Category Archives: Various

General election 2015: a personal verdict

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Change at the top

Change at the top

The polls were horribly wrong. The closest election for years proved nothing of the kind. David Cameron is back in Downing Street with a 15 seat parliamentary majority. Three of the seven party leaders who took part in the leaders TV debate resigned on Friday. Cameron and the Tories appear utterly in command. Yet that command may prove less enduring as the years unfold. Here are my thoughts three days after the most unpredictable election since 1992.

David Cameron’s majority has shrunk, not increased

The Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition had a majority of 76 in the House of Commons. It ensured a relatively smooth ride over its five year term. True, the two parties had their fractious moments, especially over the voting reform referendum, which the Tories torpedoed. But the coalition proved far more stable than anyone expected in 2010.

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Election 2015: heading for Ed?

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Ed Miliband and the hen party

Ed Miliband and the hen party

The Tories expected Ed Miliband to implode under the pressure of a general election campaign. Yet the opposite is happening. The Labour leader has grown in stature (even with hen parties – above) and popularity while the Conservatives have slipped as their campaign has tottered from disaster to misjudgement.

There’s still time, of course, for the incumbent’s advantage to show. Labour still shivers at the memory of 1992, when apparent victory was snatched from the party at the last minute. (Although the reality was different: the polls underestimated the Tory vote.)

Here are my thoughts on the 2015 election campaign just over two weeks from the poll.  Continue reading →

Paxman’s back: Cameron and Miliband grilled

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Jeremy Paxman grills David Cameron

Jeremy Paxman grills David Cameron

The day after the BBC fired Jeremy Clarkson for assaulting his producer, it was good to see the other famous Jeremy back in action. Former Newsnight presenter Paxman grilled David Cameron and Ed Miliband live in a pre-election debate.

Paxman's presses Miliband

Paxman’s presses Miliband

Cameron came off worst – in a repeat of the first 2010 TV debate, he was nervous and under-perfomed, at least against Paxman. By contrast, Ed Miliband did rather well. He was  impassioned, confident and humorous. Many neutrals will have been impressed. He came up with the best line of the night: “You’re good, Jeremy, but not that good!” in rebutting the idea that he’d be a puppet in the hands of a resurgent SNP.  Continue reading →

Georgio Moroder, Phil Oakey and Nigel Lawson

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Together in Electric Dreams

Together in Electric Dreams

A Guardian article this week caused a nostalgia rush. Georgio Moroder has launched his first album for 30 years.

Memories, memories. Thirty years ago this month, Moroder’s 1984 hit with Phil Oakey, Together in Electric Dreams, was top of my college cassette playlist. Along with The Cars’ Who’s Going to Drive You Home Tonight. Band Aid and the Frog Chorus were mercifully a few weeks away.

Back in November 1984, I was living in a student terraced house on Ullswater Street in Leicester. I was preparing for a law tutorial about the Sunday trading laws. We had been tipped off that the chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson might sit in on the session. I wasn’t a fan of local Blaby MP Nigel – he seemed far too confident, a view that was reinforced by his too-clever-by-half 1988 budget – but I prepared more carefully than normal, including prepping a few jokes walking along the Grand Union Canal in Leicester on a mild November evening…

Needless to say, Lawson didn’t show up but we did get an MEP (Tom Spencer) and, if I remember correctly, Peter Bruinvels, a one term right wing Tory MP. I never thought he would last in multi-cultural Leicester.

Delivering on?

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I’ll scream if I hear another politician saying they will ‘deliver on’ their promises.

You keep a promise, you don’t deliver on it. And since when has the verb deliver needed ‘on’? Does your postman or woman ‘deliver on’ your mail?

I wrote to the Guardian in 2011 about this awful example of abusing the language of Shakespeare.

The Great War, 100 years on

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To war, Gare de l'Est, Paris

High hopes and hidden fears: to war, Paris, 2 August 1914

It was meant to be the war to end all wars. It was the conflict that went global. And it killed millions, leaving families across the globe grieving lost sons, brothers, fathers – and lost womenfolk and children. 

The Great War has left a deep scar across Britain, France, America and the Commonwealth, not to mention Germany and her allies. The photo at the top of this post captures young Frenchman leaving Paris for war as France mobilised the day before Germany declared war on the country. Britain and its empire entered the fray the following day. This was one of a moving open air exhibition in Paris’s Avenue des Champs Élysées. By a curious coincidence, I photographed the photo 100 years to the day after it was taken.

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End of the story for Richmond’s Lion & Unicorn bookshop

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The saddest chapter

Is there a sadder high street sight than an abandoned book shop?

When Karen brought Owen to see me at work in Richmond, Surrey, last week I suggested they visit the wonderful Lion & Unicorn children’s bookshop. (I bought my very first books for Owen there: books to read in the bath.) I was shocked when Karen reported that the shop had closed down.

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Memories that began at the Lion & Unicorn, Richmond

The Lion & Unicorn had been a Richmond institution for over 35 years. Roald Dahl opened it in 1977, and countless famous authors visited over the years. But soaring rents and the rise of online book selling put it out of business, owner Jenny Morris explained to the Daily Telegraph. It joins a sad list of wonderful independent bookshops that have lost the fight for life, including the famous Harbour Bookshop in Dartmouth, once run by AA Milne’s son Christopher Robin and his wife Lesley. 

The fact I hadn’t noticed the Lion & Unicorn had closed says a lot – about me. I have always loved books, but didn’t shop there enough. We live over 25 miles from Richmond, so Owen and I tend to go to Waterstone’s shop in Amersham. (We recently chose my childhood favourite, The Secret Garden, with his World Book Day token.) And I wonder if selling just children’s books was another factor in the Lion & Unicorn’s demise. When we go to a bookshop, Owen will look at the children’s titles while I look at my favourites as well. 

Richmond still has two excellent bookshops: a big Waterstone’s and The Open Book. 

Books and book stores create life-long memories. As a child and teenager I loved Lears in Cardiff. And I still remember visiting George’s in Bristol as an 11 year old in 1975. I bought so many cherished books in those stores: every Famous Five and Secret Seven title, along with Malcolm Saville’s marvellous Lone Pine series, set in the Wales/England borderlands, Sussex and Devon. 

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George’s bookshop, Bristol. Childhood memories