Here's a treat from four years ago: Stewart Lee appears as the guest on Alexei Sayle's podcast.
They talk about the inevitable apocalypse, Beryl Reid, dinner parties, comedians of the Music Hall era and Lee's film King Rocker.
Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014
"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall
"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman
"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling
and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
Here's a treat from four years ago: Stewart Lee appears as the guest on Alexei Sayle's podcast.
They talk about the inevitable apocalypse, Beryl Reid, dinner parties, comedians of the Music Hall era and Lee's film King Rocker.
Augustus Carp, our Defections, Principles and Opportunism Correspondent, has drawn my attention to the remarkable career of Alan Amos. What follows comes from research by Mr Carp, backed up by investigations of my own Wikipedia.
Amos was first heard of as a Conservative councillor in Ealing, sitting between 1978 and 1987. He unsuccessfully fought Walthamstow at the 1983 general election, but had more joy four years later, when he was elected for Hexham in far-off in Northumberland.
He was to become a victim of John Major's Back to Basics campaign, or rather of a briefing given to the press by the now-forgotten figure of Tim Collins - he was the Tory MP Tim Farron defeated to gain Westmorland and Lonsdale in 2005.
As far as Major was concerned, Back to Basics was about bringing back the three Rs in school and the timely repairing of pot holes. But when asked by journalists if it was also about private morality, Collins said yes.
The result was the appearance of a never-ending stream of scandals (or minor incidents dressed up to look like scandals) involving Tory MPs. And Amos was involved in one of them, having the misfortune to be arrested for what sounds like cottaging on Hampstead Heath just before the 1992 election.
Amos was not charged, but he accepted a police caution for indecency, and stood down as MP for Hexham. Perhaps this might have been survivable by the Nineties, but in the climate engendered by Back to Basics he was toast.
While at Westminster, Amos was known for his vehement opposition to abortion and his enthusiasm for corporal punishment. So it was a great surprise when, in 1994, he announced he had joined the Labour Party. In 2000 he was the star of a Guardian article about the former right-wingers who were now approved Labour parliamentary candidates.
And he was given a seat to fight, losing to Peter Lilley in Hitchin and Harpenden in 2001. He was elected as a Labour member for the Millwall ward of Tower Hamlets in 2002, but lost four years later as the yuppies invaded the Isle of Dogs. In 2008 Amos was elected to Worcester City Council.
In May 2014, with the Council hung, he resigned from the Labour Group to become an Independent, allegedly because Labour hadn't put him up for Mayor. At the Council AGM in June, Amos accepted the Conservative nomination for Mayor, and as Mayor he then voted for council control to change from Labour to Conservative.
A year later, hours before his tenure as Mayor came to an end, Amos announced he was rejoining the Conservative Party. In May 2024 he was to find himself returned as the last remaining Tory on Worcester City Council.
And, a few days ago, Amos resigned from the Tories to become an Independent once again.
So, over the years, Amos has gone from Conservative to Labour to Independent to Conservative to Independent. What comes next? Will he perhaps rediscover his enthusiasm for reactionary social policies and join Reform?
"Wilkie is talking about something that has become an increasing refrain in Western capitals - that Ukraine’s military difficulties are not down to a lack of Western support but down to Ukraine’s failure to mobilise its population into the military." Arthur Snell finds that the West is already rehearsing the excuses for its coming betrayal of Ukraine.
Pam Jarvis argues that the jury is still out on the quality of England’s 'improved' state schools, and on the impact of large Multi-Academy Trusts, with their superannuated non-teaching chief executives and directors in particular.
When people have fewer places to socialise they are more likely to turn to populism, says Jeevun Sandher, the Labour MP for Loughborough.
"At the peak of his business Teesside-based court reporter Peter Holbert could make more than £5,000 per week (in 1970s money!). At the end of January 2025, at the age of 84, he will be covering his last case. He says in recent years demand for his services has almost completely dried up from both local and national media." Dominic Ponsford tells a tale that sums up the decline and fall of the regional press.
Andrew Male defends the genius of 'Allo 'Allo against a modern puritan critic: "As much as it derived its humour from the war itself, 'Allo 'Allo! was also lampooning the tropes of serious BBC drama. In fact, many of 'Allo 'Allo!’s archetypes – the covert beret-sporting female Resistance member, the kind Nazi, the bosomy waitress – are based on Glaister's original characters (in a sly moment of industry subversion David Croft even re-employed some of Secret Army’s actors within the 'Allo 'Allo! cast)."
The release quotes that party's acting leader, Kenny MacAskill:
"Without a strong independence party in opposition at Holyrood, the SNP will continue to be held hostage in negotiations with the Liberal Democrats and other unionist parties. Thus keeping Independence firmly on the back burner.
"This emphasises the need for Independence supporters to use the list ballot at the next Scottish Parliament election to rally behind the Alba Party.
"A strong contingent of Alba MSPs will ensure Independence will always be at the forefront of the Government’s agenda."
If we're forcing the SNP to concentrate on delivering services for a while, we're probably doing it a favour. It's recent record in government is not impressive.
But one of the things that unites Lib Dems is the belief that constitutional questions do matter. We can't keep pushing the line that people don't want Independence but better public services for ever.
Not only is it reminiscent of the No campaign in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum, it also aims to deny people the possibility of debating something that will always be an issue in Scottish politics.
Talking Pictures TV has started showing Z-Cars episodes from the early Seventies, though this one comes from the excellent Vintage British Television channel on YouTube. Like. Follow. Subscribe.
One thing I have learnt is that Nicholas Smith - Mr Rumbold in Are You Being Served? - was also a semi-regular in Z-Cars when the comedy was launched in 1972. He played PC Jeff Yates on and off until 1975.
You can see him in the episode above. Nothing much happens, yet it turns into a tragedy that stays with you.
I don't remember Nicholas Smith from this era of Z-Cars, but I do remember John Collins as the hard-bitten Detective Sergeant Haggar. Constables would groan when he turned up at a crime scene, yet he often turned out to have a surprisingly sensitive side.
Just like Dixon of Dock Green, these episodes of Z-Cars are much better than I expected. Unlike Softly Softly: Task Force, they are not all about the senior ranks and fighting serious crime. They are more interested in the lower ranks and their day-to-day work - see my Softly, Softly: Task Force and the history of police on television.
A word too for the location. A new private estate, it shows you exactly what 1974 was like, down to the Raleigh Chopper in one of the gardens and Leo Sayer on the radio.
Time Out reports that the Telegraph has named what it believes to be the best pub in every English county, based on reports from its readers.
So naturally I turn first to the winner for Leicestershire and for Shropshire.
They are:
The only problem is that Braybrooke is in Northamptonshire and Leintwardine is in Herefordshire.
I don't expect the urban sophisticates of Time Out to know better, but shouldn't the Telegraph? Someone there has been misled by postcodes, as Braybrooke has a Market Harborough postcode and Leintwardine a Craven Arms one.
Anyway, this is a good time to point you to my post on Malcolm Saville and the Pubs of Leintwardine.
Peter Jukes says Russia'a information warfare primed the world for Trump and Musk: "There has been a decade-long war against ‘one person, one vote’, and the concept of a transparent media to inform our citizenry. If we are ever to protect our democracies from this synergy of autocracy and tech, we will have to unravel these alliances of money and information and their traffic of hatred and falsehood."
Ginny Smith on the battle to retain village life in Sussex: "There are many examples ... of villages where people have come together to fight the 'hollowing out' of their community. They have clubbed together to buy the local pub or village shop, they have fought the threatened closure of their school, raised funds to build a village hall and created community orchards and wild spaces."
"'What I tell you now doesn’t go past this room,' the colonel said. 'You’re going to London on Saturday on the boat-train, and you’ll be playing at Churchill’s funeral.' 'But he’s not dead,' protested King, and the colonel replied: 'He will be by Sunday.'" Alwyn Turner recalls the trumpeters who played at Churchill's funeral.
It was only possible to begin production of The Mirror and the Light - the third part of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy - when the producer, writer, director and leading actor gave up a significant proportion of their fees, Ellise Shafer reports on the economics of quality television.
Sven Mikulec watches the Coen brothers' first film, Blood Simple (1984).
Anne Briggs is one of the lost legends of the British folk revival of the Sixties. Orphaned as a young child, she came from Toton in Nottinghamshire - then home to a huge railway depot.
A feature in Uncut last year described how she was discovered:
Her aunt and uncle felt she might be the first person in her family to make it to university, but the arrival of the Centre 42 festival in Nottingham in the summer of 1962 was to change everyone’s plans.
A trade union-sponsored travelling event aimed at decentralising art from London, it hinged on the discovery of local talent. Having learned folk songs off the radio, and the records of Isla Cameron and Mary O’Hara, the 17-year-old Briggs auditioned to appear, and was invited to sing on stage the following night, a one-off engagement gradually morphing into a longer tour, and then a decision to quit school and run away with the circus.
She moved to London, hung out with Bert Jansch and the Watersons, wrote songs and inspired Beeswing, one of Richard Thompson's greatest.
That Uncut piece paints her as an unhappy live performer:
On bad nights, Briggs dissolved on stage, forgetting lyrics and abandoning songs as she battled with her profoundly ambivalent attitude to performing. She always sang with her eyes tight shut, making no attempt to reach out to the crowd; her transcendent nights might be the ones when she managed to blank the audience out entirely. “I was always singing to myself,” she says, momentarily cheery. “I hated being in front of an audience. I was nervous. I was just so fucking nervous.
She recorded a folk rock album in 1973, but hated it so much that she blocked its release. (It emerged in 1997 under the title Sing a Song for You, and everyone else loved it.)
And after that she headed for a remote part of Scotland with her partner, and has rarely been heard from since,
So that's Anne Briggs: a reminder that you can find wonderful artists if you look beyond the usual sources.
The end of another week at...
No, it's not a "typo". It's a payoff from something in Monday's entry. Remember when Lord Bonkers visited the Elves of Rockingham Forest's 'Santa's Christmas Wonderland' and took a turn in the Santa costume to give Meadowcroft a break and then the Revd Hughes turned up?
You've "not read it"? But I put the links to the earlier events that week at the end of each entry! If you can't be arsed to click on those then you can hardly expect to get full enjoyment out of such carefully crafted satire, can you?
I'll admit that yesterday's offering was a bit flat, but a lot of thought goes into this. It's not like those other Lib Dem blogs - when there were other Lib Dem blogs.
Anyway, those of you who have done the reading will enjoy this next bit.
Sunday
Back to St Asquith’s. I make another attempt to interest the Revd Hughes in standing for Archbishop of C., emphasising the power and riches that would be at his command, but he remains adamant: “Get thee behind me, Santa.”
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
The Rochdale Canal runs for 32 miles from Castlefield Basin in Manchester to the Calder and Hebble Navigation at Sowerby Bridge in West Yorkshire. Its return to navigation in 2002 was one of the triumphs of the canal restoration movement.
That restoration, however, did not include the branch that ran into Rochdale town centre. This video looks at what remains of it today and the prospects for its restoration.
The success of the Liberal Democrat campaign at last year's generation has turned Freddie and Fiona into all-powerful figures, at least in their own estimation. But did they do any more than fetch the coffee?
Saturday
Do you know the Zoom? It’s a way of having meetings without taking the train to Town and, best of all, you can mute any speaker you wish. I have a morning meeting on it with Freddie and Fiona, who are already making plans for Ed Davey’s stunts in the next general election campaign.
I suggest, a little acidly, that, given our party’s new-found enthusiasm for landowners, I have a word with the Duke of Buccleuch to see if there are any ditches he needs cleared out on his Northamptonshire estate. Getting into my stride, I mention that private schools are always looking out for someone to mark out the rugby field or clean boots. The pigeon pair are delighted with my ideas – at least they look delighted.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
As far as I can make out, this interview was screened on 3 September 1977. This other guests on the programme were James Stewart and Elkie Brooks, though she may just have sung.
That summer Boycott had ended his self-imposed exile from test cricket, played three tests for England, scored 442 runs in 5 innings (at an average of 147.33, and helped us win back the Ashes. The man could play.
Here he is very serious, with no sticks of rhubarb or mothers' pinafores. This is the Boycott who was to become sought as a batting coach by teams all around the world.
I always found Jon Agnew's bating of Boycott on Test Match Special tedious beyond belief. Ed Smith, by contrast, new how to draw him out and get him talking about the technicalities of batting, which was really interesting.
At one time, incidentally, Sir Geoffrey and Michael Parkinson were rivals for an opening birth in the Barnsley first XI. The other opener was Dickie Bird.
"If George’s world view, and his work, were shaped by the second world war and the postwar international order ... Alex’s has been most influenced by the struggle for civil rights and equality. His father’s philanthropy started in South Africa and the struggle against apartheid, and Alex met Nelson Mandela at a young age." Roula Khalaf meets Alex Soros, the son of George Soros and chair of the Open Society Foundation.
Low public trust in politicians places few constraints on their ability to wield power, so leading politicians may lack the motivation to take meaningful action to arrest low levels of trust among voters. Chris Butler, Will Jennings and Gerry Stoker present their research into how politicians cope with this lack of public trust.
Margaret Brecknell on the African American abolitionists who travelled to Leicester in the mid-19th century to share their stories.
"To Be or Not to Be is twisty, turny, filled with gags and smart writing and humorous quagmires our heroes must rely on their skills to escape from. But it’s also clearly poking fun at Hitler and his gestapo and their countless failings as ring kissers par excellence. Let’s learn a lesson or two from Lombard and gang and not blindly follow our leadership until we’re no more than history’s villainous punchline." Ed Travis, Elizabeth Stoddard and Frank Calvillo celebrate Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film - one of the "funniest and most groundbreaking comedies ever made".
Graham Fellows has realised. after 40 years, that he likes John Shuttleworth. He talks to Brian Logan about him.
Lord Bonkers was in and out of Savoy Hill all the time in the early years of the BBC, though he has asked me to make clear he was never subject to an arse-booting himself. Such methods may not be appropriate in the world of today, but the old boy's right: something does need to be done about BBC News.
Friday
It’s high time we had a proper BBC arse-booting; those Tory placemen (one of them is a former member of the Bee Gees, if you please) have been there long enough. I don’t suppose you’ve had the pleasure of being present at this ceremony, where a bad hat who has evaded the stern eye of Sir John Reith and talked his way into the corporation, is ejected forthwith, but the way of it is this.
The Chief Commissionaire, traditionally a former RSM from one of the Guards regiments, boots the miscreant the length of the longest corridor at Broadcasting House and out through the revolving doors. That corridor is lined with BBC luminaries, who tut and look disappointed in the bootee. You might spot, for instance, John Snagge, Grace Wyndham Goldie, Alvar Lidell, Franklin Engelmann, Katie Boyle, Moira Anderson, William Woollard, Angela Rippon, Lauren Laverne, Richard Osman, the Frazer Hayes Four, the more senior Teletubbies and several generations of Dimblebys in the throng.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
It may be unintentional, but as it stands the government's Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill allows the creation of a new generation of church schools that are not bound by the existing 50 per cent cap on faith-based admissions.
So I'm pleased that the Liberal Democrat education spokesperson Munira Wilson is to move an amendment that would make new schools subject to this cap too.
Pleased? Back in 2017, I blogged about a Sunday Times report that Muslim pupils outnumber Christian children in more than 30 church schools.
I said I regarded this as good news and quoted Timothy Garton Ash, in his book Free World, on the woolly duffle-coat of Britishness:
Gisela Stuart, herself a German-British MP, describes a neighbourhood in her Birmingham constituency that has a large Asian population. Since Asian parents want the best education for their children, and the best school in the neighbourhood is a convent school, they send their daughters there. Never mind the Catholicism; that can be expunged by Islamic instruction after school hours, at the local madrasah.
So there they sit, row upon row of girls in their Islamic headscarves, being taught maths, British history and, incidentally, the story of baby Jesus, by nuns in their Christian headscarves. A complete muddle, of course, but Europe will need more such muddling through if it is to make its tens of millions of Muslims feel at home.
As to whether we should have faith schools at all, I remembered tackling this question long ago in an article for the Guardian website.
Reading it today, I find it better than I remembered - I'd still be happy to defend the views in it.
What I had forgotten completely is that it was written as a reply to the mighty James Graham.
Those were the days. When the Guardian would invite one Lib Dem blogger to reply to another Lib Dem blogger and they both got paid for the privilege.
Congratulations to BBC News for winning our Headline of the Day Award, but their headline could have been, nay, was, much better.
The judges have furnished me with this proof - the reference to Cleethorpes could have made this our Headline of the Year.
The second day of Christmas at Bonkers Hall is quite as much fun as the first. Danny Chambers' phone call was inspired by a news story that broke at Christmas:
Russian scientists have unveiled the remains of a 50,000-year-old baby mammoth found in thawing permafrost in the remote Yakutia region of Siberia during the summer. They say "Yana" - who has been named after the river basin where she was discovered - is the world's best-preserved mammoth carcass.
More fun with Cook and her malapropisms another day, no doubt.
Boxing Day
When I thank Cook for her sterling work yesterday, she expresses a wish that I will entertain the current prime minister here one day so that she can meet him – “He used to be Director of Public Persecutions, you know.”
That pleasurable duty done, today is a day for talking with old friends – perhaps waving a cold turkey drumstick to emphasise a point – and strolls about my Estate. I take a party of new MPs to meet the Rutland Water Monster (‘Ruttie’ to her friends, among whom I am proud to number myself). Later, the more intrepid spirits leave for the legendary Boxing Night party at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes.
I am dozing by my Library fire when the telephone is brought to me. “Hi, this is Danny Chambers. They found a frozen baby mammoth in Siberia and I’ve had it by my fire all Christmas, and given it a rub with a towel now and then. It’s just given a tremendous sneeze, so all the signs are encouraging. I was wondering if you had a spare field where it could….” Politely but firmly, I replace the receiver.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
Any hope we have of containing the escalating climate crisis depends on getting to net zero, which will mean cutting greenhouse gas emissions drastically in the next few decades. Coal, gas and oil will have to be replaced with clean energy sources.
In the language of climate policy, this is known as the green energy transition and is often presented as the latest in a series of transitions that have shaped modern history. The first was from organic energy – muscle, wind and water power – to coal. The second was from coal to hydrocarbons (oil and gas). The third transition will be the replacement of fossil fuels by forms of renewable energy.
The transition narrative is reassuring because it suggests that we have done something like this before. We owe our current affluence to a sequence of industrial revolutions – steam engines, electricity, Fordism, information technology – that go back to the 18th century. Our future affluence will depend on a green industrial revolution, and to judge by the encouraging headlines, it is already well underway.
The standard estimate is that energy transitions take about half a century; if that were true of the green energy transition, it could still be on schedule for 2050.
Unfortunately, as both Tooze and the the book he is reviewing argue, the history of human energy use provides little support for this optimistic take.
Tooze writes:
When we look more closely at the historical record, it shows not a neat sequence of energy transitions, but the accumulation of ever more and different types of energy. Economic growth has been based not on progressive shifts from one source of energy to the next, but on their interdependent agglomeration. Using more coal involved using more wood, using more oil consumed more coal, and so on.
An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but that what we are attempting – the deliberate exit from and suppression of the energetic mainstays of our modern way of life – is without precedent.
This is hardly an encouraging conclusion, but I'll leave the last word with the 18th-century bishop and philosopher Joseph Butler:
Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?
I love this: you hardly need to ask for subtitles. German satire could be the trend of 2025.
On days like this I wonder where Lord Bonkers' family is. Perhaps being immortal, whether through bathing in the spring that bursts from the ground beneath the former headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors or that cordial the Elves of Rockingham Forest sell, is bound to leave one lonely?
Christmas Day
This is what Christmas used to be like at the Hall! A long table simply groaning with good things and lined by friends, relations, staff, Liberal peers and MPs, members of Earl Russell’s Big Band, resourceful orphans, elves and the like.
Here, Daisy Cooper is discussing economic policy with the Wise Woman of Wing and the Professor of Hard Sums at the University of Rutland. There, the King of the Badgers discusses the finer points of guerrilla warfare with Helen Maguire and Mike Martin. And everywhere, Freddie and Fiona are rushing out to make or take phone calls to prove how important they are – I strongly suspect them of phoning each other.
I even spy, at the farthest end of the table, a couple of Conservatives who were MPs until the last election, but I pretend not to notice: it can’t be easy finding a job with that on your curriculum v. And as a multitude of the heavenly host put it (and I think rightly): “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
Opened in 1912 and 1913, the Derwent Valley Light Railway somehow escaped both Grouping in 1923 and nationalisation in 1948.
By the time I was a student in York, it ran from its own Layerthorpe station in the city to Dunnington, a distance of four miles. The line was linked to the wider system at its York end by British Rail's Foss Islands Branch.
When this footage was taken in the Sixties, the line ran further than Dunnington, reaching Cliffe Common and the BR line from Driffield to Selby. When that line closed in 1964, the process of cutting back the DVLR began. It closed altogether in the autumn of 1981.
I love the picturesque decay here - I recall the DVLR I knew as being better maintained.
A short stretch of the line was reopened in 1993 as part of the Yorkshire Museum of Farming.
Jane Green and Raluca L. Pahontu present research that contradicts the idea that Brexit was voted through by the economically left-behind: "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."
M.F. Robbins tells the tale of two playgrounds: "One is closing soon while the other - brand new - has stood empty for nearly a year, ringed with steel fencing to stop people from using it. Their stories aren’t the most important thing you’ll read today, but they illustrate something much bigger - the collapse and retreat of local government, and the profound effect it will have on our public spaces."
Mother Jones talks to Daniel Immerwahr about what the history of American expansion can tell us About Trump’s threats.
"Unexpected visitors to the Director’s Box that day were ex-goalkeeper and US Secretary Of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, quite literally one of the most famous men in the world at that point and in the UK for talks on Rhodesia, and UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland. A step down from Raquel Welch’s appearance a few years back, possibly, but enough to get pictures of Kissinger, Chelsea Chairman Brian Mears and his wife June in a number of national newspapers." Tim Rolls takes us back to Stamford Bridge in 1976, when the Chelsea team had only one player who had cost the club a transfer fee.
Ian Visits on Heathrow Junction, the London station that came and went in six months in 1998.
Lord Bonkers has made this observation about when Christmas begins before, but as that was in 1990 - before any of you were born - I think he can be forgiven for repeating himself.
As for the rest, I refer the hon. Gentleman to Thomas Hardy's poem The Oxen.
Christmas Eve
To St Asquith’s for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. I’m sure I speak for many when I say I do not regard Christmas as having properly begun until I hear the tremulous voice of a choirboy singing the opening verse of ‘Lloyd George Knew My Father’.
Late in the evening, a fellow in the Bonkers’ Arms announces “Now they are all on their knees,” referring to some legend that the oxen kneel in their stalls at midnight on this very day to welcome the Christ child. The Smithson & Greaves Northern Bitter has been flowing freely, and it does sound Rather Far Fetched, so bets are placed against.
To ensure fair play, I join a party heading for Home Farm to see what the aforementioned beasts are up to. And – would you believe it? – they are kneeling. I have strong suspicions that the oxen were in on this from the start and will receive a share of the winnings, but say nothing, hoping it might be so.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week...
It costs over £2m a year - almost £6,000 a day - to run. About 15 per cent of that, says the Guardian, comes from the Church of England , and the remainder must be raised by the cathedral through events, rent, grants and donations. Nothing comes from the government.
The cathedral's dean. the Very Rev. Chris Dalliston, tells the newspaper:
"There have been three or four years of erosion of our reserves. Post-Covid, visitor numbers were low and events were slow to pick up. There has been a huge rise in the cost of utilities - our bill has gone up by more than £100,000 a year across the estate, a huge additional expense.
"Peterborough is not a wealthy city. It’s not a hotspot on the tourist trail, it’s not seen as glamorous. In recent years, footfall has not been high in the city centre. We’ve lost our big department stores. People have been badly affected by the cost of living crisis.”
"We’re a spiritual hub and a community space in the heart of the city. But we also have to run this as a business. We need people to recognise the urgency of the situation. We’re not crying wolf."
The new Liberator - that's issue 427 - is out today. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.
Among the articles this time is one on the evolving politics of Leicester by Alistair Jones. The city saw both the only Conservative gain of the 2024 general election and a shadow cabinet member lose to an Independent who campaigned on Gaza.
On the other hand, there's also Lord Bonkers' Diary. We join him a couple of days before Christmas.
Monday
For the past fortnight, the larger part of the car park at the Bonkers’ Arms has, without my leave, been given over to an attraction calling itself ‘Santa’s Christmas Wonderland’. While there were queues on the first day, word has got about the village; this morning I find myself the only visitor.
I suspected the hand of the Elves of Rockingham Forest when I first heard of the place: my suspicions are confirmed when I see the legend ‘No Money Returned’ prominently displayed and a couple of truculent elves on the gate.
I make a beeline for the promised grotto, only to find a disgruntled Meadowcroft in a red suit and false beard (I’m certainly not paying to sit on his knee: as his employer I can do that any time I choose), while the advertised “elven childlings” turn out to be two Well-Behaved Orphans with their faces stained green. What Matron will have to say about that, goodness only knows.
At least I am able to give Meadowcroft a breather by donning the scarlet tunic myself, though I am embarrassed when the Revd Hughes arrives on an unannounced ecumenical visit to the elves and recognises me behind the beard.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South-West, 1906-10.