Women on the railways during World War II

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Lord Bonkers' Diary: "No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

"No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law"

I have fought too many by-election campaigns to be afraid of fisticuffs and am no duffer with an orchard doughty (that sturdy club beloved of Rutland gamekeepers), but I am not accustomed to being quite so ‘tooled up’ – as Violent Bonham-Carter used to put it. Still, I walk up from the harbour, with its smells of tarred rope and rusted chain, armed with pistol, cutlass and so forth as requested. I reach the cliff top and await the arrival of the pastymen.

One by one, figures appear through the chill mist. I recognise the remote cove and also discern a prosperous-looking fellow (who turns out to be Squire Rogerson) and a fellow in clerical garb who, sure enough, is Parson Gilbert.

We spy the lines of a trim brig out at sea – and then those of a second ship that rounds the headland. “It’s the Revenue,” growls Squire Rogerson, “they’ll be no shipping of pasties tonight.” He allows his lantern to flare for a moment and immediately the signal is answered from onboard the brig.

With that we find ourselves rather at a loose end, so we repair to the Jolly Tyler. My new companions turn out to be a friendly bunch. Parson Gilbert, for instance, proves Sound on any number of points of doctrine (though in Cornwall they no longer cleave to the back-foot no ball rule as we do in the Church of Rutland). Even the remote cove begins to unbutton a little.

“The trouble is,” explains Squire Rogerson (a capital fellow at standing his round), “we have twenty bushels of pasties ready to go, but there we shall not be able to load them aboard the Saucy Robin Teverson as long as the Revenue men are watching.

“I may be able to help you,” I reply. “I happen to have one of Rutland Motors’ finest charabancs parked outside the Jamaica Guest House. Why don’t we fill it with pasties? No one will suspect a peer of the realm of breaking the law.”

“Wasn’t there a lord in Essex...” begins one, but I fix him with a stern eye and he is quelled.

“The only problem,” I continue, “is what to do with the Well-Behaved Orphans.”

“In my experience,” returns Squire Rogerson, “there is nothing as good for orphans as sea air.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove
• Black George

The Spencer Davis Group honoured in California

Catalina Island off the coast of California is home to the British musician Spencer Davis. And from 30 June until  22 August the island's museum will be host to an exhibition entitled Gimme Some Lovin’: The Spencer Davis Group.

Not only that. On 30 June the island will see a symposium. The Catalina Island Museum Presents The British Invasion Rocks America is billed as "the first of its kind" and will examine the movement of the blues from America to Britain and back to America during the British Invasion.

And it has a remarkable list of participants:

• Spencer Davis himself
• Mickey Dolenz from the Monkees
• Peter Asher from Peter and Gordon (who once left a comment on this blog)
• Emperor Rosko, the famous DJ

Sadly, I don't suppose I shall be on Catalina Island for these events - there will also be a concert from Spencer Davis and the Catalina Island All-Stars and a firework display on 4 July - but I did shake hands with Spencer when he played in Market Harborough.

But thanks are due to Jessica Zumberge from Catalina Island Museum for sending me the photographs used in this post (the two below come from Spencer Davis's own collection) and also its press releases about the exhibition and the symposium.

On the exhibition they say:

The exhibition Gimme Some Lovin': The Spencer Davis Group opens on June 30th at the Catalina Island Museum and is the first exhibition dedicated to the band. The exhibition draws from Spencer Davis’ own archive of photographs, memorabilia and recorded interviews. “Unlike so many groups coming out of Britain in the mid-1960s, the Spencer Davis Group was not a pop band trying to emulate the Beatles,” 

Michael De Marsche, director of the museum and curator of the exhibition recently stated. “They were a band heavily indebted to American blues. They incorporated that sound with greater authenticity than any other band of the time—British or American. My question was: how did a bunch of white guys from England and Wales create music that sounded like it came from rural Mississippi or Alabama?" 

To answer the question De Marsche sought out Spencer Davis, a long-time resident of Catalina Island ... 

“I’ve been interested in the influence of the blues on British rock for a long time. I thought I knew a thing or two until I met Spencer. His knowledge is absolutely encyclopedic, and his interest started when he was a kid. He had exotic tastes for his native Wales, and he developed early an abiding love for black musicians from the American South. The raw emotion of the blues was far different than anything he could hear on BBC radio. The music inspired him to pick up the guitar and sing. After he enrolled in college, he realized that he could make a little money singing and playing the blues in little pubs and coffee shops.” 

It was during Spencer Davis’ earliest days as a musician that a single comment from a pub owner changed his life. 

“He was told that the trend was toward hiring groups like the Beatles, who were now all the rage in Britain,” states De Marsche. “He’s living in Birmingham and begins to search the city for a few musicians who might share his interest in American blues. 

"He finds himself one night in a dark, little back room and hears a boy of 15 who is, in Spencer’s words, playing the piano like Oscar Peterson and singing like Ray Charles. He recognized immediately that Steve Winwood was something special. But, as Spencer is fond of saying, the important thing was that they had similar record collections.” 

Spencer Davis’ discovery of Steve Winwood’s immense talent is a defining moment in rock history. Joined by Steve’s brother Muff on bass and Peter York on drums, the Spencer Davis Group exploded onto the rock scene, releasing within a startling brief period of time a series of hits, including “Somebody Help Me,” “Keep on Running,” “Gimme Some Lovin’” and “I’m a Man.” 

The band rocketed from obscurity into instant stardom. Much of the group’s popularity was based on Winwood’s voice, which seemed to strain plaintively for every note. Few bands incorporated better the emotion of the blues with the driving beat, lilting rhythms and melodic lyricism of the Mersey Sound.

And on the symposium:

On December 10, 1963 the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite introduced the American public to an obscure band from Liverpool that was causing near riots among teenagers in Great Britain. The following day disc jockeys in America were inundated with calls from anxious teens to play the music of The Beatles. When the band played on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 9, 1964 nearly half of all American television sets were tuned to the broadcast. 

Two months later, the “British Invasion” was in full swing, and Beatles songs held the top 5 spots of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, a feat that has never been equaled. During the next three years British groups dominated British and American charts. Groups and individuals like Peter and Gordon, The Animals, Manfred Mann, Petula Clark, Herman’s Hermits, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Dave Clark Five, Donovan and the Spencer Davis Group changed the course of American music and the landscape of pop culture forever. 

But just what was it that made these British groups so appealing to American teenagers? In many respects the answer is surprising. This symposium The Catalina Island Museum Presents The British Invasion Rocks America is the first of its kind and will examine the movement of the blues from America to Britain and back to America during the “British Invasion.” ... 

Grounded in the recordings of African-American artists like Big Bill Broonzy, Leadbelly, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, the roots of the British Invasion were in the poor rural areas of the American South. Labeled the “blues,” it developed from the spirituals of black churches, the chants of workers in cotton fields, and the plaintive songs that filled the long, lonely evenings of Southern prisons. 

Because the blues emanated from the black American South, its artists were condemned to obscurity in the 1950s. Rejected by a predominantly white establishment that related the sound with its African-American roots, the blues was labeled dangerous and a potentially corrupting influence on American youth. But singers like Little Richard, Chubby Checker, Bill Haley, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley discovered popular success by incorporating the blues into a sound that would become known as “rock n’roll.” 

To appeal to a wide audience, the earliest rock n’roll recordings present a more acceptable, “homogenized” version of the blues. Its simple solos laden with melancholy were transformed into a dance music played by four-piece combos that sped up its tempo and underscored its melody with a driving, rhythmic beat. 

In Britain, however, teenagers living in cities like Liverpool were purchasing recordings from sailors who had acquired a taste for the blues while traveling to American port cities like New Orleans. The gritty authenticity of the sound was irresistible and vividly evoked the smoky juke joints and sun-bleached cotton fields of a black America that was far away and, therefore, fairly benign to British tastes. It offered a striking contrast to the soft jazz and classical symphonies that dominated British radio, which was strictly regulated by the BBC.

I shall be very interested to hear or read the conclusions of this symposium, because the way that white, middle-class British youth took to the blues puzzles me too.

The common factors I have noticed amongst British musicians of this era are that they had fathers who were in jazz bands, meaning they grew up familiar with black music, and sang in church choirs as boys, meaning that they had a good musical education.

But that explains why the ground was fertile, not why the blues were the seed that grew so vigorously.

A science 'free school' in East London

An interesting video on the WORLDbytes website:

In this edifying sofa discussion, school teacher David Perks tells us why, with a group of passionate teachers, he is setting up a science ‘free school’ in East London. What is key, he argues, is the need to challenge the pervasive low expectations we have for young people’s ability to learn.

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"David Penhaligon is one my heroes. You can’t be a Cornishman and not have a soft spot for the man. He had the passion, humour, grace and humility which all us Cornish like to think typify the best of our county." Liberal Burblings on a great Liberal MP.

Lester Holloway asks what Tony Blair is doing in Africa.

"This summer, the city will become a fortress, protected by the largest aircraft carrier in the British Royal Navy, Eurofighter Typhoon jets, flying marksmen, more than 23,000 security personnel (including 13,500 British soldiers), and an array of new cameras added to a city that was already among the world's most heavily surveilled. As part of a $30.2 million contract, the American security company Rapiscan has delivered over 2,700 scanners to provide airport-level security for up to 200,000 visitors a day to the Olympic Park alone. Administering all of the searches and scans will be private guards hired by the U.K.-based security firm G4S, formerly known as Securicor." Fortune looks at the lock down of London for the Olympics.

Sock Puppets, a new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues that when government funds the lobbying of itself it is subverts democracy and debases the concept of charity.

Local government cuts to archaeology matter to all of us, argues Jo Caruth on History Workshop Online.

In A City Living has a magnificent archive of old photographs of Liverpool.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Black George

Black George

The remote cove’s name turns out to be Black George. He signals to me to come outside, and we wander out into the Cornish countryside until there is no danger of our being overheard. I am told of the suffering of his people and am surprised to learn that even the most respectable of them are involved in the fight against the Pasty Tax.

“Be on yonder cliff tonight with a dark lantern, a pistol and a cutlass and ye shall meet Squire Rogerson and Parson Gilbert.”

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"
• The remote cove

Contempt: Money is a Girl's Best Friend

A posting on the Do You Remember? board captures an experience I had a few weeks ago:

I'm currently watching an episode of Top of the Pops from 1977 on BBC4 and they just had a band called Contempt on singing "Money is a Girl's Best Friend". I feel like I've slipped into a parallel universe as I don't remember this band or this song at all. I was 16 in 1977 and really into music so I don't know how it/they passed me by. I can't find much about them on the Internet - anyone help me out here?

I think I was 17 by the time this came out, but otherwise I could have written that myself. And Money is a Girl's Best Friend - which can best be described as "interesting" - must be obscure, because I can still identify many singles from 1977 by their first few notes.

Follow that thread on Do You Remember? and a later posts puts us in the picture:

I'm pretty much an expert on Contempt as I'm the 21 year old daughter of the then-bass player, Nick Pallett (stripey shirt). I can tell you anything you want to know, I'm in the process of writing a pretty detailed Wikipedia article about them. There's been a sudden revival of interest since their TOTP appearance (not saying that's a good thing - most of the interest is just a kind of bemused distaste!). 

Don't be surprised that they passed you by - my mum was also 16 at the time and didn't remember a thing about them! (They're married now and she still refused to believe he was telling the truth about his performance until she'd seen it with her own eyes!) 

Basically they were invited onto TOTP as an introductory act; their single 'money is a girl's best friend' was due to be released the following Friday morning. If it did well they would have released more singles and an album (which they had already recorded). However, Polydor records didn't distribute the singles properly and the majority of record shops never stocked it, so people forgot about them and it never charted. 

The band were back to square one and returned to playing university gigs; meanwhile my dad lent the master tapes of the entire album to the manager, John Scott, who never returned them. One night a few months later my dad and Howard Paul, the front man, came to blows backstage at a gig over (amongst other things) Howard's repeated boasting about their TOTP appearance.

It's a shit business.

The new issue of Liberator is out

Hurry over to Liberal Democrat Voice for full details.

Liberal Democrats to fight Devon and Cornwall police commissioner election

Good news from the South West - and I don't mean the repeal of the pasty tax.

This is Cornwall reports that the Lib Dems are to contest the Devon and Cornwall police commissioner election in November:

Adrian Sanders, Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay, said the party needed to be influencing the debate on cutting crime, but focusing on repeat offenders and involving victims of crime. 

He added: "The Police and Crime Commissioner is going to have a major influence on how our area is policed and how resources are deployed, and that will impact on everyone's lives."

I was critical of the party's decision not to fight these elections when it was announced last October.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The remote cove

The remote cove

After breakfast, I leave the Well-Behaved Orphans on the beach and, stopping only to entreaty them to “Watch the wall, my darlings, while the pastymen go by,” I set off in search of the remote cove.

All morning I stride the cliff tops on my quest and, though I am wearing quite the lightest of tweeds, I have worked up quite a thirst by lunchtime. So I allow my steps to wander towards the Jolly Tyler. Sipping my pint of the local wallop, I see a man sitting at a table. He is staring into the distance and ignoring those around him.

I sit down next to him, saying: “You must be the remote cove”.

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Cornish adventure

• "Better than a chimbley!"

Spitting Image on railway privatisation

Yesterday I blogged about the way that privatisation has changed the nature of our railways. Spitting Image said the same thing, far more entertainingly, long ago.



britishrailways.tv

British parliamentarians queue up to suck up to Chinese tyranny

Don't read John Higginson's Total Politics article on China unless you have a strong stomach.

Here, for instance, is Mark Hendrick, Labour MP and chairman of the all-party parliamentary China group, speaking:

"Perhaps, as a democratically elected politician, I shouldn’t say this.While China may be far from what we would want in the UK, they are good at getting things done."

And here is Tory right-winger David Davies:

“Having been to Shanghai and Beijing, it took my breath away how modern those cities are. It’s absolutely extraordinary. This isn’t ‘First World’ – it’s beyond that. We travelled to and from Shanghai Airport in a train doing several hundred kilometres an hour. They had put up several huge bridges up over the Yangtze River in just a few years. When I think of the work involved in trying to get just a small bridge up in my constituency…” He trails off. “I think we’re going to learn a lot of lessons from China.”

Back to Labour and Emma Reynolds, Labour MP for Woverhampton North East and treasurer of the all-party group:

We should be worried about human rights, and that there isn’t freedom of expression, but we should be mindful of what people say are their priorities. At the moment jobs, having a decent level of income and a roof over their heads, tops other freedoms.”

I believe we should trade with China - that is the best way of spreading Liberal ideas among the Chinese people. And I am prepared to accept that lecturing people about their failings can sometimes be counterproductive.

But what is really depressing here is the politicians' tacit acceptance of the idea that tyranny is more efficient than democracy.

In particular, what is Davies, who fancies himself as a right-wing tribune of the people, doing embracing the idea that having an overpowering state is the best way to run an economy The collapse of the Soviet Union should have buried that idea long ago.

I also wonder what the voters in Davies' leafy Monmouth constituency would make of his views about planning law.

Let me end by quoting a passage that I have reproduced here more than once. It is about the philosopher Karl Popper and comes from Bryan Magee's intellectual autobiography Confessions of a Philosopher:

Bryan Mageee, writing about Karl Popper in his Confessions of a Philosopher, puts it well: Before Popper it was believed by almost everyone that democracy was bound to be inefficient and slow, even if to be preferred in spite of that because of the advantages of freedom and the other moral benefits; and the most efficient government in theory would be some form of enlightened dictatorship. 

Popper showed that this is not so; and he provides us with an altogether new and deeper understanding of how it comes about that most of the materially successful societies in the world are liberal democracies. 

It is not - as, again, had been believed by most people before - because their prosperity has enabled them to afford that costly luxury called democracy; it is because democracy has played a crucial role in raising them out of a situation in which most of their members were poor, which had been the case in almost all of them when democracy began.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Better than a chimbley!"

The government executes U-turns with such speed these days that Lord Bonkers' latest diary was out of date before it was published in Liberator.

Think of it, then, as a romance of the days when Cornwall was under the heel of the hated Pasty Tax.

"Better than a chimbley!"

Where better to be in early summer than Cornwall? I have come to spend a short holiday at Trescothick Bay and am pleased to report that the Jamaica Guest House fully justifies the praise it receives in the pages of Wainwright’s West Country Marginals. It has a dinner gong, which in my experience one only finds in the finest such establishments. The Well-Behaved Orphans are romping on the sand, investigating the rock pools and exploring the cliffs. “They’re better than a chimbley!” one little mite excitedly exclaims as he climbs.

Talking to the locals in the Jolly Tyler, however, I learn that the local economy is in a bad way. Cheap fudge imports from the Far East, the failure of the clotted cream crop and the decline of the tin mining heritage interpretation industry have hit the county hard. So it is no wonder that the people of Cornwall add to their modest incomes by making and selling pasties. Yet when I attempt to introduce this subject to the conversation, I am met with dark looks and mumbled entreaties to remain silent.

I soon discern how the land lies and tap my nose in what I like to think is a knowing manner. Later, as if by chance, I introduce the subject of Leicestershire’s occupation of Rutland and how we used to run pork pies to avoid the excise duty.

As I am making my way back to the Jamaica Guest House, a local accosts me with a dreadful leer.

“Does ee want to help the pastymen?” he asks – I flatter myself I render the local dialect accurately. “Then look ee for a remote cove.”

I resolve to spend the next day looking for that cove.

Many rail passengers pay too much for their journey

A press release from the Office of Rail Regulation gives the results of a survey of more than 1600 passengers from across Great Britain:

• Nearly three-quarters of all those interviewed were not confident what ‘off-peak’ times were. 5% of on-train interviewees travelling on an ‘Anytime’ ticket realised that they could have travelled on an ‘off-peak’ ticket. 

• Over 50% of online respondents agreed that ‘it is a bit of a lottery as to whether you find the best price for a rail journey or not’. 45% said that the fare system is too complicated for them to understand. 

• 41% of online respondents said they had previously purchased tickets and later found they could have made the journey on cheaper tickets. 

• 70% of on-train interviewees were unaware that they could only travel on the specified train on an ‘Advance’ ticket. Among those travelling on an ‘Advance’ ticket, 37% interviewed did not realise that if they missed their train, and travelled on a later train, they would normally have to buy a new ticket.

The Daily Telegraph quotes the Lib Dem transport minister as saying:

"I firmly believe that buying a rail ticket should be a straightforward transaction, not an obstacle course. 

"Passengers should be able to confidently choose from a range of fares, finding the best one for their journey without having to understand every nuance of the fares and retail structure. 

“When people do decide to travel by rail, they want a train ticket, not a lottery ticket.”

The privatisation of the railways has not given passengers more freedom but less.

What people want is to be able to turn up at a station, pay a reasonable fee and travel. But the railway companies, in order to maximise their profits, require us to book in advance and to travel at tightly controlled times.

While services have improved on many lines since privatisation, we have all paid a high price for those improvements and not just in money.

On being addicted to ITV3

A few months ago my television's integral DVD player failed, so I sent the set away to be repaired. When it came back with an unexpected bonus: I could now receive ITV3.

This station is largely devoted to repeats of old situation comedies (On the Buses, Terry and June) and, in particular, old detective series. It has become something of an addiction of mine.

There are the prestige dramas like Lewis, Inspector Morse and Vera. And the more workaday series like Wycliffe and Heartbeat. Though the prestige dramas are great in theory, I often find myself losing motivation halfway through, so it is the shorter dramas that I have studied more closely.

Wycliffe, despite being set in the tourist county of Cornwall, is a notably downbeat series, thanks both to the writing and the central performance by Jack Shepherd. But I suspect it offers a more honest picture of Cornish life than we are often given.

And a recent episode displayed one of the pleasures of these old dramas: spotting famous faces before or after they were famous. Two of Wycliffe's junior police officers were played by Philip Glenister and Marc Warren, and the villain was played by former EastEnder Leslie Grantham.

But then I recently watched a Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes in which the lad made to impersonate a dead noblewoman turned out to be Jude Law.

My greatest affection, however, is reserved for Heartbeat. Of course, it has numerous faults: Bill Maynard is a son of Market Harborough, but his comic turn as Claude Greengrass soon palls. While to call Nick Berry's acting 'wooden' would be a kindness. He could have portrayed a whole timber yard.

Still the cast changed from year to year, and there are many pleasures. Derek Fowlds is a reassuring presence: I remember him as Basil Brush's Mr Derek from the 1960s; he was the only man who could keep Basil in order. Fowlds' replacement all allowed Basil to run rings around them and never managed to finish the story. There is a lesson about parenting there somewhere.

And William Simons who played Alf Ventress turns out, improbably, to have been a child star in the 1950s. He played Anthony Steel and Dinah Sheridan's son in Where No Vultures Fly and West of Zanzibar.

Best of all there is the music. When Heartbeat was launched, making the 1960s the subject of nostalgia seemed almost daring. This was in the John Major years when that decade was being blamed for all our troubles. Today it seems pure escapism and the literal mind of the producers meant that the Spencer Davis Group's Keep on Running features more often than most songs.

What I particularly like is the contrast between the cosiness of the Yorkshire setting - Hearbeat's Aidensfield is the real-life Goathland, which also has connections with Malcolm Saville - and the wildness of the music.

Take a recent episode which ended with a shoot out at Goathland Station involving the villains and Leslie Grantham (this time playing a mysterious Special Branch officer), all played out to the trippy sounds of Dear Mr Fantasy by Traffic.

It's what the sixties should have been like, even if they weren't.

Time for Nick Clegg to connect with his party

Stephen Tall wrote on Lib Dem Voice recently:

What the poll does show is that there’s much work to be done in re-connecting Nick with the party membership, as pioneered a few weeks ago with the ‘Clegginar’ conversation between the leader and members. When a third of your party starts agreeing with Lembit Opik, then it’s a clear sign that all isn’t well!

We can all agree with the last sentence, and the Clegginar - a web-based seminar with party members - was a welcome development. But I wonder if it is right to talk of re-connecting Nick with the party membership: I am not convinced that he was that connected in the first place.

This is how I began a Liberator article in January 2010:

Nick Clegg became leader of the Liberal Democrats without most of us knowing very much about him or his politics. He entered the leadership contest with Chris Huhne as the favourite and fought a favourite’s campaign by declining to become involved in detailed policy discussions. Before that he had served a term as MEP for the East Midlands and then inherited what is probably the nearest thing to a safe seat that the Lib Dems possess. 

He did speak at a Liberator fringe meeting while still an MEP, advocating what he termed “crunchy” liberalism and attacking over-regulation, but he was careful to confine himself to matters that were the concern of the European parliament and not to trespass on the concerns of his Westminster colleagues. Even since he became leader, it has been hard, despite such apparently guileless outbursts as “our shopping list of commitments will be far, far, far, far, far shorter”, to say what Cleggism is or even which causes are closest to his heart.

Perhaps now we have a clearer idea of Cleggism - lower taxes for the poor and increased social mobility - but Nick Clegg himself remains something of a mystery to us.

Becoming deputy prime minister was never going to make it easier for Nick to connect with his party. Nevertheless, I do detect an increasing suspicion among members that he could make more effort to draw his advisers from across the party - Simon Titley has a splendid rant on this theme in the new issue of Liberator. There is almost a feeling that Nick's office has little in common with the rest of the party.

Still, whether it is connecting or reconnecting, Stephen is right: the job needs to be done.

Why I am not a republican: Thoughts after the Jubilee

When the Queen chose Leicester to begin her Jubilee tour I wrote:

To me the great virtues of having a monarchy are that it separates the office of head of state from party politics and makes it possible to have as little reverence for the position as I do.

I shall return to that in a moment, but first a few thoughts on the events of the past few days.

Heresy Corner is right: the Thames pageant was a wash out, but no one had the courage to say so. As he put it:

Yet how typically British that we should celebrate the longevity of an 86 year old woman and her 91 year old husband by making them stand for five hours, in inadequate clothing, getting wet. How even more typically British that no-one is allowed to suggest that the soggy spectacle was anything other than a triumph. 

I suppose this is what is meant when people praise the Queen's sense of "duty". It means standing in the rain, peering through the mist at a whole lot of boats passing by, affecting enjoyment. (At least we were told that she was enjoying it; she looked pretty grim-faced to me most of the time, but not being a BBC commentator I wouldn't know.) It means reinforcing the self-delusion of the crowd that this was a sensible way of spending an afternoon.

And the critics of the BBC's coverage of the event were correct - it was pretty awful. I soon turned over to Sky, who at least showed you what was going on, before giving up on the event altogether.

This should not be such a surprise, because the idea that the BBC's coverage will automatically be the best is becoming harder to sustain (despite the best efforts of ITV's football pundits and commentators). When Channel 4 won the rights to show test cricket, its approach showed you how formulaic the BBC had come.

Who, too, could forget the mess that was the BBC's coverage of the last election? I for one am still trying. That mess, incidentally, proved that sending for a Dimbleby does not automatically solve your problems.

What the coverage of the pageant and of election night had in common was an unwillingness to trust the event or to trust the viewers. We had to be constantly diverted by celebrities, so the BBC thought, or we would not watch. There was also an element of the New Labour spirit that wanted to mark the anniversary of D-Day with spam fritter contests.

And a third point on the events of the last few days - one I also made myself on Twitter - comes from Liberal Burblings:

we expect an 86-year-old woman to sit through the most terrible pile of tosh (which included three American artistes who were under the illusion it was her birthday) while her 91-year-old husband is in hospital as a result of an emergency admission a few hours earlier. Shame on us, I say for devising a system which visits such inhuman stupidity on one family.

So why don't I want to see the monarchy abolished?

Most of those who do cite the foolish attitudes that many people hold towards the Royal Family. But no one is forced to do this - many people will have avoided the Jubilee altogether.

More importantly, if we did do away with the monarchy and have a republic instead, we would probably find that there was more pressure to revere the head of state, not less. New constitutional arrangements are less able to tolerate public indifference than establish ones.

We saw a little of this in New Labour's introduction of citizenship ceremonies, and think of the Americans and their hands on their hearts during the Star-Spangled Banner.

And in the end we spent the past few days celebrating, not the monarchy, but ourselves and our national history. Again, a president could make any national celebrations less inclusive than at present. He or she would lack the historical continuity that the Queen gives and would probably be hated by half the nation.

Besides what could be more radical than closing the streets to cars and having a party? Sous les pavés, la plage. 

Empty shops and foolish landlords

At the end of last year I mourned the closure of Walkers Bookshop in Market Harborough. The chain continues to trade elsewhere in the East Midlands, but its store in this town closed because rent negotiations the property's owners fell through.

And have those owners replaced Walkers with new tenants paying a higher rent?

No, it is still empty almost six months later and a board gives you a Birmingham number to ring if you are interested in taking it on.

Why didn't the landlords make more effort to keep Walkers in the shop? Why haven't they reduced the rent on the shop and found a new tenant?

It is hard to escape the conclusion that one reason for the number of empty shops around the country is that the commercial property market does not work.

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"Slavery and exploitation are sadly alive and well in the UK.That is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the Guardian’s revelations that the company contracted to provide stewards for the Jubilee events in London bussed unemployed people and apprentices into the city, where they worked without adequate toilet facilities and were instructed to sleep rough under London Bridge." A Scottish Liberal on this morning's Guardian story.

Working Memories offers a sane reaction to the Jubilee: "It’s days like these which really bring out some baffling contradictions and absurdities: and it’s days like these when I realise that this is exactly why I like this country so much."

Why does the BBC bother inviting expert guests on to its programmes when they are treated so rudely? wonders Time Flies like an arrow: Fruit flies like a banana.

London Welsh should be allowed to play in rugby union's Premiership next season, argues Eaten by Missionaries.

Writing in the New York Review of Books, J. Hoberman remembers the days when Westerns were un-American.

"London is known to be a rainy town, which isn't thought to be an ideal location for uplifting inspiration, but Londoner Gavin Hammond finds captivating beauty in his city's soaked streets. Hammond's series entitled London in Puddles depicts a sombre yet intriguing view of the damp town, focusing on puddles that reflect its surrounding citizens and architecture." See his photographs on My Modern Met.

Lord Bonkers pays tribute to Her Majesty

This item from the old boy's diary first appeared in November 2009. This seems a good idea to reprint it.

Wednesday

An 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.

The death of David Owen's Continuing SDP

The Queen at Lubenham

The Harborough Mail has an interesting local angle for the Jubilee holiday:

On several occasions from the 1920s to the 1970s, the royal family were informal visitors to Thorpe Lubenham Hall, as guests of the Wernher and, later, the Phillips families. 

Crowds would gather to watch as they walked to and from services at All Saints Church in Lubenham. 

Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh visited in June 1949, three years before she became Queen. 

There was another visit in March 1956, with a young Princess Anne and Prince Charles in tow.

The full story has some photographs too.

Richard III lies buried under Leicester's streets

After his death at Bosworth Field, Richard III's body was taken to Leicester, exhibited naked to the populace and then buried at the church of the Greyfriars monastery in the city.

There is a local tradition that, at the dissolution of the monasteries, Richard's body was thrown into the River Soar. But there is no contemporary source for that story and strong evidence that the site was still marked in the early 17th century.

According to a BBC article about Richard:

Here in 1612 Christopher Wren (future dean of Windsor and father of the architect of St Paul’s Cathedral) who was then tutor to Robert Herrick’s nephew, saw ‘a handsome stone pillar, three foot high’, bearing the inscription ‘Here lies the body of Richard III, some time King of England’. This pillar had been erected by Robert Herrick when he redeveloped the site, in order to mark the location of Richard’s grave.

Today the site of Greyfriars monastery and Herrick's garden is occupied by Greyfriars, Friar Lane and New Street. Leicester Chronicler says:

very little survives of the medieval friary; just an archway in the basement of private property and some stones incorporated into the wall of an open air municipal car park.

I suspect that is the car park behind the social services building in Greyfriars, which was securely locked when I was there this afternoon. But I did find this plaque across the road on the side of the old Nat West bank.

And, somewhere under the paving stones, the body of Richard III may well be close by.

Lembit Opik carried from the ring on a stretcher

Back in April this blog reported that Lembit Opik would make his wrestling debut at Welshpool Town Hall on 2 June. You are no doubt wondering how he got on.

The Daily Express enlightens us:

Former MP Lembit Opik’s latest bid for stardom got off to a bruising start – after he was stretchered out of a wrestling ring by paramedics. 

The attention-seeking Liberal Democrat hoped to launch a new career as a professional wrestler following previous forays as a stand-up comedian, reality TV star, music video dancer and consort to a Cheeky Girl. 

But yet again his dreams of being in the spotlight came crashing down, as he was tossed around by 18-stone opponent Kade Callous before being floored by several blows to the face. 

Opik, 47, wearing an ill-fitting T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and kneepads, looked in agony as he was taken away by medics ... clutching his stomach and wearing a neckbrace.

Boris bikes for Leicester?

One of Boris Johnson's achievements as mayor has been to make a bicycle hire scheme - long a radical dream - work in London, even if those in the know will tell you this scheme was developed under Ken Livingstone.

Now Leicester's mayor is consulting over bringing the idea to the city.

The Leicester Mercury quotes deputy mayor Rory Palmer:

"We want as many people has possible to give their views on the scheme, to help us decide whether it would be suitable for Leicester. 

"Encouraging cycling in Leicester is a major part of our transport policy. 

"The reduction in car journeys will also help improve air quality and people's health."

The consultation closes on 6 June. You can respond via the City Council website.

The Sex Pistols: God Save the Queen

Punk's annus mirabilis, 1977, is as distant from us as the middle of the second world war was to the young Sex Pistols. By chance, it coincided with the silver jubilee, locking Johnny Rotten and the Queen together in a regular cycle of anniversaries until one of them dies.

wrote Dorian Lynskey in the Guardian yesterday. So today's music video choice was easy to make.

Back in February I suggested that punk is no longer feared because it has become part of the pageantry of our history much as the teddy boys did before them.

I quoted a local newspaper report from 1977 that Geoffrey Pearson had used in his book Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears:

Bradford Teddy Boys turned the clock back 20 years on Saturday when they gathered at an open-air concert in the city centre. To the delight of shoppers who stopped to watch they revived some of their favourite dances like the solo bop and the catwalk.

One of the things I do in my day job is write, edit and commission news stories for our website. I had the bright idea of asking a psychologist to comment on this phenomenon and turn it into a story for the Jubilee weekend.

But when the person I asked got back to me he said that he hated the idea. Punks were bad people and if teddy boys were popular by 1977 it was because they were no longer stabbing people.

Well, it's a point of view. But, though it might explain why teddy boys were no longer feared at the time of the Silver Jubilee, it does not explain the public affection for them. Maybe time smooths too many rough edges, but it is a real phenomenon.

In my post from February I pointed out that John Lydon was in danger of joining the establishment by recording the new Public Image Ltd album at Steve Winwood's studio in the Cotswolds. (And not just the musical establishment - one of Winwood's daughters recently married Camilla Parker Bowles' nephew.)

Lydon talked about the experience in an interview with Our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Q: Is it true you recorded the album at Stevie Winwood's studio? 

A: "Yeah, it was the only place we could afford. It was his barn, in the middle of the Cotswolds, with nothing for inspiration but sheep - and I don't like sheep particularly." 

Q: Did Stevie Winwood come to the sessions? 

A: "He did, but only with one ear to the barn door, and then he pretended to be watering the daisies. So he never contributed, but it was great he rented us the studio."

Observer: Nick Clegg refuses to back Jeremy Hunt

Last night I wrote a post saying that the Liberal Democrats should vote with Labour if there is a Commons division on the conduct of Jeremy Hunt.

An article in tomorrow's Observer suggests that this may happen.

Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey write:

Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, has refused to give unequivocal backing to Jeremy Hunt over his handling of the BSkyB takeover controversy as senior Liberal Democrats broke ranks to demand a new investigation into whether the culture secretary has broken the ministerial code. ...

Labour will call a Commons vote on whether Hunt should be investigated, claiming he misled parliament about his role in News Corp's bid for BSkyB and failed to keep his adviser Adam Smith, who quit over his contacts with Murdoch executives, under control. 

A Lib Dem spokesman refused to say whether Clegg would order his MPs to back Cameron. "No decision has been taken," he said.

They go on to name three Liberal Democrat parliamentarians who have publicly criticised Hunt: Adrian Sanders, Lorely Burt and Matthew Oakeshott.

Kilby Bridge quarry

Today Kilby Bridge is little more than a pub and a few houses sited between the canal and railway and beside the old A50, and some of those houses appear to be derelict. There are also a couple of car lots and a boatyard.

But at the end of the 19th century it was the site of considerable industrial activity. There is an outcrop of limestone nearby and lime kilns were built and linked to both railway and canal.

According to an article in a Greater Wigston Historical Society newsletter from 1986, those kilns were disused by 1914. The quarry is still there, but it is flooded and separated from the canal by the narrowest possible strip of land. The structure in the background is a signal gantry on the railway line.

The quarry is now a nature reserve with many waterfowl. When I was there today, the canal bridge that would take you to it from the towpath side turned out to be both ruined and barricaded.