Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearer, has noted recent discussion on how to pronounce ‘beards’. There is some argument that the UK and US pronunciation differs slightly.
Some UK speakers emphasise the first two letters of the word ‘be’ while some US speakers emphasise the last two letters ‘rd’
The campaigners say that they are relaxed on the question provided people using the word ‘beard’ are not making fun of it.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, some say beard, others say beard, its all the same to us
29th May Farage representing the Bit Coin owners of Clacton in Las Vegas
Fresh from a week’s holiday in France, and a day in the UK launching his version of Liz Truss’s 2022 Budget, Nigel Farage has been off again.
On this occasion Farage has been in Las Vegas at a Bit Coin conference, representing the Bitcoin owners of Clacton.
According to Farage and Reform the UK has a considerable number of Bit Coin owners. The source of this claim is unknown.
I don’t claim to know much about Crypto beyond the line ‘you might not get what you paid for’.
Farage has spoken at the same Bitcoin conference several times in recent years. One conclusion is that Farage is consistent in pursuing things that are in his own personal interest. The voters of Clacton, not so much
(Farage) said Truss had played “all the right notes, just not in the right order” while in No.10.
Huffington Post 2nd October 2023
Nigel Farage, ex-Ukip leader
Offers unambiguous support as he compares the budget with the income tax cut from 30% to 29% under Thatcher: “Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986.”
The Times on Farage & the Working Man’s Club Experience
The Times Political Sketch writer Tom Peck has provided some context to Farage’s demand that Keir Starmer meet him in a northern working men’s club and see who gets the best reception:
He repeated his challenge again for Starmer to come and debate him ‘in a working man’s cub in a former mining town’. Farage is very much of the view that he is the authentic voice of working class people. He tends to think this because he has received many rapturous receptions in working men’s clubs in former mining towns. And I would know, I’ve been at a few of them. They tend to happen because Farage has hired out the room for a private event, and all the guests are Reform members
The plight of job hunting ex-Tory MPs ‘they don’t want me’
Politico has published an interesting piece on Tory MPs who lost their seat at the July 2024 Election (link below)
Former MP for High Wycombe and Brexiteer Steve Baker claims that employers don’t want him.
Of course the many thousands who lose their jobs each year often face similar experiences but the Tory Party continues to show little interest, opposing the Government’s Employment Rights legislation in the Commons
“What I don’t need is: Here’s how to apply for a mid-ranking job in a corporate,” said Baker, a prominent figure in the party’s Brexit wars of the 2010s. “As soon as I apply, they know who I am, they do the Googling and they don’t want me.”
Nigel Farage is paid £4,000 a month to write a weekly column for the Telegraph. I’ve never seen any evidence of anything Farage has written so it seems likely they are ghost written.
Its fair to say that the Telegraph is sympathetic to Farage and Reform. However on 28th May it called out the plans for Government he had outlined on 27th May. As the graphic above shows the cost would likely be up to half the current Government budget.
The LibDems called the plans Trussenomics on steroid, but Farage of course welcomed her short lived Budget measures in the autumn of 2022.
Theatre is an important part of politics, something Farage understands well (and Starmer doesnt) but when a political ally calls out his fantasy economics (as does the Murdoch Times on 28th May) it is at the least an interesting political moment
It’s good to see that the Campaign For Real Ale is promoting Mild May again. I’m not sure what the roots of the tradition are, even though I’ve been a member for 50 years.
However mild, once see as an old man’s drink(disclosure, I am old but I am so much younger now etc..) is definitively back.
With the rise of what was called craft beer, it became clearer that mild was a style of beer as much as a strength. I’m familiar with the two London pubs on the list. The Antwerp Arms in Tottenham sells Trinity a super tasty light rather than a dark mild at 3%. The Southampton and indeed the Cock Tavern E8 and the Pocket towards the Highbury Corner end of Upper St N1 will have a dark mild. Sometimes from the house brewery Howling Hops, sometimes not, but often at a 4%+ strength.
Living also in Cardiff as well as North London I’ve no idea why the Chapter Arts Centre is listed- a great venue but in recent times average for beer. The good news is that one of the classic dark milds Brains Dark is back on cask in some great trad pubs in central Cardiff such as the City Arms and the Old Arcade.
Not many days left in May now but mild, variable in style and strength is always to be found. A classic beer style without question reinvented by the new range of Indy breweries
Alexei Sayle’s latest podcast has a crack at explaining basic Marxist theory through a Tik Tok dance. Its an innovative way to address the issue but has Sayle got the right Marxist dance line?
A search through the 50 volumes of Marx and Engels Collected Works reveals numerous references to dancing, not however mostly by either Marx or Engels.
However writing to his sister Marie in September 1840 we find that Engels is taking dancing lessons with a view to making his dance moves more ‘graceful’. Does Alexei Sayle’s Tik Tok dance fit the criteria? Perhaps a meeting is required…
Sept. 19, 1840. You have a more boring life than we do. Yesterday afternoon there was no more work to do, and the Old Man was out, and Wilhelm Leupold did not show up often either. So I lit a cigar, first wrote the above to you, then took Lenau’s Faust from my desk and read some of it. Afterwards I drank a bottle of beer and at half past seven went to Roth’s; we went off to the Club, I read Raumer’s Geschichte der Hohenstaufen and then ate beefsteak and cucumber salad. At half past ten I went home and read Diez’s Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen until I felt sleepy. Moreover, tomorrow is Sunday again and Wednesday is a day of penance and prayer in Bremen, and so we carry on gradually into the winter. This winter I shall take dancing lessons with Eberlein so as to accustom my stiff legs to a little graceful movement
The philosopher Alasdair Macintyre died a few days ago aged 96.
His life represented a considerable political journey from the Communist Party in the early 1950s, to the Healyite Socialist Labour League after 1956 and then the International Socialists in the 1960s. From the late 1960s he left the left and embraced Catholicism, while still retaining something of a framework of Marxist ideas.
He had an engagement with the first New Left in the late 1950s and 1960s. His Notes from the Moral Wilderness remains an importance piece, published in a journal edited by the socialist historians E P Thompson and John Saville. He also wrote a chapter, Breaking the Chains of Reason, in a volume that Thompson edited, Out of Apathy (1960). Thompson’s own writing in the book aimed to set an agenda for the new left- and the New Left Review, first published in 1960. It also suggested some of the ideas and theoretical thinking behind his landmark book The Making of the English Working Class (1963).
I extract below a few lines from the Guardian’s obituary of Macintyre. It’s an interesting anecdote, although its unclear what its source is. Thompson’s papers are locked up at the Bodleian Library until some time in the 2030s.
We do know however that Thompson was an enthusiastic note and letter writer (often of a robust nature- a new biography of Christopher Hill reports him complaining that Thompson sent him the rudest note he had ever received).
Thompson continued to hold Macintyre’s views in high regard quoting directly from him in his Open Letter to Leszek Kolakowski (1973)
Even before the Hungarian uprising of 1956, he had left the Communist party, subsequently joining the Socialist Labour League, a Trotskyist group led by the notorious Gerry Healy. He was in frequent debate with the Marxist historian EP Thompson, who used to stick notes on the windscreen of MacIntyre’s car urging him to publish his thoughts on socialist consciousness.
