Kmflett's Blog

The past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living: the Ashes

If you are interested in cricket and perhaps even if you aren’t you probably won’t have missed that the Ashes cricket series between Australia and England starts at the end of this week on 21^st November and continues over five Test matches to January 8^th 2026.

TV coverage will be on TNT Discovery and ball by ball radio of course on Test Match Special. At night and in respect of the first Test in the middle of the night.

You possibly won’t also have missed the large amount of print, social media and media discussion on what will happen based of course largely on past performance. The Australian team are all, bar one, over 30. England are a bit younger but their bowling attack relies heavily on five fast bowlers who in the nature of the game are prone to injury. Indeed before the series has started Australia and England both have injured fast bowlers.

Australia statistically are favourites on their own grounds, and we will hear and see a lot more stats as the series gets underway.

Some ‘has beens’ (Ben Stokes) England players such as Ian Botham have suggested that England are under prepared going into the first Test not having played a single competitive match in Australia. The Australians meanwhile are in their Sheffield Shield (County Cricket) season.

Part of all this is about building the Ashes as a commercial brand, and part of it echoes Marx’s dictum the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.

What actually matters is what happens on the pitch starting shortly

The above is from Private Eye although according to Substacker Sam Freedman the number of ex-Reform Councillors now stands at 42.

In Kent Reform started with 57 Councillors in May and are now down to 48. Kent is the largest local authority in England, on Farage’s home turf, and supposed to be Reform’s flagship.

The Guardian reports on Cornwall where Reform are no longer the largest party due to resignations and expulsions

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/16/when-reality-bites-the-rapid-rise-and-chaotic-fall-of-reform-uk-in-cornwall?CMP=share_btn_url

Local Government politics in austere times is a tough job particularly so when those elected are often in the case of Reform paper candidates unable or unwilling to take on the responsibilities of being a Councillor. There are many other ways in democratic politics to make a protest count that does not involve taking on the administrative burden and time consumption of Council work.

Beyond all that however lies a crisis of democratic representation and accountability of which Reform are a morbid outcrop

There is a new biography of Monty Python etc activist Terry Jones out (Robert Ross, 2025) a chapter of which touches on his part in the Penhros micro-brewery which existed for a brief-ish period between 1977 and 1984.

The brewery was constructed under the guidance of Peter Austin who went on to found Ringwood brewery.

My interest lies not just in the new biography but because porter is becoming a familiar sight on at least some bar tops again.

As a style it peaked in the 1820s and by the post-1945 era was hardly to be found. Guinness stopped selling the variant plain beer (aged porter mixed with a younger mild beer) in 1973 and by the time I started drinking real ale (the alternative then was old style keg) in the mid-1970s it had all but disappeared.

Terry Jones can take some credit for setting porter’s return to the bar but as Will Hawkes noted in 2017 it took the craft beer scene from 2008ish to see porter re-establish itself, often based to an extent on historic recipes, Kernel being perhaps particularly well known for this.

This weekend I’ve enjoyed a Hook Norton 5.5% Twelve Days porter in Wetherspoons on cask and a bottle conditioned Fullers 180th anniversary porter at 7%. Not an invented tradition but a reimagined one

BBC Hereford and Worcester on Penrhos Brewery

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0l20jtc

Times 15th November 2025

Of course past performance is no guide to the present but it does provide a context

E P Thompson on Britain, Europe & a history of solidarity with refugees

I was looking through E P Thompson’s Peculiarities of the English for quite other reasons and came across the passage below which has interest in the context of 2025 and Shabana Mahmood’s disgraceful ‘refugees are not welcome here’ policy

It’s an argument about why Britain is not an exception to the rest of Europe (a debate he was having with Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn) and why links existed both in the realm of ideas and in practical solidarities of fighting fascism and welcoming refugees.

Certainly a message for our times from European history and yet more British history Keir Starmer would prefer not to think about.

Here is this island, and there, across a few wet miles, are Other Countries. Those waters have, on occasion, been crossed. That city, London, is not in the Antarctic but has been, alongside Paris, Vienna and Prague, a great European capital. In its East End there have been deposit after deposit of refugee and immigrant workers. In the universities there have been deposit after deposit of émigré intellectuals. Across that water there came, in the 1930s, wave after wave of refugees from Fascism; across that water there went, in the early 1940s, wave after wave of troops to assist in the liberation of Southern and Western Europe; and across that water there came, in the later 1940s and 1950s, a further wave of refugees from Eastern Europe.

Peculiarities of the English, 1965

The Ambridge Socialist

16^th November

24^th sexiest man in Wales joins the Archers

This week has seen the introduction of Amber’s father Bill who it seems is a man in the motor trade. Despite his distinctly East End voice Bill, otherwise known as Matthew Gravelle is Welsh. He may not be unconnected to Natasha when not in Ambridge. In 2009 he was voted the 24^th sexiest man in Wales by the Western Mail.

Bill seems like a reasonable man for a car dealer and Amber rather less reasonable while George unreported by the BBC appears to have got a job at ACAS.

The shop. Location, location

Susan has rescinded her resignation and is carrying on but the vicar is clear that this can’t be in the Church for much longer. Surely Grey Gables is the answer…

In Other News

Brian has got gout and so can’t go the Castle. Hazel however is apparently making an appearance, although it would appear a silent one

Beavers & rewilding

To the dismay of Phoebe the arrival of the beavers at the rewilding project has been delayed. A bit of a puzzle in this respect for an Archers story line but it remains an important issue and the coverage is welcome.

Beard Liberation Front

16^th November

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Joe Marler faces Zohran Mamdani on Beard of the Year 2025 Longlist

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has unveiled the longlist for the Beard of the Year 2025.

The 12 names will be reduced to 8 through on-line polling. Final voting rounds will take place in December 2025 with the Beard of the Year announced on 28^th December

The campaigners underline that the longlist is not about beard styles or beard lengths but rather the positive impact the beard wearer has had in the public eye during the year.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, as ever we expect Beard of the Year 2025 to end up being a close shave.

Beard of the Year 2025 Longlist

Joe Wilkinson, Comedian, Faithful

Joe Marler, Rugby player, Faithful

Michael Rosen, author & broadcaster

Alexei Sayle, comedian

Roy Keane, football pundit

Gary Lineker, Woke Icon

Zohran Mamdani, New York Mayor

Sir Tom Jones, Beard of Wales 2025

Zack Polanski, Green Party leader

Chris Woakes, cricketer

David Olusoga, Historian, Faithful

Luke Littler, darts player

Below is a transcript of part of an interview Liz Truss gave to GB News. In it she supports Donald Trump’s attempt to interfere with UK media, as he has been doing with the US media.

The BBC has apologised to Trump for an error in a Panorama programme, which should have been corrected sooner. It has declined correctly to pay Trump damages. How is it possible for Trump to suffer reputational damage.

Truss of course backs Trump. Much as she says she wants the BBC to be defunded its hard to avoid the point that this looks a bid for an appeara nce in the 2026 Celebrity Traitors series. Truss would certainly make an excellent traitor.

GBNews of course wants the BBC to be defunded so that its far right conspiracy theories gather a bit more of the niche market they address.

“Lots of people in Britain are cheering Trump on. They’ve lied, they’ve cheated, they’ve fiddled with footage. They’ve also covered up what’s happening in Britain, whether it be mass migration or economic problems. They are always biased towards the left, and the British taxpayer has had to pay for all of this fake news. I believe the organisation needs to be defunded. It needs to be put out of its misery.”

The poll ratings of Keir Starmer and UK Labour continue to be as one might say, concerning. But that is a one-dimensional view.

A crisis of representation is present in most countries which have some form of representative democracy, how democratic being another question.

The British media is quite parochial although in the social media age engagement particularly from the US market is prized (see the BBC).

Fraser Nelson (former editor of the Spectator) has noted in the Times (15th November):

Of 57 national elections held since lockdowns, 43 ended in a change of government. And often the new ‘guys’ see their support drain very quickly.

It can be seen as a crisis of incumbency, Parliamentary style democracies limiting the ability to respond to crisis of climate, economy and war. The right has an unpalatable and not hugely democratic answer to this. The left’s perspective of for the many not the few needs to expand further. Quickly.

In his novel News From Nowhere William Morris described how Parliament had been replaced by a dungheap with locally based citizens assemblies convened instead. There are socialist democratic ideas and traditions out there.