Station Sellout – Take 4

Previously, I’ve noted how the railway has been less than open about plans to close lines and stations, right up to the present day. Here I’ll show that the concept of less than total honesty extends to the concept of moving station locations.

In the late 60s, British Rail (BR) ran two stations at Gloucester. One of these – Eastgate – was used by what we nowadays call Cross Country (XC) services, those running from Bristol and the South West to Birmingham and beyond. But at one end of Eastgate was a level crossing that was causing increasing delays to town traffic. To eliminate the crossing, and concentrate traffic on just one station, Eastgate was closed. This meant that XC services now had to reverse direction when making their Gloucester stop.

At first this worked fine, but a quick reversal meant changing engines, and this in turn involved keeping a stabling and refuelling point nearby. As costs came under pressure, push came to shove, the stabling point closed, and most XC trains just missed out Gloucester altogether. But then someone had a great idea. A new station was proposed for Barnwood, outside Gloucester, but on the route taken by XC services. At first this looked like a good idea, until the questions started.

What would happen to the station in Gloucester? How would travellers transfer between the old and new stations? If by train, what was the difference between transferring to Barnwood and transferring to nearby Cheltenham Spa? Wasn’t Barnwood too close to Cheltenham Spa for XC to bother to service both?

The Barnwood proposal was quietly dropped. A similar fate befell another great new station idea, this time for Birmingham. New Street station was near capacity, so a new station, called Heartlands, was proposed, out of town to the North East. Again, the questions kept coming: what about getting between the two stations? Which services would serve which stations? What about car parking, access roads, bus services?

Once again, the apparently great idea turned out to be poorly thought out, and did not survive serious examination. Also, the thought entered that an element of presenting the travelling public with a fait accompli was involved.

And that brings us up to date, and back to Crewe.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today – Part 2

Once upon a time, public service was thought of as an honourable profession. Then along came Margaret Thatcher, and those public servants working in local government found their honour not so much questioned as stridently dismissed. Here, once more, was Thatcher the vindictive. And this part of her legacy endures.

What had local government done to wrong her? Ah well. For this we have to delve deep, and go back a long way. For the wronged party was not Thatcher, but her father, Alderman Alfred Roberts. In Margaret Thatcher’s personal recollection of history, Dad was the good guy, and his ousting from power was driven by the bad guys. This crusade was to score one for him.

Local government had always obtained much of its income from central Government grants. The Thatcher administration, looking to cut spending, forced councils to cut their spending in turn, and then took powers to cap the budgets of those they deemed to be spendthrifts. That much, although it may have been unpalatable, was straightforward. But there was more to come.

The Tories’ allies in the media also rounded generally on local government, particularly councils under Labour control. These were held to be not merely “left”, but “looney left”. Leading Labour figures in this area, such as Ted Knight in Lambeth, Derek Hatton in Liverpool, and Ken Livingstone at the GLC, were treated as if they were the reincarnation of Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zhedong.

The screaming media campaign continued as the Thatcher Government moved to abolish the GLC and the six Metropolitan County Councils. The legislation was called “Streamlining the Cities”, but Private Eye cartoonist John Kent caught the public mood when he labelled it the “Abolition of Red Ken Act”. The fact that all these bodies retuned Labour majorities, and that they were perceived by the Tories as sources of dissent, was presented as mere coincidence.

Thatcher got her legislation passed, and those Labour power bases were dissolved. But the idea that the power simply evaporated does not stand serious analysis: it was still there, but had moved to central Government. And there it has stayed. Neither Blair nor Brown has moved seriously towards renewed localism, and any suggestion that David Cameron would do so is not credible.

Thatcher and Europe, as mentioned previously, is considered next.

Parting of the Ways

Alex Ferguson denied the story run recently by the Guardian that his Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo was on his way to Real Madrid come the end of the season. And when Ferguson says someone is staying at Manchester United, they tend to stay.

On the face of it, this might be thought to be the end of it. Ronaldo is a top player, and his goal tally last season drove the Red Devils to another Premiership title and a second Champions’ League win. But recently it has become clear that young Cristiano has also developed a top ego. And those don’t keep well at Old Trafford, as anyone who remembers the swagger and subsequent departure of Paul Ince will know. Also, Ronaldo has hit the target a lot less this season.

Now comes the story, once again from the Guardian, that Man U have been enquiring about the availability of Frank Ribéry, at present with Bayern Munich. The Frenchman would be a more or less straight replacement for Ronaldo. The cost, given the present exchange rate of Sterling versus Euro, would be over 60 million, but of course the amount that Man U might expect to extract from Real Madrid for Ronaldo would translate into more pounds as well.

The idea that Ronaldo – or any other player – is too “big” to sell on should not detain anyone for long. Ferguson has shown over the years that no player is bigger than the club, and has moved on a succession of crowd favourites – Hughes, Beckham, van Nistelrooy, Keane, Stam – when he has decided that the time has come for them to go. And on every occasion he has replaced them, with the team moving on to win more Premierships, more FA Cups, more anything and everything.

The fans have soon got over the changes, and those that were moved on have been forgotten. It will be no different with Ronaldo.

Clown Imperial

Anyone believing that my characterisation of Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi as “Duce” was an exaggeration need look no further than this article in Saturday’s Guardian. His power is now, apparently, on a par with that enjoyed by Benito Mussolini, but more worrying is that Freedom House has downgraded its assessment of Italy from being a “free” country to a “partly free” one – the same award as they give to Albania.

Even so, Berlusconi enjoys approval ratings well over 50% - also as Mussolini did before he got the country involved in World War 2. His hold over the country’s print and broadcast media might just have something to do with it.

But into each life a little rain must fall, and hardly had the Guardian article had chance to sink in, than Berlusconi’s long suffering second wife decided that enough was enough, and moved in the direction of a divorce lawyer, as the Guardian noted here. The last straw may have been the Italian PM’s appearance at the eighteenth birthday party of an aspiring model who refers to Berlusconi as “Daddy”.

However, if anyone thought that being on the wrong end of a divorce petition would shut him up, they had another think coming. “Duce” has now demanded that his wife apologise to him (not the other way about) and that the opposition had put her up to it, as the Guardian has noted.

The more straightforward explanation, of course, is that Berlusconi is once more behaving like a clown, and is an embarrassment to his country. As Cloughie would have observed, “Simple as that, young man”.

And he should always remember what happened to Mussolini when the Italian people finally rumbled him.

Station Sellout – Take 3

It started with a campaign to persuade Virgin Trains (VT) to reinstate the London services from Hartford, but ended with an increasingly grim battle to keep that station, and the neighbouring ones of Winsford and Acton Bridge, open. The railway, this time in the form of Network Rail (NR) predecessor Railtrack, was again less than open about its intentions.

VT had removed the London services from Hartford as an apparently temporary measure after the upheaval caused by the Hatfield derailment in late 2000. They then pulled the services completely the following year. The Mid-Cheshire Rail Users’ Association (MCRUA) took up the case, giving invaluable support through its organisation and connections, but VT were not persuaded and later removed the Hartford stops made by its cross country services as well.

Soon after that, news came that Railtrack had decided that stopping trains at Winsford, Hartford and Acton Bridge was “limiting capacity” on the route. When the stops by trains on the Liverpool to Birmingham service were removed, and a Liverpool to Crewe shuttle running only every two hours was substituted, it was clear that the stations were being softened up for closure.

MCRUA worked to raise awareness of the issues, and met with Mike Hall, the MP whose Weaver Vale constituency includes Hartford. At first, seeing Hall was one of the 1997 intake, the thought that he might be an on-message New Labour man who would not rock the boat entered, but he pitched in, questioning ministers and getting an adjournment debate in the Commons. Also, he would turn up when MCRUA organised litter picks at Hartford station, thus ensuring the attendance of a press photographer.

Unfortunately, the specialist press, typified by magazines like Modern Railways, did nothing. My email to James Abbott, then as now the editor, did not even merit a reply. This was a sign of things to come: the magazine merely printed the NR line when the move of Crewe station was proposed.

Ultimately, the efforts of MCRUA and others paid off: the Liverpool – Birmingham service now once again makes stops at Winsford, Hartford and Acton Bridge, new trains have been put into service, and the high occupation of station car parks shows that more people are using that service. But it was a damn close run thing. And it showed campaigners who their friends were.

Also, the railway has previous on proposing station moves, as well as closures. I’ll look at that next.

It Was Thirty Years Ago Today – Part 1

Actually, the title was true yesterday: it was on 3 May 1979 that the General Election was held which resulted in the last change from Labour to Tory Government. After the “Winter of Discontent” – and the winter of 1978-9 was grim in itself – no leader had been more eagerly awaited than Margaret Thatcher.

Standing on the steps of 10 Downing Street for the first time, Thatcher memorably quoted St Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, let us bring harmony”. For many, this became a sick joke. Here was a Prime Minister with an ability to polarise the electorate like no other, which turned out to be, given the UK’s electoral system, an asset to her and her party.

Thatcher was, simply, a lucky general – whatever her politics. She acted ungraciously when David Steel stood down as Liberal leader, out of vindictiveness because Steel had sustained Jim Callaghan in power through the Lib-Lab pact. But it was this very move that kept Callaghan in place long enough to be damaged by the “Winter of Discontent”, giving Thatcher the advantage which was then turned into electoral success.

The post 1979 spilt within the Labour Party and the lack of coherent opposition, together with the Falklands War, salvaged a landslide electoral victory in 1983 from a position two years earlier when polls showed Thatcher to be the most unpopular Prime Minister ever. The “Falklands Factor” was a perversely rewarding thing for Thatcher: the spending cuts set in train by her government arguably provoked the Argentine invasion. Her government went from regarding the islands as unaffordable to considering their sovereignty to be non-negotiable.

By 1987, the economy, previously brought to its knees by the dalliance with Friedman quack doctory, was at last recovering, and this helped the Tories secure a third election success. But the luck then ran out with the adoption of the reviled and iniquitous Poll Tax, and soon she was gone.

What was the legacy? Home ownership for the many, curbs on trade union power, selling off state assets, and the deregulation of the City, the last a greedy child whose conspicuous consumption in adulthood ended up in the lap of Pa Broon.

Also, under Thatcher the Tory Party became rather more diverse and meritocratic than the collection of rather good chaps in the Macmillan cabinet. This thought does not appear to have troubled the present generation of Tory cheerleaders, as they survey yet another collection of predominantly good chaps who pretend to emulate the longest serving Prime Minister of the last century.

I’ll revisit the Thatcher anniversary, looking at local government and Europe, later.

Station Sellout – Take 2

I’ve previously outlined the relationship between the town of Crewe and the railway. Also, the moves by Network Rail (NR) to take the station out of town were considered. I mentioned that NR’s predecessors had previous. It is from this point that I continue.

Forty-two years ago, a senior British Rail (BR) manager published his memoirs and soon after was sacked for what was widely seen as misconduct: one didn’t do that sort of thing. Gerry Fiennes’ book, I Tried to Run a Railway, is interesting and accessible, even to those with little or no knowledge of railways. It also reveals the sometimes less than honest way that the railway dealt with its customers and staff.

After railway nationalisation in 1948, the network was organised on regional lines, each region being defined by area, and not by the previous operator. This meant that some lines found themselves in the territory run by the successors of their competitors. Some main lines – those from London to Birmingham via Bicester, and London to Exeter via Salisbury – have survived, despite being run down and considered for closure. The main line from London through Rugby and Leicester to Nottingham and Sheffield, built by the former Great Central Railway, did not.

Fiennes’ book was quite candid about the Great Central. He admitted that a team had set out in the early 1950s to prove that the route was uneconomic and, ultimately, close it. Neither the travelling public, nor even those who worked on the line, knew of this. Not until the end of the 50s, that is, when the express service on the line was withdrawn, presaging a running down of the route.

BR were soon afterwards faced with the fallout from the Beeching Report. From this came a wave of route closures. One proposed closure, of the route from Stockport to Buxton, resulted in furious opposition. Those against closure sought the assistance of consultant Roger Calvert, who demonstrated that BR’s cost assumptions were substantially bogus. They included, for instance, the cost of upkeep for major stations that would still be open even if closure went ahead: closure would not produce any saving.

The line to Buxton survived, and is still in use today. But any opponents of future closures had their hopes of similar reprieve dashed when BR then changed the rules to stop their costings and other assumptions being challenged. Closure could now be challenged only on the grounds of the hardship it would cause to those having to make alternative travel arrangements.

Thus the lack of openness that Fiennes’ memoirs revealed returned. It has survived into the new millennium, as I discovered when the railway toyed with the idea of more station closures in the North West, in fact, only just north of Crewe. I’ll consider this later.

The Sub Prime Cut

No, it’s not about dodgy mortgages. It’s about cuts that may turn out to be rather less chunky than the adverts suggest, or not as painless.

Tory survivor Ken Clarke was the party’s offering on today’s Andy Marr Show: Fat Ken was in characteristically combative form, giving as good as he got and generally batting away attempts to show differences in approach between him and the rest of the Shadow Cabinet. But what he wasn’t going to commit to was cuts, at least not on any kind of numbers, which gave me that 1979 feeling once more – the election aftermath which I previously touched upon here.

What he would say, though, was that after a Tory General Election victory would come a spending review. Ah, now we have something to go on: Tory Governments have done these before. In fact, the one that comes to mind happened on the watch of the Chancellor of the Exchequer who Margaret Thatcher called “unassailable” (thus demonstrating not so much a sense of humour failure, but more like no sense of humour in the first place).

Nigel Lawson did indeed order a spending review, and with the objective of finding savings, as I assume the one that Fat Ken has outlined will also be intended to do. Thus the Civil Service was absorbed with lots of sums about sums.

The result of that review? Out of all the billions of annual Government expenditure, a whopping 500 million was found. That’s enough for, er, not even a fraction of a penny off income tax, but perhaps enough to pay for the review.

So the lesson from reviews past is there: it’s a pretty pointless exercise, unless there really are painful spending reductions, involving dumping tens of thousands onto the dole, to come soon after a Tory General Election victory.

How about levelling with us, Young Dave?

Station Sellout – Take 1

The campaign was brief, and victory was decisive, but this was not the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. It was, arguably, far more important than that. Because what I’ll be considering in a series of posts over the coming weeks is Network Rail’s frankly potty idea of moving Crewe station out of town, the efforts put into opposing the idea, and the lessons for the community in the aftermath of the campaign.

The title of these posts has been given for one straightforward reason: that many people that might have been expected to stand up for Crewe and its transport links totally failed so to do. Politicians, business leaders, and the media either sat on the fence or merely ignored the issue. As the only ones to address this problem, a convocation of councillors, trades unionists and like minded individuals were the ones who showed leadership. They alone emerged from the fog of battle with credit.

So why is the station so important in an age dominated by road travel? A look at the way in which Crewe has developed over the years may prove instructive.

Crewe is a town built either by the railway, or on the back of its presence. When the burgeoning network came to this part of the world, the local landowners didn’t want to know. The railway was kept out of the largest town in the area – Nantwich – and had to make do with a junction station near the settlement of Monks Coppenhall. That name may have been too much of a mouthful, but nearby was Crewe Hall, and so Crewe was born.

The town grew into what is, effectively, a bi-polar one: the town centre in a position near to the railway works, and Nantwich Road’s strip near to the station, both close to major centres of employment. Over the years, the importance of the station has changed as the demand for mobility has risen: the long distance trains that once stopped there to change engines, or add through carriages, now call to service passenger demand. Also, the station serves a growing commuter base, as people move out of nearby cities to the area’s more affordable housing. Those commuters then shop in the town centre, reinforcing its importance.

Moreover, the station and town centre are within walking distance for many thousands of residents, a benefit that might be thought worth retaining. But the interdependence of station and town centre made little impression on the ideas men at Network Rail (NR), who decided that moving the station out of town, south to Basford, was not only a good idea, but one that could be stood up in the heat of debate, or at least for long enough to get the plan approved.

Am I suggesting that NR may not have been totally open about the exercise? Ah well. The predecessors to this organisation have previous. A lot of previous. I’ll consider the prosecution case later.

A Postie Delivers

Last week, while noting the progress made by Nick Clegg in getting himself heard, I also said that, for the Tories, the Gurkha issue was an act of shameless opportunism. That observation has been made elsewhere, as Alan Johnson’s appearance on today’s Andy Marr Show confirmed.

Johnson – perhaps sent on to the show to make a “good guy” defence of Pa Broon – made sure he got across that the last Tory Government, with David Cameron an advisor to then Home Secretary Michael Howard, did nothing to change the status of Gurkha veterans. He also echoed my point about Cameron getting his photo opportunity with Joanna Lumley.

Further, the point was made – and expect to see a lot more of this in the coming months – that being in opposition is one thing, but having to be in Government and therefore sorting issues such as this is of a different magnitude.

Of course, such an approach depends on one more thing: that the issues being debated are actually being identified, addressed and sorted.

And then delivered.

Rook to King Four?

During the course of defending the attempt by the deeply unpleasant James Goldsmith to put them out of business, the management at Private Eye brought in a new legal team. Their new lawyer examined the case, and concluded “We appear to be in check. But is it check mate?”

It’s a thought that the team of the medium term, prudent, steadfast defender of the colour Broon may have as they survey the damage from a bruising week. True, some of the more excitable observers of the Westminster Village got a little ahead of themselves, and the expenses votes yesterday afternoon were notable more for keeping MPs at Westminster after 1800 hours on a Thursday than much else, but the mood around Labour members right now is not good.

The judgment problem, as I considered earlier this week, remains. Also, the need to set out the stall for upcoming elections is becoming urgent, with the European polls as early as next month. Why should it be so difficult to show some vision?

The only opposition party showing any kind of nous is the Lib Dems: here, as I noted the other day, Nick Clegg has at last made himself heard. Moreover, his supporting cast has at its head the World’s Most Agreeable Politician (tm) Vince Cable, who can discuss economics with the confidence that comes from having been a real world economist.

The main opposition – the Tories – have done very little, except for routine shouting down of the Government and acts of blatant opportunism. They cannot, or will not, level with the electorate on their vision for the future: this should be no surprise to anyone who observed the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, where they turned the contest into “Yah boo Pa Broon”. That is, so far, all they can muster nationally: that is not good enough.

Brown and his team managed, by all accounts, rather well with the banking crisis and the G20. So it should not be beyond them to get a grip, get organised, point themselves towards the sound of gunfire, and face down the slippery Cameron and his fellow opportunists.

The alternative is to knock over the king and concede the game.

Happy Holiday

Another month, another weekend, another meal choice: I’ve decided that tomorrow will be C-day. That’s as in Curry. So it is that I had to make an extra trip into town to ensure all the ingredients and accompaniments were in place.

And here I had another encounter with a conundrum that I’ve never managed to figure out. May bank holiday is for one day only – next Monday – yet the demand for just about everything in the average supermarket suggests that folks are stocking up for some kind of siege.

Crewe Asda was verging on the manic this morning; what it’s like right now I dread to think. We can’t all be having visitors over the holiday – if so, there would be nobody doing the visiting. Where does the extra food and drink go?

There is, though, one silver lining: it’s nothing like the scale of the bulk buying of foodstuffs that characterises the run up to Christmas. Because that’s, well, a whole two days without access to supermarkets.

And it’s less than eight months away, so you’ve been warned.

Selling the Pass

Demonstrating that it’s not a paper that feeds its readers a uniform diet of stuff they want to hear, the Guardian yesterday carried a column by Simon Jenkins on the first anniversary in office of London mayor Boris Johnson. Jenkins tells us that the very fact that this anniversary is being discussed makes it news. Wrong. The fact of the matter is that hacks like Jenkins are pushing this on to the news agenda to make it news.

And it’s not hard to find suspect reasoning elsewhere in the piece. Jenkins bemoans Johnson’s missing of the opportunity to cancel Crossrail, and he does so as if it’s something trivial, and unworthy of further comment. It is here that he sells the pass.

Crossrail, like similar rail schemes in cities across the world, is about the need for more capacity to move people into and around the central area. More, it is about relieving the pressure on nearby transport links, such as the Central Line, and the Circle and Metropolitan between Paddington and Liverpool Street.

There is, in London’s recent history, a text book example of the need for new transport capacity and what happens when its introduction is delayed. What eventually opened as the first phase of the Jubilee Line (between Baker Street and Charing Cross), taking the traffic from the Bakerloo Line’s Stanmore branch, had been planned for many years previously. Its intended continuation through central London gave the new tube the intended title of the “Fleet Line”. As the delays continued, so commuting on the Bakerloo south of Baker Street became more and more grim. Nobody having to endure that line in the peaks would have denied that the demand for more capacity was there. What conditions would have been like today without the Jubilee Line does not bear serious consideration.

So the discussion, I would urge, should not be over whether to have Crossrail, but how it can be delivered as soon as humanly possible. Anyone doubting that the need is there will only need a few weeks of the Central Line at peak times to inform their decision. And it’s not just about commuting: the viability of the West End as a retail and leisure destination will suffer progressively as it becomes less convenient and pleasant to get there.

Perhaps Jenkins doesn’t lower himself to use the tube. If so, that would explain his flippant dismissal of Crossrail. And, if he can’t provide an informed opinion, it might be better for all concerned if he were to leave the arena to those who can.

You Can Be Serious

The problem for the Lib Dems, I concluded recently, was that Nick Clegg would have to make himself heard above the sound of an increasingly tabloid Tory approach. It was ever thus for a third party in British politics, even one with over sixty MPs.

Yet today, with his party’s motion on the right of former Gurkha soldiers to settle in the UK, Clegg has made himself heard. He now has an opportunity rarely given to the leader of a third party: to make his pitch to the electorate, and with a General Election no more than a year away. However, he may have a difficult course to steer.

Clegg and his party carried today’s vote not only by attracting defections from Labour, but more significantly by gaining the more or less total support of the Tories. And here is the greatest hazard that he must negotiate.

David Cameron has latched on to the Gurkha issue in an act of shameless opportunism. Clegg had been ploughing a lone furrow on the issue; Cameron has joined in merely to defeat the Government. He may sympathise with the Gurkhas, but will value the photo opportunities alongside Joanna Lumley more. As I discussed previously, history tells any Liberal leader that getting too close to the Tories is not a good thing.

So Clegg must shut out any background noise from Young Dave and his chums. He has the stage. The electorate, I suspect, would like to hear him. And what might just go down well is someone – anyone – who can show some leadership. Let me give a definition of that term.

The economist and commentator J K Galbraith put it directly: “All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership”.

Brown has, today, had another lapse of judgment. Cameron is good at play acting, shouting down the Government, and acts of opportunism. Neither of them are committing themselves – not with any conviction - to confront that major anxiety.

Thus the opportunity for Clegg. The requirement is straightforward: he must tell the electorate what he is for, where he is going, and above all he must level with us.

Now that Nick has spoken up, he must step up.

Another Question of Judgment

It was only earlier this week that I was considering another instance of poor judgment by the steadfast, medium-term, prudent defender of the colour Broon. It is now clear that a week is a long enough time in politics to include more than one instance of judgment drift. Because the Government have just been defeated on a motion put forward by the Lib Dems, on the subject of former Gurkha soldiers and their right to settle in the UK. Also, I’m glad to see that the BBC's Nick Robinson has reached a conclusion very similar to my own.

Of course, Gurkhas have been fighting for us for many, many years, and without a right to settle here, and the issue has been seized upon by a shamelessly opportunist Tory Party, but part of the job of Prime Minister is to see the curve balls coming. Pa Broon seems to have missed this one in flight: perhaps he needs someone to install a sight screen.

Tony Blair had Alastair Campbell to provide the focus and highlight the hazards. Who advises Brown? Does anyone advise him? More, does he listen and act on that advice?

Because right now, not only does Pa Broon need someone on the team to “do a Campbell”, he must then listen to the advice given and act directly on it. If his judgment is shaky, then he needs someone to assist – that’s not an admission of defeat, merely an acceptance that he can’t do everything by himself.

Who might he turn to? Well, for an initial damage estimate, Alastair Campbell would be a good place to start. Also, as he’s back in the Government, Brown should swallow his pride and summon Peter Mandelson, if only to frighten the Tories. And a good man to bring in as a “conscience” figure, satisfying the Lyndon Johnson criterion, would be Charles Clarke. Finally, if Brown still isn’t minded to listen, someone should ask Sarah to sit him down with a nice dram of malt and tell him. The alternative would be messy and distracting, and perhaps even less popular.

It is, as ever, a team game, as I considered earlier.

Bolly, Pats?

Watching the assembled Gurkhas and their supporters outside Parliament recently reminded me of how acting can be a perilous profession. Championing the Gurkha cause has been the evergreen Joanna Lumley, who has had to suffer the perils more than once over the years.

The young Ms Lumley was a top model in the 1960s, and for a while a regular on television, as Ken Barlow’s posh girlfriend in Coronation Street. She even got to appear in a Bond film (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – the one starring Big Fry) where she had one very memorable line: “Of course, I know what he’s allergic to”. But then she found herself out of favour and out of work.

Having to sign on, when folks still saw her as someone “off the telly”, must have been the most difficult of tasks. So it was no surprise that she went for the role of Purdey in the New Avengers with gusto and grim determination, to the delight not only of audiences, but all the womens’ hairdressers who cashed in on the craze for “Purdey cuts”. But later, again, she seemed to disappear from view.

Not for long: in the early 90s came Absolutely Fabulous, a series that could never be exported to the USA, because after taking out all the alcohol related content, and the non-PC language, there was very little left. Her character, Patsy Stone, had originally been pencilled in by creator Jennifer Saunders for a male actor. And Pats wasn’t a very nice person – but we didn’t care.

And now Joanna Lumley has become an occasional documentary star, campaigner, and all round National Treasure (thought she probably hates such labelling). Not by merely being there, but by being determined and purposeful as well as agreeable. All those qualities can be discovered in her first autobiography, which is a rather good read.

It’s called simply “Stare Back and Smile”.

Don’t Mind if I Do, Squire

One image that runs through the whole Smeargate business is that of groups of exclusively male journos, politicos and others enjoying each others’ company while putting away copious amounts of alcoholic beverages. This might surprise some out in the provinces, but not me.

Why not? Well, among the cities that work has taken me to over the years is London. And you don’t have to be there for long to realise that there is a predominantly male drinking culture. In my line of business, it was thought of as a “City culture”, but as workers move between the Square Mile and other berths elsewhere in the capital on a regular basis, in effect it is universal. And this also applies to journalists – remember Private Eye’s caricature of Lunchtime O’Booze.

From hacks, it’s not such a great leap to the advisors and hangers on in the Westminster village. And it is here that much of the gossip that found its way into those emails germinated. Like a recreation of the legendary Monty Python “nudge nudge” sketch, Damian McBride would address his drinking chums as “Squire”. But there wouldn’t be any Breakaway biscuits.

That, for me, was the problem with after work drinks (the site where I worked, thankfully, had a no-alcohol policy), that it was straight to whatever liquid was on offer, without any interruption for food: a colleague once pitched the still memorable phrase “eating’s cheating” to me. Not that I’m averse to the odd pint or two of an evening, but the empty stomach beforehand. It’s not for mere show that a bar in central Madrid will serve you a tapa with your tipple, as I previously noted.

The discovery by more and more – usually but not exclusively male – workers in and around the City that by their mid-30s they have put their livers under severe strain will inevitably extend to the Westminster village. After all, it’s a similar culture, driven by the same drug. Nobody seeing Damian McBride, a prematurely corpulent and otherwise unhealthy mess, and learning that he is only in his thirties, should be surprised.

Unless they’re from out of town.

Not Whiter than White

While acknowledging the achievement of Everton’s players in overturning Manchester United’s 39 year unbeaten spell in FA Cup Semi-Finals, I remembered the last team to beat Man U at that stage in the competition. It was Leeds United.

Leeds were a team that provoked very different feelings, depending on where you lived. For those of us growing up less than fifteen miles from Elland Road, they were the local side that had made it to the top, and that was seen as A Good Thing. Many others disliked the team for its gamesmanship and occasional crude play. The semi-final against Man U, which went to two replays (those who dislike penalty shoot-outs please note) was typical: Billy Bremner was on his way to berate the referee before realising he’d scored the winning goal.

At one awards dinner, with the Yorkshire TV cameras present, guest of honour Brian Clough said in typically direct style exactly what he thought of the Leeds approach, but YTV were not courageous enough to include Cloughie’s speech in what was finally transmitted. It might just have upset their audience.

The Leeds revival of the 1960s came under the guidance of Don Revie, who had the team play in all white to ape Real Madrid. But they were no band of galacticos. In addition to the accusations of dirty play came suggestions of attempted match fixing, though nothing was proved.

The opponents that awaited Leeds United after those three semi-final matches in the 1970 FA Cup were Chelsea. And they, too, had players well versed in the physical aspects of the game, not least Ron “Chopper” Harris, their captain, who Mark Lawrenson recently said would have got himself booked getting off the team bus.

That final went to a replay, at Old Trafford. Late tackles, head butting, lunging, kneeing and fisticuffs were all in evidence in a supremely ill-tempered match. Leeds’ Mick Jones temporary disabling of Chelsea keeper Peter Bonetti helped him to open the scoring; Peter Osgood later equalised, partly because Jack Charlton, who should have been marking him, was elsewhere on the pitch looking for some afters.

And, after more extra time, Leeds ended up losing a match that modern day referee David Elleray later reviewed, concluding that the teams had merited a total of six sendings off and twenty bookings.

Leeds’ diehard supporters thought they had been robbed; most neutrals shrugged and concluded they got what they deserved.

They don’t make them like that any more.

Breakdown of the Gravy Train

A week is indeed a long time in politics. In this post, I looked at what Pa Broon had actually said about reforming the parliamentary expense system, rather than his performance, concluding that this was aimed at choking off the welter of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests about which MPs were claiming for flat screen TVs, sofa beds and bathplugs. I did think that, after the usual posturing, Brown might get some measure of agreement for the idea, but that now looks a long way off.

And if the Broon YouTube performance was bad, the posturing and reasoning of the other two party leaders has not stood serious analysis either. In the case of David Cameron, this may be related to a less than happy conversation he had with Pa Broon late last week.

Brown directly pinned part of the blame for all the expenses hooha on Cameron, for making party political gain from the subject. He was right, but this was never going to help the two reach an understanding. So Young Dave has come out even more jolly angry than usual, yet again using the whole business to slag off the Government, while failing to put forward any proposal of his own.

The level to which the debate has descended was summed up by Cameron, who denounced the concept of an attendance allowance as “sign in and bugger off”. This supremely infelicitous outburst glosses over the fact that, at present, the system does not even oblige MPs to turn up in the first place.

And Corporal Clegg hasn’t covered himself in glory either. His reason for rejecting the allowance idea? It’s too much like the EU. Yes, the leader of the only solidly pro European party in the Commons is using the expenses debate to engage in Euro bashing. Er, hello?

Meanwhile, the barrage of FOI requests continues. The benefit from any fallout, on balance of probabilities, will generally favour opposition parties, if only because of the comparative numbers of MPs. But it only needs someone to unearth another Conway or Chichester and Young Dave will find himself in the crosshairs once more.

Blaming Pa Broon for that may not be easy.

Makes a Change from Dogs

Dog bites postman is not news. But what one unfortunate postie found in a Somerset post box was something rather more exceptional, as The Guardian tells us today, right here.

Ouch.