The next instalment of the Diary of Lord Bonkers has hit doormats on the back page of Liberator, and his diary secretary Jonathan Calder is posting them up day by day on Liberal England.

Today’s gripping instalment covers squirrels. As we have previously learned in these pages, Lib Dem peer Lord Redesdale is trying to eliminate grey squirrels – first from Northumberland, then the rest of the country.

Lord Bonkers gives the compelling reason why this effort is so urgent:

Whereas our native red likes cricket, morris dancing and good ale, and understands the principles of queuing, the brash American Grey chews gum, flashes its money about and demands good service in hotels. Clearly, it must be extirpated from these islands.

I wonder, if when in Morpeth, he heard the local ringers ringing Morpeth at Morpeth? As the new Northumberland County Council becomes unitary with the Lib Dems as largest party, Castle Morpeth Borough Council shuts down. This has ended traditions that link ringers with civic life there, including a peal for each new Mayor, and five minutes of ringing before each council meeting. To note this, the Morpeth ringers learned a complicated and difficult method named after their town: Morpeth Surprise Minor.

The method is here (click Morpeth in the table at the intersection of Canterbury and Wells). News report here. The record of the quarter peal is here. And interestingly, Nottingham University Soc of Change Ringers scored a quarter of this at Clifton last month.