Daily catch-up: Great British Place Names and the Great Tory Schism
Important news from the cartographic business, plus the beginnings of the Conservative Party's second great fracture over Europe
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Your support makes all the difference.Very grateful to the people at Strumpshaw, Tingleton & Giggleswick for sending me a copy of their Map of Great British Place Names. They liked my Listellany book of Top 10s (just £1.89 on Kindle), including the Top 10 Best British Place Names.
They also sent a copy of their map of Great British Bottoms, which marks a lot of place names with the word Bottom in them, which is very childish.
• On a lighter note, Tim Montgomerie, Times columnist and founder of the Good Right groupuscule, has resigned from the Conservative Party. His article is behind a pay wall, but for the purpose of criticism and review I copy an extract from it here:
Faced with a weak, divided opposition in the 1980s Mrs Thatcher moved the country forward. She seized the opportunity to deliver tough reforms that a more effective opposition might have stopped. Today, David Cameron and George Osborne are doing little that Blairites or Cleggites could object to. I recently asked Peter Mandelson what separated his politics from that of Mr Osborne. He joked that the top rate of income tax was too high. At least I think he was joking ...
I admit this grand repositioning might work electorally for a period, but it doesn’t mean that people like me should continue to give time, love and money to the Conservative cause. So, after 28 years of membership, I’m resigning. I’m not joining another party but don’t want to give another penny to the Cameron project.
To summarise, Montgomerie criticises Cameron's failure on immigration, deficit reduction and inequality. To have tried to cut the deficit faster would have been disastrous and at a time of low interest rates pointlessly so. I admire Montgomerie's emphasis on equality and wonder at its becoming a test of Conservatism, especially as Cameron's rhetorical commitment to an all-out assault on poverty is one of the reasons some Blairites don't object to him.
But immigration here in effect means "membership of the European Union", so Montgomerie's departure is an early sign of the great schism that is about to divide the Tory party, as I commented yesterday.
• More schismatics via Robert Peston, who reported yesterday that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove were "leaning towards the exit". As I said in my Politico article, it doesn't look good for the Prime Minister.
• Here is an extract from Randall Munroe's list of things to worry about, from his latest What If? about trying to slow down Jupiter's rotation:
• And finally, thanks to GlennyRodge for the latest medical bulletin:
"I keep getting a rash every time I compare one thing with another. Think I might have analogy."
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