Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
Place on Beard of Summer Shortlist for England Men’s Football Manager Tuchel under threat
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that England’s struggle to overcome Andorra in a 2026 World Cup qualifier reflected the lack of beard power exhibited by new England manager Thomas Tuchel.
England beat Andorra 1-0 with a goal on 50 minutes from the award winning beard of Harry Kane. However with Andorra ranked 173rd in the world England’s overall performance was below par.
The campaigners say that while Tuchel has a beard it lacks the influential gravitas of previous manager Gareth Southgate.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, A better performance against Senegal in the friendly match on Tuesday is essential if Tuchel is to make the Beard of Summer Shortlist which will be announced on 21st June
The veteran journalist Martin Bell who during his career covered conflict in the Middle East called recently for journalists to be allowed access to Gaza, something Israel refuses to allow (even though it has no legal authority to do so).
The graphic above underlines just how keen Israel is to stop journalists from reporting the realities of Gaza.
As ever but even more so now truth is the first casualty of conflict
There will be those and I’m one that thinks that BBC News and Politics (a separate part of the BBC) already gives far too much time to Farage and Reform UK. Farage holds the record for the most appearances on the independently produced, and in my view unwatchable, Question Time programme.
In reporting Reform the BBC often seems more keen to shape views rather than report them. It does this much less with other small Parliamentary Groups the Greens and the Independents. It also largely ignores the LibDems who have over 70 MPs, but no doubt they have their own strategies.
ByLine Times has the story that the BBC DG Tim Davie is trying to see how more Reform UK viewers can be attracted (fortunately radio doesnt seem to feature so Farage’s appearance at the bar in the Bull, Ambridge may be delayed). Here well known hard right figure Robbie Gibb, ex-GB News, may well have been influential.
Of course in reality Tory appointees Davie and Gibb should have been moved on but Keir Starmer is a Statal figure who, as with the DPP, sees public servants as diligently performing a role without fear or favour.
In short expect more Farage on the BBC, with more Tice when not in Dubai and more Anderson when not in the pub
There has been days of protests and arguably riots in Los Angeles focused on the activities of the US ICE, essentially immigration police, often it seems under the present US Government irregulars
The media refer to riots and Tump ordered a law and order crack down. Arrests continue as do protests
The Kaiser Chiefs famously sang that they ‘predict a riot’ but in fact this is not possible.
While many riots are not quite the spontaneous events they seem to authority- there is usually some spark, often the intervention of authority in a protest, that provokes them- they are not and can’t be pre-planned events like a big demonstration.
Historically, riots are not for abstract principles like Brexit. Action over rising food prices while wages don’t keep pace is a more likely focus. Police racism is another
Expect more protests and riots.
In the meantime while a riot may not be the most effective form of protest it has an impact and it’s a which side are you on issue. In this case the Los Angeles protesters
Keith Flett is the Editor of A History of Riots (CSP 2015)
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard/bsky.social
Campaigners pay tribute to former Beard of the Year Tom Jones on 85th Birthday
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has paid tribute to Sir Tom Jones on his 85th birthday.
Sir Tom was joint winner of the Beard of the Year Award in 2008 with then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. In 2025 he shared the Beard of Wales Award with Senedd politician Hefin David
While he rose to prominence in the 1960s as a clean shaven singer in recent decades he has sported a gravitas adding beard.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are pleased to recall Sir Tom’s Beard of the Year triumph on his 85th birthday. As a mark of respect he will feature on the Beard of Summer 2025 shortlist later in June.
Metro 29th December 2008
Tom Jones has been crowned winner in the annual Beard of the Year award. The Welsh singer shares the title with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, while Prince Williams was runner-up.
The Beard Liberation Front, an informal network of beard wearers, has recognised Britain’s best beards for the past 14 years. The award aims to highlight those who have given beards a positive image in the public eye during the year. Led Zeppelin vocalist Robert Plant won the Award in 2007 and cricketer Monty Panesar in 2006 Keith Flett, of the Beard Liberation Front, said: “The votes were too close to call and so they have shared the title. “A concern this year was beardism, irrational prejudice against the hirsute, and while Tom Jones sex symbol status overrode this, it was certainly a factor for other winners.” The award also gave Bruce Forsyth a special commendation for his trademark moustache on Strictly Come Dancing.
Whitsuntide (24th May 2026) Church Ales: the origins of the pub-crawl..
Whit Sunday is the 7th after Easter, hence 24th May 2026 (not always the same date, since 1965,as the UK Bank Holiday)
In the traditional calendar Whit Sunday and Whitsuntide, the days after it, are a period of festival and holiday. It represents a time when the weather is warmer and the agricultural calendar less pressing. It allows for outside gatherings.
Part of this is the Church Ale a practice which declined with the Reformation but like all the best customs continued on here and there.
The Church Ale was not a beer as such but a wider name for a festival where specially brewed beer was certainly consumed as was food. The aim was to raise funds for charitable causes, often as the rhyme below indicates the church itself.
It was also perhaps the origin of the pub crawl. It was not unknown for numbers of Church ales to take place at the same time allowing for an ale-crawl between several of them.
As usual I don’t expect we’ll hear anything from those who claim to stand up for an English or wider British way of life on this but it’s no less of a tradition for that.
Its almost a year since the July 2024 Election when 252 Tory MPs either stood down or lost their seats. Yet numbers including well known names (not usually for good reasons) such as Steve Baker and Jonathan Gullis have still to find a new job.
One anonymous ex-Tory MP told Politico
“It’s been an incredibly difficult jobs market,” the same person said. “We’re not exactly that marketable.”
MPs who lose their seats are entitled to double the normal statutory redundancy terms (which are not exactly munificent). Steve Baker thinks ex-MPs should get a year’s money. I don’t disagree but not that all 121 of the surviving Tory MPs voted against Labour’s Employment Rights Bill in the Commons.
A Seventeenth Century Pub, an Ale Wife & Subversion
The 5th June 2025 issue of the London Review of Books carries a review by Deborah Valenze of a new book (2023) by micro historian Steve Hindle The Social Topography of rural community: scenes of labouring life in 17th-Century England
Hindle takes a history from below approach pioneered by E P Thompson and others. His focus is on the Warwickshire village Chilvers Coton, where George Eliot was born. She also wrote about the village in Scenes of Clerical Life. Eliot’s focus was on the church but Hindle has a chapter on the village pub.
Hindle’s research recovers from detailed research the details of lives of ordinary people which were previously thought to be lost to or hidden from history.
The village pub was run by an Ale Wife. While Frances Rason made cheese its not clear if she also brewed but it’s very likely. In the book Hindle describes the key role of the village pub (summarised by Valenze below). He notes not just respectability but also ‘those who skulked subversively in the corners of the village alehouse. Two centuries later in Scenes from a Clerical Life, (1858) George Eliot writing about a pub in the same area noted ‘in some of the alehouse corners the drink was flavoured by a dingy kind of infidelity, something like rinsings of Tom Paine in ditch-water’. Note that radicals are always to be found in corners of the pub, presumably out of sight of the bar…
In the 1680s the pub was frequented by farm workers and metal workers, two distinct groups with different incomes and different work experiences. Because probate records for Frances Rason have survived Hindle has been able to put together a detailed picture of what the inside of the pub was like:
Within this context, Frances Rason’s ale house becomes a wealth of potential clues for the historical sleuth. Thanks to that probate inventory, Hindle knows the disposition of rooms and furniture within the alehouse itself. He can even say with certainty what utensils, flagons, and plates Rason’s customers used. Since ale houses were typically male-dominated spaces, it is noteworthy that Rason and her granddaughter ran the tavern by themselves.
Unlike Eliot, who chooses the church, the centre of Chilvers Coton village life in these records is the alehouse run by Frances Rason, one of 26 widows in the parish. She described herself as a victualler, translated by Hindle as a supplier of fast food for the working people of the village. Some of those meals would have included cheese made in her household: she dedicated a large amount of space and equipment to the dairy. While other alehouses received admonitions against rowdy behaviour, Rason’s never did. As an owner-occupier, she would have been allotted an important pew in church and it seems she had friendly relations with the local miller and maltster. Life didn’t get much better than this for an alewife in a 17th-century village.
Rason must have been a trusted as well as a prominent member of the community: the records show that packets of silk were left in her alehouse by middlemen to be collected by weavers; nailmakers also went there to collect iron bars, the raw material of their trade. Rason rented out rooms, too; activity in this establishment must have been constant. A teenage granddaughter called Mary, listed as a servant, helped out. After Rason’s death, Mary became the owner of the family Bible, along with a large share of her grandmother’s movable goods. We’re left to wonder about her fate, however, because she disappears from local records in 1685, when Rason died. Perhaps she used family networks to find a new home. Working in the alehouse would have made her a good judge of character.
Even in the Archers time moves on. Justin has become concerned about his legacy. A visit to the Rewilding project with Lilian saw him unfortunately fall in the pond and get his expensive shoes wet.
Akram has got a mallet and he’s going to use it
The revamping of the village shop continues with Susan ordering in hardware in order to compete with Underwoods Local at the Charging Station. Akram acquires a mallet. What he plans to use it for is not yet clear.
Arthur & dementia
Lilian and Justin have met Arthur at the Laurels. It transpires that Peggy has given a significant donation to a dementia organisation that Arthur runs with others. It all seems very creditable and worthwhile. If its legit that is
Open Farm Sunday
Daveed has retreated a little on Open Farm Sunday. No armed guards or armoured cars will be used
Sgt Knacker Burns has missed his birthday party
Knacker Burns was a no show for his own birthday party still being detained in Coronation St. It occasioned a confidential conversation between Alice and Fallon. Alice remains concerned about whether her drinking had harmed Martha. Fallon opined that now that Knacker was absent she didn’t miss him at all. Seconded.
There is no connection between Taylor Swift and cricket. The singer is an NFL fan and while their Swift cricket memes there is no evidence she an interest.
However in the world of entertainment there is a link.
In the winter of 2025/26 the next Ashes cricket contest between Australia and England takes place.
320,000 Ashes cricket tickets were sold on the first day of sale. Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in Australia in early 2024 saw 620,000 people attend over seven dates. Cricket Australia appears to think that eventually more Ashes tickets will be sold than Taylor Swift tickets. For those familiar only with UK cricket grounds, Australian grounds are massive
The cricket Ashes open on November 21st 2025 in Perth
