Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

5th August

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

London Beard Week 2025 Promoting Hirsute Style in the Capital

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that London Beard Week which begins on 5th August will mark the continuing growth of beards in the Capital.

It traditionally coincided 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

Charles Dickens, author

Fred Engels, philosopher and activist

Michael Rosen, author & broadcaster

William Morris, socialist & designer

Jeremy Corbyn, Islington North MP

William Cuffay, Leader of London Chartism

Bernie Grant, London Labour MP

W G Grace, cricketer

The above is the final paragraph of a Times Editorial on the Fifth Test at the Oval which ended with a 6 run victory for India on 4th August.

The Times as one would expect of Murdoch media is generally in favour of unbridled capitalism and the hard right politics that go with it. Murdoch originally an Australian clearly has interest in cricket and has landed the current owners of Sky, Comcast, with contractual arrangements to show cricket which they clearly would prefer not to have..

The Hundred is certainly an example of unbridled capitalism. As the ECB has finally got around to admitting it was never about attracting a new audience to cricket (despite much media hyperbole). The boost it gave to women’s cricket was not of course in the ECB’s plan. Rather the idea was to franchise a part of English and Welsh cricket and attract funding. This has worked and £500m is now available to secure the short to medium term future of County Cricket.

Even so even with unbridled capitalism there is scope for flex it seems..

The Times Editorial is rightly in my view concerned about the balance between the Test cricket summer and the Hundred. Given that it is now agreed that the Hundred is not about attracting new audiences, why can’t it start a bit later in August and run into early September allowing more space for a sensibly paced Test schedule?

Still not ideal but better than the existing cricket calendar

Facial hair optional

The above chart is from David Goodway’s book on London Chartism (CUP). It shows that the peaks of Chartist organisation by branch (mainly based in reports in the weekly Chartist paper the Northern Star) were in 1839, 1842 and 1848. All three years saw significant Chartist challenges to the authorities. The Newport rising in South Wales in November 1839 was a nearly successful armed revolt. 1842 saw a General Strike dismissed by conventional histories as the ‘plug plot’.

However as Goodway notes it was only in 1848 that the State saw Chartism in London as a serious threat. 1848 was a year of revolutions in Europe and beyond. The Chartists organised a 100,000 strong demonstration for the vote on 10th April at Kennington. In June and July 1848 there were a series of increasingly militant meetings and night time marches often in conjunction with Irish Repealers. Lastly there was an attempt at a revolutionary armed outbreak at Seven Dials on 16th August 1848.

Underlying all this was the organisation of branches of the Chartist Party the National Charter Association which provided the framework for the activities of summer 1848 in London, albeit far from all the organising of events was done through the branches.

Branches met weekly in pubs(or temperance venues) or coffee houses, but when activity was planned they met more frequently- up to daily. There was of course no telephone, social media or e-mail, to meeting in person was essential

David Goodway’s book does take an extended look at what trades were active in London in 1848 but understanding what the members of the, say, 25 branches in Tower Hamlets did for a living is so far less easy to ascertain. A detailed reading of the Northern Star for summer 1848 focused on that particular issue might give some clues

Indian fast bowler Mohammed Siraj took 5-104 in England’s second innings at the Oval. Despite the impact of Bumrah, who didn’t play at the Oval, Siraj was a key player in the series.

Posting on FB long time cricket fan Tariq Ali while noting it was cricket at its best, the Test rather than the short form, goes on to note something most if not all the UK media is unlikely to pick up

This was a wonderful series. There was one unpleasant aspect confined to the Indian camp.. Mohammed Siraj, the gifted seamer, whose brilliant performance today was decisive in drawing the series and who is the only Muslim player left in the Indian side was the victim of unfriendly briefings to the press. ‘Just a workhorse,’ ‘Not really a skillful bowler.’ The ESPN cricket commentator, Sanjay Manjrekar could barely conceal his hostility to Siraj in public. Indian culture has moved so far right under Modi that the Manjrekars of this worlds could be doing this to curry favour with someone or the other. Islamophobia is rife in the country. And I have had reports of some key members of recent teams subjecting Muslim players to abuse, especially when India played Pakistan. Today Siraj was and Indian hero and cheered by everyone at theOval. And tomorrow…?

The Ambridge Socialist

4th August

With the news that the Gills are selling Home Farm, rumours suggest that Kemi Badenoch may be moving in. While Farmer Farage would boost the takings of The Bull considerably, perhaps Badenoch could think about standing for the Parish Council

Wetherspoons is a publicly quoted company and its legal duty is to shareholders. That said without customers there is no profit.

Spoons currently has around 800 pubs and is opening news ones (for example in London at Fulham Broadway and London Bridge). It also continues to close pubs. That latest closure list has around half a dozen pubs including the Baxters Court in Hackney (opened 2003)

Thanks at least in part to the activities of Sir Tim Martin Wetherspoons is something of a marmite pub chain. However its no music, all day food and reasonably priced drinks mean, as the beer writer Pete Brown has pointed out, that many Spoons fulfil function similar to the Working Persons Club.

Hence closures are not popular. Below is a fletter I wrote to CAMRA’s London Drinker magazine in 2003 about the closure of one of the original Haringey Spoons, the Old Suffolk Punch(opened 1983). Its now a betting shop.

Wetherspoons reasons for pub closures tend to be on the opaque side but occasionally community campaigns get the decision reversed (Rochester Castle, Stoke Newington). At one point it was claimed that there were too many Spoons pubs in close proximity to one another in some locations (i.e the Angel and the White Swan at opposite ends of Upper St, Islington). Spoons have also had a programme of buying the freeholds of leaseholds pubs which aside from everything else gives them control of maintenance

Additionally in recent times most closed Spoons do seem to continue as pubs, although not on the Spoons model. That said, and this may seem odd to those who are not fans, the community role many Spoons play is lost with concern when closures occur.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. Monday: Test cricket finished for the summer; Tuesday: The Hundred starts

I’ve been going to Test matches at The Oval for longer than I can remember.

I was there on 27^th August 1968 with my father when Underwood bowled the Australians out on what had been an uncovered pitch after rain.

Later when I worked as a manager for what is now one of the UK’s largest companies at Vauxhall from 1981, I would often wander down at around 11am to catch a day’s Test cricket. Particularly on the final day (then a Tuesday) if an interesting result was in prospect.

I was there again on Thursday 31^st July, for the first day of the final England v India Test. Aside from getting drenched in a hail storm, it was a good time to watch high class cricket. The result on Monday morning was gripping. 56 minutes of intense cricket which saw India triumph, just, and draw the Test series. One of the great sporting spectacles.

Things have changed of course. 30 years ago you could simply wander along to The Oval Test and get in on the gate.

The development of the Ashes into the occasion it is today started to see that change, until the situation today where you apply in a ballot for a ticket for the Oval Test in the autumn of the previous year. Entrance is via a scan of your e-ticket on your mobile

It is not of course the end of the cricketing summer. From Tuesday there are several weeks of the Hundred, which Sky and the BBC are contractually obliged to cover. I may well check some of the women’s games where the standard of cricket is often higher than the men’s games.

The Hundred has its appeal, not least in the £500 million that the ECB has gathered from the franchisees who now have a stake in the Hundred teams. As a sporting occasion and spectacle there is no chance of it matching the Oval Test, however hyperbolic the commentators are.

That feeling of the Oval Test marking the transition from summer to autumn has gone. With its departure has come a five match Test series held to very tight timescales with the result that both sides at the Oval are missing key players who are injured.

We live not just in a market economy but a market society, and the timing of the Oval Test in 2025 is part of that, unfortunately. And as the Hundred starts on Tuesday it is the market not sport that is the key element in play

Beard Liberation Front

August 4th

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that England bowler Chris Woakes has been admitted to the Beard Hall of Fame. Woakes who dislocated his shoulder during the 5th Oval Test still came out to bat on the final morning ready to face a ball if need be.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Chris Woakes sums up what Beard Power is all about and takes a rightful place in the Beard Hall of Fame

Beard Liberation Front

3^rd August

Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

2025 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season Suspended for 24 hours from 00.00 4^th August due to Storm Floris

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2025 Official Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season will be suspended for 24 hours from 00.00 4^th August, UK time, due to Storm Floris.

The summer storm is set to bring high winds and heavy rain across much of the UK

There are concerns that high winds can blow beards out of shape, while heavy rain can lead to waterlogged follicles.

No Guidelines in 2025, but a weather caution

The Beard Liberation Front, one of whose founding principles is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want is increasingly concerned about official diktats about how people should or should not appear.

However the BLF urges those participating in the 2025 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season to take care out there:

1 UV levels. It’s not just sun that can lead to sunburnt legs

2 Pogonophobia. Participants should beware beard haters

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, As someone who suffered a seriously waterlogged beard in a hail storm at the Oval cricket ground on Thursday I obviously concur with the Storm Floris guidance. However it has been provided by the BLF ‘Weatherman’ Committee who experts on weather-follicle interactions