The England and Wales cricket team lost the first two Ashes Tests against Australia and barring a very unlikely change of tactics are on course to lose all five Tests.
There is however yet more bad news for the England team. The Boxing Day Test is one of the great fixtures of the cricket year in Britain because it starts just before midnight on Christmas Day UK time.
The Sunday Times (7th December) reports that Nigel Farage plans to be in Melbourne to watch it. While it hardly features in his social media Farage is a cricket obsessive, having appeared on Test Match Special’s View From the Boundary.
The big issue for England fans will be, which side will Farage will be supporting? Given his track record of backing Putin and Trump support for England is far from guaranteed. Perhaps the England team will hope he does back Australia…
15 years ago at the beginning of January 2011 Nigel Pargetter fell to his death from the roof of Lower Loxley. With him on the roof was the Earl of Portland. No charges were ever brought. Why the decision was made to purge Nigel remains a mystery, certainly to his alter ego.
However every indication is that a sequel is planned for New Year 2026. The scenario remains unknown but George is certainly involved
Tractors- Joy has a spreadsheet
Roy, King of the Ambridge spreadsheet has departed but Joy has one for the Christmas tractor parade. The Ambridge Socialist was never a huge fan of Lynda Snell’s Christmas Pantos but tractors????
George needs help. In Borsetshire can he get it?
We don’t know the answer to this question yet, but at least Ed has persuaded George that he needs to seek help and he is meant to be going to see the GP. This appears to be possible in Ambridge but how long the waiting list for help might be we have yet to find out.
A message from Hazel
The work at the village shop is complete and it can re-open meaning no further discussions about pizza deliveries. At the moment.
England lost the second Ashes test in Brisbane by eight wickets and there is talk of the end of the Bazball era. While the idea of Bazball was to make Test cricket more entertaining the only people being entertained currently are the Australian crowd and media.
Jonathan Agnew is right that there is in effect no Plan B. Players who are performing badly, and there are some, can’t be dropped and replaced because there are no replacements immediately available.
Yet as my friend Ian Marriott, who watches a lot more cricket than I do, notes the real crisis in English and Welsh cricket is at the top. In the same week that England have been significantly underperforming in Test cricket an important announcement was made about the short form Hundred series for 2026.
The best team in the Hundred have been the Oval Invincibles. However with Corporate money coming into the competition Oval Invincibles have been renamed MI London The men’s and women’s franchises become the sixth and seventh under the Mumbai Indians (MI) brand, joining teams in the IPL, Women’s Premier League, Major League Cricket, SA20 and ILT20.
The Hundred is the competition that the England and Wales Cricket Board have promoted above all. It has bought much needed money into the game but it is part of the global branding of cricket by Corporate Capitalism. It is not about putting out the best England cricket teams, as events in Australia are underlining. Without the flagship national team performing the rest of cricket certainly at a County level will suffer, the reverse of what the ECB claim they are doing.
The long running FT ‘lunch with’ series which has in the past featured Nigel Farage (can be Googled) this week met Robert Jenrick in the Prince Rupert pub in his Newark Constituency.
Jenrick is best known in 2025 for making provocative hard right statements accompanied by similarly forthright videos. He is also known as someone who either plans to lead the Tory Party or defect to Reform.
The interview with the FT however finds Jenrick not in uniform but in a merino sweater and while he is well known for dieting, he consumed two pints of cask beer, fish & chips and sticky toffee pudding. Not perhaps a Farage ‘proper fucking lunch’ (PFL) but one suggesting the distinct possibility of an afternoon siesta..
In conclusion, since Newark is one of the most well know English Civil War locations and Jenrick actually studied history at University the FT asks him which side he would have been on. He declares for Cromwell. Interesting
Liz Truss has launched a weekly You Tube. It airs at 6pm on Fridays (7pm yesterday for an unknown reason) I’m not linking to it, Google is your friend should be so inclined.
It is mash up of Truss’s favourite conspiracy theories focused on running down the country she was briefly PM of for the benefit of a far right US MAGA audience. There were a few guests including Reform publicist Matt Goodwin. Goodwin has a single theme. If he runs out of milk, the blame lies with… mass immigration.
The context here however is important. The membership of the Tory Party elected Liz Truss as leader and she was briefly Prime Minister in September and October 2022. That says a lot about the state of UK politics in 2025 I suspect…
The funeral of my partner of 30 years Megan Davies took place on Friday 5th December. Thanks to all those who attended in person and joined the livestream. This will be downloaded and available on line shortly and I’ll post a link.
Thanks to Megan’s sister Bronwen who jointly organised matters with myself, to Jo John who did an excellent job as a humanist celebrant and Cor Cochion, the Cardiff socialist choir who sang two songs including Nkosi Sikelele Afrika.
I spoke briefly about Megan’s love of cricket, the Test Match Special theme Soul Limbo was played, indy beer and her socialist politics.
The funeral concluded with a reading of Michael Rosen’s poem Fascism I Sometimes Fear…
It was both a remembrance and a celebration of Megan’s life but the things she fought for Palestine, anti-racism and socialism will continue with her as an inspiration to future struggles for a better world.
The picture is from the wake where Cor Cochion sang Women of the Working Class
For those unable to make the Cardiff funeral there will be a celebration of Megan’s life in London (Megan was ‘born and bred’ in North London and spent time there in the last 30 years) at the Cock Tavern, Mare St, E8 (Hackney Central BR 2 minutes) on (tbc) Sunday 18th or Sunday 25th January 2026 PM
This rather grainy picture appeared in the New Musical Express (16th August 1980).
It shows the late socialist historian and peace campaigner in his office at Wick Episcopi on the outskirts of Worcester.
Notable are an (now old fashioned) dial telephone and a type writer. There is of course no PC or printer or any kind of electronic device. Papers are piled on the desk and strewn on the floor.
This is how history was written in what might be called the pre-electronic days of 45 years ago. Whether the age of the laptop has produced better history…..
The issue of whether Nigel Farage made racist and anti-Semitic remarks to fellow pupils while at Dulwich College in the 1970s has continued to be in the news, often provoked by a range of contradictory statements by Farage himself.
The crisis worsened for Farage on 5th December as the Guardian published a letter from Holocaust Survivors demanding Farage tell the truth about anti-Semitic comments when he was at Dulwich College
Earlier on 4th December Richard Tice ‘deputy leader’ of Reform claimed on the Radio 4 Today programme that people who had claimed Farage had made remarks were ‘lying’. Tice is not someone to think before he speaks and at a later press conference Farage did not back up his remarks.
Farage however attacked the BBC and ITV who he noted had screened the Black and White Minstrel Show and Bernard Manning in the same era. A couple of points arise here. Firstly did Farage complain at the time? Secondly how many Reform supporters agree that the programmes were racist?
Farage also claimed he had been receiving letters from former Dulwich College students. One noted that he was ‘sometimes offensive’ but this did not amount to racism
To be continued, at least until Farage finally says sorry and Tice shuts up
Reading out the letter, he said: “While there was plenty of macho tongue-in-cheek schoolboy banter, it was humour, and yes, sometimes it was offensive… but never with malice.
Ho Ho Ho: Campaign For REAL SANTAS 2025 warns on fake beards
The Campaign for Real Santas, which promotes Santas with genuine organic beards, has launched its 2025 initiative to promote real Santas with genuine beards by warning people to be aware of absurd false bearded Santas as the busiest pre-Christmas shopping weekends are well underway.
The Campaigners say that with unemployment and under-employment amongst mature men over 50, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to use an assistant Santa who does not have a real beard.
At the same time the Campaign is also keen to encourage more female Santas with organic knitted beards.
Campaigners are urging parents and children to demand that Santas vigorously tug their beards as a definitive test as to whether they are in the presence of a real Santa or not.
CFRS organiser Keith Flett said, we launched the campaign early again this year but the reason is hopefully obvious to most. Christmas decorations and lights are up in main High Streets and Christmas tat is everywhere. Our task of exposing false bearded Santas is more important than ever. However campaigning for Santas with real beards does not mean we support the arrest of Santas with fake beards. That is an authoritarian over reach. Confiscating their false beards is enough
THREE STEPS TO SPOT A GENUINE SANTA
1 Ask the Santa to tug their beard. If it comes away, then the Santa is FAKE
2 If the beard remains intact ask the Santa to tug their beard again. If the Santa swears then they are genuine. If they simply repeat a ‘ho ho ho’ mantra they are FAKE
3 The Campaign for Real Santas says that genuine Santas must have just the right mix of bonhomie and grumpiness and a real organic beard.
Notes
The Organic Santa of 2025 will be named on December 18th. In the last 5 years Michael Rosen and Brian Blessed have been key contenders for the annual honour
The Campaign for Real Santas is organised by the Beard Liberation Front
Farage: millions are behind us (£9m donation from crypto investor)
The Guardian has reported on the latest data on donations to political parties
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has received a £9m donation from Christopher Harborne, a leading cryptocurrency, defence and aviation-fuel investor who previously bankrolled the Brexit party.
Reform is the only UK party that takes crypto donations and Farage has spoken up for Harborne before, hardly surprisingly given he has previously donated large sume to Farage’s various political projects.
While Reform likes to style itself as a party for the little man and woman, those left out or ignored by other parties (and indeed Farage has gathered quite large sums in supporters fees to the Reform political business of which he is boss) in reality the main funding for the operation is coming from millionaires
The German photomontager John Heartfield in a well known image made the same point about Hitler. Farage of course is not a new Hitler but the principle of far right parties gaining support from big business while gathering support from those who have little wealth remains an important one to grasp
