Kmflett's Blog

Robert Plant chooses a song for our times: Dylan’s Masters of War

Interviewed by Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2’s Folk Programme on his new band and record Saving Grace

The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe – Robert Plant talks folk and Saving Grace – BBC Sounds

Available until the end of September

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the return of Jimmy Kimmel’s ABC Show after it was taken off air.

The campaigners say it is a victory of Beard Power over Clean Shaven Trumpism.

A diversity of views and appearance is a key part of a democracy

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the future is not orange.

When the first Labour Government was elected in January 1924 Philip Snowden was appointed Chancellor. He was possibly even more keen on following Treasury rules than Rachel Reeves is. However his background was in the early socialist movement and the Independent Labour Party (founded 1893). As a result he retained a solid grasp of basic class politics. His first Budget (and only one until 1929) in May 1924 introduced what was known as the Free Breakfast. The concept in fact has its origins in later nineteenth century Liberal politics. It meant not that people would get free breakfasts but that that tax was reduced on some of the key elements of a working class breakfast. In particular on tea, sugar and prunes.

Fast forward a hundred years and Ocado reports that sales of prunes are up 60% in a year. They of course ensure regular visits to the toilet (drinking a bottle conditioned beer with the sediment in has the same effect) but also high in fibre.

A missed pointer for Rachel Reeves in the Autumn Statement. Reducing tax on prunes would address both Old and New Labour at the same time..

Dickie Bird who died this week aged 92 was as his Times Obituary notes the first celebrity cricket Umpire.

Born in Barnsley he played cricket for Yorkshire and Leicestershire but his true vocation was in Umpiring which he began doing in 1970.

His Times Obituary records ‘a devout Methodist he turned down lucrative offers to join Kerry Packer’s break away series and to officiate in during the rebel tours of South Africa in the apartheid era. He was no political firebrand but he regarded both enterprises as undermining the integrity of the game’

At the UN on Tuesday Trump found himself on a stopped escalator and blamed all and sundry. It was his own staff that did it.

On Wednesday Reform owner Farage appeared on LBC and proceeded to promote Big Lies. Firstly that Eastern European migrants are eating swans (a protected species in the UK). The Royal Parks posted that this was a lie. Secondly that he wasn’t sure, repeating Trump’s lies, if paracetamol was safe.

And its only Wednesday…

Queueing at the bar, Tim Martin favours anarchy but is it an invented tradition

Its one of those things that gets talked about on social media, in pubs(obviously) but does not permeate into official society. Namely whether you should wait in line to get served or just go to the bar.

Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin has opined and the company does have 800 pubs, at least one of which seems to have introduced a queueing system. The up to the minute thoughts of Martin can be found across social media:

“The coffee culture has had an effect — people are used to lining up.

“On balance, we’d opt for the traditional anarchy of a non-queue.”

The question remains is the pub queue anything to do with British tradition, or is it a tradition that has just been invented?

Reporting the Reform UK 2025 Conference from Chris Mason BBC to actual journalism

The BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason’s report of the 2025 Reform UK conference held at the Birmingham NEC earlier in September marked him out as a Farage Fanboy. So much so that a satirical take on it made it into the pages of Private Eye

Chris Mason: Reform conference shows party’s growing ambition like never before – BBC News

Fortunately a more measured and informative account of the event has now appeared in the London Review of Books

Peter Geoghegan · Short Cuts: Reform’s Disaster Capitalism

Peter Geoghegan also provides the kind of thoughtful analysis that is well beyond Mason.

Hard to far right parties are in strong positions in France and Germany and in Government in Italy. Britain may have left the EU but the country is not exempt from that political mood.

Geoghegan argues that after the 2016 Brexit Referendum the final UK vote in EU elections in 2019 which saw the then Brexit Party top the poll by some distance was not an aberration. Farage did a deal with Boris Johnson at the December 2019 General Election that saw hundreds of Brexit candidates stand down. The right-wing mood did not however dissipate. It was reflected in the ejection of the Tories from Office in July 2024 with Labour potentially only the temporary recipient of the result.

Serious times require serious analysis and as a public service broadcaster the BBC is not being well served by Chris Mason.

Donald Trump gave one of his trademark Society of the Spectacle speeches at the UN on 23rd September. It was of course a rambling affair designed not for the UN delegates but for social media clips.

On his way Trump stepped on an escalator that immediately stopped working. Clearly it was Woke, although some might see another example of King Midas In Reverse Syndrome..

Media reports suggest btw that Trump’s own team caused the problem

It is 70 years since the launch of ITV. It began as a series of regional companies and roll out was staged across the UK.

The first broadcasts were on 22nd September 1955. The BBC’s The Archers (then on the Home programme, RP pronunciation on request) staged a dramatic episode where Grace Archer was killed in a stables fire. 20 million listeners tuned in. The Archers is still broadcast with an audience of 4-5m.

Until that day the only TV station available was the BBC. BBC2 and colour came in 1965. Before the launch of ITV the majority of licences were for radio only (no radio only licence is required in 2025) but that situation rapidly changed.

The above statistics are from Asa Briggs History of the BBC, quoted in Peter Hennessy’s, Having It so good, Britain in the Fifties.

Hennessey quoting the cultural historian Richard Hoggart notes that early ITV shows like Hughie Green’s Double Your Money (prize £1,000) promoted TV as entertainment over other more serious educational and political possibilities.

It was as Hennessey notes the start of the consumer society (ITV of course had advertising) and with it the first of many reassessments of what British people were after Labour lost the 1959 election followed by the Penguin Special, Must Labour Lose (Mark Abrams & Richard Rose, 1960)

The above YouGov poll is more for political entertainment than serious politics. After all General Elections are fought on Party grounds, not to elect a leader. Of course party leadership plays a role.

I’m generally sceptical about opinion polls. As YouGov itself recently demonstrated the answers you get depends on the questions you ask. Even so YouGov is now a commercial polling organisation and if its political polls were to be as zany as some others profits would be hit.

The polling for Farage and Corbyn suggests a political polarisation but also in another register so does the support for Davey who was forthright again at Bournemouth in opposing the politics of Trumpism in a way that Farage, Badenoch and to an extent Starmer do not.

The header takes from the Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, a politically ambivalent song, although Pete Townshend has been very much on the left