Friday, November 27, 2009
Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Queen's lorry-driving career
WednesdayAn early start finds me enjoying breakfast at a transport café on the Great North Road. They do the finest bacon sandwich in Rutland here, and the tea is strong enough to go 15 rounds with Marciano. I spot a familiar face in the corner: we exchange smiles, but I do not compromise her privacy by speaking to her.
My readers will recall that the Queen – for it is she – was a driver with the ATS during the War; what is less well known is that she has kept her hand in ever since. Indeed, she is never happier than when at the wheel of a pantechnicon, finding it a blessed relief from the pressures of reigning.
Many are the motorists on the high roads of our nation who have been surprised by a shout of “Get on with it, Granddad! One could get a tank through that gap,” followed by a distinctive wave from a hunched figure in a headscarf.
I watch her fondly as she drains her tea and heads for Selby and the A19.
Earlier this week
Monday: Trapped inside Phil Drabble
Tuesday: The Liberal Democrat Attack Unit
Labels: Lord Bonkers
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Jackie Ballard's new job
Jackie Ballard is one of the candidates to join the board of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, set up after the expenses scandal. Her name was among those announced by John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, on Tuesday. She will have to be approved by MPs.
As the BBC website reminds us, Jackie:
As the BBC website reminds us, Jackie:
was Liberal Democrat MP for Taunton from 1997 to 2001 and has served as director general of the RSPCA. She is currently chief executive of the Royal National Institute for the Deaf.
Labels: Expenses, Jackie Ballard, Liberal Democrats
Golden Wonder offices may come back to life
Good news in this week's Harborough Mail. Edinburgh House, where I worked when it was the head office of Golden Wonder, may come back to life.The building has been empty since the company went into administration in January 2006. Now a local developer is proposing to convert it for retail and restaurant use.
Labels: Market Harborough
David Cameron and Michael Gove: Two faces of Conservatism
David Cameron's early success as Conservative leader was built upon the emphasis he put upon the more appealing aspects of Toryism, such as conservation and localism. To a large extent he is a traditional aristocratic Tory, seeking power to ensure that those who are doing well out of the current system (notably D. Cameron) maintain there position.
This kind of Conservative seeks power in part to prevent anyone else winning it. Similarly, you sense that stopping Labour was the chief reason for Boris Johnson's standing as Mayor of London. It was not so much that he had great ambitions of his own for the post.
But there is a different kind of Conservatism these days. It is far more explicitly ideological and has its roots largely in North America. Many of its concerns, such as a strong support of Israel, are rather alien to traditional Toryism.
A good example of this sort of Conservative is Michael Gove. And it was Gove who clearly inspired David Cameron's attack on the government over Islamist influence in schools at prime minister's questions.
That attack came over badly - and not just because Gove's office does not appear to have done its research properly. Cameron needs to decide whether he wants to appeal to the liberal-minded voters who have deserted his party since 1992 or to Conservative activists and bloggers, among whom the Goveite wing of Conservatism is well represented.
This kind of Conservative seeks power in part to prevent anyone else winning it. Similarly, you sense that stopping Labour was the chief reason for Boris Johnson's standing as Mayor of London. It was not so much that he had great ambitions of his own for the post.
But there is a different kind of Conservatism these days. It is far more explicitly ideological and has its roots largely in North America. Many of its concerns, such as a strong support of Israel, are rather alien to traditional Toryism.
A good example of this sort of Conservative is Michael Gove. And it was Gove who clearly inspired David Cameron's attack on the government over Islamist influence in schools at prime minister's questions.
That attack came over badly - and not just because Gove's office does not appear to have done its research properly. Cameron needs to decide whether he wants to appeal to the liberal-minded voters who have deserted his party since 1992 or to Conservative activists and bloggers, among whom the Goveite wing of Conservatism is well represented.
Labels: Boris Johnson, Conservative Party, David Cameron, London, Michael Gove
Team of the Week
It's the "specialist fish rescue team" on hand as Foxton Locks are drained for maintenance.
Labels: Awards, Canals, Market Harborough
Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Liberal Democrat Attack Unit
A second day with the doyen of Liberal Democrat parliamentarians.Tuesday
To Cowley Street for the first meeting of the ‘Liberal Democrat Attack Unit’ put together by Clegg to direct our fire upon the Tories.
I happen to be the last to arrive and find an encouragingly ugly crew already present when I enter the room. In the chair is Chris ‘Hard Man’ Huhne, and around the table I recognise Knuckles Oakeshott, Norman ‘Bite Yer Legs’ Baker and Norman Lamb, who made a good living as a masked wrestler (‘The Sheringham Strangler’) before he entered Parliament.
Having given my apologies, I waste no further time in handing out orchard doughties to all present and advising them to give their opponent one up the snoot when he is not expecting it. Huhne urges us to think up some new ways of attacking George Osborne, concentrating in particular upon his lack of experience. After some discussion, my plan of catching him in the dorm while Matron is having her nap, cramming him into a laundry basket and pushing it down the stairs is agreed by acclamation.
Earlier this week
- Monday: Trapped inside Phil Drabble
Labels: Lord Bonkers
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
J. W. Logan: Pioneer of pigeon racing
The Up North Combine reveals another side to one of my political heroes:
Although a man of many interests John W. Logan was destined to become the pioneer of distance pigeon racing in England.
Labels: J. W. Logan
Last orders at the Pump and Tap
Today's Leicester Mercury reports on the last night of business at the Pump and Tap yesterday.
The pub is being demolished, along with the Bowstring Bridge, to make way for a new swimming pool for De Montfort University.
Labels: Bowstring Bridge, Leicester
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Trapped inside Phil Drabble
It is high time we spent another week with Rutland's most popular fictional peer. Liberator 336 has long been with subscribers.As it is Wednesday we shall start with...
Monday
Autumn has come to Rutland and the season of agricultural shows has drawn to a close for another year. While I always enjoy the opportunity to display my Longhorns, for me the highlight of these events is the sheepdog trials. It is, I hasten to add, many years since any dog was executed: these days they take place merely for entertainment.
I fear, however, that the wider public has a wholly unrealistic picture of what a dog can accomplish because of the activities of Phil Drabble. ‘One Man and his Dog’, his moving television programme, enjoyed great popularity in the 1980s until it became embroiled in a notorious scandal. You see, the sheep on his show were not sheep at all, but out-of-work actors in woollen costumes. While this provided welcome employment to former cast members of ‘Triangle’ and ‘Howards’ Way’, the public felt cheated when the practice was revealed and the programme was taken off the air under something of a cloud.
Drabble, incidentally, later decided he was ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ (which must, in all fairness, be Terribly Uncomfortable), had the operation and now enjoys some success as a novelist under the name Margaret.
Labels: Lord Bonkers, Television
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Tony Greaves and anger management
The leader of the Labour group on Pendle District Council suggests that Tony Greaves should sign up for an anger management course.
Typical New Labour therapism.
What Tony displays is righteous indignation. We could do with more of it.
Typical New Labour therapism.
What Tony displays is righteous indignation. We could do with more of it.
Labels: Labour, Liberal Democrats
Baroness Ashton
Brian Eno and Nick Clegg
Does anyone know how Brian Eno - "stalwart member of 'The Roxy Music' and heir to the fruit salts fortune" according to Lord Bonkers - is getting on as Nick Clegg's adviser on youth affairs? We have not heard a great deal about this role since his appointment was announced.
Some wondered at the time whether Eno was to old for the role. However, he is a full three days younger than Steve Winwood, who would obviously have been this blog's choice.
Labels: Liberal Democrats, Lord Bonkers, Music, Nick Clegg, Steve Winwood
Monday, November 23, 2009
Memorial plaque for airmen who died on the Stiperstones
Today's Shropshire Star reports the unveiling of a memorial to five airmen who died when their Whitley bomber crashed in Mytton Dingle during World War II.
Labels: Shropshire
Back from Edinburgh
I have never been wholly convinced that heavier-than-air flight is possible, so it is good to be home again.
Labels: Scotland
Alison Uttley shows how to deal with child readers
Yesterday, at a specialist children's bookshop on Edinburgh's Royal Mile, I picked up a book of pieces by Alison Uttley. They dealt with her childhood home of Cromford in Derbyshire.
It put me in mind of an item I read in the Guardian in the summer, having performed the not inconsiderable feat of finding a twee, hippyish coffee shop in Desborough.
That item dealt with Alison Uttley's behaviour at a children's bookfair. Gwyn Headley, then a literary publicist, wrote:
It put me in mind of an item I read in the Guardian in the summer, having performed the not inconsiderable feat of finding a twee, hippyish coffee shop in Desborough.
That item dealt with Alison Uttley's behaviour at a children's bookfair. Gwyn Headley, then a literary publicist, wrote:
Alison Uttley died in 1976. They don't make 'em like that any more.I'd arranged for everyone attending the fair to be invited to come and meet Alison Uttley. At half-hourly intervals the PA system hollered out "ALISON UTTLEY! LITTLE GREY RABBIT AUTHOR! HERE AT 12!"
Teachers were whipping their charges into a state of frenzy. I just wanted to sell some books. We'd placed Uttley on a curtained dais, and on the dot of 12 the curtain rose. A howling crowd of excited children stormed the stage.
As Uttley hadn't bothered to listen to a word I'd told her, she was completely unprepared for this. Dimly, she perceived an overwhelming mob running at her and with British pluck she unhesitatingly grabbed her duck-handled umbrella and waded into the attack,
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Britblog Roundup 249
Jonathan Glancey on the Bowstring Bridge
Although I am in Edinburgh, the support of the excellent Jonathan Glancey for my current favourite Leicestershire lost cause has not escaped me:
The fight is on — perhaps too late — to save what the city council hasn’t managed to demolish of the Bowstring Bridge at the junction of Leicester’s Western Boulevard and Braunston (sic) Gate. You would have to be deeply thick to even think of wrecking this special stretch of late Victorian engineering.Or a member of Leicester's ruling Labour group.
Labels: Bowstring Bridge, Leicester
Shop Name of the Day
Runrig: Skye
Writing, as I am, in an Edinburgh hotel bedroom, this seems an appropriate choice.
Runrig began as an almost wilfully obscure band. Its roots were in Skye and the Outer Hebrides and many of its early songs were sung in Gaelic. I have their third LP -"Recovery" - from 1981 (Market Harborough Woolworth's bargain rack in used to broaden my tastes nicely), and much of it is concerned with the history of the crofters.
They later became more commercial, with anthems like this one and "Loch Lomond" (still with a Gaelic interlude) becoming particularly popular.
Runrig are a political band, not only in the concerns of their songs, but also in their personnel. The keyboard player here is Pete Wishart, now an SNP MP at Westminster. And Runrig's long-term vocalist Donnie Munro left the band to fight the Ross, Skye and Inverness West seat in the first elections for the Scottish Parliament, but was defeated by the Liberal Democrats' legendary John Farquhar Munro.
In the years since Munro left them Runrig have veered more to the middle of the road. World music, when crossed with soft rock, all tends to sound the same, whatever part of the world it comes from. There is a tape they play in Thai restaurants that sounds oddly like late Runrig.
I saw Runrig play life at Portree Town Hall (which in truth is more like a village hall) with a fellow blogger 10 years ago. It was a good night and the sense of a band coming home was palpable.
Being carried sideways through the night: The Caledonian Sleeper
I don't like this, being carried sidewaysI remember David Steel choosing the Norman MacCaig poem "Sleeping Compartment" when he took part in Radio 4's With Great Pleasure some years ago. And it conveys well the oddness of travelling by sleeper train.
Through the night. I feel wrong and helpless - like
A timber broadside in a fast stream.
There is the magic of going to bed in London and waking up somewhere near Edinburgh. There is the personal service of being asked if you would like tea or coffee the next morning. And there is the old-fashioned strictness of being woken so that you are up and dressed and off the train as soon as it arrives.
But it is a very odd experience too. Being carried sideways through the night means that you feel every ounce of braking and acceleration in a way that you never do when seated normally. (One of these days I will lie full length on the table while commuting between Market Harborough and see if I can produce the same effect.)
Sometimes with the rocking and lurching you feel that you are on board a ship rather than a train. Sometimes, as you feel every bolt in the train straining, it is like being on board a jet as it comes in to land. All this is compounded by the anonymity of election traction: you never hear the locomotive straining as you would with a diesel.
The consensus among the Scottish politicos is that you don't get a full night's sleep travelling this way, so you don't want to do it too often. But I am glad I have had the experience and it certainly beat trying to fight my way through Friday's rush hour to get to Luton Airport and EasyJet.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Vince Cable interviewed in Total Politics
Read the whole thing in Total Politics.Iain Dale: So you don't do what Ming Campbell used to do every morning when he was shaving and think: "God, I wish I'd stood against Charles Kennedy?"
Vince Cable: No, absolutely not, I genuinely don't. I quite enjoyed the 'acting leader' period, and did quite well, but I've got a very full role.
Labels: Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable
Headline of the Day
Scottish Lib Dems HQ, Clifton Terrace, Edinburgh
I am at the first Lib Dem Bloggers Unconference, which is being held at the Scottish party's office in Edinburgh.Labels: Blogging, Liberal Democrats, Scotland
Friday, November 20, 2009
Steve Winwood, Ronald Reagan and Jacques Derrida
How can I resist this essay on The Rumpus?It is a meditation on "Higher Love" - which is not one of my favourite Winwood songs either - and takes in Reagan, Derrida and Levi-Strauss:
I would volunteer the hypothesis that no matter how abject the pop confection is, there is often a moment of the sublime hovering in there somewhere ... and that Steve Winwood, with his rather thrilling past, his past of greater accomplishment, was calling forth this possibility of music, that it can fuse us to some more interesting set of forces and meanings, something more comprehensive than just what’s happening on the surface. A dreadful song, therefore, with a useful philosophical nugget concealed deeply within.The comments are worth reading too.
Incidentally, I have never heard Winwood live but I did hear Derrida.
Labels: Music, Steve Winwood
The shorter Iain Dale
House Points: Pork Pie Poujadist or Stilton Stasi
I am posting this from the first class lounge at Euston. I shall fulfill a long-held ambition and catch a sleeper train later this evening, waking up in Edinburgh for the first Lib Dem Bloggers Unconference.
Meanwhile, here is this week's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.
The Queen's Speech
They’ve gone again. Only four weeks after the end of the summer recess, the Commons had a break before this week’s State Opening. Some observers seethed about MPs’ long holidays; cynical old hands reasoned that at least it limits the damage they could do.
But the real problem is that, however long they spend at Westminster, there is little MPs can do to hold the government to account. And few with only a few months left until the election, there is little the government can do either.
Which is why Nick Clegg was right to call for the inevitably electioneering Queen’s Speech to be abandoned (David Cameron forecast it would be “shameless”, which conjoured up an unwelcome vision of Frank Gallagher on the throne) and the remaining time to be devoted to some reform of the Commons itself.
If you doubt that reform is needed, listen to the Labour MP Kevin Barron speaking in a health debate in Westminster Hall last week:
Which is why I have some sympathy for the Norfolk Tories – the very term “Turnip Taliban” is redolent of metropolitan contempt for the provinces – who felt Liz Truss had been wished upon them by Conservative Central Office and that they had been told less than the full truth about her.
Imagine their chagrin when they discovered she had conducted an affair with a married Tory MP and –worse – was a former Liberal Democrat who used to write rude articles about the Royal Family.
And if that identifies me as the East Midlands equivalent of the Turnip Taliban – a Pork Pie Poujadist or a member of the Stilton Stasi – then so be it.
Meanwhile, here is this week's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.
The Queen's Speech
They’ve gone again. Only four weeks after the end of the summer recess, the Commons had a break before this week’s State Opening. Some observers seethed about MPs’ long holidays; cynical old hands reasoned that at least it limits the damage they could do.
But the real problem is that, however long they spend at Westminster, there is little MPs can do to hold the government to account. And few with only a few months left until the election, there is little the government can do either.
Which is why Nick Clegg was right to call for the inevitably electioneering Queen’s Speech to be abandoned (David Cameron forecast it would be “shameless”, which conjoured up an unwelcome vision of Frank Gallagher on the throne) and the remaining time to be devoted to some reform of the Commons itself.
If you doubt that reform is needed, listen to the Labour MP Kevin Barron speaking in a health debate in Westminster Hall last week:
Members of Parliament are sent to the House because our constituents want a representative of the state. That is the whole point of the exercise and why we are sent to Westminster, whether we are in government or opposition ... We are the state's representative in our constituencies.You could say that he was just being a socialist, but MPs of all parties have to be careful not to fall into this trap. They must always remember that they are not at Westminster to speak for the government or their party: they are there to represent the electors who sent them there.
Which is why I have some sympathy for the Norfolk Tories – the very term “Turnip Taliban” is redolent of metropolitan contempt for the provinces – who felt Liz Truss had been wished upon them by Conservative Central Office and that they had been told less than the full truth about her.
Imagine their chagrin when they discovered she had conducted an affair with a married Tory MP and –worse – was a former Liberal Democrat who used to write rude articles about the Royal Family.
And if that identifies me as the East Midlands equivalent of the Turnip Taliban – a Pork Pie Poujadist or a member of the Stilton Stasi – then so be it.
Labels: Blogging, House Points, Railways
Market Harborough autumn
Thursday, November 19, 2009
David Curry, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee, resigns
From the Daily Telegraph this evening:
The newspaper goes on to allege:
David Curry, the MP who heads the committee responsible for policing Commons expenses, has claimed almost £30,000 for a second home that his wife has banned him from staying in.Mr Curry has resigned his chairmanship of the Parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee and told the Telegraph that he will refer himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner.
The newspaper goes on to allege:
The Conservative MP is accused of having an affair with a headmistress in his Yorkshire constituency and using a taxpayer-funded cottage to meet his lover.
A Telegraph investigation has learned that four years ago, after discovering the affair, Mr Curry’s French wife Anne demanded that he does not stay at the Yorkshire property as a condition of the couple’s reconciliation.
However, the former Conservative minister has continued claiming thousands of pounds a year for the house – which he could expect to sell for a substantial profit after leaving Parliament.
Labels: Conservative Party, Expenses
Irfan Ahmed implodes
Many readers will remember Irfan Ahmed, the enfant terrible of Liberal Democrat blogging. He removed his blog from the LibDemBlogs aggregator a few months ago and little has been heard of him since.
But it seems that his idiosyncratic views have landed him in trouble and that he has closed his blog down as a result. Full details on Political Scrapbook and in the Burnley Citizen.
I hope we will see an older, wiser Irfan return to blogging one day.
But it seems that his idiosyncratic views have landed him in trouble and that he has closed his blog down as a result. Full details on Political Scrapbook and in the Burnley Citizen.
I hope we will see an older, wiser Irfan return to blogging one day.
Labels: Blogging, Liberal Democrats
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Statues at St Pancras
I was down at St Pancras today for a business lunch - there is a phrase you would not have written a few years ago - and noticed that Paul Day has now added a frieze to the base of his giant statue The Meeting.It does not make me warm to the statue, but it the frieze itself is a striking piece of work. I did not have my camera with me today, but Londonist has posted a video of it.
The photograph above, which I took on an earlier visit, shows Martin Jennings' charming statue of John Betjeman.
Labels: London, Railways, St Pancras
Labour MP denies he is dead
From The Journal:
But he would say that, wouldn't he?A North East MP has insisted reports of his death are an exaggeration after rumours swept his constituency that he had died.
Whispers grew across Blyth Valley from Sunday night that Labour MP Ronnie Campbell had had a fatal heart attack.
Labels: Labour
