Kmflett's Blog

Food Foundation

Price Inflation

50-64% increase

Pasta

Frozen vegetables

Chocolate

Eggs

Beef

Av household food bills increased by £605 from 2022/3

May 19th

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Arsenal men’s manager Mikel Arteta has been given a special ‘Stubble Supremo’ Award after Arsenal won the Premier League on Tuesday evening. Manchester City could only draw with Bournemouth meaning they could not overtake Arsenal’s points tally on the final game of the season on Sunday.

The campaigners say that while Arteta consistently fails the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western test where stubble becomes a proto-beard there is no question that he has finally calibrated his stubble match by match to meet the requirements of the moment.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we have perhaps been guilty of not taking stubble seriously enough, and Mikel Arteta has reminded us that stubble is a perpetual work in progress. He fully deserves his Stubble Supremo Award.

Greene King sells Speckled Hen to Damm & gets out of supermarket sales

Greene King has sold the Old Speckled Hen brands it acquired 25 years ago to Spanish owned brewer Damm. They will brew it at their Bedford brewery which was originally owned by Charles Wells and then Carlsberg.

At the same time they have announced a withdrawal from off sales-supermarkets etc- with a focus on selling cask and ‘craft’ beer in their own pub estate. They are in the process of opening a new brewery which it seems likely will lead to the closure of their historic site in the centre of Bury St Edmunds.

Trying to make sense of this latest Big Beer story requires more than a check on AI.

Despite what the Guardian thinks it is not about a British brewer being bought by a foreign one. Greene King has been owned by Hong Kong based CK Assets since 2019.

Damm is family owned but since it is operating in Spain and the UK clearly  also in the Big Beer market.

Quite why GK wants out of supermarket sales is not reported. It is noted that Old Speckled Hen variants account for more than half of GK’s off sales and perhaps is the bigger brand in supermarkets.

That said assuming that there is profit in it even given the sharp price competition on the shelves it still begs the question of why GK are doing it. Perhaps the new brewery will not have the capacity or building new bottling and canning lines etc is too costly.

One thing that is not mentioned, as often, is jobs. One would expect job losses at GK and there is no news on whether Damm plans to create any jobs. Just another day in the world of Big Beer.

At the June 1983 General Election Tony Benn was defeated in his Bristol East seat. There had been boundary changes and Benn was not selected for a more winnable Bristol seat. He declined to move to a more winnable Constituency and duly lost.

When the first post General Election By-Election in a Labour seat came around, at Chesterfield in March 1984, far from being blocked as a left-winger Benn was selected as the candidate. Prominent Labour right-wingers such as Denis Healey spoke up for Benn at pre-election meetings. He duly won and served several terms as the MP.

There is a strong contrast with the Labour NEC’s decision to block Andy Burnham from putting his name forward for possible selection as a Labour candidate at the Gorton By-Election. Labour subsequently lost to a Green candidate whose politics probably weren’t that different from Burnhams.

Burnham is not Bennite and indeed has recently styled himself as an exponent of Manchesterism (something Engels was critical of in 1890, although Burnham uses the term differently!). In short he is personable but after a long political career also comes with a lot of baggage, some of it good, some of it not so much.

He is a well-known figure in Labour who it might be thought would at least give Labour a good chance of winning what might well be a difficult election at Makerfield, now that NEC objections have ceased.

It might be argued with some truth that Labour in the 2020s is more authoritarian than it was in the 1980s (when nevertheless it was still expelling socialists) but perhaps a bigger point is the left does not have the weight within Labour to stop attempts at Head Office control freakery.

It will be interesting to see how engaged senior figures from Starmer’s Labour are in Burnham’s campaign, if indeed he thinks that will be a good idea…

While Wes Streeting looks to be the standard bearer of the Labour right in a leadership election, as my Guardian Fletter below points out he faces a battle to hold his Ilford North seat.

While the Guardian reported from the Constituency that he is known and liked in the area (by some no doubt, particularly due to his high profile perhaps) it did not engage with the community based Redbridge Independents who have particularly focused on Labour’s record on Gaza.

At the May 7th local elections they won some seats on Redbridge Council in the areas covered by Streeting’s Constituency but Labour held the majority. In the context of the London wide elections on that day, that probably wasnt a bad result. Streeting currently free of Ministerial responsibility may be happy that he now actually has time to campaign in his local area….

Aditya Chakrabortty is right to draw attention to the cocoon of Westminster politics, oblivious to the pressures of life in communities and workplaces (As Westminster rages, and Labour sinks into civil war: what about the people?, 13 May). Looking outside, Wes Streeting won Ilford North in 2024 by 528 votes over the independent candidate Leanne Mohamad, who campaigned on Labour’s position on genocide in Gaza. Is there any reason to think, on present trends, that Streeting will still be an MP after the next election (Wes Streeting prepares to launch leadership challenge against Keir Starmer, 13 May)?
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London

Guardian Fletter, 15th May 2026

Beard Liberation Front

18^th May

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

HIRSUTE WELCOME RETURN OF GNOME POWER AT CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW

The Beard Liberation Front, the network of beard wearers that campaigns against beardism, has welcomed the news that the Royal Horticultural Society, the organisers of the Chelsea Flower Show, has again lifted its long running ban on gnomes for 2026.

Gnomes were banned for 100 years to 2013 when they made an appearance before again being vetoed.

In 2026 gnomes, mostly with beards, will be on display again at Chelsea.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Gnomes and beards go together. They are often organised and militant and it is excellent news that after a thirteen year gap Gnome Power will be at the Chelsea Flower Show again in 2026

Guardian Report

Celebrities call for permanent end to gnome ban at Chelsea flower show | Chelsea flower show | The Guardian

The above is The Times lead Editorial on 18th May. It is unusually vitriolic even for the Editor Tony Gallagher.

Clearly teachers should put up with poor working conditions and while there may be a theoretical right to strike actually exercising it is not something that can be countenanced.

Jonathan Agnew will be forever associated with cricket and Test Match Special. The first men’s Test of the summer starts in June.

However he has now become a euphonium player in the Melton brass band in Leicestershire.

The Today Programme (18th May) interviewed Aggers about it and to close the programme out he played a few bars of Jerusalem.

While it may not have been quite pitch perfect as it were, the tune was recognisable. From 2.55 at the link below

Today – 18/05/2026 – BBC Sounds

Band gets a new star turn | Local News | News | Oakham Nub News | by Nub News Reporter

Peter Mandelson received a fine for urinating in a public place but I doubt those in the picture above (picture Stand Up To Racism) will feel the full force of the law. In fact such scenes are common place when the far right and fascists descend on Central London.

Of course there is an important point here. There are far too few public toilets in Central London. The ones in Trafalgar Square are still 20p a pee as it were but have gone cashless. Card only relief.

At the same time if a significant element of those attending such events did not turn up for a piss up and a punch up the problem would not exist.