George Harrison - not the Fabbest but still pretty Fab

For me, remembering to post about notable anniversaries is a bit like sending birthday cards: a couple of weeks out from the day I make a mental note not to forget. Then it doesn't cross my mind until after the event has passed.

In the nick of time I've remembered that today is the tenth anniversary of George Harrison's death. I had intended to watch Martin Scorcese's two-part documentary on the Quiet One and use it as the basis for my argument that he was the true genius of The Beatles. But I forgot either to record the second part or watch it when it was available on iPlayer.

While I note that at least one person has tried, it isn't really tenable to argue for George as the greatest Beatle. He's my favourite because he was the plucky underdog who emerged from the shadows of the other two. I quite like his songs too.

His solo career showed that he wasn't quite the songwriting equal of John and Paul. Yes, All things must pass is a great album because he had built up a backlog of material, having been rationed to two songs per album with The Beatles. The follow up Living in the material world is a fine piece of work also, perhaps underrated because his religious preoccupations are to the fore. But after that he ran out of steam, and I suspect it was because he didn't have the others to keep up with. His solo albums between the mid-70s and mid-80s each had their strong tracks, but overall lacked inspiration or ambition.

It was only when he started working with Jeff Lynne of ELO fame that things got better. 1987's Cloud Nine was a return to form, the first Travelling Wilburys album was very good and the posthumous Brainwashed , probably the second best of his career.

While George was known to complain that his songs didn't always get a fair hearing in The Beatles, I suspect he needed strong collaborators to inspire him to great work, and he was fortunate that they didn't come much better than his Fab colleagues.

The YouTube link is to Sam Brown singing one of George Harrison's very last songs Horse to the water from the tribute Concert for George. His own version, a collaboration with Jools Holland, was recorded shortly before he died and doesn't quite have the oomph that the song deserves. Sam Brown really does it justice. Unfortunately the audio and video are badly out of synch so it's better listened to than watched. Frustratingly also, the song can only be downloaded from iTunes with the whole album. These tribute things are normally pretty uneven overall, but this is one of the best cover versions of a Harrissong.

Coventry, rugby, nostalgia

Today, for the first time in six years, I made a trip to the midlands to watch a Coventry Rugby Club home match - this one against National Division One leaders Ealing Trailfinders.

Coventry is my birthplace and I have supported the city's rugby team since childhood. Until the 1980s they were one of the big beasts of English rugby, up there with Leicester, Gloucester and the leading Welsh club sides. The first game I ever watched was the great David Duckham's last home match in a Cov shirt.

Until a few years ago, I would generally get to a couple of home games each year, combining watching the match with a visit to my grandparents. But when grandad died five years ago, and then my grandmother moved south to be cared for by my mother, there was no personal reason to visit Coventry any more. It seemed perverse to take a whole day out of a busy life to watch second tier (and now third tier) rugby. The more so as we have Saracens playing premiership rugby ten minutes' walk away - although Saracens have never really adopted Watford and in turn I have never quite adopted them.

Anyway, because it conjured up family memories it was quite a sentimental trip today, but an enjoyable one, not least because my team won. It is nice to see that at this semi-professional level, players still stop to talk to supporters, club officials are relaxed about people wandering on to the pitch after the game, and generally the corporate takeover of rugby that one sees in the premiership is thankfully absent.

In days gone by Cov were famed for their forward game, and tended to see off southern teams like Rosslyn Park and Harlequins who threw the ball about a lot but never won anything. It was a bit like that today. Ealing came at Cov with their effete passing and offloading game, displaying the kind of skilful play that so disfigures the modern game. But Cov were having none of it and scored a winning try in injury time after a rolling maul which at one point included 13 of Cov's 15 players.

Cov have a long way to go to regain their glory days but perhaps today was a start.

Whatever the truth, Roebuck's suicide was a terrible, lonely death

For one with not much more than a passing interest in cricket, I have found myself pondering the fate of Peter Roebuck rather more than I would have expected.

I hope it is not pure ghoulishness. Rather it is the combination of how the story has unfolded and the struggle of a media that likes people to be monsters or angels either to know what to say about someone who may have been a bit of both.

On another day I might not have even clicked the button to read the reports of his death. I remembered his role as Somerset captain in the 1980s and his part in the controversy over the Richards/Garner/Botham departures and vaguely aware that he had gone on to become a cricket writer. But beyond that he hadn't much permeated my consciousness and it was intriguing to learn of this brilliant but tormented soul, whose suicide somehow didn't completely surprise those who knew him.

But there was more than that. However tactfully, most obituaries and tributes referred to his 2001 conviction for caning three 19-year-olds whom he was coaching. This is the sort of information that once known permanently colours one's perception of anybody. An open-minded person might reflect that the history of sport is littered with charismatic coaches with odd methods, and consider that this may have been an error of judgement for which Roebuck was righly punished, but which should not be held against him for all time. Yet it is hard to avoid agreeing with the trial judge's reported comment that: 'It seems so unusual that it must have been done to satisfy some need in you'.

When those who had spent the day of his suicide with Roebuck reported that they saw no sign of what was to come, one sensed the grim inevitability of unpleasant revelations explaining his apparently sudden decision. And so it proved: his leap from a sixth-floor window was triggered by his imminent arrest on a charge of sexual assault.

This leaves judgement on his life and reputation in a strange state of limbo. Any fair-minded person would avoid judging the motivation for his suicide. It might have been fear of his guilt being exposed. But equally, even if innocent he would have known that his reputation would never quite recover. Even if not convicted there would be a sense he had 'got off' rather than been exonerated. The later accusation, combined with the earlier conviction and his charitable work helping young men through university would be combined to create a picture of a sordid predator. Already you don't have to look far to read an article about Roebuck written as if an accusation is proof of guilt and indeed of serial wrongdoing.

All of which might amount to an argument for defendants in cases of sexual assault or rape to be given anonymity, along with the victims. Who knows whether Roebuck, if innocent, would be alive today if there was a chance he could have cleared his name without facing trial by media also?

But issues around anonymity are not that straightforward and that wasn't really my purpose in writing about this. (And for avoidance of doubt I should add that sexual assault is an appalling crime and the police should assiduously investigate any report of it, however talented or philanthropic the alleged perpetrator.) Rather it is just a sense of the cruel vicissitudes that attend the human condition.

Perhaps a young man hoping for a way out of poverty and a new chance in life found himself suffering a grotesque sexual assault at the hands of his supposed benefactor. Or a brilliant but troubled man faced the horror of a false accusation when they were merely trying to do good. Either on its own is awful enough, but whatever happened led to a terrible, lonely death. Whether Roebuck was guilty or innocent, one would need a heart of stone not to feel a profound sense of sadness at the whole story.

PS: Clearly plenty of people have felt troubled by this story. I have also read these very measured pieces by Howard Jacobson and Geoff Lemon.

Book Review: Robert Ingham and Duncan Brack (eds) Peace, reform and liberation

This has been a busy, busy week, with no time for blogging. I did, however, make my

debut as a Liberal  Democrat Voice contributor, with my review of the Liberal Democrat History Group's new history of Liberal politics, Peace, reform and liberation, edited by Robert Ingham and Duncan Brack.

How they are related: Anna Chancellor and HH Asquith

We all know that Helena Bonham Carter is the great grandaughter of Liberal prime minister HH Asquith, indeed she lives in his old house at Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire. But I was curious to discover that she is not the only thespian of note descended from old Squiffy. Specifically Anna Chancellor of Spooks, The Hour and Hidden fame (and still better known as Duckface from Four weddings and a funeral) is his great great granddaughter.

Her great grandfather was Asquith's eldest son Raymond, whose tragic death on the Somme was symbolic of the 'lost generation' who fell in the first world war. Raymond's daughter Perdita was Anna Chancellor's grandmother.

In passing I might also mention that  her uncle is Alexander Chancellor, who edited the Spectator in the 1970s and 80s when it was an elegant, eclectic and enjoyable vehicle for fine writing rather than the organ of grim right-wing ideology it is today. And she is playing the lead role in Radio 4's current classic serial, an adaptation by Harold Pinter of Elizabeth Bowen's masterpiece The heat of the day, which is a cut above Spooks, Hidden and other such nonsense.

PS: Had I been blogging at the time I might have remarked that in January of this year, Raymond Asquith's son Julian died at the age of 94. He was just the second Earl of Oxford and Asquith, having inherited the title from his grandfather the former prime minister in 1928. He was therefore an earl for 83 years.

Should a Liberal really be advocating compulsory cycle helmets?

I see via Jonathan Calder at Liberal England that Lib Dem MP Annette Brooke's private members bill to make it compulsory for cyclists to wear a helmet has not been given a second reading.

Jonathan reiterates his opposition to compulsion and cites research that it simply reduces the number of cyclists on the road. I am probably a case in point on this. I own a bicycle, but use it all too rarely even though I do enjoy a nice cycle ride. I am middle aged, overweight and am trying to make an effort to eat less and take more exercise. This could include cycling. But it is already a bit of a palaver, remembering where the pump is, checking that the lights are working etc. Having to buy a helmet, find it when I need it and then wear the horrible thing on my head would pretty much guarantee that the bicycle will remain in the shed. I suspect a lot of occasional, recreational cyclists would feel the same.

[EDIT: Perhaps I should have looked a little further before posting the above. I see the bill was aimed at under-14s. But the point still stands - both as regards children who use their bike only occasionally and in that if legislation was passed for under-14s there would soon be pressure to extend it to apply to adults.]

Leaving aside the practical arguments, it annoys me when Liberal Democrats are in the forefront of trying to implement such petty restrictions on personal freedom. Over the years my libertarian instincts have been increasingly tempered by pragmatism. We are not a Libertarian party and are hardly going to call for an end to seatbelt laws or to reverse the smoking ban. But  for me, the correct position for Liberals on such matters is that of sceptics not cheerleaders. We should be the ones wanting to see clear and overwhelming evidence that the social good outweighs the infringement of personal choice. So I am disappointed that a bill such as this was put forward by a Liberal Democrat MP

CD Review: The Bangles 'Sweetheart of the Sun'

Conventional wisdom has it about right regarding the oeuvre of The Bangles. Their first album, 1984’s All Over The Place, was a fine example of the emerging sixties-influenced guitar-based, jangle-pop ‘Paisley underground’ thing that was happening at that time.

Instead of continuing in similar vein, the band sought a short-cut to stardom, through songs such as Manic Monday and Walks like an Egyptian, enjoyable pop confections in themselves, but less than the band was capable of creatively. And then of coure they recorded the excruciating power ballad Eternal Flame.

So I wouldn’t have bothered with their latest effort Sweetheart of the Sun had I not needed to use up eMusic downloads before they expired and chosen this in haste because I had at least heard of the ban. It is pleasing to find that this album is really rather good, a worthy successor to All Over The Place. Unlike their intervening efforts, most of the material is written by group members without outside help.

All the things that made The Bangles worth listening to in the first place are here: pleasing harmonies, jangling guitars, memorable songs with soaring choruses. Beatles, Byrds and REM influences very much to the fore. Songs like the opener ‘Anna Lee’ and ‘I’ll never be through with you’ even sound like potential hit singles. The only complaint (as more than one reviewer has commented) is that some of the lead vocals sound strained – as if a nasty cold virus was going round and the group members hadn’t quite recovered when they recorded their vocals.

In case it seems a strange leap from writing about CD by the respected-but-obscure Jayhawks to the well-known-but-lightweight Bangles, it’s worth remarking that the producer of this album, Matthew Sweet, has also co-written and recorded with The Jayhawks, while Bangle Susanna Hoffs sang on Jayhawk Gary Louris’s solo album Vagabonds. Degrees of separation and all that.

For some reason I don't seem to be able to embed videos right now but here is a youtube link to a song from the album.

Adoption row: just another exercise in council-bashing?

I can’t claim any great expertise (or even knowledge) on the subject of adoption, but instinct and logic incline me to be very sceptical of the government’s latest exercise in council-bashing.

Take, for instance, David Cameron’s statement that "It is shocking that of the 3,600 children under the age of one in care, only 60 were adopted last year - this is clearly not good enough.” This takes it as read that the more children in care under 12 months old who are adopted the better. But is this a reasonable view? Unless parents have explicitly given up their children for adoption, then one hopes that in many cases local authorities will be trying to return babies to their birth parents if at all possible. A rush to arrange adoption is not necessarily the best solution. (One might even expect Conservatives to agree with this).

The other measure mentioned is how quickly councils arrange adoptions after agreeing that this is the best outcome for a particular child. But it hardly takes a moment’s thought to work out how this might be affected by factors other than the council’s ability to arrange adoptions. If the social services department is more reluctant than others to decide that children should be adopted then its success rate will appear higher because it has fewer cases to resolve. The reverse would also be true.
That is leaving aside the issue of whether socio-economic or demographic factors might make it easier to arrange adoptions in some areas than in others.

Given how serious an issue this is, how important to people’s lives, it seems unfortunate to say the least that Cameron and Conservative children’s minister Tim Loughton are using this as an excuse to pick a row with local authorities. Doubtless there will be some councils who really are not doing a very good job, although one suspects there will be others who are ‘named and shamed’ who have actually got sound reasons to explain their performance. Whichever way, government gunboat diplomacy doesn’t help.

Paul Tyler and 38 Degrees - pressure groups should be subject to scrutiny too!

Writing on the Guardian website last week, Lib Dem peer Paul Tyler took issue with the lobbying methods on the NHS bill of campaigning organisation 38 Degrees. He commented:

The kind of exaggeration 38 Degrees used made people ask whether simply filling up someone's inbox with a lot of half-constructed half-truths was a respectable way to campaign. The organisation had not asked people to engage with any of the detail of this issue, and had given a false impression about the headlines. Some would say this route leads us into a form of one-click rent-a-mob – what is now termed "slacktivism" – enabling ill-informed and disconnected instant electronic communication to take the place of genuine political discussion and interaction.

Regardless of the precise rights and wrongs on this specific issue, I think Paul Tyler highlights a wider point about the credibility and ethics of 'third sector' organisations and the campaigns they run and the free pass they are often given by the media.

So we see the NSPCC, which provides very little direct care for children, running ever more emotive advertising campaigns, which no doubt provide them with funds for another round of horror-movie-style ads.

Similarly, visiting a National Trust property earlier this year, I was shocked to see them running a disingenous campaign against the government's National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), as if there every National Trust property was about to be surrounded by new housing estates. (The NPPF is far from perfect and many legitimate criticisms can be made of it, but this should not descend into caricature). Likewise, last year we had homelessness charity Shelter engaging in questionable use of statistics to generate publicity for themselves by attacking local authorities.

Third sector organisations are by no means necessarily noble and disinterested parties. They too have their vested interests - publicity helps them raise funds and gain competitive edge over their rivals. So they have every reason to make their claims sensational and their tactics noisy. Equally, they are likely to be represented by those well-versed in the political game. Campbell-Robb, the director of Shelter worked in the cabinet office under Labour; when MacMillan Nurses denounced the government over benefits earlier this year, their media spokesperson was former Labour parliamentary candidate Mike Hobday.

Of course, charities, NGOs, pressure groups and the like have a vital role to play in any democracy, but their arguments and campaigning tactics should be scrutinised as closely by the media and treated with a degree of scepticism. For that reason Paul Tyler's article is timely and welcome.

PS: I suppose for the sake of full disclosure I should mention that I had my own little local run-in last year with a well-known third sector organisation.

The Lib Dems have a duty to contest police commissioner elections

The decision of the Federal Executive that the party should not contest next year’s police commissioner elections is misguided and wrong. To be clear, FE hasn’t actually said that Lib Dem candidates must not stand, but there will be no federal funding for these elections and its suggestion that ‘Individual Liberal Democrats may support non party candidates’ is hardly a rallying cry for local parties to fight energetic campaigns.


Perhaps I will be in a tiny minority in feeling so strongly about this, but it seems to me that the whole issue has been bungled by the party from start to finish. As a result, we have a mess from which we don’t even emerge with honour intact.

The election of police commissioners was always going to be a problem for the party, as it was one of the few elements of the coalition agreement that provoked strongly-held and near-unanimous opposition among Liberal Democrat activists. Although it was clear that the coalition would have a change of heart on creating police commissioners, in practice it wasn’t a problem as the elections were to take place on the same day as next year’s local elections. So we could fight two elections for the price of one, just as we do when European and council elections are fought on the same day.

Then came this year’s disappointing local election results, in which a difficult situation was made worse by many non Lib Dem voters turning out to vote No in the referendum and Tory or Labour in the council elections. At the Lib Dem local government conference in the summer, there seemed to be a strong view from councillors, campaigners and defeated candidates that having police commissioner elections on the same day as the local elections would be disastrous for our chances of holding council seats, and this opinion was expressed very strongly to ministers etc.

I found myself a lone voice in arguing the opposite case. The referendum did harmed in the council elections because the Conservative party threw all its weight behind getting its supporters out to vote, as the referendum became a must-win for Cameron. By contrast, police commissioner elections would largely be a local matter, influenced more by the ground war than the air war and in my view there was little cause for alarm. In the past we have not been harmed in the past by having European and council elections on the same day – arguably the need to knock up our local vote has helped us to get more MEPs elected. Perhaps the most obvious comparison is with mayoral elections, and there too people largely treat them as local elections. In my view local government colleagues were drawing the wrong conclusion from this May’s double header.

This was not a popular view, however and there was near unanimity that the date of the police commissioner elections just had to be moved. But the consequences of the change of date needed to be considered also. If the police commissioner elections did not take place on the first Thursday in May, we would end up having to spend a lot of money and motivate activists to fight a set of elections that in most places we would have little chance of winning because of the size of the constituencies.

Regardless of whether it would help our prospects in council elections, the announcement in September that the police commissioner elections were being moved to November 2012 meant that it was highly unlikely that the Lib Dems would contest them seriously, or indeed at all.  Even before the date changed, the lack of urgency shown by the English party in developing approval and selection procedures for police commissioner candidates was a worrying sign that we were preparing to surrender without a fight any chance of influencing local policing. Likewise, at the recent federal conference in Birmingham there was a noticeable lack of training sessions, fringe meetings and the like on fighting police commissioner elections.

Federal Executive’s decision merely confirms what I feared. But while it may save the party money and spare campaigners the need to tramp the streets on cold, dark November evenings, it remains a bad decision. Effectively the national party is saying that having helped to create these posts it has no interest in ensuring that policing in our communities is carried out in line with Liberal principles. It is leaving it to the sheer chance of whether an independent, liberal-minded figure comes forward. Even then we are faced with the dilemma of whether to divert resources to campaigning for a non Lib Dem candidate or ignoring the election at the price of allowing authoritarian opponents a free run.

In my view, as a minimum, the central party should be look to use these elections as a campaigning opportunity. This would mean picking the best prospect of victory and treating it like a parliamentary by-election with the hope that at least one of the new police commissioners would be a Lib Dem. Elsewhere it should encourage the selection of candidates and a national campaign of talking to our supporters, to reaffirm their support, encourage them to vote in the police commissioner election and to recruit new members, helpers and so forth. In places with elections in 2013 this would help kickstart their campaign.

It occurs to me that there may be a Machiavellian hope lurking in some minds that by not contesting the elections, we are undermining their credibility and that if a series of local mavericks are elected the Conservatives will see the error of their ways and police commissioners will prove a short-lived experiment. I doubt whether this will be the case. Taking away people’s right to vote is unlikely to be popular.

Whichever way, the party nationally cannot expect to be taken seriously on crime policy if it effectively declares that it has no interest in taking responsibility for policing at local level. In my view it has a moral duty to contest these elections and the central party has a moral duty to give active support and encouragement to local campaigners to do so. Is it too much to hope that the party’s great and good will think again?

PS: Both Jonathan Calder and Anders Hanson have put forward strong arguments in favour of the Lib Dems contesting these elections.

One's a master spy, the other an Oxford scholar, yet neither can use a standard reference book

The recent conclusion of my time as a perpetual student means that I can now occasionally read books purely for pleasure, not as part of my studies. In particular, I can read the occasional novel, an indulgence largely foregone these last few years.


But perhaps because of years of studying obscure monographs and critiquing their arguments, I find myself doing the same with novels – reading them against the grain and searching for the weak link in the plot that undermines the rest of the story.

A case in point is the spy thriller Restless by William Boyd. The plot concerns the exploits of a woman working for British intelligence during the second world war and her revelation of this secret past to her daughter thirty years later as she seeks to resolve unfinished business.

To link the two time periods, Boyd has the mother (and spy) enlist the help of her daughter (an Oxford Phd student) to find the whereabouts of her wartime spymaster and lover who betrayed both her and his country. The only information they have to go on is a memory that at some point he received an honour, either a peerage or a knighthood. To track him down, the daughter has to consult her well-connected thesis supervisor, who seems to know everything there is to know about the great and good (or rich and bad).

At this point I groan and sigh. Our protagonist has been trained in the arts of espionage and can remember the most obscure details of what she has done and seen. Is it likely that she would be quite so vague about what honours have been conferred on someone she had once been in love with and who had tried to have her killed? Is it possible that neither our spy nor her Oxford scholar daughter would be aware that everyone who receives a peerage or knighthood is listed in Who’s Who? And just in case the villain tries to wrong-foot everyone by changing his name on being enobled, Who’s Who cross-references noble titles and family name. Each entry also gives an address for each subject, which would have relieved our heroines of the need for the elaborate piece of deception they engage in to be able to follow their quarry home and find out where he lives. It would have been so much easier to visit their local public library.

Marvellous things reference books! Yet I suppose if Boyd had allowed his characters use of them, the plot wouldn’t have been quite as exciting and I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of reading a whole book in a single sitting, something I haven’t done for many years!

Don't mention the civil war!

Just about caught up after a fortnight in Andalucia and ready to start blogging again. Andalucia is everything on expects from the guide book: wonderful scenery, centuries of architectural history reflecting that southern Spain was territory contested between Christian and Muslim worlds.

With my interest in more recent territory, I looked out for signs of commemmoration of the Spanish civil war. I realised, however, that since the return of democracy the so-called 'pact of silence' has meant there is little recognition by public bodies of the legacy of the war. Avoiding raking up its poisonous legacy was no doubt intended to help embed a new democratic system.

So I was surprised to see engraved on the facade of the Sagradio church in Granada the name Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, a Falangist leader, who might have become a rival to Franco for the leadership of the nationalist causes, but who was executed by the Republican government in 1936. Around the inscription red paint has been splattered on the wall to symbolise blood.

I ask the guide of our walking tour about this. She tells me that recent legislation (presumably passed by the current socialist government) requires the removal of Francoist memorials from public buildings. But the church is exempt from this. It has clearly been unwilling to remove the de Rivera inscription and this has, quite rightly, led to protests.

While I knew perfectly well that the Roman Catholic Church aggressively supported the nationalist side in the civil war, one might have hoped that today it could be a focus for reconciliation, but evidently not. I ask the guide to what extent the church remains a right-of-centre political force in Spain, in a way that is not really the case in Britain. Diplomatically, she says: 'The church is still very powerful in Spain, and has plenty to say about Spanish society.'

Eric Pickles - a man who never puts the bins out

Others have written (here and here) about the Eric Pickles' latest daft idea of a £250 bribe for councils to revert to weekly collections of residual waste.

What strikes me is that Pickles doesn't understand the basics of refuse and recycling collections. While he cultivates the image of blunt, plain-speaking man, he is clearly so remote from everyday life that he never actually puts the bins out. Or else he would know that his proposals do nothing to achieve his stated goal.

According to the Daily Mail, Pickles says that:

My aim has always been to pass the chicken tikka masala test, so the nation’s favourite meal can be consumed on Friday night safe from the worry that two weeks later its remains will still be rotting in the bottom of the bin

But weekly residual waste collections don't achieve this. Leftover tikka masala goes into the food/garden waste bin, not general waste. Packaging goes into recycling bins or boxes. In other words, none of the chicken tikka masala or its packaging should end up in the general waste and none of it will be collected any earlier if councils moved from fortnightly to weekly collections.

The only way to end the rotting tikka masala nightmare would be to introduce weekly collections of food and garden waste. To their immense credit, Lib Dem colleagues in neighbouring Three Rivers have pioneered this, although they have met with little but begrudgery from the Conservatives. But Pickles is not proposing weekly food waste collections.

CD Review: The Jayhawks - Mockingbird Time

The Jayhawks' trademark sound was based on the harmonies of joint songwriters and frontmen Mark Olson and Gary Louris. It's sixteen years since they recorded together under the Jayhawks moniker, eight since the band sans Olson released a studio album and three since the two of them recorded the (under appreciated) Ready for the Flood album as a duo. So the reunion album Mockingbird Time  has been much anticipated by the band's long-standing followers.

Before the release of the new album they professed the ambition to be the band who produced their best album work later in their career and that Mockingbird Time would be it. This was always going to be a tall order, the more so as their 1992 release Hollywood Town Hall was not only a masterpiece in its own right, but also highly influential, indeed genre-defining.

And so it proves. While Mockingbird Time recaptures the band's classic sound as if a natural successor to Tomorrow the Green Grass, the last Jayhawks album to feature Louris and Olson, this time the songs are not quite there. In particular, the limitations present in Olson's solo work are in evidence here - I liken him to Stephen Stills, writing songs that are worthy and workmanlike but rarely memorable.

One of the things that made the Jayhawks interesting to listen to was the way their songs never went for the obvious hooks (perhaps this is why they never had a hit), but spun off in unexpected directions. That is still the case here, but there is a shortage of good tunes.

This is not to say this is a bad album - the band are too professional in their songwriting and musicianship for that to be the case. The Byrds-influenced 'She walks in so many ways' will be an automatic choice for any future 'Best of' compilations, while Louris's 'Pouring rain at dawn' captures the spirit of wistfulness that is present in all the Jayhawks' best work.

And none of the songs here are weak or embarrassing, it's just that for the most part they are a bit off the pace. One or two reviews I have read suggest that this is an album that grows on you, and perhaps that will be the case. But anyone looking for an introduction to the Jayhawks should still start with Hollywood Town Hall. And for contemporary work in the same vein, try the outstanding Nothing is Wrong by the California band Dawes, who sound like they have listened to a Jayhawks album or two in their time.

So farewell then, REM

Perhaps more surprising than REM splitting up is that they were still together after so many years of releasing indifferent material, with each new album being hailed as a return to form but flattering to deceive.

It also provokes me to reflect on a quirk in my own musical taste, namely a tendency to lose interest in artists I like as soon as they become successful. I was a relatively early follower of REM, first hearing them in 1984 at the time of their second album, Reckoning, and playing 'Don't go back to Rockville' endlessly. Their wistful, melancholic sound was unmistakeable, as were Michael Stipe's mumbled vocals that left you with the impression of profound lyrics that you somehow couldn't quite hear. For a while I would buy everything they recorded as soon as it was released. I even rather liked their much-derided third album, Fables of the Reconstuction (hence the youtube clip).

They seemed to be a band that would remain a reasonably well-kept secret, admired by those of use who enjoyed now following the mainstream. And then of course the sound got louder, Stipe stopped mumbling, 'Everybody hurts' followed 'Shiny happy people' and the secret was out. While Out of time and Automatic for the people were in their own way fine albums, to me they lacked quintessential REM-ness. One started hearing people describe themselves as REM fans, who hadn't heard anything they had recorded before 1992.

So, listening to REM was no fun anymore and I mostly stopped buying the albums. But once upon a time they were indeed special.

Why I have little sympathy for the 'Philharmonic Four'

As an avid reader of newspaper and magazine letters pages, I have often found myself annoyed by people expressing what is clearly a personal opinion, but sending it from their employers' rather than their home address. Academics are particularly guilty of this, and unless they are writing specifically on an issue of professional expertise, there can be no justification for it. Often one suspects they are using their university address to give added gravitas to their opinion on a subject where their opinion is no more expert than anyone else's. At worst author's can give the impression that their view represents that of the institution from which they are writing.

It is in this light that I view the suspension of the so-called 'Philharmonic Four' for signing a letter to the Independent objecting to the participation of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in the Proms. The signatories of the letter in the Daily Telegraph defending their right to express an opinion are (deliberately or otherwise) missing the point. The problem is not that the four musicians expressed a view publicly, but that they signed the letter as members of their orchestra.

When expressing an opinion publicly, in whatever forum, it's always worth being clear about on whose behalf one is speaking or writing. I post on this blog, and occasionally write elsewhere, in a purely personal capacity. Sometimes I have to speak or write officially as a Lib Dem councillor or group leader, occasionally as an executive member of Watford Borough Council. On the other hand I don't have a public-facing role in my permanent job and would avoid even the appearance of speaking on their behalf - for example by signing letters to the press from work rather than home.

And that's where the Philharmonic Four have come a-cropper. Had they each signed as 'musician', it's hard to see how their bosses at the London Philharmonic could have objected. But unwisely, they chose to mention their employers. Of course, one could argue that it's wrong to punish musicians for a practice that academics get away with all the time. Which would be a fair point. But it would be better all round if people avoided using their employer's name to add gravitas to the public voicing of their personal views.

The problem with the Rugby World Cup

As a fan of the game with the oval shaped ball, I should be rather more excited about the Rugby World Cup than I am. This is because it is a rather unsatisfactory tournament for one simple reason - there are too few games where the result is in doubt and likely to make a difference to who qualifies for the next round.

In soccer there is a sense that in any given match anything can happen. Algeria can hold England to a draw; the cup-holders can be eliminated without winning a game. Even the weaker teams who are unlikely to progress to the next round might have a say in who does qualify.

In rugby this doesn't happen - nearly every time the stronger team will win out, overpowering their opponents, and as teams are allowed to substitute nearly half their players during the course of a match, rugby's powers have ensured an even stronger bias in favour of the bigger rugby playing nations.

By my reckoning , of the 40 pool games only about six that could both be won by either team  and make a difference as to who qualifies. (Those involving Wales, Fiji and Samoa in Pool D and Scotland, England and Argentina in Pool B.)

Admittedly, the last Rugby World Cup did offer some surprises - Argentina's victory over France in the opening game, and their becoming the first country outside the traditional eight to reach the semi-finals and Wales's defeat at the hands of Fiji. Yet still the majority of games at the pool stage started as a foregone conclusion.

Rugby also has been poor at broadening its competitive base - Argentina still don't take part in a major international competition, as a result have not built on their success of four years ago and last month were reduced to playing one of their warm-up games against an English club side.

The tournament will open in a few hours with a game in which the only matter in doubt is whether Tonga will be able to restrict New Zealand to a margin of victory lower than 50 points (unlikely). So I shall wish the underdogs well (other than those playing Scotland or, in deference to my dear wife, Wales) but suspect I won't be watching all that many games.

On prejudice against country music

The Independent's pop music critic Simon Price excuses his surprise at learning that the country and western artist Brad Paisley sold out the O2 arena by saying 'he operates in a genre which still dare not speak its name in sophisticated company.' He adds:

The one thing, in the great tribal Taste Wars of the Eighties, that everyone could agree on was that country-and-western was rubbish. Even its main British proponent had to sneak past the defences by giving himself the self-consciously wacky name Hank Wangford.

While it's certainly the case that people who should know better unthinkingly mock country music, the above comment is testament more to the author's ignorance than anything else. While there was plenty of cheesy and naff country music around in the 1980s that was only part of the story. Elvis Costello recorded an album of country and western standards that spawned hit singles. Bands like Jason and the Scorchers and the Long Ryders fused country and punk influences in a way that was just as reverential to the former as the latter. And Paisley Underground bands such as REM, while hardly belonging in the country section of record shops, were clearly influenced by country music traditions.

If all of the above don't qualify as country, there were plenty of respected artists around who did. Steve Earle (see youtube link) was a kind of country-and-western Bruce Springsteen. Dwight Yoakam revived and reinvented traditional, hard-core country, while Rosanne Cash, kd lang and Nanci Griffith each emerged as serious songwriters working within a country-and-western tradition.

 

Simon Price's comment is a bit like saying all rock music is naff and citing the oeuvre of Cliff Richard as proof.

Total Politics blogger awards voting thingummy

I don't really approve of such beauty contests, but in response to the various pleas (now I know how voters feel when they are knocked up) have given in, logged on and voted.

But those folk at Total Politics don't make it easy. For your vote to count you have to name five blogs, then separately name five bloggers, write 'Blank' down the rest of the list, designate the Blank by category (I thought 'Non-Aligned' was best) then name your favourite twitterer or whatever.

It took me three goes to cast my vote successfully. If I didn't have better things to do I wouldn't have bothered.

More on Richard Webster

There is an obituary at the Good Enough Caring blog by Mark Smith of the writer Richard Webster, about whom I wrote recently. It might seem a little eccentric of me to post twice about a relatively obscure writer whose work is a little removed from the normal subject matter of this blog.

But one of Webster's preoccupations was the concept of 'noble cause corruption' - how people can be less than scrupulous methods in promoting a cause that they believe to have an overriding good. It is regular, if intermittent interest of mine, and part of the reason for the name of this blog.