Coate Water in Swindon was formed by diverting the River Cole. It was originally a reservoir for the Wilts & Berks Canal, and when the canal was abandoned in 1914, it became a pleasure park for the people of the town. It was the inspiration for the New Sea of Richard Jefferies' book Bevis: The Story of a Boy, which was published in 1882 and is the urtext of all children's holiday adventure stories. In a later book, the postapocalyptic fantasy After London, the New Sea has effectively expanded to cover much of Southern England. Jefferies' birthplace was Coate Farm, ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: In semi-democracies, and especially in non-democracies, political opinion polling is often restricted by authoritarians not wishing the public to know what the public thinks. Although that itself might give those in functioning democracies pause for thought about banning polls, that has not put off talk of – and in many other countries, action to introduce – a ban political polls in the run-up to polling day. Find out more by reading this edition of The Week in Polls here, and you can ...
You might think that I'd have learnt better, having served as Regional Secretary and then Regional Candidates Chair in London, and then as Regional Secretary in the East of England, but I find myself hoping for a somewhat gentler return to the fray as a member of the East of England's Regional Candidates Committee. Now, that said, there is the small matter of an election to win first, with six candidates for four places. My odds are perhaps improved by the slightly puzzling failure of two of my opponents to submit a manifesto, and the high probability that another will ...
Over to BBC News: Undiscovered "sea dragons" are lurking underneath the feet of Leicestershire and Rutland residents, an expert has said. As readers of Lord Bonkers' Diary will know, they are lurking above ground too. Here's the old boy writing in September of last year: Who should I spy on the lawn at breakfast but my old friend Ruttie, the Rutland Water Monster? Between you and me, I think she is getting jealous of all the attention being paid to Loch Ness. The next thing we know, she'll be waddling across the Oakham road and pulling faces at the motorists ...
SERGEANT: Today the professor is here to talk to us about Keats. I bet none of you ignorant bastards even knows what a Keat is. Today, with the rise of podcasts, there's no excuse for such ignorance. Here are three good podcast episodes on 19th-century literature. The first line of John Mullan's book The Artful Dickens asks: "What is so good about Dickens's novels?" This is just the sort of question that modern literary theory disapproves of, but they are wonderfully good. In an interview on the National Centre for Writing podcast, Mullan emphasises that Charles Dickens was not just ...
Friday morning dawned, and we had an appointment in the diary. But it was time to explore, and thus time for a walk. Tirana is designed on a north-south axis, which runs from the Technical University at the southern end, leads you up Bulevardi Deshmoret E Kombit across the River Lana (described as an open drain by one commentator) to Sheshi Skenderbej, one of those vast setpiece and rather stark squares that appears to have been so attractive to communist planners. I guess that it works if you want to hold military parades but, as a public space, it needs ...
With the BBC holding a miniature Powell and Pressburger festival these past few days, there's no better choice than this. It did feature here some years ago, but my excuse for choosing it again is that this version has Eric Portman's monologue at the start. (Besides, two tracks - Paint it Black and Bryan Ferry's version of A Hard Rain's A‐Gonna Fall - have appeared here twice without my noticing at the time, and the world didn't end.) A Canterbury Tale comes from Dreadzone's second album, Second Light, which was a favourite of John Peel's. Reviewing it in the Independent, ...
COP 29 COP 29 is in trouble. It was inevitable. This year's climate change conference is in oil-producing Baku, Azerbaijan, and host president Ilham Aliyev is using the conference to push oil and gas as "a gift from God." This is encouraging the Saudis who are working hard to strike the phrase "transition away from fossil fuels" from previously agreed communiques. Then there is the question of the transfer of money from the developed to the developing world; partly to compensate them from the effects of climate change problems created by the industrial north and partly to help them transition ...
The pupils of Kingspark School are hosting a pop up coffee shop in the Logie & St John's (Cross) Church's halls in Shaftesbury Terrace this Thursday - 28th November - from 10am to 12 noon. All are welcome to come along and support this wonderful initiative.
THe Mirror reports that Jacob Rees-Mogg - the former Government Efficiency Minister - blew £1,152 of taxpayers' cash having paintings removed from his Parliamentary office after he lost his seat, despite owning a house just 390 yards from Parliament. The paper says that according to records published by watchdog IPSA, Mr Rees Mogg claimed the eye-watering sum for the "relocation of paintings etc from Parliament" - despite owning a £5 million mansion a stone's throw away. In 2018 he bought and renovated a five-story home just 390 yards from the Palace of Westminster, where he lived with his wife and ...
