few punches. If their report has a weakness it's that it all too well reflects the general election campaign's fundamental mistake of seeing political problems and offering organisational solutions ... 

The elephant in the room throughout ... is Nick Clegg himself, Its conclusions painfully reinforce the now clearer view that he lacked the political experience for the job having had one term as an MEP - so semi-detatched from UK politics - and only two years as an MP before becoming leader, in both cases parachuted into safe berths.

I am sure you would like to read more, but to do so you will have to subscribe to Liberator.

Radical Bulletin, incidentally, was originally a separate publication, latterly edited by John Tilley and Ralph Bancroft.

It merged with Liberator in the early 1980s, where it survives to this day as a section of the magazine.

Think of the two publications as the radical Liberal equivalent of Whizzer and Chips.

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Conservative council puts up tax bill by over 400 per cent

The memo about Britain having overspent on its credit card has clearly not reached Desborough in Northamptonshire.

There the Conservative-run town council has voted to increase its portion of the council tax bill by more than 400 per cent.

Defending the decision, the council's chairman Cllr Mike Tebbutt told the Northamptonshire Telegraph:

"I've had a few complaints passed on to me by the council clerk and they have all been responded to explaining our intentions. 

"The rise is absolutely justified. We are going to provide many of the things that people have wanted to see happen in Desborough. 

"From information passed to the electorate we are committed to a number of things, including improving the town centre, sports facilities and provision of a new skate park."

I have a certain sympathy for this decision. If ever a town gave the visitor the impression that it needs some money spent on it, that town is Desborough.

And this is how local democracy is supposed to work. If Tory councillors have misjudged the mood in the town then the people of Desborough are free to vote them out at the next election.

But Council Tax rates are now so controlled from the centre that it is only town councils that can take radical action like this.

Not everyone agrees with the council's decision.

Step forward Mick Scrimshaw of Kettering Labour Party:

No other council would even be allowed to do this but as Town councils do not have to abide by the same rules as other councils and they were able to push this through without a referendum and without proper consultation with their electorate. 

In my opinion it shows a complete disregard for democracy and also shows a spectacular lack of competence and imagination. I have n doubt they want to spend this extra money on worthwhile things (although I don’t know) but simply to raise council taxes in this way without looking at other ways of raising finance is simplistic and crass.

So welcome to the topsy-turvy world of Desborough Town Council where the Conservatives hugely increase taxes to pay for better services and Labour demands continued austerity.

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: Do you know New Rutland?

The new issue of Liberator is on its way to subscribers, which means that it is time to spend another week at Bonkers Hall.

Except, Lord Bonkers if far from the Hall as he writes this...

Do you know New Rutland?

I sit in one of the dives on 52nd Street writing this diary before I take a yellow cab to JFK and a jet to Oakham International Airport. I was a regular visitor to New York as a young man, the more so after I was given a Manhattan penthouse by a grateful President for rendering services to the American nation that I had better keep under my hat even today. You will have seen what the locals call the ‘Bonkers Tower’ – perhaps because of the moustache-like structure that protrudes from either side of the 34th floor.

The purpose of this visit has been to observe the contest for the Democrat and Republican nominations at close quarters – the New Rutland primaries in particular.

Do you know New Rutland? No doubt you have heard the tale of how, after a painful schism in the Church of Rutland following an attempt to reform the LBW law, a party of settlers sailed from Oakham Quay. After many vicissitudes they reached New England, before trekking into the interior until they reached unclaimed land.

What became New Rutland was bought from Red Indians and proved to be difficult to farm. (Foolishly, the settlers failed to keep the receipt, with the result that the Indians refused to take it back. Some urged legal action, but the majority felt it unwise to sue the Sioux.)

Nevertheless, the settlers tilled the soil and raised their animals to build an economy based on the production of Stilton cheese and pork pies. Why, to make themselves feel even more at home they even dug a vast artificial reservoir and named it New Rutland Water!

I travelled there last week, receiving something of a cool welcome when I disembarked at a wayside station. There were three fellows hanging about, and not one of them had thought to bring me a horse! Well, I soon put them right, I assure you, and also told the stationmaster to oil his wind-pump.

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

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