Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

30^th September

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners slam US military ban on ‘beardos’

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said a diktat by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth that beards are banned in the military is both outrageous and irrational.

Hegseth convened a meeting of senior US military leaders on Tuesday and proclaimed a ban on beards and long hair claiming that ‘beardos’ bring an unprofessional appearance

The campaigners say that length of hair or wearing a beard have no relation to the professionalism of a soldier or how effective they are at doing their job. What Hegseth has announced is pure prejudice which of course is a hallmark of the Trump regime

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Hegseth has a reputation for, how shall we say, idiosyncratic behaviour. We wonder if he checked his new beard ban with the Vice President  J D Vance.

The weekly Ambridge Socialist tends to focus on key news from the class struggle in Borsetshire and doesn’t always cover the minutiae of village life.

A couple of footnotes therefore:

Marking a potential new partnership to run Home Farm with Adam and Ruari, all concerned retire to The Bull for a drink and a meal. Brian of course orders gammon and equally of course this weeks reporter of Ambridge stories is Keri Davies

On a rather more profound point the historian Christopher Clark (i.e Regius Prof of History at Cambridge) has given an interview to Prospect magazine about his new micro-history A Scandal in Konigsberg 1835-1842. Clark explores a sex scandal he has found in archived papers. However as he points out the book is really about people and relations between people in a specific place at a specific time. In short not so different from the Archers

 it is not entirely removed from The Archers, even if it concerns a religious scandal in 1830s Prussia. As Clark puts it himself, while sipping at a gin & lime & soda that was the result of an ordering mix-up, “It seems to me that a city like Königsberg can be very, very complex. Just as the life of Ambridge is actually quite complex.”

Wetherspoons are opening a couple of landmark pubs in central London, the Sun King at London Bridge and the Alexander Fleming at Paddington. To mark the occasion Tim Martin has been interviewed by the Sunday Times Business News (28th Sept).

Unusually for Sir Tim nothing controversial emerges in the interview.

However there were some interesting comments. Despite campaigns Wetherspoons with 800 pubs does not recognise a union. It is unfortunately hardly unusual amongst large pub chains in this.

However just as supermarket chains like Aldi and Lidl that resist front of house unionisation, pay higher than average wages, so Martin reveals, in part, what Spoons have done to fend off unions.

Newer Spoons pubs now have staff rooms and Martin notes that the average length of service of a Spoons manager is 15 years.

For these developments the kudos should mostly go not to Sir Tim’s employee relations but to unionisation campaigns that remind him that he can’t ignore employee welfare.

Union organisation and recognition at Wetherspoons is still an important objective.

Beard Liberation Front

30^th September

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Labour  Conference: concerns on impact of Clean Shaven Starmerism

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said there are concerns about a significant decline in the number of beard wearers at Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.

While the gender and ethnicity balance has moved on in a positive way since the era of ‘trade unionists and their wives’ the hirsuteness level appears to have reduced.

The BLF says that while Keir Starmer may not be particularly popular amongst delegates the impact of Clean Shaven Starmerism appears to be significant.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it could be argued that after Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership the decline in hirsuteness at Labour Conference is being orchestrated by Nathan McSweeney. He does of course have a beard but we suspect that this is simply hiding his actual Clean Shaven Starmerite appearance.

With Keir Starmer quitting as an MP there is some interest in looking back, nearly 40 years, to what he believed as a young socialist activist. He has made a political journey from left to centre. That of course is a cliche except for the reality that there are left MPs elected in the 1980s who are still in Parliament who have not made that journey..

In the mid-1980s Keir Starmer was part of the Editorial Board of a socialist magazine, Socialist Alternatives. In a 1987 edition he interviewed Tony Benn and discussed with him various possibilities for how the left could relate to Labour.

Socialist Alternatives was part of a Pabloite or arguably post-Pabloite project (orthodox Trotskyism) looking to reconfigure red-green politics. It originally orientated around a left Labour grouping, the Socialist Society, but later (Starmer was possibly not involved at this stage) in the Green Party

Netanyahu has paid a fourth visit to Washington in eight months. He remains wanted for war crimes in the Hague. Another ‘peace settlement’ in Gaza is being discussed. Netanyahu says he will agree it if Hamas does. Leaving aside that Israel recently tried to murder Hamas negotiators in Qatar, Hamas have agreed peace deals before. At which point, Netanyahu and his far right and fascist backers, will find a reason why they can’t actually agree it. Their plan is permanent war.

Anyway just another Monday…

Beard Liberation Front

29th September

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that as new West Ham manager Nuno is in charge of his first game at the club, v Everton on 29th September, a key issue is whether Nuno’s Beard Power can save West Ham.

It was noticeable that Graham Potter who had an award winning beard when he was at Brighton had suffered from significant beard withering at the London Stadium.

Nuno has trimmed and styled his beard since the days when it was fully organic and is a master of football managerial Beard Power.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there is no question that Nuno’s Beard Power can influence the outcome of football matches. It may be however that West Ham are a limit case. Our Football Beards team will be watching the experiment with interest

The future of Labour: Arsenal v Everton

Media hype about Keir Starmer facing a challenge as Labour PM reflects both poor polling performances and a wider sense of dissatisfaction with some key issues, whether its Gaza or the two-child benefit cap.

Starmer is reportedly frustrated at the pace of change or lack of it, reflecting his lack of political experience. Blair was in the same place and got involved with an illegal war in Iraq where change did come quickly but not in a good way.

The New Statesman has a long interview with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who the media are keen to promote as a challenger to Starmer. As he is not currently an MP this seems premature and it might more accurately be suggested that Burnham is arguing for Starmer’s great moving right show to turn left (tho not too much).

The New Statesman however reveals that the real difference is of course about football.

‘Everyone knows Burnham is a fan of Everton, the people’s club of Merseyside.. its hard not to reflect on the contrast with Keir Starmer, the knighted fan of cosmopolitan Arsenal’

I’m not sure about the use of the word ‘cosmopolitan’ here but the key point about a footballing divide between North London and the North of England is I think a real one, even if we do understand that many Manchester United fans live in London..

It has been an historic day in the Party. What Gaitskell attempted in 1960 has been done again.-an attempt to destroy the left, the Conference and the unions. Some people will want a candidature against Kinnock next year, but he would smash his critics and crush the left, probably even expel it. On the other hand, we don’t have any obligation anymore to go along with what is said, and I think it is perhaps the restoration of the freedom to speak out that is more important.

Tony Benn’s diary 1st October 1985. He refers to Neil Kinnock’s leaders speech which attacked the then Militant Tendency (now the Socialist Party). It underlines that the fortunes of the left in Labour have ebbed and flowed. Whether they will flow again is a matter of debate but whether Labour or another structure there is always very likely to be a party in a market economy that has policy of reform for economically and socially progressive reasons (achievable or not)

But framing Bethpage as a one-off misses the larger point. What happened here didn’t invent the tone of American life so much as reflect what’s been an incremental breakdown in public behavior. The country now lives in all-caps, from school-board meetings that sound like street rallies and comment sections that have spilled into the street. The algorithm bankrolls outrage, the put-down is political vernacular and the culture applauds “saying the quiet part out loud”. In 2025 you can say almost anything in public and be cheered for it (unless you’re Jimmy Kimmel). Put a rope line and a microphone in front of that mix and you get exactly what you got at the Ryder Cup: people testing boundaries not because the moment needs them to, but because they’ve been told volume is virtue. Some might argue golf, in the US particularly, has always been a sport for white conservatives, but it’s hard to remember galleries calling opposing players “faggots” and openly deriding their wives until recently. What could have changed?

Guardian 29th September

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/sep/28/usa-fans-ryder-cup-rory-mcilroy?CMP=share_btn_url

Of course there is another US that is not at all like the above just as there is another UK that wants nothing to do with Farage and his mates