The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has said that it has barred the President of Argentina from the annual vote for Sideburns of the Year.
The vote takes place in August each year with the winner announced on 11th August.
Javier Mieli a self styled ‘anarcho capitalist’ is a far right politician whose presence in political office daily brings sideburns into disrepute
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the BLF is broad and tolerant network when it comes to facial hair but there are limits and President Mieli is someway beyond them.
E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class discussed the ‘Freeborn Englishman’ the archetypal British patriot. He was referring to the early nineteenth century and the ‘man’ is related to historical evidence and documentation. Even so work on the ‘Freeborn Englishwoman’ is long overdue.
Thompson makes the point that the English patriot can be on the political left or the political right depending on the specific times and context.
He identified some key characteristics. The first he noted is ‘freedom from foreign domination’ which in a modern context was a feature of the EU Referendum campaign, whether genuinely so or not.
Many others relate not to economic or social liberty but political liberty. These included, freedom from arbitrary arrest, trial by jury, equality before the law and freedom from the home being arbitrarily entered by the authorities.
Thompson also indicated the notion of some specific political freedoms around elections, free thought and speech and Parliamentary opposition.
The bottom line however was what Thompson called a ‘moral consensus’ of limits beyond which the patriotic Englishman would not be pushed. In short the Freeborn Englishman wanted the right to be ‘left alone’.
Yvette Cooper’s attempt to call and ban Palestinian protest activism as terrorism shifts the emphasis from people who are actively involved in planning a terrorist attack to a wider layer of people who may, for example, have strong views about British foreign policy, but have no idea of taking that further than making a peaceful political point.
The plan is in short not to leave people alone, free to speak out.
The Guardian (9th August) reported that 365 people (many more were present) were arrested by the Met Police in Parliament Square for holding up a sign which had written on it words that Yvette Cooper and Keir Starmer don’t like. The Met Police later claimed they had arrested 466 people. I wouldn’t place much faith in that figure. The Met are incompetent and cant be relied on to add up and they also lie about lots of things. Of course I would say that but several official reports on the Met have concluded they are racist and corrupt but still they blunder on, unreformed.
Both claim that there is evidence that direct action on Palestine and Israel war crimes is in fact ‘terrorism’ but can’t say or perhaps can’t remember what it is. If this is what Parliamentary Democracy in 2025 looks like it’s a very bad look indeed
Franchisees now own significant stakes in the eight Hundred teams and will in effect take control of the competition from October 1st 2025.
Over £500m has come into English and Welsh cricket and investors will be looking to see what develops. While the IPL is a model, cricket is the national game in India. Here it is one of a number of national games.
Its early days yet for the Hundred 2025 but crowds appear decent. Lizzie Ammon at Lords for the first two matches reported that many were attracted by the chance to see some cricket, not bothering about who was winning (in the IPL crowds bother a lot about that). Another attraction was the low ticket price- £20 for adults, while a ticket for a Test Match will cost well over a £100 for some grounds- if you can get one.
The Guardian reports that the franchisees plan early changes. The first is to move to a 120 ball competition in 2026, bringing the Hundred in line with every other short form competition around the globe (unless you count T10). That might cause issues with the T20 blast, a significant money maker for the 18 Counties, but it underlines the reality that the 100 ball format was a conceit by the ECB to allow the Hundred to be marketed outside of the existing County format.
An immediate focus reports the Guardian is to invest in players with top payments for men rising to £500,000. The Women’s Hundred has often produced better cricket with the players clearly having the incentive of a possible England place. The men often look like journeymen just passing through on their way to the next franchise competition.
So far however there appear to be little discussion about the future of the Women’s Hundred..
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
London Beard Week 2025 W G Grace shaves Jeremy Corbyn to win vote for Best Ever London Beard
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that London Beard Week which runs from 5-9th August marks the continuing growth of beards in the Capital.
The central part of the week is the annual vote for London’s Best Ever Beard. With over 1,100 votes cast in an on-line poll cricketer W G Grace shaved Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn for the accolade.
W G Grace got 35.4% of the vote compared to Jeremy Corbyn’s 29.2%. Michael Rosen stood down in favour of William Morris but their combined vote fell just short of that of W G Grace.
W G Grace’s beard was of Bristolian origin but from 1899 to his death in 1915 he lived in Mottingham in South-West London and therefore qualified to be on the poll.
It traditionally coincides with the Campaign For Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival at Olympia often the source of anti-beard stories in the media. However this is running at the NEC in Birmingham in 2025. The Beard Liberation Front has sent follicular greetings for good imbibing.
The campaigners say that aside from the many more beards to be seen in workplaces, shops and pubs, there is also a growth of specialist beard care shops and hairdressers offering beard trims and treatments, although the BLF generally advises against beard trims in barbers shops.
London Beard Week is a celebration of London, now one of the most beard friendly Capital cities in the world, and of London’s great hirsute heritage from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx through to modern day beards such as Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn and author and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen.
As part of the week the BLF ran a poll to find the most impactful and impressive figure with a beard who is associated with London, past and present.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, London is striking a decisive blow against pogonophobia, the irrational dislike of facial hair. It’s now respectable to wear a beard in London but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for stylish and perhaps even world changing beards to be promoted further. We congratulate W G Grace, posthumously obviously, in being voted London’s Best Ever Beard although we accept of course that his beard matured in Bristol.
London Beard Week poll to find London’s most Iconic Beard.
An online poll ran during the week
In the preliminary votes, Jeremy Corbyn, William Morris, W G Grace & Michael Rosen shaved the other contenders.
Jeremy Corbyn’s allotment gardening, theory and practice, has come under attack in the Guardian and he is rightly defended his allotment methods.
As he has written this week allotments were long fought for against the wealthy who saw land as a source of profit, a tradition of claiming people’s land that goes back to opposition to enclosure from the late eighteenth century and the Chartist Land Plan of the 1840s.
Historical accuracy however does require the footnote that William Cobbett argued potatoes were suitable for pigs not people.
The letter below appears in the Guardian 9th August together with several others including one from Toby Wood who suggests that the new ‘your party’ should be named the Allotment Party
I must respond to a scathing attack on my gardening knowledge and integrity. Dariel Francis claims I am wrong about “leaving spuds in the ground till February” (Letters, 6 August). I never said I would – and I reject this scandalous and deeply hurtful accusation. I said “digging ground for potatoes” in February. That means manuring and preparing the ground, before planting the potatoes in March or April. Save our potatoes – and save our allotments! Jeremy Corbyn MP Independent, Islington North
You may think that toast is simply a case of putting a slice of bread in a toaster or under the grill and waiting until it has turned a light or golden brown colour. After which you spread it with butter, jam, marmite etc etc and eat it.
Not at all because as the Telegraph (where else) has revealed there is a class politics to eating toast.
According to Etiquette expert William Hanson, who you may recall has previously opined on the correct way to eat peas, like everything else there is a class angle to how to eat toast.
First there is how you present your toast:
Posh Toast: square with crusts removed
Middle-Class Toast: Triangular
Common Toast: Rectangular
That is however just the start.
Hanson thinks that the common or proletarian toast eater just eats the whole slice with teeth bared to the elements.
However for the more refined the politically correct way for the bourgeois to eat toast is not to simply eat the slice. Rather cut a small rectangle of toast, add butter, jam etc, and pop into the mouth. Repeat until the whole slice has been consumed..
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that on the 56th anniversary of the iconic picture of the Beatles crossing Abbey Rd, taken on 8th August 1969, it is important not to forget the central role of facial hair in the shot.
Paul McCartney is shown as wearing no shoes in the picture and this has often been taken as a sign that he had in fact died.
The campaigners say the reverse is true. McCartney is the only clean shaven Beatle in the shot and this meant that he planned to go on and on.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the difficult clean shaven legacy of the Abbey Rd picture 56 years on is that Paul McCartney is still singing Hey Jude
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
London Beard Week 2025 Best Ever London Beard. Jeremy Corbyn, W G Grace, William Morris & Michael Rosen face off in Final Vote
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that London Beard Week which runs from 5-9th August marks the continuing growth of beards in the Capital.
It traditionally coincides with the Campaign For Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival at Olympia often the source of anti-beard stories in the media. However this is running at the NEC in Birmingham in 2025. The Beard Liberation Front has sent follicular greetings for good imbibing.
The campaigners say that aside from the many more beards to be seen in workplaces, shops and pubs, there is also a growth of specialist beard care shops and hairdressers offering beard trims and treatments, although the BLF generally advises against beard trims in barbers shops.
London Beard Week is a celebration of London, now one of the most beard friendly Capital cities in the world, and of London’s great hirsute heritage from Charles Dickens to Karl Marx through to modern day beards such as Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn and author and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen.
As part of the week the BLF is running a poll to find the most impactful and impressive figure with a beard who is associated with London, past and present.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, London is striking a decisive blow against pogonophobia, the irrational dislike of facial hair. It’s now respectable to wear a beard in London but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for stylish and perhaps even world changing beards to be promoted further
London Beard Week poll to find London’s most Iconic Beard.
An online poll will run during the week. Final vote pinned at Twitter or respond to this post
In the preliminary votes, Jeremy Corbyn, William Morris, W G Grace & Michael Rosen shaved the other contenders.
one of those research byways, looking at the history of ‘legitimate’ concerns. Raymond Williams Keywords doesn’t really enlighten but, perhaps surprisingly, E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class does in the form of 1790s Church & King mobs. In 1791 a mob attacked religious dissenters in Birmingham, attacking individuals and burning houses and religious meeting places. There were relatively few arrests and as Thompson notes there is some evidence that figures in authority pointed out to the mob ‘legitimate’ targets.
Rather like GB News and the Daily Express do with refugees…
