The Sack-Damian-Green-at-all-costs camp should beware of what they wish for

It is very tempting to use any pretext to drive a minister in a government you hate out of office and out of parliament. However, consider the precedent which would be set. Any member with iffy (including politically dubious as well as sexual material) images on his office computer could be scapegoated. It could lead to vigilante groups organised by opposing whips, barging into suspects' offices in the hope of seeing something they could feed to the media.

The history of the Green affair as laid out in this Guardian article.

Two senior police officers have now condemned the retired policemen and even suggested they could be prosecuted.

The protean Brian O'Nolan

It was good to hear celebrated the life of the wonderful Irish writer Flann O'Brien. The Great Lives programme on Radio 4 had time only to concentrate on the books and just touched on the other personae of a man who was brought up as an Irish speaker ("before it became fashionable") in Ulster - before the partition, of course - but made a living as a civil servant and writer in Dublin.

So there was no space for Myles na gCopaleen's (his identity as a columnist in the Irish Times) weakness for puns. A running gag comprised supposed dialogues between Keats and Chapman which concluded with a pun by Keats. This is the one I remember best: http://thirstygargoyle.tumblr.com/post/77263595398/keats-and-chapman-were-conversing-one-day-on-the/ (There is a representative sample of Myles at http://thirstygargoyle.tumblr.com/tagged/Flann-O'Brien)  Myles was an obvious influence on the late, great, Miles Kington and to a lesser extent on other writers of humorous newspaper columns.

The classic Brian O'Nolan pun was surely the one which terminated a brave piece contributed to the Guardian newspaper in the early 1960s, and the one which introduced me to Flann O'Brien. It was a history of episodes in his writing life and his ambiguous relationship with organised religion, relating how each public criticism he made of the latter was followed by some seemingly divine punishment. It was funny and touching at the same time, culminating in a description of the facial cancer which was to kill him. The pay-off was that he supposed that the article had been his "agony in the Guardian".

The railway in Cardiff

There is news of developments in Cardiff, gleaned from Rail Wales, the magazine of Railfuture in Wales.

Approval has been given for the restoration of the building at Cardiff Bay (formerly Bute Street) station. It is rather more imposing than a mere station building and I suspect it may have housed the offices of one of the many local railway companies which were eventually absorbed by the Great Western. One cheer for preserving the existing structure (and hopefully what remains of the Victorian interior), but none for the unsympathetic extension which has also been given approval.

No cheers for Cardiff city council and its chosen developer for yet again postponing a decent replacement for the bus stands which used to be so convenient for travellers to the capital via Cardiff Central station. It now looks as if there will be no new Cardiff bus station before 2020.

Railfuture Cymru tweets

Tweets on topical news affecting rails in Wales, plus links to items of interest outside the nation, can be found @RailfutureWales.

Railfuture Wales is always looking to widen its membership. We have too few women (whereas our Scottish cousin has a woman in the chair!) and we could do with more members under retiring age. If you are a Welsh-speaker, you would be especially welcome; please click on the Railfuture logo in the side-bar to take yourself to the Web site.

Et in Arcadia ego

It should not have come as a surprise, but sexual harassment is as common in the orchestras playing the sublime music of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms as it was back-stage in the Young Vic. Perhaps the situation is worse in orchestras because they have been virtually male preserves (apart from the occasional lady harpist) until the 1960s. It also took some time before the policy of integration which started in provincial orchestras like the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic reached the London orchestras, something which was not achieved until the 1980s. However, it seems that the worst excesses affect freelance players.

The Music Matters programme which exposed the extent is repeated this evening at 22:00.

[Later: Jessica Duchen has written an extensive piece about misuse of power in the world of music]

Votes at 16 put off yet again

Conservatives objected to the Representation of the People (Young People's Enfranchisement and Education) Bill at the session devoted to Private Members' Bills last Friday. So the adjourned Second Reading is deferred to May 2018 when it may well be overtaken by another general election and therefore lost. The Bill has received only the initial 90 minutes debate of November 3rd, much of which was absorbed by a speech by Bernard Jenkin and spurious interventions and points of order from other Conservatives.

Wales at Work no more

The Radio Wales business programme, that is. Like so many good broadcasts these days, its content is now only on the Web, though presenter Brian Meechan remains as industrial correspondent. Considering that some of the most enterprising small businesses in Wales are in areas of zero or poor broadband and minimal mobile telephone coverage, the decision to take Wales at Work off-air seems very short-sighted.

Radio 4 has Inside Business, but this tends to centre on international and big UK businesses. At least we still have Country Focus.

I agree with Tim

Tim Farron spoke recently about the conjunction of Christianity and liberalism. As has been recommended in another place, his entire Theos speech is worth reading but I would pick out one of his conclusions:

I believe in pluralism, I am not a secularist but I believe in a secular society where there is no ‘state faith’. That in Britain we have a church trapped as part of the furniture of the state is a waste of a church. A boat in the water is good. Water in the boat, is bad. A church in the state is good, the state in the church is bad. Really bad. It pollutes the message of that church. It compromises it. Weakens its witness.

I am a secularist, but I agree with that. We are fortunate in Wales in that there is no established church.

The media and the public generally should not give Tim or any other declared Christian a harder time than they do Sadiq Khan, a practising Muslim, or Lord Winston, an observant Jew, or any of the prominent practitioners of other faiths. We should also recognise the liberal aspects of most other great faiths of the world.