There are certain things you expect to find in the middle of a Stratford-upon-Avon roundabout. Cones. A discarded Greggs bag doing laps. What you do not expect is a piece of public art that has been hit by a car and then abandoned by every official who might reasonably own a screwdriver. And yet here we are. The Armillary Sphere on Banbury Road is still standing, two months after the crash, with its steel bands bent like a paperclip that lost an argument.
Warwickshire County Council says it looks after the road, not the sculpture, and had “no involvement in the commissioning, delivery or installation.” Stratford District Council is “currently investigating” and “exploring the options,” which is council-speak for a long meeting and a short conclusion. They hope to recover the cost from the driver’s insurer. A former mayor has pointed out that a lot of people never wanted the thing in the first place. When it went up in 2009, paid for from a developer pot of about £100,000, a petition to take it down gathered 1,183 signatures. It stayed. It has now been improved by a Ford.
This is the British way with public art. First we argue about whether it is art. Then we argue about whether it is public. Then a Vauxhall settles the aesthetic debate and we argue about the invoice. Nobody is against spheres, exactly. Nobody is for a four-figure welding job that might turn out to belong to a department that was abolished in 2011 and reconstituted as a strategy.
I have some sympathy. A roundabout is a hostile environment for anything with feelings, including motorists. I have less sympathy for three organisations in a room, each holding a folder marked “not us.” If your Arts Strategy of 2005 can birth a sphere, it ought to be able to admit the sphere exists when it gets a dent.
If you are restoring your own household armillary sphere, Amazon will sell you metal epoxy. It will not decide which council writes the cheque. It will at least pretend to be a solution.
I do not expect Shakespeare’s town to unbend this quickly. I do expect the sphere to remain a conversation piece, which is what public art is for, just not usually because a bumper got there first. Remember that the next time a press officer says they are exploring options. It means the sculpture is still crooked, and so is the organogram.
The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up. This one is called King v Earl, which is the sort of fixture Britain still puts on the fixture list even when the rest of the week is on fire. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If you like your headlines with a coronet and a grievance, have a listen. If you would rather settle the matter over a brew, Amazon will sell you a teapot. It will not decide who outranks whom. It will at least be warm.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the peerage news left you feeling generous.
There was a time when the great municipal panics of Britain involved a sofa in a canal or a wheelie bin left out on the wrong Tuesday. Now several councils in the West of England are looking at High Court injunctions so that anyone who ties a flag to a lamp-post can be fined, sent to prison, or have their assets seized. Not because the flag is illegal. Because the furniture belongs to the council, and the council is tired.
Bristol says it has spent about £50,000 taking flags off lamp-posts and railings. That figure does not include the officer hours spent driving out, filling in forms and answering emails about bunting. Somerset puts its bill at a more modest £2,900. Oxfordshire already has the court order. Bristol is considering the same. Breach it, and you are not in a debate about patriotism. You are in contempt.
I have no brief for people who treat a lighting column like a flagpole they forgot to buy. I also have no brief for a legal machine that escalates from “please don’t” to “we may take your car” because a St George cross has been cable-tied to a pole. Fifty thousand pounds is a lot of money to spend proving you own a lamp-post. You could resurface a side street for that. You could buy a lot of actual flagpoles and put them where flags are supposed to go.
The official line is safety, street furniture and cost recovery. Fair enough. A flag in the wrong place is a maintenance job. A High Court injunction is a personality. Once you have one, every cable tie becomes a test of the realm. The people putting the flags up think they are making a point. The people taking them down think they are enforcing a duty. Both sides will now get a barrister, which is how Britain settles an argument about a lamp.
If you would rather fly something on your own property, Amazon will sell you Union Jack bunting. It will not need a cherry-picker. It will not generate a fifty-grand invoice. It will look a bit like a street party, which is what flags used to be for.
I do not expect this to end with everyone calmly using a proper pole. I do expect another council to announce that it has spent a small fortune defending a piece of metal from a piece of cloth. Remember that the next time someone says local government is only trying to keep the streets tidy.
Here we are again. There are certain things you expect a county council to spend three years on. A bypass. A pothole that has achieved heritage status. What you do not expect is a legal war over a 98 centimetre gap in a garden wall in Matlock. And yet here we are. Helene Ball, 81, who has lived on George Road since 1967, has just won. The council cemented a metal fence panel across the gate her family had used since the sixties. A tribunal has now said, in the calm language of people who bill by the hour, that she had a right of way all along.
Derbyshire County Council did this in April 2023 because the car park on the other side was going up for sale as a small housing site. Block the gap, tidy the asset, hope the retired teacher gets bored. She did not. The fence panel came out within a year. The vehicle access did not. For the rest of the fight she was left threading a route the council later marked with concrete blocks, which is the civic equivalent of being invited back to the party and asked to sit on a breeze block.
The judge, Robert Brown, found some of the council’s evidence surprisingly combative, totally irrelevant and most unhelpful. That is legal-speak for “please stop.” Costs: £50,000, to be paid by the council, which has declined to say what the whole performance actually cost. Helene, a retired teacher of nine, ten and eleven-year-olds, said she never expected the council to act so babyish. When a woman who has marked spelling tests for a living calls your strategy childish, you should sit down.
I do not doubt that car parks need selling and housing needs building. I do doubt that the fastest route there is to concrete someone into their own garden and then argue about the 1960s. If your official process is a metal panel and a three-year wait, people will invent a smaller, louder one and take it to a tribunal. They have. A right of way is now written down. The gap is a gap again.
If your own wall is feeling insecure, Amazon will sell you a wooden garden gate. It will not stop a council with a sale board. It will at least be a gate, which is more than Matlock was offered for a while.
Britain is very good at this. We can map a county to the nearest centimetre and still lose a decade arguing about a hole in a wall. Ninety-eight centimetres. Remember that the next time a press officer says they were only trying to be helpful.
The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up. This one is called How to End the Drought, which is a bold title for a country that treats a hosepipe ban as both a national emergency and a personality test. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If your lawn has gone the colour of a Rich Tea and you are still waiting for a minister to invent rain, have a listen. If you would rather take matters into your own hands, Amazon will sell you a watering can. It will not end the drought. It will make you look busy.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the dry spell has left you feeling generous.
There are certain things you expect a district council to fall out with Whitehall over. Bin collections. A bypass that has been “imminent” since the Silver Jubilee. What you do not expect is a High Court case about seven tenths of one per cent. And yet here we are, in Worcestershire, where Wychavon has been told it is “not delivering” because 10.7% of its refused housing schemes later won on appeal. The official limit is 10%. The difference is the sort of margin you would ignore on a bathroom scale and then think about for the rest of the day.
The punishment, handed down in June, stripped councillors of the right to vote on big planning applications. Officers decide instead. The council calls this outrageous. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government says it wants homes and infrastructure built quicker for local people, which is government speak for “please stop saying no.” A two-day hearing is booked for December. Wychavon wants a precedent. Whitehall wants houses. The lawyers want lunch.
The council’s argument is that the government used the wrong window. Look at the year to March, they say, and the figure drops to 5.2%. Use that, and they are model pupils. Use 2023 to 2025, and they are rogues by the width of a planning notice. It is the civic version of being banned from the pub because of a round you bought two summers ago.
Fair enough, the country needs homes. Fair enough, some planning committees treat every new roof as a personal insult. But taking the vote away from elected people because a statistic wobbled over a line drawn at a nice round ten is the sort of precision that makes your brain itch. We cannot find a dentist, but we can measure Worcestershire to one decimal place.
If you are founding a breakaway planning committee of your own, Amazon will sell you a gavel. It will not restore your scheme of delegation. It will make a nice noise when the 10.7 comes in.
I do not expect the judges to settle the housing crisis in two days in December. I do expect someone to leave court explaining that 10.7 is basically 10 if you squint. Britain has always been good at this: when the official process feels deaf, we invent a smaller, louder one and give it a barrister. Point seven of a per cent. Remember that the next time a minister says they are only asking you to play your part.
The latest live stream is up, and it is the usual pile-up of British news that would not wait its turn. In this one: UK flights cancelled, a flasher tackled, and someone mili-banned. Plus the other headlines that wandered into the studio and refused to leave.
If you were one of the hundreds of thousands staring at a departure board that had given up, this is your recap with jokes attached. If you would rather stay grounded on purpose, Amazon will sell you a neck pillow for the next time Nats has a technical moment.
Watch the stream below. If the player sulks, the same video is on YouTube at youtube.com/@mrstevenallen. Tip the host on Ko-fi if the cancelled-flight energy feels familiar.
There was a time when the great battles of the school dinner were about whether you had to eat the skin on the custard. Now the Department for Education has decided the real crisis is deep fat. Not the kitchens that still look like 1987. Not the twelve year old who can smell a Greggs from the ring road. No. The menace is a chip that has met oil.
This is, we are told, the biggest shake-up of school food in England in more than a decade. From September 2027, primary schools will have to serve pulses such as lentils and chickpeas with a main meal at least once a week. Deep fried food is out. Chips may remain, but only if they have been baked, which is the culinary equivalent of being invited to a party and then sat in the hallway. Cake drops to once a week in primary and twice in secondary, and it must arrive with fruit, as if a slice of sponge becomes a vitamin the moment an orange sits next to it.
Breakfast clubs get their first proper rules too. Fried eggs and pastries off the menu. Cereals face a sugar cap, which is government speak for Coco Pops having a quiet word with HR. Schools must publish their menus online. Lucy Powell called the changes once in a generation. That is a lot of weight for a chickpea to carry.
The idea is simple. A third of children leave primary school overweight. Tooth decay is still the main reason five to nine year olds end up in hospital. Fair enough. Nobody is campaigning for more waffles as public policy. But compulsory lentils have the same energy as banning biscuits for adults. It sounds noble. The only guaranteed outcome is a thriving black market in smuggled sausage rolls and a generation who can spot a pulse at twenty paces and walk the other way.
Ministers promise the meals will be exciting. Schools minister Georgia Gould even said lentils are tasty, which is the sort of sentence that should be stress tested on a Year 8 before it leaves the building. If you would like to practise the new national dish at home, Amazon will sell you a kilo of red split lentils.
I do not doubt the fibre figures. I do doubt that a baked chip and a published menu will fix what happens after half three, when the same child meets a corner shop. Still, at least we have a timetable. Primaries first. Secondaries by 2028. Plenty of time for the lentil to become a personality, and for the rest of us to remember that we once survived school dinners that were brown, wet, and somehow still called stew.
The latest Steve N Allen (almost) Daily is up, and it is the usual mix of the important, the royal and the slightly unhinged. In this one: the UK pension is failing, a prince saves Dartmoor, Tom Cruise knows he is annoying, and AI needs a kill switch. Plus the other news nuggets that would not sit still long enough for a newspaper column.
If you have ever watched a Mission: Impossible press tour and thought, yes, that man is aware of the effect he is having, this episode is for you. If you would rather rewind to when he was merely hanging off a plane, Amazon still has Top Gun: Maverick.
Have a listen below. If the player misbehaves, the same episode is on Spotify, Apple and the usual suspects. Watch on YouTube, read the Substack, email me@mrstevenallen.co.uk, or tip the host on Ko-fi if the pension news left you feeling generous.
There are certain things you expect a British village to vote on. The colour of the new benches. Whether the fete tombola can include homemade gin. What you don’t expect is a referendum on leaving the United Kingdom. And yet here we are, in a place called Piddington, which has just declared itself a principality with the sort of confidence normally reserved for people who’ve had two pints and found a laminator.
Residents of the Oxfordshire village, population about 350, were invited to post a slip in a box outside the village hall. The question was whether Piddington should secede from the UK. Of 312 votes, 285 said yes, 26 said no, and one person spoiled the paper, which is the most British form of diplomacy available when you can’t decide between rage and a sit-down.
The spark is a Home Office plan to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at nearby MoD Bicester. That’s roughly four proposed residents for every villager, or, if you prefer the official version, a site “designed to be largely self-sufficient to minimise any impact on the local community.” Which is government-speak for “please stop looking at the numbers.”
There is, of course, no legal mechanism for a parish council to leave the country. You can’t opt out of Britain the way you opt out of a gym membership, though plenty of us have tried both and still get the emails. The vote is symbolic. That hasn’t stopped a “Principality of Piddington” sign appearing on the boundary, which is how all the best micronations start: with laminated card and a very firm tone of voice.
That hasn’t stopped a “Principality of Piddington” sign appearing on the boundary, which is how all the best micronations start: with laminated card and a very firm tone of voice. If you are founding a breakaway state before tea, Amazon will sell you the laminator.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told breakfast television the government would not reconsider. Fair enough. If every village that objected to a planning decision got its own foreign office, we’d have more ambassadors than buses, and the buses still wouldn’t come.
Still, you have to admire the commitment. They’ve got a campaign song. They’ve got a pennant. They’re “the village that roars,” apparently, which is a lot to live up to when the next item on the parish agenda is probably the grit bin. Britain has always been good at this: when the official process feels deaf, we invent a smaller, louder one and give it a flag.
I don’t expect the UN to be taking calls from Piddington this afternoon. But in a week of inflation figures and “challenging” budgets, there is something very us about a village-hall box, a 92 per cent turnout, and the quiet hope that if you print the word Principality big enough, someone in Whitehall might finally look up.
There was a time when the great moral panics of Britain involved things like video nasties, satanic messages hidden in rock albums, or whether showing an ankle on television before 9pm would bring down civilisation. Now the government has decided the real threat to the nation’s youth is… scrolling. Not drugs, not gangs, not the fact that half of them can’t afford a house unless they marry into the Royal Family. No, the big menace is thumbs moving too freely on a screen.
The latest plan, floated with the confidence of a minister who hasn’t spoken to an actual teenager since dial‑up, is to ban under‑16s from using social media altogether. According to the political mood music, the House of Lords is already on board, the Commons is warming up, and within a year we could see “highly effective age checks” rolled out across every platform. Because if there’s one thing the internet is famous for, it’s people telling the truth about their age.
The idea is simple: protect children from doomscrolling, online bullying, and the kind of algorithmic rabbit holes that can turn a perfectly normal 14‑year‑old into someone who thinks the moon landing was faked by lizard people. And fair enough, the online world is a mess. But banning teens from social media is like banning adults from biscuits. It sounds noble, but the only guaranteed outcome is a thriving black market in Bourbons.
We’re told this is all about wellbeing. Ministers speak solemnly about “addictive design features”, as if TikTok is a nicotine patch with dance routines. They promise “rapid implementation”, which is government‑speak for “we’ll get to it right after we’ve finished fixing the potholes, the NHS, and the economy”. Meanwhile, parents are being reassured that the state will finally step in and do what they’ve been trying to do for years: stop their children from staring at a glowing rectangle long enough to remember what their family looks like.
But here’s the problem. Teenagers are better at technology than the people trying to regulate it. These are kids who can jailbreak a phone faster than a minister can say “consultation period”. They can set up VPNs, burner accounts, and entire digital identities before breakfast. If the government thinks a ban will keep them offline, it might want to have a quiet word with Australia, where a similar policy has mostly resulted in teenagers becoming experts in circumventing Australia.
And then there’s the philosophical question: if you ban under‑16s from social media, who will teach the rest of us what the latest memes mean? Without teenagers, the cultural timeline collapses. Middle‑aged people will be wandering around saying “slay” in the wrong context. Society will crumble.
Still, the government insists it’s acting “in months, not years”. Which is impressive, because that’s roughly the same timeframe in which a teenager can create a new account, get banned, create another, and become a micro‑influencer. If nothing else, this policy will give young people a valuable lesson in bureaucracy: no matter how fast you are, the government will always be at least three steps behind.
I’ve often wondered what keeps the highest legal minds in the land busy. I assumed it was weighty matters of constitutional importance or deciding who actually owns the rights to a "no-score-draw." It turns out, the UK Supreme Court has spent its week meticulously defining the word "milk."
The Swedish company Oatly has just lost a long-running legal battle with Dairy UK. It’s all over Oatly’s attempt to trademark the slogan "Post Milk Generation." The Supreme Court has ruled that they can't have it. Why? Because under a bit of assimilated EU law, the kind we kept just for the nostalgia, presumably, the word "milk" is a protected "designation."
Dairy UK, the trade association for people who deal in secretions, argued that using the word "milk" in any context for a non-dairy product is "oblique and obscure." They’re worried we’re all so dim that if we see the words "Post Milk Generation" on a carton of oat drink, we’ll immediately think, "Ah, finally! Milk that comes from a post!"
The judges agreed. They said the slogan doesn’t "clearly" describe the product as being milk-free. Instead, they said it describes the consumers, specifically a younger generation who are "concerned" about dairy. So, you can be a "Post Milk" person, you just can't drink a "Post Milk" drink.
It’s the kind of institutional logic that makes your brain itch. The court even came up with a hypothetical analogy: a "Post Alcohol Generation" drink. They said that wouldn't clearly tell you if the drink was alcohol-free or just low-alcohol. I’d argue that if I’m in a "Post Alcohol" phase of my life, the last thing I want is a drink that’s "obliquely" trying to get me hammered.
What’s truly magnificent is the selective nature of the ban. Oatly is banned from using the trademark on food and drink, but they are allowed to keep it on their T-shirts. Apparently, the law assumes that while you might accidentally drink a T-shirt thinking it’s a pint of semi-skimmed, the risk is statistically low enough to be permitted.
We’re living in a world where the government can't fix a pothole or find a bin man who works on Tuesdays, but we have five Supreme Court justices, Lords Hamblen and Burrows among them, spent months ensuring that your oat juice doesn’t get ideas above its station.
It’s about "fair competition," apparently. Because nothing says "fair" like the massive dairy industry using international regulations to bully a Swedish company over a three-word slogan.
If we’re going to be this pedantic, we need to go all the way. I want "Coconut Milk" rebranded as "Tropical Nut Sweat." I want "Milk of Magnesia" renamed "Chalky Tummy Slurry." And let’s not even get started on "The Milky Way." If there isn't a giant cow floating in the vacuum of space, I’m calling the Intellectual Property Office.
But don’t worry, as a middle-aged man whose knees make a noise like a bag of crisps every time I stand up, I’m clearly not part of the "Post Milk Generation" anyway. I’m part of the "Could Really Use a Sit Down" generation.
Happy New Year. Or, as I like to call it, the week we all collectively agree to lie to ourselves.
Every January 1st, we decide that the version of us that’s been fueled by cheese boards and cheap Prosecco for three weeks is suddenly going to become an Olympic-level athlete. We sign up for the gym, a place that, for the rest of the year, is just a building we walk past while feeling slightly guilty and we buy enough kale to fill a compost heap.
The New Year’s resolution is a fascinating scam because we are both the con artist and the mark. We tell ourselves, “This is the year I learn Mandarin,” when we haven’t even mastered the art of putting the laundry away in the same week it was washed.
The gyms love it, of course. Their entire business model relies on you paying for a year-long membership in a moment of madness and then never showing up again. You’re essentially paying a monthly fee for the right to say, “I really should go to the gym,” which is a very expensive form of self-flagellation.
By February, the kale has turned into a liquid at the bottom of the fridge, and the only "running" we’re doing is running out of excuses. But don't worry, next year will be different. We'll tell ourselves the same lie, and we’ll believe it again. It’s the ultimate triumph of hope over experience.
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