Kmflett's Blog

The Ambridge Socialist. a week with the Grundys

It’s not often that the Archers focuses on the leading proletarian family of Ambridge, the Grundys.

Of course the story comes with a further Amber warning. George’s betrothed has apparently walked out or been booted out of her parents place and pitched up to stay with Clarrie, Eddie etc at Grange Farm. Clarrie has laid down clear rules about how matters happen. Amber has been out on a tractor bringing the hay in, apparently quite happily.

Speculation about who Amber and what her plan is continues in on-line chat boards, not all of it progressive.

Meanwhile Eddie has been making a nuisance of himself at the Bull complaining about pies and pints. This it was revealed was all in the cause of him nominating the Bull for the best customer service in Borsetshire in some competition or other.

All a bit low key and actually in the best traditions of the Archers

In Other News

Annabel originally hired to keep a legal eye on Borchester Land has made her first appearance since 2018. Martyn thought she was a special friend but as she made clear she is not. Cue Martyn muttering about things throughout the week

Beyond Dross

Just to make people aware/ remind you that our Ed’s alter ego, Barry Farrimond, is actually a talented musician. He runs an orchestra(the National Open Youth Orchestra), and enables people with disabilities to make music. Scrubs up well, too.

From Academic Archers

The Bull & the cat

Kenton thinks the Bull’s resident cat has been poisoned and Alistair has had to be called in to sort things out. If Kenton finds a horses head in his bed he’ll know things are serious

Keir Starmer & the working class

There is apparently no such thing as Starmerism and working out what the Labour leader thinks about most things has been problematic (Gaza aside).

His is famous/infamous for noting that his late father was a toolmaker. As Lord Kinnock pointed out (below) this meant he was not a proletarian but a member of the labour aristocracy.

Leading Labour, a new podcast from the Institute of Historical Research sees Neil Kinnock tell Keir Starmer that his father being a toolmaker does not prove his proletarian credentials. Kinnock (correctly) notes that where he comes from toolmakers are ‘aristocracy'(the labour kind)- Times 10 July

The claim that the current Cabinet is the most working class one ever was made a year ago and Starmer repeated it again at a Cabinet away day at Chequers this week (Times 12^th July)

It remains erroneous, although if qualified as the most working class since 1945 it would likely be correct.

The most working class Cabinet to date is that which took office in January 1924- the first ever Labour Government. Of course numbers had by this date gathered experience as MPs or union officials but probably only Sidney Webb qualified as someone who had been to a fee paying school (several in fact)

The PM Ramsay MacDonald was the illegitimate son of a farm labourer. Arthur Henderson had been an iron moulder, Jimmy Thomas a railwayman, Willie Adamson and John Wheatley were previously miners.

Most of these men (there was one woman Margaret Bondfeld) are not in the socialist hall of fame for the reason that while they had working class backgrounds, social being determines consciousness. The Chancellor Philip Snowden was possibly even keener on fiscal rules than Rachel Reeves although in his May 1924 Budget he did cut taxes on what was known as the free breakfast. That is he reduced tax on items that workers had for breakfast.

Working class credentials do not read across to socialist politics. Most of the Labour MPs elected in 1906 for example, were union officials who were ‘Lib-Lab’ essentially Liberals.

The qualification, arguably, is how Starmer understands ‘working class’. A source of collective strength that can, via unions, improve conditions for all, or something to be risen out of.

The once well known lines ‘the working class can kiss my arse, I’ve got the foreman’s job at last’ may refer.

The graphic above is associated with an article by John Burn Murdoch in the Financial Times (12th July 2025).

With climate change, there are more hot days. When temperatures rise above 30C mortality rises significantly. This can be mitigated, and as the graph shows, is in some countries by air conditioning. Notably the graph compares mortality against rising temperatures in locations (in the US) that have a high incidence of air conditioning against those in Europe that do not. The difference is significant.

The article notes that while the impact of some air conditioning systems can add to climate change, the impact of hot temperatures is now such that finding ways to implement air conditioning that does not promote climate change (this does now exist) is becoming urgent.

File under really useful knowledge, something the FT is quite good at

picture: The Guardian

England v India Test Series: The Spirit of Cricket in changing times

Cricket is governed by Laws, quite a lot of them, which are tweaked and changed from time to time. But there is a wider framework of fair and appropriate play, sometimes known as the ‘spirit of cricket’ something which can be quite closely related to gamesmanship.

The current series between England and India, closely contested, is producing some interesting examples. One focus has been on slow over rates. Sometimes these just relate to fast bowlers who take longer to bowl an over than a spinner. Equally they can be a tactic to slow down the game for a variety of reasons.

In addition ball changes have become a frequent occurrence. The umpires have a pair of metal hoops and if the ball goes through them it has lost shape and needs to be replaced by a ball of a similar condition. What the reason for the increasing number of ball changes is remains unclear.

The Daily Telegraph blamed India for slowing down the game with ball changes on Day Two but may have noticed that England did exactly the same on Day Three.

In the final over of Day Three with England facing a few minutes batting against Indian fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah, England batsman Zak Crawley stood aside four times, as Bumrah was ready to bowl. That is against the Laws of Cricket but the Umpires did little beyond trying to make sure that exchanges of words between the Indian Captain Gil and Crawley went no further.

BBC comments included

Former England bowler Steven Finn on Test Match Special: “The end was great, you wait six and half hours of play for something as captivating as that.

“It sets up a beautiful first hour tomorrow morning because India are going to come with some gumption.”

Meanwhile Andy Bull in the Guardian describes the playing background of Indian Head Coach Gautam Gambhir

Gambhir is a man who was banned for elbowing Shane Watson in the chest while coming through for a second run during a double hundred against Australia and said afterwards he wasn’t “on the field to make friends”, the man who had to be dragged away from a staring contest with Kamran Akmal, who squared up to Shahid Afridi after barrelling into him in the middle of the pitch during an ODI in 2007, and who had to be separated from Virat Kohli after giving him a send-off in an IPL game.

The spirit of cricket as Mike Marqusee underlines in his book Anyone But England was in the nineteenth century about imperial advantage for the England team. Think W G Grace.

In 2025 the power in cricket rests not at Lords but the Board of Control of Indian Cricket….

These are the words not of a left-wing activist but of Fraser Nelson, former Editor of the Spectator writing in the Times (12th July)

His subject is the victory of the left-ish candidate Zohran Mamdani in the recent Democratic Primary election to determine who would be the candidate in the next election for Mayor of New York in the autumn.

He argues

‘If Mamdani can win, anyone can; that’s the real shock to the system. In a political culture supposedly ruled by party tribes, money and machinery, a skinny-tie socialist with barely a campaign office managed to flatten the Democratic establishment. He didn’t need a newspaper endorsement, a donor network or even a coherent policy agenda. He needed anger, fluency in the digital platforms where that anger lives and a generation ready to listen and then vote’

The underlining idea that leads Nelson to this conclusion is in the Monty Python very silly category, namely that its caused by having too many graduates, with too few graduate jobs.

The reference for this is a 2009 book by Peter Turchin, Secular Cycles, which opines for example that the reason for the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution was an over supply of graduates. Its the way they tell them.

Even so Nelson’s analysis of Mamdani’s victory is to the point

Christopher Hill. His highest ambition was to be a  Yorkshire cricketer but be became one of the most well-known British Marxist Historians

A biography of the British Marxist Historian Christopher Hill(1912-2003) has long been awaited and Michael Braddick has now written one (Verso 2025).

There is a wealth of interesting information and some fascinating incidental detail.

The Hill family were from Yorkshire and fielded a family cricket team. Braddick notes that Hill’s ambition was to play cricket for Yorkshire. Hill told the historian Penny Corfield that ‘I practised and practised but I wasn’t any good’.

Hill became a leading of the Communist Party Historians Group, leaving in 1956 and the author of numbers of important works, informed by Marxism, on the English Revolutionary period from the 1640s to the 1660s. He was also Master of Balliol College Oxford

Perhaps Hill made a bigger longer term impact in this context than if he had become a left-wing version of Yorkshire batsman Geoffrey Boycott

On the improvised cricket pitch, however, he was energy itself. He confided that his youthful ambition was to play for his natal county of Yorkshire. To us kids, imbued with stalwart Yorkshirism from our mother, Christopher’s first aim in life seemed entirely laudable and natural. ‘I practised and practised’, he then explained, ‘but I wasn’t any good’.

He told  fellow historian Penny Corfield in a 1988 interview that he had a birth qualification which would have allowed him to play cricket for Yorkshire. It was his highest ambition, higher even than playing cricket for England.

Penelope J Corfield appreciation of Christopher Hill

CHRISTOPHER HILL, THE MARXIST HISTORIAN AS I KNEW HIM

Below is a note from Tony Benn’s Diary about his attendance at the Durham Miners Gala on 17th July 1964. Its a world of which many will now have no conception. The labour movement still exists but no Labour Minister is on the speakers list this year

Caroline and I went to Durham and attended the pre-Gala dinner. Also there were Harold Wilson, Frank Cousins, Will Paynter (NUM) and Sam Watson(NUM).

At dinner I could hear Sam asking Harold who would be doing what in the Labour Government and I could just hear Harold giving some names. Afterwards when I was alone Harold came up to me and said, I thought it would be helpful if you knew that I want you to be Postmaster General in the Government..

Labour won the October 1964 Election with an overall majority of 4.

Durham Miners Gala displays the internationalism Labour has forgotten

The Durham Miners Gala has been since 1879, and while the pits are gone the tradition continues.

Saturday’s Gala may be one of the hottest ever (temperature wise) but the days when the balcony of the County Hotel were filled with leading Labour Party figures are at least for the moment in abeyance.

Keir Starmer has only appeared once, virtually in 2020 and in the last couple of years has written a piece for the Northern Echo on the Gala. The most prominent MP on the balcony is Jeremy Corbyn. Also speaking after a week of Unite’s policy conference is the union’s GS Sharon Graham.

Perhaps the most notable speaker however is the Palestinian Ambassador. It is a striking focus on an issue, Palestine and Gaza, where Labour has a dreadful record. Words on Israel’s numerous atrocities in Gaza and elsewhere there have occasionally been, but few signs of action particularly on arms sales. David Lammy’s claim that Labour’s foreign policy is a mix of Ernie Bevin’s NATO driven pragmatism and Robin Cook’s ethical approach have not stood the test of time well.

The Miners Gala in focusing on Palestine is underlining a core labour movement principle, internationalism. The Durham Miners backed the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and supported those fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. It’s an important record of solidarity but probably not one will find an echo in Keir Starmer’s thinking

According to the London Economic membership of Reform has declined by 10,000 in the last month to 227,000.

Membership of political parties is not the most transparent of things relating to Hotel California syndrome. That is you can check out any time but you will still be on the membership list even if you’re not paying subs.

In the case of Reform people are not in fact paying subs but an annual fee to Nigel Farage’s political business vehicle. No membership rights accrue, no democratic conferences are held etc.

The reason for decline as often are likely to be varied. Firstly, as often on the far right, Ben Habib and Rupert Lowe have launched rival organisations

Then again after the May 1st local elections Reform’s record in the Councils they control has been much less than sparkling. Resignations and purges seem to be a regular feature for Reform Councillors. Meanwhile Reform have put teenagers in charge of key parts of Warwickshire Council. In principle perhaps not a bad thing except these roles come with legal responsibilities which may perhaps not be fully grasped.

In addition the number of Reform MPs in Parliament is back to four after James McMurdock self purged and quit Reform.

In short what one would expect from a right-wing rabble, unless of course you are GB News, the Daily Excess and the BBC’s political correspondent Chris Mason who don’t recognise any of the above

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has responded to a Guardian letter (11th July 2025) from veteran BLF supporter Toby Wood. He draws attention to the statement in an earlier article on beards by Polly Hudson that all men look better with beards.

The campaigners say that Ms Hudson’s beard allyship is appreciated and while it is true that many men do look better with beards there are exceptions.

Examples include Richard Branson, Noel Edmonds, Lord Sugar and in particular Boris Johnson all of whom regularly bring the hirsute into disrepute