Brewdog shuts 10 bars, including Camden, the first ever outside Scotland, at 3 days notice
Brewdog has announced the closure of 10 bars in Scotland and England with the earliest closing on Friday July 25th.
Unite Hospitality which has many members at Brewdog has rightly complained that a consultative process on redundancy, required by law, is being made a mockery of.
Brewdog does not recognise Unite and claims it is carrying out a two week consultative process with employees and some may be redeployed to other bars. Indeed one legal requirement is to see if there is suitable alternative employment if jobs are at risk. Another, which one might suspect is not being done, is to allow for counter proposals which can show how jobs could be saved if things were done differently. Finally since Brewdog claims to be a decent employer no doubt enhanced rather than statutory redundancy terms. We shall see
The Camden closure- quite a small pub- is particularly poignant as it was the first ever Brewdog opening outside Scotland on 10th December 2011. James Watt was atop a tank that drove around Camden High St. I was of course present (not on the tank).
Brewdog cites commercial reasons for the closures and there is no question that hospitality faces difficult times. However the reality is that Brewdog’s beers don’t have the cachet they once did, they are expensive, and the bars offering of guest beers is limited
The full list of the bars to be closed are: [[Aberdeen]] Flagship (Gallowgate), Brighton, Camden, Dundee, Leeds North Street, Oxford, Sheffield, Shepherds Bush, Shoreditch, York.
King Charles & the Highgrove Garden: time to unionise
Highgrove is King Charles Gloucestershire residence, well known for its organic gardens and the base of the Duchy Originals brand.
For reasons as yet unclear the Sunday Times (20th July 2025) devoted the best part of two broadsheet pages to issues at Highgrove, primarily about the gardeners are treated and paid, and King Charlie’s own idiosyncratic behaviour (hardly a secret)
When Charles ascended to the throne, or was possibly directed there by God, Highgrove should have passed to William. Instead he drew up an arrangement that allows him stay there until age 92 at a cost of £340,000 a year. The gardens are handled under a related arrangement.
The agreement gives Charles the exclusive use of Highgrove’s swimming pool and the right to hunt hares, rabbits etc on the land.
Despite this low pay is a significant issue at Highgrove with gardeners paid at or around the minimum wage, less than they could earn in similar roles elsewhere. The work is demanding, not least because without pesticides it is difficult to protect plants fully.
The Sunday Times reports that Charles is a micro-manager, issuing detailed instructions on individual plants and flowers and on one occasion had, in effect, had a gardener sacked because they got the name of a flower wrong.
After a grievance based on bullying against the de facto manager of Highgrove, an external HR consultancy investigated (no union recognition) but the report notes that Highgrove is significantly understaffed giving the demanding nature of the work (Charles has called for volunteers) and staff turnover is very significant.. A rural idyll Highgrove may be for the King but not for anyone else. What Murdoch’s issue with the King is remains unclear.
The cartoon above appeared on-line and in the print edition of the Observer on 20th July. It has since been taken down on-line and the paper has apologised. Not it might be noted for being racist to Zarah Sultana or categorising the left-wing social democrat Jeremy Corbyn as a Communist but anyway..
The NUJ chapel at the Guardian and Observer went on strike to stop the Observer from passing to Tortoise which they claimed would not end well.
I’ve been reading the Observer since the 1960s and until the transfer still did as I subscribe to the e-version of the Guardian. I usually glance at daily updates from the Observer now but it has become a viewspaper more than a newspaper.
The front cover is not news lead but magazine story focused. The sports pages carry interesting comment pieces but no results or match reports. The features are sometimes interesting but if you are looking for liberal-centre left analysis Byline Times and Prospect magazine do it better.
The Observer always was to the right of the Guardian (certainly from the late 1960s which is as far back as I can reliably remember) but it often had important news and features and good sports reporting.
I have no insight into how it is now doing beyond the anecdotal. While I mainly read on-line at 68 I still like to flick through an actual paper as well, which is a different experience to on-line reading. On Sunday morning I meander down to the newsagent just in time to get the last copy of the Sunday Times next to which can be found a pile of unsold Observers.
As the NUJ warned, there could be trouble ahead, beyond just that cartoon
In the 1980s and 1990s Spitting Image, primarily master puppeteers Fluck and Law ran for 18 seasons on ITV. The political satire was often sharp and one aspect of it was a focus on the police in the Thatcher era. Portrayed as ignorant and thuggish Spitting Image picked up on the point that you could be arrested for being the wrong colour, looking at an officer oddly or walking in an unapproved way. There were actual instances of such cases, but the satirical point was that anyone could be arrested for doing or not doing pretty much anything and sometimes were.
Fast forward thirty plus years and we have a Labour Government headed by a former human rights lawyer. However it now seems that if someone says or displays words that the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper does not approve of then arrest is possible.
In the meantime the stakes have been upped because doing this, or possibly just thinking about doing it, can be labelled as ‘terrorism’ with a potential jail sentence of up to 14 years.
Land O’Cakes Hotel, Great Ancoats St, Manchester, July 1962 (picture Manchester Archives/Morning Star)
186 years ago this week the world’s first working-class party was formed at a meeting in a Manchester pub
The National Charter Association, the first working class party anywhere in the world, was formed at a delegate meeting which began 186 years ago this week on 20th July 1840.
The NCA provided an organised structure to attempts to win the vote for working men around the Six Points of the People’s Charter.
It had an elected provisional Executive, and a branch structure with a paid membership. It lasted until 1860.
The concept of a trade union focused party came much later in the nineteenth century, although the NCA did work with the trade unions of the day which were often Chartist focused. The NCA did however encompass a wide range of views from moderate Parliamentary reformers to those who supported a socialist revolution such a George Julian Harney.
The meeting took place in the Griffin pub in Great Ancoats St, Manchester. The pub dated from 1791 and was closed in 2005 by which time it was known as the Land O Cakes. It is now the Bem Brasil restaurant*
Perhaps typically of how much of Britain’s working class history is either forgotten or not remembered at all I don’t believe there is any current plaque on or near the spot to mark the event.
*thanks to @gwilty200 for info on what the pub is now
Who attended (the conference started on a Monday)
Source: Manchester Conference 1840 | chartist ancestors
The following names are those of the delegates to that first Manchester conference (source: History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1854, by R.G.Gammage ).
John Arran and Joseph Hatfield, West Riding of Yorkshire. James Leach and James Taylor, South Lancashire. J.Deegan, Staleybridge and Liverpool. David John, Merthyr Tydvil and Monmouth. J.B.Hanson, Carlisle. W.Tillman, Manchester. George Halton, Preston. Samuel Lees, Stockport. Richard Littler, Salford. Mr Andrew, Glossop. Mr Lowe, Bolton. Samuel Royse, Hyde. William Morgan, Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham. James Cooke, Leigh. George Black, Nottingham. James Williams, Sunderland. Thomas Rayner Smart, Leicester and Northampton. James Taylor, Loughborough. Richard Spurr, London. Richard Hartley, Colne.
What the meeting decided
A NCA Executive Council, consisting of seven full-time, paid members, was responsible for the co-ordination of the national Chartist movement.
The general secretary was to be paid £2 a week, and members of the executive were to receive 30 shillings a week while they were sitting.
The Executive Council was to be elected annually by a ballot of all NCA members with each county being able to nominate one candidate.
Members of the NCA had to sign a declaration agreeing to the Association’s principles and buy a 2d quarterly membership card. Where possible members were organised locally into classes of ten under a class leader who was responsible for collecting each member’s 1d subscription.
Classes were grouped into wards or divisions and monthly ward meetings heard reports from class leaders.
There was to be a ‘collector’ for each ward responsible for forwarding subscriptions to the National Executive.
The membership was divided into classes of ten, whose leaders fed into was, town, ‘county and riding’ that had its own councils with officers elected democratically.
There were to be local branches, and an annually elected general council and an executive.
Half of the money collected by local branches was to be at the disposal of the executive and plans were formulated to stand Chartist candidates at the next general election.
picture Julie Mukherjee (FB). Organised by Zed Lomax & other boaters
Police have been busy arresting people who, peacefully, protest about genocide in Gaza. One arrest in Leeds involved someone holding a page from the satirical magazine Private Eye. For those with longer memories the Spitting Image portrayals of dim and thuggish police come again to mind.
Protest of course will continue and Sunday 20th July saw a boat flotilla for Palestine on the River Lea in north-east London from Tottenham Lock through Lea Valley Marina and Hackney. Protest comes in many forms and (I wasnt able to be there) pictures provide no evidence of the Police Special Boat Force in pursuit
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
Open Golf: campaigners salute Scottie Sheffler only the fourth winner with a beard since 1882
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has saluted Scottie Sheffler the winner of the Open Golf at Royal Portrush as he became only the fourth person with a beard to take the claret jug since 1882. The first was Shane Lowry in 2019, the second Brian Harman in 2023 and the third Alexander Schauffele in 2024
All the winners of The Open since 1945 until 2019 had been clean shaven although there were some moustache wearers in the earlier years of the twentieth century.
The last winner to wear a beard before 2019 was Scotsman Bob Ferguson who won The Open three times from 1880 to 1882
The campaigners say it’s not just about the beard but how golfers have managed to get their follicles to interact with what were often difficult air currents to allow maximum advantage in terms of both ball distance and accuracy.
Golf has been the most clean-shaven of sports for so long that the media have struggled to grasp the historic significance of a series of hirsute winners.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, golf has gone from being one of the most clean-shaven of all sports ten years ago to one where Beard Power was centre stage on the last day of The Open. It’s truly a sign of the hirsute times.
Tony Benn on why the Tolpuddle & other labour & socialist festivals represent the real movement
Tony Benn died in 2014 but in his later years he was a regular on the Sunday at the annual Tolpuddle Festival in July.
He wrote in his last volume of Diaries, A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine on 20th July 2008
All these festivals I go to- Burford, Glastonbury, the Durham Miners Gala, Tolpuddle and then Burston- just keep me going.
That’s the real Labour Party that the Government has absolutely abandoned… I don’t quite understand it but it does mean that when we are defeated there is a core support we can go to and we’ll just have to build the Labour Party up all over again
One wonders if Andy Burnham plans a weekend visit?
Classic Friday episodes of the Archers have been in decline but 18th July provided one. Firstly Neil lost his temper over Susan’s decision to give Amber the ring that had belonged to Ivy. Neil demanded Amber return the ring and she did, but in the process blowing up peace negotiations between George, themselves and Amber. Meanwhile despite Justin’s justifiable caution, Martyn Gibson decided to honour the invitation to Tracy’s 50th that he had given himself. Tracy made her view clear to Jazzer. If Gibson attended she would walk out. It seemed to sum up quite well the state of Britain in mid-July
George gets God
In a slightly unusual move for a Grundy George has got God after a visit to the prison chaplain. The Grundys are of course Methodists but we hear little of this on the Archers. Suffice to say the chaplain was not an Alan the vicar type, well-meaning with a handy Biblical reference. Rather counselling was on the agenda, and George subsequently decided to be nice to Emma and to forgive Susan
Warring Brothers news
Justin and Martyn have had a further discussion about plans for the future of Borchester Land. While they initially were at war, a round of golf followed by lunch at the nineteenth hole soon sorted matters out. They agreed a plan that will provide something that both of them can agree on, profit.
The Village Fete
It’s that time of year again. One thing we can be sure of is that the mystery celeb guest will not be Gregg Wallace or John Torode, rightly so. Lynda has somehow arm twisted Akram into doing the organising, while Oliver has agreed that it can be held at Grey Gables because the village green has seen better times
Security at The Bull
After the potential cat poisoning issue Kenton has decided to step up security at the Bull by hiring Mick to keep an eye on things (and collect the glasses). There will however be no need for a uniform.
