Marxists sometimes refer to the falling rate of profit. That is that capital investment in industry over time brings less return (the UK economy being an example). This can be resolved by an economic crisis where some companies go bust and others are able to benefit from that.
Karl Marx is not known to have been a cricket fan but a broad parallel can be seen with Bazball. The more that is invested in Bazball as the way England play cricket the less the returns in the way of games won are.
The crisis may not be far off when Rob Key, Brendan McCullum and possibly Ben Stokes find that they are no longer the way forward for English and Welsh cricket.
Jonathan Agnew provides another perspective on Bazball. It must be less a mantra & more adaptable to specific conditions and matches. Or as Marx would have it, theory must be turned into practice
Sunday 23rd November. Stirring it up from the Archers to Jenny Marx
Sunday 23rd November, the last before Advent, is Stir Up Sunday. While there is a Biblical reference its not to the making of Christmas puddings. It’s a tradition that has evolved and is still marked. The Archers sometimes mentioned it again this year after a break, and expect to see a picture of the Royal Family stirring their Xmas pudding mix(again no evidence as yet).
It’s not something however that those who go on about our island story and British traditions bother with. Indeed the Telegraph in 2023 citing a YouGov poll suggested that Stir Up Sunday is one tradition that isn’t celebrated anymore as people don’t like Christmas puddings
The point is that the traditional Christmas pudding needs to be mixed and left to age and mature well before 25th December. These days of course many people buy one instead.
One person who did observe the tradition (sort of)was Jenny Marx. She only made Christmas Pudding on 23rd December. However the tradition had only been invented by Prince Albert in the 1840s so in 1867 it was work in progress
Below is Jenny Marx’s recipe for Plum Pudding- which is called Christmas Pudding in 2023 and is in shops now
Yesterday evening we were all at home together sitting downstairs, which in English houses is the kitchen area from which all ‘CREATURE COMFORTS’ make their way up to the higher regions, and were busy preparing the CHRISTMAS PUDDING with all due thoroughness. We were seeding raisins (a most disagreeable and sticky task), chopping up almonds and orange and lemon peel, minutely shredding suet, and with eggs and flour kneading together the oddest potpourri from the whole mishmash;
Jenny Marx to Kugelmann 24th Dec 1867
It’s not recorded what Karl Marx thought of it, or if he preferred stollen…
Ex-Reform leader in Wales Nathan Gill sentenced to 10.5 years in prison for taking Russian bribes. UK media: nothing to report on here.
Nathan Gill who was a UKIP and then Brexit Party MEP was briefly the leader of the Reform Ltd in Wales in 2021. He then stood down and has not been replaced. Reform will go into the 2026 Senedd Elections without a leader in Wales it seems.
On Friday 21st November Gill who had pleaded guilty to taking bribes from an Ukrainian pro-Russian politician while an MEP (The politician was sanctioned as a Russian agent by the US in 2022) was sentenced to ten and half years in prison at the Old Bailey
Given the perpetual talk of Farage being pro Putin one might think this story would be front page news. The BBC news site and the Guardian led with the story correctly labelling Gill as an ex-Reform UK leader.
By Friday evening the story had disappeared off the front of the BBC new site. The print editions of the Guardian and the Mirror led with the story and none of the other front pages mentioned it at all….
Farage has posted nothing on his Twitter account or, as far as I can see, said anything about Gill’s sentence. I scrutinised the entire 36 page main section of the Sunday Times (23rd November) for what it might and should mean for Reform UK. No comment at all.
Those who have been around a while may recall perpetual speculation in the 1960s that Harold Wilson was a Russian spy and more recently that Michael Foot was (sued and won a case against the Times) and even more recently Jeremy Corbyn.
All those stories suited the news agendas of the largely right-wing UK media. Gill’s case does not so it has simply disappeared into the ether without further comment.
Farage who was a UKIP MEP with Gill has previously claimed that the Gill who took bribes was not the politician he knew. Given that reports indicate that Farage and Gill’s offices at the European Parliament were adjacent one wonders if it was simply that Farage was rarely there that led to his lack of knowledge about what his colleague was up to.
At least some of the Archers dynasty made it to the Scottish Castle- well the stable block anyway- this week. Others went to Blackpool instead and seem to have had an enjoyable time, apparently, at least according to BBC reports, avoiding the more risqué activities the town is known for. There was not of course any lack of programme placement as Strictly’s annual visit to the Tower Ballroom got a segment with Lilian and Tony dancing.
Social media commentators have rightly noted that the story lines were somewhat chaotic.
Mark Bonner of Traitors fame appeared as a sheep farmer and retained fire fighter. He clearly got on well with Helen… in what was described as a ‘frisson’.
Phoebe meanwhile gave birth in Blackpool, with advice from Jakob. This led Kate to get a taxi from the castle to the town, putting the cost, which was not noted, on Jacob’s credit card. More particularly the baby is apparently named Peggy….
Tony seemed (unusually) happy, particularly with the fishing facilities and with the whisky tasting.
Meanwhile
Back in Ambridge Tom was underlining why he remains the Village Idiot as Kirsty had to despatch what might have been an attempt to rekindle their long ago relationship, including a reference to the trashing of Brian’s GM crops (those were the days)
The idea of seasonal produce remains more or less with us even in the age of air freighting but the practice of seasonal labour is less well grasped nowadays. In the world of zero hours contracts it is not by the season but by the hour and day that work is or is not obtained.
However in the Victorian era long before this time of year saw green hop festivals, based on beer produced with the freshest hops, beer production was heavily seasonal.
September famously was the time for hop picking with casual labour recruited for the task. After that however the newly harvested hops meant that the autumn was the peak brewing period of the year.
At the brewing centre of Burton large numbers of workers who had been employed in agricultural during the summer came into to help to the brewing process.
Raphael Samuel wrote about it in his essay on seasonal labour, Comers and Goers
One of the most enduring of these autumn migrations was that which brought many hundreds of labourers to work in the breweries…Malsters were usually taken on at the beginning of October and continued until about the latter end of May ‘being about seven months of the year’. The great majority of these were drawn from the country, big-framed men strong enough to handle the comb-sacks (sixteen stones each) of barley… The winter employment in Burton helps to keep wages up, the Agricultural Employment Commissioners were told in 1868
It is a world we haven’t quite lost, particularly when it comes to issues of regularity of employment and wages.
Pete Brown has written in the Sunday Times (23rd November) about the importance of Burton as a brewing centre and the resurgence of brewing (and good pubs) in the town.
Covid crisis February 2020. Boris Johnson was out to lunch
The middle of February 2020 was a key moment in the development of the global COVID crisis and decisions on what to do about it.
Official Government logs obtained by the Guardian reveal that for a week in the middle of February 2020 Boris Johnson was largely at a Government official residence at Chevening in Kent. While he did take some official calls be missed key briefings and a COBRA meeting.
The lyrics of the Sex Pistols song Pretty Vacant sum the matter up well:
there’s no point in asking you’ll get no reply ill just seem inward a dolt inside i got no reason it’s all too much you’ll always find me out to lunch
18th February 2020
Johnson entertained his late mother, Charlotte Johnson, and his now mother-in-law, Josephine McAfee, over lunch at Chevening
20th February 2020
a three-hour dinner with Henry Newman, Simone Finn and Josh Grimstone, former government officials understood to be close friends of his wife.
21st February 2020
he enjoyed a four-hour dinner with Catherine Humphrey, a friend of his wife’s who would later be a witness at the couple’s wedding in May 2021.
There is now a petition organised by COVID-19 bereaved families demanding that Johnson is stripped of all State given and funded privileges so that he faces consequences for his actions in 2020. This includes his access to the Public Duty Costs Allowance, his ministerial pension and his place on the Privy Council
The Times has been running correspondence about whether Keir Starmer could organise a p*ss up in a brewery. As a regular at the Good Beer Guide listed Pineapple pub in Kentish Town its a fair bet that he could.
However the discussion broadened to the above letter on the Carlisle State Management scheme (1916-1973). The Government nationalised brewing and pubs in the town during World War One. It was a centre of arms manufacture and controlling drinking was important to the war effort.
It did mean however that beer of a good standard and pubs that were welcoming to all and served food were the norm. I have posted in the past on the Carlisle scheme (which also ran at Enfield Lock) could be one model for a future socialised pub trade.
The rhetoric & the reality. Wetherspoons goes beyond Brexit
Wetherspoon are set to open their first pub outside of Britain and Ireland in January 2026 when a Spoons will welcome drinkers at Alicante airport in Spain. The airport is heavily used by Brits returning from holiday and Spoons already have UK airport bars.
The pub will reportedly sell Guinness and Stella (and probably not real ale) and most of the food will be familiar from the British menu with the addition of garlic prawns, Spanish omelettes and a few other nods to the local cuisine. Perhaps the most notable change will be the use of Spanish tiles on the floor rather than the trademark Spoons patterned carpets.
The decision to open in Spain is clearly a business one, and Spoons has a duty to shareholders to maximise profits. The rhetoric of course has been very different. Tim Martin gave £200K to Vote Leave in 2016 and was a vocal supporter of Brexit and Boris Johnson.
Wetherspoons will run the Alicante bar from a new subsidiary based in Dublin to get around Brexit issues when dealing with the EU. That is quite a usual device for UK based companies but it also underlines that business and Brexit was more rhetoric than reality
England slumped to defeat against Australia in Perth in a two day Test Match. It may say something about the direction of modern cricket, but there are some specific issues.
Joe Root both historically and now is England’s best batter, yet at Perth he scored 0 and 8. Statistics are not everything but Root’s record in Australia is significantly below that of other countries where he’s played Test cricket.
When your best batter fails and the records show that is not unusual there may well be trouble ahead.
Meanwhile the England team (and apparently the Aussies too) now have three free days to play golf
