The FT’s Jennifer Williams provided an interesting insight into Oasis gigs at Heaton Park in Manchester starting on 11th July. She reported that a city centre bar is offering a Champagne Supernova bottomless brunch for £35, increased to £60 if champagne is included. Meanwhile in Chinatown a restaurant is offering an Oasis set menu for £19.80 including salt and pepper prawns which allegedly is a favourite Oasis dish.
Elsewhere there is a Definitely Maybe unofficial Oasis bar, while the Oasis official Merch outlet in Spinningfields is selling Oasis branded Parkas for £100, although it’s rather hot to actually wear one.
Hot Weather Advice for the Hirsute: Avoid Beard Oils
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued emergency advice for the hirsute as Britain faces potentially its hottest days of the year.
Tips for protecting the Beard in hot weather
If the beard is above six inches in length moderate summer pruning may be in order. However this will only be needed if the hot weather continues
Where possible do not go out between 10am and 6pm and stay in a cool or air conditioned space, such as a library or pub.
If the beard starts to overheat immersing it in the freezer cabinet of the nearest supermarket will provide an instant remedy
Hand held fans may also be used to ventilate the beard
If the beard starts to dry out in the heat and follicles become brittle regular immersion in a glass of craft beer or lager will moisturise and nourish the beard
Do not use beard oils. In heat these may make the beard a sticky mess
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, as well as warmer temperatures the UV index will be high. There is an additional danger to the follicles. Shielding the beard with a mask or bandana may be prudent.
Liz Truss, John Redwood & David Starkey launch new culture war on the Elgin Marbles
Sky News has reported that a letter signed by 34 people has been sent to Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy warning of legal action if the ‘Elgin Marbles’ are returned to Greece. The letter claims that a Greek industrialist is financing a campaign on this.
Of more interest is who the ‘Great British PAC’ reported writers of the letter are and who is financing them. PAC stands for political action committee, a feature of US MAGA politics.
It appears to be a classic culture war which makes a lot of noise in the right-wing media about something that is not actually being proposed or going to happen. The British Museum has a long term partnership project with Greece on the Marbles, long term in this case being the time likely to elapse before anything happens. Neither the Government, or clearly the Tories support a return of the Marbles.
It remains the case, as outlined by Dan Hicks, Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford there is a very good case for returning the Marbles whatever hard right culture warriors say
I had many disagreements with Christopher Hitchens in his later years but his book on the Parthenon Marbles (2008) remains an eloquent argument for their return.
He argues in the book
‘an opportunity to redress an old injustice and restore an ancient beauty and symmetry..many, many British citizens will never regard the case as closed until the restoration, restitution, reparation or, if you like, reunification is complete
Nigel Farage is the MP for Clacton and Parliament was sitting on Thursday July 10th. However Farage was (as often) not there. Nor was he, a more likely location, at Lords for the first day of the England and India Test Match. In fact he was in the Channel dressed as a fisherman. It is a change from his recent appearances as a farmer.
Farage was of course fishing but not for fish but media coverage, and he seems to have got as often a good catch.
Farage does of course understand that an important part of politics is theatre. Leaving aside the question of where on the line between sanity and insanity Trump is, he also understands the point. So far Keir Starmer is well behind the game here, his appearances as a Sunday footballer not quite cutting through in the same way.
Hawkstone lager is produced by the Cotswold Brewing Co and is promoted by one of the UK’s biggest Nobs, Jeremy Clarkson. Its sold in his Oxfordshire pub and reportedly is on the bar at an increasing number of pubs.
It also in supermarkets. I found some in Sainsburys priced at £8.50 for 4x330ml bottles, a common price across the supermarkets that sell it (Morrisons, Tesco etc) except of course Waitrose where it costs £8.65. As supermarket lager goes that’s quite expensive.
I’m no fan at all of the reactionary Clarkson, anymore than I am of Tim Martin who runs Wetherspoons (although his record on reactionary remarks is considerably smaller). However Spoons sells some decent beer- for example currently Thornbridge Jaipur IPA on cask. You are not required to sign a loyalty pledge to Martin before buying a pint, anymore than you have to listen or read (Sunday Times) any of Clarkson’s BS.
Anyway the Hawkstone lager is actually a decent lager particularly for this kind of weather. Its full bodied with a good citrusy hop taste on the front with a good malt backbone. In other words a well balanced beer which is highly quaffable.
Will I get it again? Probably not because once the heatwave is over (this time) the limited range of decent lagers Sainsburys sells will no doubt be back on the shelves..
According to the Telegraph (10th July) former hard right Tory MP Jonathan Gullis is set to switch to Reform.
Gullis has complained that since his defeat in the July 2024 Election he has been unable to find a full-time job because his reputation proceeds him.
Gullis ended up as a Tory Deputy Chair a position previously held by Lee 30p Anderson. Anderson defected from the Tories to become Reform’s first MP and has now warned that out of 120 Tory MPs only 30 or so would be suitable for Reform.
What reputational damage might occur by Gullis moving to Reform, and to whom, is a highly debatable point
Telegraph 10th July 2025
Reform is understood to also be considering whether to welcome Jonathan Gullis, a former Tory minister.
No formal conversations between the party and Mr Gullis have taken place so far, but The Telegraph understands he is sympathetic to its positions on a number of issues.
On Wednesday night, Mr Gullis told GB News he could “understand” why Sir Jake had left the Conservatives and said he was more despondent than ever about Tory prospects.
He has previously called for Mr Farage to receive a peerage and suggested last year that Reform was attempting to convince him to cross the floor
Telegraph provides guidance on what cheese is good for you & how much of it.
The Telegraph might usually call the guidance below ‘Woke’ but apparently guidance on cheese is appropriate. It seems to give some credence to a recent French cheese survey that Stilton is a right-wing cheese.
It might be reflected that Churchill liked Gruyere (hence the Swiss reference) while Thatcher liked Lymeswold and Truss Stinking Bishop. Boris Johnson meanwhile liked whatever cheese he found in the fridge late at night
There’s evidence that cheese supports our bone health and may help with weight management as it helps keep us fuller for longer and fermented cheese like Gouda, Swiss and Stilton contain live bacteria that can benefit our gut health. A recent Oxford University study even listed eating cheese as one of the 25 things linked with a longer life expectancy.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much you eat. Official guidelines recommend no more than 30g of cheese per day, a piece roughly the size of a matchbox. If you can’t resist an extra grating over your dinner or a few slices as a snack, though, 40g to 60g per day is unlikely to do healthy people any harm, experts say.
E P Thompson on the Jury System & attempts to undermine it
Proposals are before the Government to restrict the right to jury trials. Partly due to the pandemic there is a backlog of cases. This could be addressed by providing more finance but the Government seems to prefer, in what is a general authoritarian drift, not to do that.
The Times (Editorial 10th July 2025) acknowledged the historic importance of the jury system but essentially concluded ‘needs must’
In an earlier generation-1986- the late socialist historian E P Thompson reminded that the jury system has been under attack since the seventeenth century..
The jury system is, to a social historian, a very remarkable institution. Beginning as a group of knowledgeable persons (or ‘inquest’), who could report their findings to the officers of the Crown, it has survived immense changes in political life and administration – not as a fictive or vestigial sign but as an active element in the judicial process.
During its 800-year life it has shed some functions and acquired others, evincing a quite unusual flexibility – from ancient juries of presentment, the homages of courts leet and baron, and the Regarders and homage of forest courts, to the formalities of the jury box today. Even more remarkable, it is an institution, or presence, or tradition – which is it? – which is in some part secret and impervious to research. The actual deliberations of the jury may not be disclosed, and sustained accounts of them are few and imperfect.
What, indeed, is the jury? A legal expert may tell us how it is summoned, and, less exactly, what are its powers. But a social historian cannot be so certain. To be a juror is to have thrust upon one a temporary office, to which is attached an inherited weight of rules, practices and expectations; and this weight transforms an office into an imposed (and often internalised) role. This role is exercisedfor a day, or a week, or for three months, and then as suddenly as it was adopted, it falls away once more. Seen in this way, the jury is less an institution than a practice, or a place amidst adjacent judicial practices: a place through which generation after generation flows, inheriting the practices of their forerunners, yet inheriting these with little formal instruction, and practising the role in the light of expectations brought with them into the jury box and shared by the public outside.
Extract from EP Thompson Subduing the Jury. London Review of Books 4th December 1986
Not related to Wimbledon AFC (a football club in south-west London) but an extension arguably of calling someone a cock (a reference to the bird of the same name). An alternative usage is shitgibbon
