Kmflett's Blog

The England cricket team and the closed shop

Philip Collins, formerly a speech writer for Blair and Times columnist has written for the Observer (link below) arguing that the England cricket team is the last ‘closed shop’ in the country.

He seems to particularly feel that players like Zak Crawley and Jacob Bethell are there because they get on with England and Wales cricket coach Brendon McCullum or possibly cricket boss Rob Key. Possibly. They would argue that they look to promote talented players for the future I suspect.

Crawley whose record in the current India series is decent is in the side because its thought he’ll perform well on Australian pitches in the forthcoming Ashes series. I’m less sure about Bethell, who has little experience, but is a public school boy. The distinction between amateur and professional in cricket was abolished in 1963 but public schooling still counts at the top of English cricket.

Collins argument on the closed shop, of which I suspect he knows little, is specious. Unlike Collins I was a trade union officer when the closed shop still existed (banned 1990). In some trades, the print for example, you couldn’t get a job without a union card. That was true in the (then) civil service area I worked in too, but in reality it was often of more benefit to the employer than the union. They could strike binding agreements and implement them knowing that everyone was covered. This meant, for example, less HR (or as they were called then personnel officers) managers were needed. From a union point of view it meant there were people in membership who really did not want to be members (for whatever reason) and they could be very annoying- to the union not the employer.

The closed shop did not mean, as Collins seems to think, that you couldn’t be sacked for poor performance. You could, but it had to be done using appropriate procedures with union representation- much as many employers still to do.

The England cricket team is not a closed shop, it is an autocracy, or in part a young public schoolboys club. It misses out on a large number of players, perhaps particularly those from a South Asian background, who could be brilliant England cricketers. The start of an answer is to make England cricket team selection a more democratic affair, with the coach having a say, along with significant others.

Opinion: England cricket must end culture of the ‘closed .

with very few exceptions, and this won’t surprise those (like myself) who are not fans, McDonalds Big Mac is pretty the same product the world over.

The Economist has long used this to compile an index based on Big Mac prices for economic comparisons. The specific interest in the summer of 2025 is how much difference the Trump tariffs are having on the Big Mac prices in countries Trump doesn’t like (that clearly varies like the weather). So far he evidence suggests, perhaps unsurprisingly is not much..

A Day at The Oval Test but not now the end of the cricketing summer..

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

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.

But 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.

The picture is of Brewdog Sheffield in Division St which closed on 28th July. Staff were given three days notice of compulsory redundancy. While Brewdog mention employment law and the duty to look for suitable alternative employment, given that they also shut their bar in Leeds this seems unlikely.

Unite Hospitality which has members at Brewdog complained of the very short notice closures and lack of prior consultation, but according to Brewdog this is simply ‘mischief’ making, which says a lot about how they view employee relations.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/sorry-sight-brewdog-sheffield-yorkshire-164518594.html

Peak English summer. Thurs July 31st 12.50hrs, hailstorm at the Oval cricket ground, Sarf London, England v India 5th Test,day one of five. & yes I got absolutely drenched,waterlogged beard included

Lord Glasman promotes a new culture war- the Lanyardocracy

Skimming a Times Editorial (31^st July) on civil servants and public officials (The Times wants to introduce ‘commercial expertise’ aka mates of Rupert Murdoch et al) I noted the use of the term ‘lanyardocracy’.

Of course whoever writes Times Editorials is mostly not of this planet, but surely they have noticed that the lanyard is worn by many in the public AND private sectors. Why. Primarily as security device to allow appropriate entrance to buildings and within the buildings to show that an individual is meant to be there.

Why this should cause an issue is unclear except that culture wars are not about coherent thought.

The term appears to have been made up only recently possiblby the right-wing Times columnist Janice Turner.

The Spectator has been promoting it along with, of course, Lord Glasman. He gave an interview when he droned on about it in May 2025 and has been quoted in the magazine in July 2025.

Look out for future usage but keep in mind that the lanyard has a practical purpose and is not associated with any particular perspective on the world. After all as someone employed firmly in the private sector I certainly have one.

Raymond Williams died in 1988.

A Welsh Marxist and leading writer on literature and language, he was key figure in the first new left from 1960.

I remember him as a softly spoken, pipe smoker. I recall disputing with the Guardian on his death that they were not taking his significance seriously enough, but in the intervening years, that significance has continued to grow.

Of the key figures of that old new left in March 1968 EP Thompson was lecturing on William Blake in America. Raymond Williams however was on the anti-Vietnam War protest in Grosvenor Square and wrote about his reasons why in The Listener, 25th April 1968.

Robin Blackburn in a New Left Review piece on Williams death (NLR 1/168, Raymond Williams and the Politics of a New Left) quoted the Listener article as follows:

‘Today in a score of countries, the protest march has become a regular part of political activity. In the past in Britain, as at Peterloo and in the marches of the Chartists, there was a style of demonstration that pre-dated liberal democracy, the march of men without votes representing that majority who were excluded from political decision, and a march through the streets with banners because this was still the quickest and most visible means of communication. Today the means of communication are much more developed. . . . Yet parliamentary democracy has become increasingly formal under the pressure of consensus. . . . Moreover the theory of representative democracy, with all its strengths and limitations, is being itself surpassed in practice by the pressures of modern organized capitalism to channel decisions to many non-elected bodies. And a key role in this replacement of representative democracy is being played by the modern communications system, which is not, and does not pretend to be, democratic at all, except in purely negative ways. When the German students, after the shooting of Rudi Dutschke, demonstrated against a press monopoly, they were taking into the streets, and for their own good reasons, what had been for many years a central part of New Left theory: that in any large and complicated society, the communications system in newspapers, broadcasting and television is a major political institution—in its supply of necessary information, in its capacity to select, emphasize or exclude, and in its power to influence and campaign. But this institution . . . is permanently up for auction to rich men, to the new communications combines, who then claim by simple purchase this immense political power. . . . Parliament itself has conceded many decisive areas of power, in economic planning and in communications, to wholly undemocratic institutions which it is in no way prepared to fight. The measure of the failure of the social democratic parties in Western Europe is that by compromising on just those issues, they’ve excluded themselves from any serious consideration as the means to democracy and socialism. It is in the gap left by that failure that the new movements are being formed. . . . It is necessary to say soberly and quietly that the decay and corruption of the political system, and the intolerable violence now actually directed against the poor of the world, will go on being fought by all effective means.’

The Official of National Statistics has published the top one hundred names of baby girls and boys registered in 2024.

The Telegraph reports that ‘Keir’ does not feature but doesn’t mention that ‘Nigel’ doesnt feature either. An exercise in the construction of useless knowledge.

Nigel last seems to have had some popularity in 1964 (the ONS looks at 10 year intervals back to 1904).

Keith (which Starmer is sometimes called) was last popular in 1944. Sad.

Good news however for Michael Rosen who sometimes raises concerns that he doesn’t come across youthful Michaels. Michael is at 86 in the top 100.

Historically babies were named after popular leaders- the Chartist leader in the 1840s Feargus O’Connor being an example

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesenglandandwalesbabynamesstatisticsboys

I’ve been a regular attender at the final Test of the summer at the Oval since the 1960s. I was there on 27th August 1968 when Derek Underwood won it for England after spectators had helped to dry the pitch (no pitch curators in those days)

The final Test was always in late August but in 2025 its late July so the Hundred can be fitted in.

There are consequences. As Nick Hoult in the Telegraph points out five Tests against India in 44 days takes its toll on players, not least on England captain Ben Stokes.

The Hundred has brought money into cricket but some things money can’t buy

George Eaton, New Statesman journalist has said that a ‘senior Labour source’ has said that top Labour MPs could lose their seats to a left challenge. Named are Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and Shabana Marwood.

The new left formation announced by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn now has 600,000 supporters.

Some caution. Senior Labour Sources are not reliable and have agendas. The comment may reflect something that happened with the Respect challenge after 2003 when Labour lost touch with its grassroots and had little idea what was going on out there.

Finally its not just about elections. Ask Morgan McSweeney. Challenges need to be rooted in communities and workplaces a long way from Westminster.

Still interesting times