Sunday mornings...

I don't know about you but I've never been able to get to grips with this habit of showing political programmes on a Sunday morning. There is a place for interviews with the great and the good, faux little debates and the endless scandal-mongering that passes for political journalism these days but it isn't for Sunday morning.

I gather from extensive investigation (I asked some bloke down the pub who seemed well informed) that this politicisation of the sabbath morn is, like so many other bad things, an import from our former colonies in North America. Which is odd because I though they were a deal more god-fearing than us and troop in their droves (do droves troop or rather meander?) to vast churches built using the same architects who, in England, design warehouses for electrical component distributors.

So now, as I sit with my morning tea (dreaming sweetly of bacon sarnies) before the telly, I am regaled with Andrew Marr interviewing some or other grandee - today it happens to be Nick Clegg. Marr's interviews do rather remind me of the "great microphone of state" and provide rather less insight than Desert Island Discs. It's almost like a staged, scripted event - a few gentle questions, the grandee getting his (it's usually a 'he') point across and Marr being able to extract just the one theatrical squirm from the interviewee.

Sunday mornings are to blame for this softball approach - if the interview was at seven thirty on a Wednesday evening, it would be all businesslike, stern and of infinitely greater value to the viewer (although less useful to the political superstar being grilled). Sunday mornings are for tea and slippers, for having breakfast in the garden, for the slow life. Sunday mornings are when we should savour things - the sun, the grass, our families and all the good things around us.

Sunday mornings aren't for politics.

....

Bingley Show, old laws and the real reason for getting the show moved

****

Not sure whether to laugh or cry about this.

"Following a request from a member of the public Bradford Council uncovered an old act of Parliament – S44 of the Public Health Acts Amendment Act 1890 – which states that the local authority may on such days as they think fit close the park for any agricultural, horticultural show...provided that no such park or pleasure ground shall be closed on Sundays."

Another part of the act known as – S76(1) of the Public Health Acts Amendment Act 1907 – does give the local authority certain powers to set apart any such part of a park for the purposes of recreation and exclude public from the part set apart. Unfortunately this only applies to a part of the park and not the whole or majority of the park which is necessitated by Bingley Show."

As Bingley Show charge admission and use the whole of the park they are effectively excluding public. If Bradford Council were to continue to let Bingley show use Myrtle Park on a Sunday it would mean that the council would be operating beyond their powers. Bingley Show have thus been asked to book another day."

To start with this is the 21st Century. And Bingley Show takes place once each year – that’s right folks, just one Sunday out of the 52 available. But what I find most surprising is that “a member of the public” has gone to the bother of finding out about this dusty law and then telling the Council about it. Why? Does it really matter?

Or are they – without success – trying to stop this event from taking place?

....