2026 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Pre-Season to open on Saturday March 21st
21st March
Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the weather set fair for the coming period the 2026 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Pre-Season opens on 21st March.
The campaigners say that it is far from the earliest start to the pre-season in recent years. The 2016 pre-season opened on 13th March
In the Pre-Season the framework of guidelines for appropriate Beard, Shorts and Sandals deportment are relaxed.
The decision to open the Pre-Season has been taken after a careful review of the Met Office weather forecasts and will be reviewed again on Easter Sunday.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, Shorts and Sandals season has been a major influence on summer fashions in recent times and we expect the 2026 season to be no different. We’re pleased to be able to announce the opening of the pre-season after carefully studying the Met Office’s beard friendly weather guidance. It is ideal beard flaunting weather
The perpetually clean shaven Allister Heath (Editor Sunday Telegraph) is not impressed with Nick Timothy MP’s beard in the New World random headline generator.
Nick Timothy has made Islamophobic comments about Muslim prayers in Trafalgar Square. Keir Starmer has called on Kemi Badenoch to sack him as a Shadow Minister. So far she hasn’t
Nick Timothy has been barred from the Parliamentary Beard of the Year contest for bringing the hirsute into disrepute
King Charles has hosted the President and First Lady of Nigeria for a banquet at Windsor Castle.
With Andrew Mountbatten Windsor out of the way it might be argued that these occasions are good for business, at least judging by the Nigeria supplement that fell out of my Financial Times today.
As ever however one place where there is never a cost of living crisis is a State Banquet. The menu is below.
Soft boiled quail egg tartlet with watercress and kale and a basil sabayon
Fillet of turbot, lobster mousse wrapped in spinach, beurre blanc sauce, sprouting broccoli with hollandaise sauce, fricassee of peas and broad beans, Jersey Royal potatoes
Iced blackcurrant souffle with red fruit coulis
There was also a special non alcoholic cocktail consisting of the Nigerian drink Zobo combined with English rose soda, hibiscus and ginger syrup. There was of course also plenty of wine and whisky.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Tory MP and Shadow Minister Nick Timothy has brought the hirsute into disrepute with his comments about a Muslim prayer gathering in Trafalgar Square.
The gathering in question was lawful and just one of many varied events that take place in Trafalgar Square. Timothy who has recently been defending football hooligans, claimed that the prayer gathering amounted to ‘domination’
The campaigners say that in reality Timothy was expressing a deep seated Islamophobia quite contrary to the traditions of the Beard Liberation Front which believes in religious toleration, as part of a society that respects how people dress, appear and think.
Nick Timothy, a former advisor to Theresa May, is one of the best known Parliamentary Beard Wearers and has featured in Parliamentary Beard of the Year votes. He will now be excluded from any future votes for the foreseeable future.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we don’t often find ourselves agreeing with the perpetually clean shaven Keir Starmer but he is right to call on Kemi Badenoch to sack Nick Timothy as a Shadow Minister.
In 2013 Zack Polanski told a reported from the S*n that he believed hypnosis could increase a woman’s breast size. Clearly it can’t but 13 years ago Polanski was not the leader of the Green Party or even its leader. However the story has been covered by the Mail and the BBC in the last week.
Meanwhile the Guardian has researched short Cameo videos that Nigel Farage makes upon request and for payment. In fact he has made hundreds of thousands of pounds over several years doing so. The Guardian investigation found that in some videos Farage appeared to encourage far right and fascist sentiment and echo racist views on immigration.
Farage is still making the Cameos now but aside from the Guardian no other mainstream media outlet has as yet covered it.
In a sense its hardly news that the media is biased against left of centre politicians. Studies have been underlining it since the 1970s. Perhaps of more interest is that it continues and reasserts itself in each new generation of journalists. Those who vilified Tony Benn in the 1970s are like the man himself mostly gone, but their 2020s successors are still at it.
From John Major to Ed Miliband: the politics of warm beer
Ed Miliband has opined that pubs could save on energy bills by serving beer warmer and turning off fridges overnight. Understandably this has not gone down well in the pub trade which has been implementing ways to cut bills for quite a while.
It does however return us to the question which occasionally arises about how warm or otherwise should be
It is important to recall that the defining perspective on the matter comes from John Major:
“Fifty years on from now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs”.
This was from a speech made in 1993 and my research suggests possibly not written by Major.
In case you can’t recall Major was a Tory Prime Minister responsible for privatising the railways. He was depicted by the cartoonist Steve Bell has someone who wore his underpants outside of his trousers and enjoyed eating green peas.
Major’s words were designed of course to appeal to an idyllic English tradition.
The beer in question, invariably cask, was meant to be at 12C, that is tepid. More or less the same temperature as a well stewed cup of tea. Historically that is about right give or take a degree but there has I think been a drift to cooler beer commensurate with the rise of technology that can make this happen.
Certainly the expectation is that lager will be served much cooler than 12C (and Miliband is a lager drinker) but serving very cold Guinness is not traditional. Stouts and Porters generally were not served chilled and even now would (or should) be likely a bit warmer than bitter.
So perhaps the way forward for Ed Miliband’s warmer beer strategy is for pubs to serve more imperial stout.
Surprisingly this is not a New World Allister Heath (editor Sunday Telegraph) generated headline.
Leaving aside Trump’s legal action against the BBC & the fact that Trump is currently in orbit, it might be questioned why he would bother what the BBC had to say on his Iran War debacle. Perhaps because of the state of the US media the BBC is one of the top news sites in, er, the US….
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