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I think it's about time I started blogging more again. I recently found a quote from Lord Acton that was very apposite - "Learn more by writing than by reading". So since he was a bit of a hero of mine I think I should put his exhortation to the test.

Later this week we will be treated to the denouement of the worst kept secret in Oxford politics, likely to break this coming Thursday we are told. Two of last year's defectors from the Lib Dem group on the City Council are apparently about to take another step away from their constituents' wishes and sign up to become the first Conservative Group on Oxford City Council since 1996. The story goes that they are to be joined by a third, possibly a Green councillor, though that remains to be seen. It would make life difficult for the ex-Lib Dems, for from what I can see the only way Cllrs Sargent and MacGregor are ever going to have fancy titles like "Group Leader" and "Deputy Group Leader" is if they are part of a group of precisely two.

Obviously the political headlines at the moment are dominated by the "battle" (though one suspects it might be a "rout" when the votes are counted) for who succeeds Blair as caretaker-manager of Air Strip One. Apparently Sargent and MacGregor may have delayed their announcement by a week to avoid clashing with Tony Blair's announcement last week - though I hardly think their little local defection was ever going to compete for column inches - though that is probably how self-important they are! No doubt they will spin it that "a former chair of the Lib Dems in Oxford" and "the wife of the former constituency vice-chair" have seen the light and joined the Cameroonies. No doubt if it was the other way round, we would do the same. Defectors are always, and without exception in my experience, self-seeking, smug, narcissistic types and will do anything to give themselves a heightened sense of their own importance and the significance of their political disloyalty, usually to cover for the real reasons they defected (such as, in this case, lack of sufficient ability to get onto the Lib Dem led executive of the City Council).

But let's not forget, present occupiers of these positions obviously excepted, that chair of the city group and vice-chair of the constituency, are, in Lib Dem circles, not too dissimilar to David Horton and Frank Pickles in the "Vicar of Dibley." Cllr Sargent's own nick-name when chair of the group - "Fluffy" - kind of demonstrates the seriousness with which the post is viewed. Most recently, and including Sargent's own period of office, is has been occupied by relatively junior members of the group willing to do the thankless task of herding cats and keeping order in meetings because they generally don't have other onerous council tasks to do.

Elsewhere there are stories floating around that Cameron's Tories might join the Lib Dems in calling for Gordon Brown to hold a snap General Election to secure a mandate for his rule. Now, don't get me wrong, I do agree with these calls, as, it would seem, do 72% of people who expressed a preference so far on the Oxford Mail's current online poll (and, according to the BBC, so does most of the country). Cameron should give pause to such urges, populist though it may appear to be. In his own back yard, Oxford, it would be unfortunate for him to be crying over what was a majority at that last election, just two summers ago now, for a Labour Government and Labour Prime Minister (whoever they decide to put in that position, such is our broken and unaccountable democracy) when his only local councillors arrived by breaking their contract with their constituents and voters.

I called, in vain as usual, for them to submit themselves to their electorates in a bye-election when they first left the Lib Dems under whose banner they were elected. But at least they maintained for a while the pretense of political neutrality (some of us call it indecision). But, should they now join a party that stood candidates against them when they were elected and whom they defeated, overwhelmingly in both cases, I do hope Mr Cameron will this time join my call for them to submit now to a bye-election to prove the city wants "back door Tories". For if I were a Tory in Oxford, I hope I would be appalled now to be represented by those two in any case, and I hope I would have the conviction to stand against them in a selection contest in any such bye-election.

Just so you know, when I was eleven, at prep school, I used to have two knives.

One, a "Swiss Army Knife" was a thing of pride - everyone vied to get one with as many different gadgets on as they could. That one I used to carry in my pocket all the time; you just never knew when you would come across a pencil that had not been turned into "pencil cricket" or a desk with a screw that could do with being removed for the delectation of watching the next occupants of it have it collapse on them...:)

The other was one of those "Ray Mears" type things - it folded its four inch blade, kept razor sharp (because there wasn't much else to do with it and one of those sharpening blocks), into its wooden handle. It was meant for whittling my woggle with or whatever it was that we Scouts did, but it occasionally came in handy for cutting up sticky-backed plastic or something like that!

Come to think of it I must have had another one as well - one that had a fixed blade and was worn in its scabbard on my belt whenever I was in uniform. Oh, and if I recall, I bought them all, with my saved up pocket money, myself, and whilst I may well look a decade older than I am now, I did not, I assure you, at eleven!

And the most memorable book I read at school that year?  The Cross and the Switchblade .

I don't remember anyone, ever, getting stabbed, except perhaps by accident when their woggle was whittled too much. We soon grew out of them, when we graduated to the CCF and started playing with guns instead! But I do recall some of the Duke of Edinburgh types remained loyal to their knives. So, blame the Duke of Edinburgh maybe, or Peter Duncan definitely, but the knife itself - what a useful piece of equipment!

Don't they have pencil cricket or woggles that need whittled, any more?

Oh, and I still have a fold-away thing for my pipe that has a blade and a stiletto type poker thing on it - am I going to gaol?

Yesterday in my piece about the Policy Exchange think tank's suggestion that Oxford and Cambridge ought to be allowed to expand to as many as a million homes I mentioned the work "Car Free Cities" by J H Crawford which I came across a decade ago when looking into Oxford's last Local Plan. In it he postulates a city of a million people with a topology and transport system that means that any two addresses anywhere in the city would be no more than 35 minutes apart by foot and rapid transit system.

The city is made up of many districts of about 12,000 population like strings of beads along one of three overlapping rapid transport loops. Every home is less than five minutes walk from open countryside. And whilst the densities within the districts are amongst the highest on earth (similar to Seoul, for example, although nothing is more than three stories in the reference designs) only 20% of the total 100 sq mile (10 by 10) area is developed at all, leaving all the areas between the beads and strings as open countryside or managed parkland or whatever. Overall then the density is not a lot greater than Oxford's current density and less than the average of Greater London as a whole.

So, for a bit of fun, I superimposed Crawford's one million population city topology onto the ten by ten mile square centered on the current centre of Oxford. Now sure, a million population is only probably about a third of the million households the Policy Exchange report was ultimately suggesting, but if anyone says to you that it would simply be impossible to imagine a million people in the area between Wheatley and Eynsham, Littlemore and Kidlington, you can say you have seen how, and with no traffic and only 20% of the land developed to boot! It would currently take me over an hour to get from the end of one of these loops to about a third of the way out the adjacent one, incidentally.

Now nobody is suggesting that we do this, least of all me. I'm just demonstrating that it would be possible, indeed whilst making more of the green belt actually because all the space would be accessible in minutes rather than in half an hour in the car, it would reach right into everyone's neighbourhood - with open country no more than 400m from every front door. Fitting such principles into existing cities is of course much more difficult than an academic sitting at a drawing board with a blank sheet of paper. They need not be loops for example but twelve strings with termini at the end of each. It would increase average journey times but not the overall maximum of 35 minutes door to door and could be fitted in along existing radial roads as a series of villages.

Incidentally, the picture on the right here shows some of the housing in the ward with the highest density in England, at least that I can find - a "middle level super output area" either side of the Cromwell Rd in Kensington & Chelsea.  I notice from Net House Prices that there have been 267 £1m plus residential property transactions in the last eight years in this post code area.  This is getting pretty close to the densities that would be required in a city such as that in Crawford's book.  It's hardly slum clearance stuff is it!