Wimbledon

 Time was, my heart was in my mouth every time a British woman was forced to play two or more shots in a game, waiting for the inevitable unforced error. Find a winner, finish the point off quickly, I said mentally. Katie Boulter has broken the mould. First at Eastbourne and now gloriously on Centre Court she has succeeded in out-rallying foreign players. Harmony Tan, who harried the great Serena Williams to defeat, will be a tough opponent, but I look forward to an exciting match.

The Scots are owed a further referendum ...

 . . . but they should still vote "no".

One suspects that the reason for Nicola Sturgeon's declaration today has as much to do with keeping the SNP in power in Holyrood and protecting her MPs as a genuine belief in the viability of an independent Scotland. However, the ground has shifted since the first independence referendum of 2014. That was conducted on the basis that the UK would remain in the EU. Indeed, a major argument - something that English unionists conveniently forget in the current debate - was that Scotland would be excluded from the EU if she became independent. The legal advice from EU bodies was that an independent Scotland would not be allowed to "inherit" membership but would have to apply to join. Spain for one, wary of encouraging splits from her own provinces, gave a clear indication that she would veto Scottish membership. Scotland clearly benefited more than England from EU membership and recognised the fact, as was shown in the later Brexit referendum, so it is a fair assumption that the danger of EU exclusion swung the 2014 vote against independence. For a long time, opinion soundings had shown that the decision was on a knife-edge, before the EU issue gained prominence.

Scottish voters were not to know that Tory machinations were already under way to achieve Brexit. So a second referendum where the ground rules are known is surely just. However, unless there is a clear indication from the EU that a Scottish application would be welcome, I suggest that Scots had better work with the devil that they know instead of the deep blue sea that they do not. The Scottish economy is in deficit and even if it could once rely on oil production to support it - which was debatable even at the time that independence was first mooted - it cannot now. The UK as a whole, member of the G7, is trusted to borrow at prevailing rates. Scotland almost certainly will not. EU contributor nations like France and Germany will not be happy to accept another debtor nation and one can expect Spain's resistance to continue. 

Heart-warming news from Iraq

 It does not compensate for the continuing break-downs in utility supply or the sporadic religion-inspired terror attacks, but at least the street scene in Iraq is becoming brighter and more inspirational. The mayor has clearly taken the hint from the unofficial graffiti relieving the concrete structures in the capital city by commissioning art works from Wijdan al-Majed, a 49-year-old artist and instructor at the Baghdad College of Fine Arts. She has taken inspiration not only from local heroes but also such influencers as Max Weber, the German sociologist. But you do not need to know who all the subjects of the murals are in order to enjoy the vibrant colours.

International anti-drug abuse day

 

In 1987, the United Nations General Assembly decided that every year 26 June should mark International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. The idea was to demonstrate its commitment to the fight against drug abuse, illicit production and trafficking, and their nefarious effects on individuals and on society as whole. The illicit drug market generates huge profits for organised crime, and is estimated to be the source of approximately one fifth of global crime proceeds. [From this EU briefing.]

Repressive measures, which the current UK government is wedded to, have been ineffective. The time has surely come to follow the lead of more progressive nations.

Kent Tory MP's role in denial of global warming

In February, Craig Mackinlay*, the MP for South Thanet, as chair of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG) hired Harry Wilkinson, who is head of policy at the anonymously funded Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). Wilkinson has said “the ‘climate crisis’ is a religious belief, nothing to do with science”. He was previously employed by GWPF founder and former chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson, who recently said climate change was “not a problem”.

Official rules, which give aides a 28-day window to register, mean Wilkinson has yet to be declared on the House of Commons register, despite having a parliamentary pass.

Wilkinson joins existing Mackinlay aide Ruth Lea, a trustee of the organisation until last year who has said people should “move on” from worrying about “climate change” and serves as an adviser to a bank run by a former Conservative Party treasurer. (Lea admits that global warming is occurring, but maintains that it is part of a natural cycle and nothing to do with human activity.)

Two other members of the NZSG, including former Brexit minister Steve Baker, also have connections to the GWPF.

The revelations, reported by the pressure group DeSmog, should deal “a fatal blow” to the credibility of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, according to Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, who warned that MPs should be wary of “regurgitating [GWPF] propaganda” and instead start thinking “rigorously” about the climate.

The NZSG, formed by Mackinlay and fellow Tory MP Steve Baker last year to oppose the UK’s net zero measures, finally revealed its 19 supporters last month in a letter to the Sunday Telegraph, which called for cuts to green taxes and increased fossil fuel production.

Mackinlay has previously said the NZSG is using research in its campaigns that is sourced from the GWPF, which was founded with the purpose of combating “extremely damaging and harmful policies” designed to tackle climate change.

Steve Baker, the MP for Wycombe, joined the GWPF as a trustee last May and Lord Peter Lilley, another NZSG member, is a former trustee of the charity. Both attended its annual lecture at the end of November, where US scientist Professor Steve Koonin questioned the scientific consensus around the climate crisis.

The GWPF’s main source of income is through donations, but it does not disclose its funding sources. However, a handful of donors have been revealed over the years, including Michael Hintze, a hedge-fund manager and major Tory donor; Neil Record, chairman of the free-market Institute of Economic Affairs; and Lord Nigel Vinson, co-founder of the Centre for Policy Studies think tank.
‘Gesture Politics’

The NZSG claims to accept climate science and Mackinlay recently said he is “not a climate-change denier”. But his two taxpayer-funded aides have both regularly challenged mainstream climate science.

Wilkinson has previously criticised BBC coverage of climate change as “alarmist”. He stated in 2018 that the idea “global warming can be somehow ‘irreversible’ is pure propaganda; the climate has always been changing and it always will”. Wilkinson has also said that a temperature rise of more than two degrees is “not inherently dangerous”.

Wilkinson is regularly invited to speak about climate policy in right-leaning media, including on television and radio channel GB News and talkRADIO. In the past year he has tweeted that “the ‘climate crisis’ is a religious belief, nothing to do with science” and that anyone who believes all forms of extreme weather are getting worse because of climate change is a “climate change denier”.

He was one of at least 11 climate science deniers who attended the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, during which he falsely claimed the conference was being powered by diesel generators, a move environmental experts described as “desperate”.

A spokesperson for the parliamentary commissioner for standards confirmed to DeSmog that Wilkinson had joined Mackinlay’s team in January, though he is not listed in the most recent official register. As parliamentary staff have 28 days to register, Wilkinson will likely feature in the next entry in early March.

Parliamentary records show Wilkinson worked simultaneously as a research assistant to Lord Lawson and as a researcher at the Global Warming Policy Foundation from November 2015 until last June, when Lawson went on leave.

In October 2019 he was promoted to head of policy at GWPF, and is now also head of policy at the newly-launched Net Zero Watch (NZW), run by the campaign wing of the GWPF, the Global Warming Policy Forum.

Shortly after DeSmog approached him for comment, Wilkinson tweeted that he was “pleased to be able to take a position in Craig Mackinlay’s office” and confirmed he would continue working at Net Zero Watch while in the role.

He added that it was an “enormous privilege to work with Lord Lawson, who continues to be an inspiration and has achieved so much in public life”.

Bob Ward said the revelation of Wilkinson’s new post “explains why Mr Mackinlay, Mr Baker and their fellow campaigners against net zero have been parroting the media releases from the lobbying arm of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

“It should deal a fatal blow to the credibility of the so-called Net Zero Scrutiny Group, which now appears to be just the Parliamentary office of the Foundation,” he told DeSmog.

Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, added: “That an organisation so consistently wrong on matters of global significance is now right at the heart of Parliament shows how wrong their supporters are too. Any right-thinking politician who wants not to be wrong should avoid them. And those who don’t, are saying a lot about themselves and their interest in evidence.”
‘Move On’

Wilkinson is joining political economist Ruth Lea on Mackinlay’s team. Lea has worked for the South Thanet MP since at least February 2017, according to available records.

The former civil servant and vocal Brexit supporter was a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation from 2019-21. In 2019, Lea wrote a GWPF pamphlet called “Carbon Futility”, in which she called the UK’s net zero target “futile gesture politics” and said the Paris Agreement was “doomed to failure”. She also took aim at UN climate science body the IPCC, describing its “forecasting record” as “poor” and accusing it of “overestimating the degree of global warming”.

In response to a 2020 Met Office report which found that 2019 was the 12th warmest year since 1884, Lea tweeted: “Oh yes, and temperatures fluctuate. Time the climate alarmists cooled down”.

She also dismissed the need for the 2021 COP26 climate summit, telling her Twitter followers to “move on” from “climate change”. In June, she described a Climate Change Committee report warning that the UK was unprepared for climate chaos as “ludicrous scaremongering”.

Lea currently sits on the advisory council of the TaxPayers’ alliance, a group that has frequently opposed government measures to combat climate change and is based at the same Westminster address on Tufton Street as the GWPF.

Lea has served as an economic adviser to Arbuthnot Banking Group since 2007. The private bank’s chair and former CEO Henry Angest is a major donor to the Conservative Party, where he has previously served as treasurer. Angest, a strong supporter of Brexit, has donated to both the Freedom Association, which has promoted climate science denial, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Asked by DeSmog to comment on her links to the Foundation, Lea said: “I have been associated with the GWPF and fully support its aims”. She added that she was “not a climate change denier”.
Lack of Transparency

Wilkinson’s appointment also highlights the need for greater transparency about the GWPF and parliamentary access more generally, said Tom Brake, director of campaign group Unlock Democracy and former Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington.

“Parliament and the public are entitled to full disclosure about people who have access to Parliament,” Brake told DeSmog.

“Mr Wilkinson is head of policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation. This foundation is known for its forthright views on climate change and its less than forthright explanations about who funds it. If Mr Wilkinson is going to be pushing their line in parliament, we should know who is behind the GWPF.”

Brake also called for greater transparency in parliament through linking registration and the issuing of a pass. “A simple solution would be to register an individual and issue their pass simultaneously. That way, there will be no time lag between the two – and immediate transparency.”

* (The Tory MP had benefited from the notorious Conservative party RoadTrip campaign in 2015, which saw his agent, a Conservative apparatchik, convicted of overspending their expense allowance.) 

Tiverton and Honiton: those Tory excuses

 The scale of yesterday's by-election win needs emphasising. These are the detailed figures, as reported by Devon Live:

04:20KEY EVENT

How Tiverton and Honiton voted - results in full

Full results of Tiverton and Honiton by-election.

Liberal Democrat gain from Conservatives.

Richard Foord (LD) 22,537 (52.91%, +38.14%)

Helen Hurford (C) 16,393 (38.49%, -21.72%)

Liz Pole (Lab) 1,562 (3.67%, -15.88%)

Gill Westcott (Green) 1,064 (2.50%, -1.34%)

Andy Foan (Reform) 481 (1.13%)

Ben Walker (UKIP) 241 (0.57%, -1.06%)

Jordan Donoghue-Morgan (Heritage) 167 (0.39%)

Frankie Rufolo (FB) 146 (0.34%)

LD maj 6,144 (14.43%)

29.93% swing C to LD

Electorate 81,661; Turnout 42,591 (52.16%, -19.71%)

2019: C maj 24,239 (40.66%) – Turnout 59,613 (71.86%)
Parish (C) 35,893 (60.21%); Pole (Lab) 11,654 (19.55%); Timperley (LD) 8,807 (14.77%); Reed (Green) 2,291 (3.84%); Dennis (UKIP) 968 (1.62%)

"This is just mid-term blues"

The scale of the reversal is extraordinary, far beyond the normal swing against an incumbent government. Moreover, the size of the turnout suggests that the Lib Dems win was achieved not just by Conservative voters staying at home, but by many actively switching their vote. 

"The Lib Dems have a fantastic by-election machine which will not be there for a general election"

True, but we know from workers on the ground that the Tories also threw all their resources into this campaign, knowing how significant this particular contest was. They will be unable to replicate this at a general election either, especially as funding will dwindle. Tories will be seen as losers, and business does not like to back losers. Their Russian oligarch chums may stay loyal, of course, but will their grubby money be sufficient?

Perhaps this particular constituency may revert to Conservative hands at a general election. But look where it is situated. The south-west of England is a traditional Liberal stronghold. The Conservative gains in 2015 on the back of a dubious disinformation campaign from 2010 onwards will, on the evidence of the Tiverton and Honiton reversal, be seen as an anomaly and a whole slew of Cornish and Devon seats will come back to the Liberal Democrat fold.

(Labour can expect a complementary swing back in the "Red Wall" seats, of which Wakefield was one. The Tories won these on a specious promise to stop immigration. It is clear that traditional working-class voters have looked at the post-2019 evidence that nothing has changed in that respect and are returning to the fold.) 

"In 1991 we lost two by-elections on the same day but went on to win the 1992 general election"

But it took a change of leader from the divisive Margaret Thatcher to the apparently affable and trustworthy John Major to achieve this. Is the Nasty Party of today ready to make a similar shift? Is there an untainted leader in waiting?

On a slightly mischievous note . . .

The election of a male Lib Dem breaks the trend of recent by-election successes and helps to redress the gender balance in the parliamentary party.  Ed Davey, Alistair Carmichael, Tim Farron and Jamie Stone need feel less laagered by the sisterhood. 

And, of course, "just for a bit of fun" as Peter Snow would say, I just had to feed the Tiverton and Honiton percentages into an electoral forecasting engine. On this basis, at a general election Lib Dems with 406 seats would have no trouble forming a government with the Conservatives on 222 forming the opposition and the rest practically nowhere. One can dream!

Afghanistan, the unhappy country

 It says a lot about our conservative, nationalistic BBC news division that the lead item on Breakfast this morning, and one that dominated the rest of the bulletin was the rail strike in England and Wales. The thousand and more people who died in the earthquake which struck the provinces of Paktika and Khost in Afghanistan yesterday were felt to be of no concern to a domestic audience.

The Tennant canal

 Since my last post on this subject, the situation has got worse. The Save The Tennant Canal blog reports that "[the canal was after 2008] supplied by a River Weir which partially collapsed in February 2015. On June 29, 2018, the Port Tennant Canal company and NRW [Natural Resources Wales] installed water pumps to restore some supply from River Neath to the Tennant canal at Aberdulais after hot weather and low flow conditions. But since early July 2021, the pumps have been switched off and all machinery removed from the site. This unforgivable move cuts the Tennant canal’s main source of water."

Neath Port Talbot council has until now failed to realise the benefits to tourism and to property values of a healthy viable canal system, never mind the ecological and leisure benefits to residents. The hope is that the new coalition running the county borough has a wider vision than the previous blinkered administration, but it will no doubt bolster their support if people convey their feelings to their local councillor and MP.

The blog quoted above also contains useful links to organisations which have the canal's future at heart.

Fines for "truancy" do not work

 Both the English and Welsh education ministries have resumed fining parents for school non-attendance. This in spite of research in other countries which suggests that they bear down on families which can least afford it and who have good reasons for keeping their children at home, while well-off parents merely treat the fixed penalties as the price for permission to take their children on holiday in term time. The experience of Black Country schools summarised in this Wolverhampton Express & Star article backs up the research and demonstrates that UK social attitudes do not deviate from the norm.

James Bowen, director of policy for the National Association of Headteachers, [...] said: “Fines have always been a blunt instrument when it comes to managing persistent absenteeism, and even more so if the reasons are related to the pandemic.

“The reality is that if a parent is concerned enough about their child’s safety to keep them off school, the threat of a fine is unlikely to change their minds.”

Recent cases of unchecked bullying in Welsh schools emphasise the point.

It is not going to be easy for Macron in his second term

 It is not quite cohabitation, because Macron's "together"-branded party will still be the largest in the French national assembly following Sunday's general election final round. One imagines that Ensemble will be able to strike a deal with conservatives so that there will be stable government. However, the president will have to make compromises and it is unlikely that his modernisation project will be realised in full.

A worrying sign is that not only did the socialist grouping make gains, but so also did Marine le Pen's neo-Nazis, against all expectations. In the past, as a BBC correspondent explained prior to the election, the National Front in its various guises has held no more than a handful of seats because its support has been very localised. In 2022 they have gained wider acceptance.

The implications for the UK are likely to be less help from France in processing refugees and other migrants, and pressure on the European Parliament and Commission to take a stronger line on EU-UK trade.

What was Dame Kelly afraid of? Not the general public, surely

 Dame Kelly Holmes has made official what most of us guessed, and were quite happy with  It seems that what has prevented her coming out for so long is the fear of retrospective prosecution by a military which has been at least a century behind public opinion on same-sex relationships. It is sad, and astonishing, that she has had to live with this burden of fear for so long and one hopes that it has been totally lifted.

£1m a month spent on agency staff in local NHS

 A reminder this week from the Evening Post that what we need is more nurses, not more politicians:

Around £1m is spent every month on locum and agency staff to support key hospital services in Swansea Bay. The figures vary from month to month, peaking at just under £1.4m in February this year after dropping to around £700,000 last October. They were just over £1m in March 2022.

Ajax or a jakes?

 Private Eye reports that the Ministry of Defence still does not know how to fix the noise and vibration problems in its Ajax armoured vehicles. In the wake of a Public Accounts Committee demand that they either fix it or abandon the programme, the MoD has appointed a barrister to find out where it all went wrong. It seems to me that their priority should rather be to call on experts on vibration to establish the root of the trouble. For instance, consulting engineers Arup diagnosed the instability in London's Millennium Bridge and provided a fix for it. 

It is unfortunate that the army chose as a name for their 21st century armoured vehicle that which provided a pun for a privy in Shakespeare's day.

Undue power of a few well-endowed influencers

 DeSmog claims that not enough is being done by the big tech companies to counteract misleading propaganda on social media.

It would be tempting to dismiss the tweets and posts of climate deniers and delayers as pitiable nonsense.

Because who in 2022 is using their energies to downplay scientifically indisputable facts about our heating planet? Surely these are fringe actors we don’t really need to worry about?

Fringe they may be, but that doesn’t mean they don’t get through to people. A major new report out this week reveals how a tiny group of “super-spreading” accounts were able to disseminate climate disinformation throughout the COP26 climate summit.

Research from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a think-tank monitoring extremism, and the Climate Action Against Disinformation (CAAD) coalition, found that just 16 social media accounts amassed over half a million likes and retweets – including those run by some all-too-familiar faces from DeSmog’s disinformation database.

Twitter carried the most false content by volume and Facebook’s fact-checking policies were found to be “woefully under-enforced”, it found.

Improved policies by major tech companies wouldn’t only tackle disinformation about climate change. The report found repeat-offender climate sceptics often spread misinformation on multiple topics, sharing misleading information on COVID-19 as well as conspiracy theories such as QAnon.

This chimes with analysis by DeSmog last year around the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which found that many climate deniers posted messages supporting the insurrectionists, spread debunked claims about election fraud, and hinted at civil war.

Sasha Havlicek, CEO of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, said the analysis showed “in stark terms how a well-worn information and influence operations playbook is being applied to the climate context”.

Another bad air warning

 Euronews reports:

Nearly all of the world’s population are breathing polluted air, knocking more than two years off of average global life expectancy.

According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) latest findings, 99 per cent of people live in areas where air pollution exceeds safe levels.

The contamination chops an average 2.2 years off global average life expectancy for each person - a combined 17 billion life years.

This impact on life expectancy is comparable to that of smoking, more than three times that of alcohol use and unsafe water, six times that of HIV/AIDS, and 89 times that of conflict and terrorism.

There is even a suggestion that the menstrual cycle could be drawn out by PM10 in polluted air.

People who do not like the BBC are not keen on green energy either

 DeSmog reveals a PR person behind campaigns to hobble the BBC and support fossil fuel use.

A well-connected public relations specialist who runs an anti-BBC pressure group and campaigned for a “hard” Brexit is working with climate science denial groups to oppose the UK’s net zero target, DeSmog can report.

The finding sheds new light on a network of PR agencies, right-wing politicians and think-tanks working to drum up opposition to climate policies as part of a broader drive to cut regulation and boost production of fossil fuels.

Rebecca Ryan, managing director of Blue Sky Strategy, runs the “Defund the BBC” campaign, which wants to see the licence fee scrapped and deep cuts in the corporation’s budget. The campaign, launched in 2020, has accused the public broadcaster of bias, including in its climate coverage. 

Ryan has ties to senior politicians, having run a campaign for a “hard” Brexit backed by 60 MPs including Boris Johnson and former Brexit Minister Steve Baker, who is leading efforts to scrap climate policies. 

The Renewable Heat Initiative

The principle of the RHI is commendable, but it is an initiative which only businesses and a few already well-endowed individuals can take advantage of. There is nothing on the same scale to help people at the bottom of the economic ladder. Open Democracy writes:

Tory MPs, Lords members and multi-millionaire landowners are raking in eye-watering sums from a taxpayer-funded subsidy to heat their mansions even as millions face fuel poverty this winter, openDemocracy can reveal.

Among the beneficiaries identified by this website are international trade secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, who has claimed £80,000; Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the MP who headed a parliamentary inquiry into whether the scheme was delivering value for money; and two members of the House of Lords, one of whom is in line to make more than £1m.

The non-domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) was meant to encourage a shift to cleaner energy and has been running since 2011. Under the scheme, anyone who installs an eligible ‘green’ boiler in a business or public sector building receives 20 years of payouts for their trouble.

Exhaust emissions coming under control, concern shifts to tyre dust

 The first item on this week's 5 Live Science covers an issue raised here before, that going electric on its own does not eliminate pollution from motor vehicles. The micro-particles shed by the artificial rubber of tyres have been shown to be harmful. 

Welsh schools riddled with racism

 BBC Wales provides a detailed examination of how racism pervades Welsh education. An extract: 

Race Equality First said reported cases of racist bullying in schools, colleges, and universities, were on the increase, from 13 cases in 2019 to 17 in 2020, then up to 19 in 2021, and reaching 21 last year.

The charity's chief executive, Aliya Mohammed said the incidents ranged from physical violence to name-calling and subtle prejudice from teachers.

"Often we see institutional racism embedded in a school's culture and we see ignorance and we see complete denial that racism has taken place" she added.

She said official figures may not show the whole story if some incidents were not recorded by schools worried about their rankings.

"Tackling racism in schools is no longer just about providing anti-racism training for teachers... school teachers and heads need to ensure students are held accountable," she said.

It seems to me that if teachers are turning a blind eye to racist bullying, then the anti-racism training is not working. Holding students accountable is not enough.

OSLO ANTI-CORRUPTION CONFERENCE

ICIJ’s Scilla Alecci will be discussing enablers uncovered in ICIJ’s biggest investigations today at a session of the 8th anti-corruption conference in Norway.

"Hospital treatment takes longer in Wales"

 I am always suspicious of simple headlines like this, especially where the health services of England and Wales are concerned. Statistics are reckoned differently in GIG, and probably are more realistic. In this case, there are parameters which might be in play differently in the two countries. For instance, the burden of industrial disease is greater in Wales. Maybe the concentration on centralisation in Wales means greater distances between hospital and home. The statistic could be a warning and should be investigated, but let us not jump to conclusions about the quality of treatment.

Tying some threads together

 My long-awaited copy of Christina Lane's Phantom Lady, her biography of Joan Harrison, arrived from Waterstone's last week and did not disappoint. Harrison was a close associate of Alfred Hitchcock, his wife Alma Reville and their daughter Patricia. She was a writer, script editor and eventually a Hollywood producer in her own right. Her major achievement was probably what is now termed "showrunner" for Alfred Hitchcock Presents which ran for eight years on various networks in the US and was taken up by ITV in the UK. 

Ms Lane's thorough research fills in a lot of gaps in the sketch of Sarett Rudley logged here four years ago. She has turned up a couple of marriages which I missed, for one thing. Sarett (described by Lane as "a ball of fire") worked on the Hitchcock TV series and also on Journey to the Unknown a Harrison series produced in Britain jointly with Hammer after Harrison had moved back to Europe with husband Eric Ambler. Harrison had had a number of affairs with prominent men in Hollywood. It was quite a surprise when she appeared to opt for domesticity with Ambler. There was clearly affection on both sides - the marriage lasted until Harrison's death in 1994 - but Ambler once remarked that "the only person Joan really loved was a woman". Christina Lane proposes that the woman was Sarett Tobias. There is good evidence. Sarett was in a relationship with Richard Mason's first wife when she became his second, and the honeymoon appears to have become a threesome. I would still dearly love to see a photo from when the Masons set up their farm in Wales. Surely some mid-Wales newspaper archive has a photo of the famous author and his attractive wife attending a show?

The other thread was that of Norman Lloyd, socialist and veteran of the Federal Theater Project, an offshoot of FDR's "New Deal". He was an obvious candidate for the Hollywood blacklist and had to retreat from cinema and TV to the New York stage to make a living. Though he had long been a friend of Hitchcock, it was at Joan Harrison's insistence that Lloyd came back to work in TV, on the Hitchcock series, overcoming network reservations. It was not just because Lloyd was a favourite tennis partner; Harrison hated the blacklist and managed to bring many writers and actors back in from the cold. Lloyd was later an executive producer on Journey to the Unknown, which sadly lasted only one season in spite of good critical reviews. There is more on Norman Lloyd, who died last year, on IMDb.

I thoroughly recommend Phantom Lady.

Tories stick with dishonesty and corruption

 There will be a reckoning on the 23rd.

The monarchy, looking back and forward

 In the middle of the long weekend of diamond jubilee celebrations, I do not suppose I am the only one of my generation in trying to recall the moment when the news of the death of George VI broke. The truth is that I cannot recall what should have been a flashbulb memory. It must have occurred in the brief time between evacuation of service families from Egypt and my father's re-posting to Benghazi. The celebration of the coronation by the army school there I certainly remember. The swiftly-produced colour film featuring William Walton's stirring Orb and Sceptre was shown to us pupils. But of the accession itself I have only a dim memory of a black-and-white photo of the new queen and her consort with a bewildered-looking Prince Charles and Princess Anne. 

In searching the Web for that photo I came across this story which features (second image) the new queen descending the stairs from her British Overseas Airways plane home to be met by the great and good. (Nerdy point: the plane was an Argonaut, BOAC's name for the Merlin-engined development of the Douglas DC-4 by Canadair.) The welcoming party included Winston Churchill, her prime minister, Clement Attlee, previous prime minister and probably the future prime minister Anthony Eden, then foreign secretary.  

The brooch that features in that story dates from a 1947 visit by the then Princess Elizabeth and Duke of Edinburgh to apartheid South Africa and Southern Rhodesia whose colonial administration was hardly less racist. Does her majesty's attachment to that brooch betray nostalgia for those days when the sun never set on the British Empire? I prefer to think that she treasures it only as a beautiful object. Certainly, when she was active as head of the Commonwealth she was clearly at ease with the other heads of state, whatever their origin or skin colour.

That is less true of her future successor as Commonwealth head who seems to have absorbed his father's prejudices. The other members may well have second thoughts after a year or so of his chairmanship. At home, Charles (or whatever other regnal name he chooses) may well be forced to preside over a transition to an elected (or appointed) head of state. It is, however, important that any president has no greater powers that royalty has at present.  We do not want to repeat the stresses and strains of such executive presidencies as France and the United States. Germany and Ireland must be the models.

Will Llandod have a mini-jubilee celebration in October?

 

[Original photo by David Luther Thomas]

This stone is set into the down platform of Llandrindod Wells station. One hopes it will look somewhat brighter come Llandrindod Wells' own platinum anniversary later this year. 

Back to pre-Clegg days in local government

 Mark Pack, president of the federal Liberal Democrat party, has posted;

Over the last couple of weeks, new Liberal Democrat council leaders have been taking up their posts all across the country, with the number of Lib Dem majority councils now back to where it was before the 2010 coalition.

I’ve covered many of these on social media, but in particular it’s worth highlighting the two new unitary authorities of Westmorland & Furness and Somerset.

The Conservative Party’s enthusiasm for large new unitary councils has always seemed to be fuelled in part by a political calculation – that larger councils, with larger wards and less frequent elections will benefit them compared to parties such as the Lib Dems. However, in both north west and south west England this May, that proved to be spectacularly wrong.

This resurgence is echoed in Wales, though patchily. There is clearly still resentment at Clegg's U-turn on the social security budget which hit post-industrial Wales more than most.

The E-sleazabethan age

 That is my best attempt at a Sun-style headline, but one that the Sun will never use.

The growth of dubious large money movements through the City of London began not long after Elizabeth came to the throne. According to Ian Bullough in his series for Radio 4, How to Steal a Trillion, the seeds were sown in the mid-1950s when the Midland Bank (later to be taken over by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank) did a deal with Moscow Narodny Bank. The Russian bank's London branch was sitting on millions of dollars which it did not want to come under the jurisdiction of the USA. This was the time of the Cold War and there was mutual suspicion between the USA and USSR. The Midland offered to borrow the money, which it could then lend out and both banks would make money at a time when formal exchange controls were making large bank profits difficult. Thus was the Eurodollar market born.

Tuesday's episode showed how London banks literally moved money off-shore, avoiding tax as well as regulation, by opening branches in British overseas territories. A point that Bullough missed out of his presentation that UK government deliberately turned a blind eye since allowing poor island nations like the Cayman Islands to make money from a financial regime favourable to money-launderers avoided having to subsidise them.

Yesterday stressed the need for enforcement of company regulation in the UK, a theme which is to be expanded on today.

Overdue recognition for Bradford

Although there is a twinge of sorrow that Wrexham did not gain the jam of City of Culture 2025 on top of the cream of city status, I am delighted that Bradford has at last been recognised. When the Museum of Cinema and Photography was set up in the 1980s it was truly ground-breaking. One of the highlights of a time spent contracting in Leeds was a day-trip to Bradford to take in the Museum and I was not disappointed. To some extent, other attractions have caught up, but I see from their Web pages that the now National Science and Media Museum has continued to develop.

 

The "let them eat brioches" brigade are countered

 The Office for National Statistics has responded to the excellent Jack Monroe's charge that the official cost of living index does not reflect the spending of the least well-off. On Monday, they published the results of a survey which does indeed show price rises over the last twelve months for a basket of 30 everyday items. While potatoes and cheese have become slightly cheaper, less perishable supermarket own-label standbys like pasta and rice have risen. In all only 6 of the items in the basket have seen a fall.

There is a belief in comfortably-off circles that the poor have only themselves to blame for getting into debt. One recalls the suggestion by Lee Anderson MP  that there would be no need for food-banks if everybody knew how to cook properly. Well, this pensioner has had to cook for himself for at least the last couple of decades. Katharine Whitehorn's "Cooking in a Bed-Sitter" and Bee Nilsson's Penguin cookery book have been my friends for many years. But "getting by" has been replaced by "struggling" these last few months. Yes, more young people should be taught cookery, but clearly there must be many people badly off in spite of basic cookery skills.

Moreover, Jack Monroe has been lucky - or canny - enough to be within striking distance of an Asda supermarket. So, although Asda had raised the cost of basic items, they would not have been as expensive as those in convenience stores or corner shops. Many pensioners and even young families without their own transport have access only to the latter, and not to supermarket items. (This is no criticism of convenience store owners, by the way. They have proportionately higher overheads than the supermarkets, without the benefit of volume of sales.) The ONS survey concentrated on supermarket goods. It will undoubtedly be more costly to arrange, but there ought to be a supplementary survey visiting only corner shops.