Kmflett's Blog

A Fletter I hoped I’d never need to write

The letter below appeared in The Guardian on 4th November 2025

My long-term partner of 30 years, Megan Davies, died from lung cancer on 31 October.

While I agree that there is much to be done to improve end-of-life care (Editorial, 29 October; Letters, 2 November), in Megan’s case, she was able to stay at home and enjoy many of the things she liked until a final two-day stay in hospital, where she also received good care.

This was achieved by a combination of support from family, friends and her local GP, together with targeted assistance from hospice-based palliative care nurses.

It was not, of course, perfect and sometimes required chasing up treatment and medication, but that web of care seems to me an important matter, if, of course, it can be achieved with a stretched NHS and still austere Britain.
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London

Funeral details

Megan’s funeral will be on Friday 5 December at 2.00 pm, at Briwnant Chapel, Thornhill Crematorium, Cardiff, CF14 9UA.

Everybody who knew Megan is welcome to join her family as we gather to celebrate her life and commit her body back to the earth and the air.

Afterwards please join us for refreshments at the Manor Parc Hotel, Thornhill Road, CF14 9UA

Family flowers only.

Donations in Megan’s memory may be made to Medical Aid for Palestine, either at the funeral or online: https://www.ivorthomasfunerals.co.uk

Please note, there will also be a celebration of Megan’s life in north London, in the New Year (date and venue to be confirmed in due course).”

As an Arsenal season ticket holder Keir Starmer will be familiar with the point that if the team is not doing well pressure starts to change the manager.

Labour are not doing well and polls suggest they could be in danger of relegation.

The Guardian has led with a story that a change of Labour manager could be on the cards before Christmas. This has been cut and pasted by Chris Mason on the BBC news site.

Names of potential new Labour managers have been managed but the obvious answer surely is to look a few miles across North London to Ange Postecoglou, the recent Spurs manager.

Like Labour Postecoglou had a mixed record at White Hart Lane but he took Spurs into the Champions League 2025/6. That’s the kind of success Starmer can’t deliver but Ange could

How a fair profit worked for the baker

Heineken reduces strength of Fosters to 3.4% Time for the Assize of Ale & a ‘fair profit’

According to reports in the Grocer and the Morning Advertiser global brewer Heineken is set to reduce the strength of Fosters lager from 3.7% to 3.4% in February 2026. Heineken claim it’s to meet demand from health conscious drinkers who want lower strength beers.

Heineken will save a considerable amount on duty- lower at 3.4% but the Grocer reports that off-sales were down 13.7% earlier in 2025.

The brewer claims that work has gone into making sure that Fosters retains whatever taste etc it has and given the scale of the brewer’s operations I’m inclined to believe them. An article in the Financial Times earlier in 2025 underlined the lengths Heineken went to ensure that its brands maintained the same quality etc across the globe.

Of course Fosters is far from the first beer to see a reduction in strength. Carlsberg Pilsner and Grolsch have met the same fate and on the cask side so have Greene King IPA and Dark Star Hophead. I’ve tried the 3.4% version of the latter and it was actually fine.

The issue here is whether the drinker is being ripped off getting a lower strength product but at the same price.

In pre-market society where as we know supply and demand determine price..there were attempts to regulate the price of essential foodstuffs. Bread was the key focus but beer, often safer than water to drink, was also involved.

The aim of an Assize was to look at various beer types and qualities and determine how much the cost of raw material- malt and hops would be. Stronger beers of  good quality would cost more to brew and attracted a higher price. Every day beers would be less strong but still of an acceptable quality, that is unadulterated.

Out of all this came the concept of a fair profit. The brewer needed to cover costs of brewing and selling. They also needed premises to brew and live in and the ability to look after their family. They did not need to amass large savings or capital sums any more than those who drank their beer did or could.

Hence the Assize was about price and quality and ensuring fairness for both drinkers and brewers

In the British Library Autumn 2025

I’ve been a reader at the British Library since 1984 and I renewed my reader’s pass for another three years a couple of weeks back. When I did so I spoke to the librarian about the strike action (then forthcoming) of PCS members at the Library.

The strike action was primarily about a below inflation pay offer for workers who keep the Library going and have kept it going two years on from the October 2023 cyberattack. But it was also about the wider issue, so common now in workplaces, about the lack of respect shown to the Library’s workers and the important job they do.

The British Library is the national library and a library of record- every book published must be deposited there. Yet as a key cultural institution it feels and actually is undervalued. Of course everything is seen in market capitalist terms, but I also mean undervalued in terms of what a great resource it is.

Perhaps the St Pancras site doesn’t quite have the history of the old British Museum round reading room where both Marx and Lenin studied and the graffiti in the gents toilets was of the highest possible literary standard. But it’s a functional library, which actually works.

The PCS strike got great support and large rallies every day for two weeks. As a fellow trade unionist I hope they win, they certainly deserve to

Zadie Smith has written in the Guardian about the importance of the BL and of the strike

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/nov/11/britain-value-culture-striking-workers-a-british-library-zadie-smith?CMP=share_btn_url

Perhaps the local MP could help. Their name? Keir Starmer

The right-wing offensive on the BBC & David Olusoga’s Empire

The couple of weeks has seen a full on attack on the BBC by the right. Certainly mistakes have been made, but the matter goes far wider than that.

In the same week a three part series on Empire fronted by David Olusoga began airing on BBC2. It is a powerful and well documented account of the impact the British Empire historically had around the globe and the impact it still has in 2025.

Its public service broadcasting at its best and a reminder of what the right would like us to lose.

Extract from Guardian report

But another source characterised it as the culmination of a “relentless critique of BBC journalism over two years by members of the Board and advisers – all of whom come from same political persuasion”.

They point to Robbie Gibb, a former BBC editor who left to become Downing St director of communications for Theresa May and who is now a member of the Board.

The former Sun editor, now BBC presenter David Yelland has called it “nothing short of a coup”. He claims the BBC Board has been undermined and “elements close to it have worked with hostile newspaper editors, a former PM and enemies of public service broadcasting”.

But another former Sun editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, had a very different take. Speaking on the BBC News Channel, he said the resignations were “the right thing to do – this was an issue that was never going away”.

Katie Razzall: A seismic moment that shows rift at top of BBC – BBC News

Empire with David Olusoga – Series 1: Episode 1 – BBC iPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002lvwh/empire-with-david-olusoga-series-1-episode-2

The above is a YouGov poll from June 2025, graphic The Guardian.

YouGov now are a relatively reliable polling source. They do a lot of commercial polling as well as political polling and business doesn’t pay for imaginative polls.

Perhaps the poll requires some context. BBC News polls at the top. I don’t trust it on Israel, Reform, and any labour dispute (or for that matter the reporting of Spurs games but that is sport not politics, mostly)

However compare the scores for the Telegraph and GBNews the two main anti-BBC protagonists in the current moment. The BBC is an obstacle to their hegemonic intentions. Either it has to take them on board or it has to be broken up.

These are the stakes. Either a much less than perfect public service news broadcaster or Trump News

Trump claims he is taking a case against the BBC for $1bn. Meanwhile is telling air traffic controllers who have been working for nothing during the shutdown to get back to work…

According to the Daily Telegraph (10th November) the BBC is in an ‘existential crisis’. Noting that the Telegraph may not be quite on top of the works of Sartre, it can be agreed that the Panorama Trump editing issue is a crisis.

As former BBC journalist Robin Lustig has noted while the error was serious the real problem was the week’s delay in apologising for it. At the root of that seems to be an issue that while ex-DG Tim Davie was a former Tory candidate he was just not right-wing enough for the likes of BBC Board member and Boris Johnson protege Robbie Gibb.

However while the BBC faces a crisis so does the Telegraph as this paragraph from a recent Sky News report underlines

The Telegraph’s ownership has been in a state of limbo for nearly two-and-a-half years after its parent company was forced into insolvency by Lloyds Banking Group, which ran out of patience with the Barclay family, the newspaper’s long-standing owner.

The latest potential owner is US based Redbird Capital. Whether the bid proceeds depends on the Government giving approval. Not to the Editorial line of the Telegraph but whether the new owner will guarantee the paper’s Editorial independence such as it is.

Meanwhile the Times reported last week that according to the Telegraph’s auditors until the ownership issue is settled their remains a doubt over whether the Telegraph will remain a going concern.

Crisis, what crisis?

Pictured is Liz Truss at the Cenotaph on 9th November

She was there with ex-Tory Prime Ministers, Dave Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

She has of course been busy on Twitter backing Donald Trump against the BBC.

Its not known if she remains a member of the Conservative Party..

Nigel Farage is another of his ‘news’ conference has repeated his view that the BBC should become a subscription broadcaster like Netflix and Sky. The exception apparently is the news and it can be understood why. Farage gets far more coverage on BBC News and of course Question Time than any other politician. When Farage claims the BBC is ‘institutionally’ biased we can understand the actual meaning of his words.

A subscription model would see an end to such classics as the Archers and Test Match Special. They still draw millions of listeners but its doubtful there is much commercial advantage. They are what public service broadcasting is all about.

The same goes for Traitors which could indeed have been made, for example, by Sky. The final episode of Celebrity Traitors got 11.1m viewers bringing the country together to watch a TV show in the moment. Sky can’t achieve that and its also of course the kind of unity Farage hates

Below is a Guardian account of what Farage said on the BBC on 10th November 2025

Q: What do you think needs to change at the BBC?

Farage says the BBC has been “institutionally biased for decades”.

He says he spoke to Donald Trump on Friday.

He just said to me, is this how you treat your best ally?

It’s quite a powerful comment, isn’t it? It’s quite a powerful comment. So there’s been too much going for too long.

Farage says last year half a million people stopped paying the licence fee. He says, if the culture there does not change, millions more people could start doing this

He say he would like to see the BBC “slimmed down”.

When it comes to entertainment, when it comes to sport and many other areas like that, they should compete against everybody else [with] a subscription model. That’s the modern world that we live in.

So the licence fee, as currently is, cannot survive. It is wholly unsustainable.

Farage says he is not saying he does not want the BBC to survive. The BBC World Service is “very important”, he says. He says it should just focus on doing “straight news”