Kmflett's Blog

Nigel Farage won the Clacton By-Election on Friday morning. The result was announced at 6.30am. He was not there.

As often with Farage there were several explanations. He claimed he didn’t want to share the stage with ‘nobodies’. But then he also claimed there was a, not detailed, security issue. The police did not agree.

I don’t usually quote the BBC’s Chris Mason who has been something of a Farage fan, but this underlines Farage’s vanished status

The Clacton by-election has been unorthodox from the start – and results day has been no different, with winning candidate Nigel Farage choosing not to turn up to the result of a contest he himself triggered.

Not only that – I got up this morning anticipating being in the audience, on your behalf, for a Farage victory speech, here in Clacton, and then doing an interview him afterwards.

Neither of those things have happened. The Reform UK leader cancelled all of the interviews he had planned, with the BBC and others.

Again there are several alternative stories. Firstly and most obviously Farage wanted to avoid questions about his £5m. The Parliamentary Inquiry has re-opened. Secondly as the Guardian revealed. Farage had been at an all night Farage Fest in the Essex countryside. Perhaps he was just sleeping off the hangover.

Even so its odd behaviour to promote a By-Election and then vanish when you win it.

A bottom line is that Farage got 22,000 votes. The campaign against the racism and bigotry he is stirring up must not vanish

Andy Burnham has told LBC that his favourite Greggs item is the sausage, bean & cheese slice which costs £2.20. As an occasional consumer of the item Burnham is right in my view.

It won’t please the unnamed advisors who complained that a clip of Burnham and John Healey rating pub snacks was ‘laddish’.

In my experience both women and men like pub snacks and Greggs.

Nigel Farage who promotes his man of the people image by posing with a pint in a pub (he drinks fine wines) has not commented on his favourite pub snack or Greggs item.

I posted this on my blog 10 days ago but not social media except LinkedIn where it posts automatically. Last time I checked it had 650 hits underlining that the final period of August really is peak silly season.

London bus drivers, members of Unite the Union, have resumed a series of strikes over hot working conditions on 25th August.

The summer of 2026 has seen record temperatures and London buses, with inadequate cooling, have meant intolerable conditions for drivers and indeed for passengers.

Managers at Arriva which runs a large number of TFL routes in North-East London, have refused to act and the dispute is also about bullying and victimisation of union reps.

The TUC has demanded that there should be a maximum working temperature, as there is a minimum. So far the Government has failed to act.

The bus strike will cause inconvenience for thousands but if employers will not act on the impact of climate change ultimately industrial action is a way of focusing their minds

Arriva North London drivers strike over roasting buses as capital sees fifth heatwave

Nigel Farage called a By-Election in his Essex Constituency of Clacton and then didn’t bother to show for the announcement of his victory. He also cancelled a victory speech scheduled for Clacton on Friday morning. Farage claimed there were security issues (perhaps the same ones that means he has never held a surgery in the Constituency). The police confirmed there were not.

Ace BBC reporter Chris Mason could not discover where Farage was but the Guardian did. He was at an all night Farage Fest bender in a field somewhere else in Essex. Presumably he is now sleeping off the hangover.

After a 25-minute or so drive from the count, at an airbase far away from the heart of Clacton-on-Sea, a lone guard sat in complete darkness beside a sign that read Farage Fest.

After getting through this initial security checkpoint and parking up, there was a trudge through a dark country lane. Soon, the festival came into full view, with a lit-up ferris wheel, tents and Farage himself at about 3.30am, visible through a gated fence.

But after reaching the entrance, undercover security guards intervened and said it was a ticketed event. They asked the Guardian to leave and trailed behind while leaving the premises.

This post is not about The Hundred as such, of which I’m no fan, but the impact of the franchise takeover in 2026.

It has been as can be seen negative when it comes to crowds. Perhaps less freebies are being offered. Perhaps the change of identity and players has had an impact.

Notable that Sofia Gardens Cardiff has seen an increase. The Welsh Fire were the worst performing Hundred team. So in this case a change of players, womens and mens, is not a negative but a positive. Secondly unlike other venues ticket prices have been held, mainly £20/£25 not £40 or £50. Thirdly reportedly the new franchise partner has worked with Glamorgan rather than imposing an existing franchise model.

The title line is of course from Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a Changin’

My thoughts on the Hundred are here

Beard Liberation Front

13th August

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has warned that sustained exposure to high temperatures can cause serious damage to the beard.

As Britain faces its fifth heatwave of the summer the campaigners say that temperatures above 30C can cause beard hairs to become brittle and potentially fall out.

There are several approved courses of action

1 To temporarily shave the beard as Marx did in April 1882. This can prevent the impact of high temperatures reaching the beard’s roots, the hair follicles

2 To cover the beard with a damp cloth or mask

3 To regularly irrigate the beard with cold water or, if preferred, lager

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the impact of climate change is serious and action is required. Protecting the beard is at the bottom of the scale but as a network of beard wearers it is our duty to advise on protection nevertheless.

England Test captain Joe Root at the crease, Sofia Gardens, Cardiff 12th August 2026

A Day at The Hundred

I doubt many, if any, perusing this are fans of The Hundred a brief now franchised 100 ball contest inserted into the cricket schedule in August. Most will prefer, as I do, the One Day Cup at this time of year.

Even so, and following Marx’s dictum that to understand capitalism you need to check out its new developments, I ventured to a Hundred match at Sofia Gardens in Cardiff with my ‘niece’ Menna on 13^th August. Menna btw is a nurse and has only recently developed an interest in cricket so this seemed like a good way to engage that.

It was of course very hot- 34C- but the attendance for the two games women’s and men’s was 10,288. Not bad for midweek, daytime cricket. It probably helped that of all the Hundred grounds Cardiff has held prices, so it was £20 a ticket.

The history of The Hundred of course was a desire by the ECB to take control of cricket from the Counties and monetise it. This over 5 years they have now done. Welsh Fire is now partly owned by a US Tech guy.

Aside from the political objection I found the promotion of The Hundred by Sky and the BBC to be way over the top. Of course they had paid to cover it and so wanted an audience.

Its true, although this was never the ECB’s intention, that it did  a lot with double header matches to promote women’s cricket. That is the one unqualified good.

It also introduced ‘tweaks’ such as five and ten ball ‘sets’ to be bowled and various others now forgotten. Indeed ‘sets’ have also been given a well deserved place in the dustbin of history. Overs is the term now used and for the hard core traditionalists, the six ball over was only codified in the Laws of Cricket in 1980. Before that it varied.

The crowd on Wednesday had some children (one of the big points ECB wise is that The Hundred introduces new people to cricket- up to a point, see above).

However the newly franchised Hundred felt a lot like a T20 game with twenty fewer balls. The crowd also had a T20 feel to it.

Given the summer the pitch was slow and shots plugged before they reached the boundary. Welsh Fire women beat London Spirit  but the latter had a last ball victory in the men’s match.

Enjoyable? Up to a point. I enjoy cricket most when you don’t have to pay attention all the time, have a chat, read the paper, and then check events in the middle. The Hundred as T20 demands attention.

The political danger of course is that having morphed The Hundred into very nearly T20 the franchise owners (who own clubs in other T20 competitions, sometimes with the same players) will dictate that its not a hundred but a hundred and twenty balls. That will disrupt the existing T20 Blast and cause further issues for the Counties.

Capitalism is disruptive and thrives on being so.

As for Menna, we’re looking at tickets for the England v Sri Lanka international in Cardiff in September. So that sort of worked!

The eclipse: is it a  sign of bad things ahead for Farage?

The Clacton By-Election is on 13^th August but on the evening of the 12^th August there is a rare solar eclipse.

Norman Cohn’s book on millenarism, In Pursuit of the Millenium lists a number of events that might be regarded as omens, heralding the end of days. Signs included, droughts, famine, plague, civil discord, sudden deaths of significant people and so on

In 2026 there is detailed scientific understanding of what comets are, how they arise and where, what they consist of and what they do. Likewise for eclipses

Suffice to say this post is not about the science-quite the reverse.

In Medieval times the appearance of comets were not understood except in superstitious terms. Wiki has the following:

Fear of comets as acts of God and signs of impending doom was highest in Europe from AD 1200 to 1650.^[136] The year after the Great Comet of 1618, for example, Gotthard Arthusius published a pamphlet stating that it was a sign that the Day of Judgment was near.^[137] He listed ten pages of comet-related disasters, including “earthquakes, floods, changes in river courses, hail storms, hot and dry weather, poor harvests, epidemics, war and treason and high prices”

By the nineteenth century there was a much better understanding that bad things happened for many reasons, but comets was not one of them.

However the comet analogy had a brief political usage around the time of Peterloo and just after.

In 1819 Shorter published a radical paper the Theological Comet which anticipated the overthrow of priests and Kings. It was subtitled the Free Thinking Englishman

E P Thompson references it in the Making of the English Working Class noting that it was the kind of publication and ideas that London ultra radicals supported in the period after the Peterloo Massacre in August 1819.

In particular Thistlewood, who was a key organiser of the Cato St Conspiracy in February 1820 may have been influenced.

Cato St, a reaction to Peterloo, was a plot to behead the Cabinet while they were at a dinner in central London. The plotters were infiltrated by Government spies who in fact may well have been the real originators of the plot, and executed.

August is traditionally known as the ‘silly season’ in terms of media stories and this may explain why the Aberdeen Press and Journal (August 11th) reports that James Watt’s new brand Second Best is planning to launch a 6.7% West Coast IPA and a 5.4% Helles. Nothing remarkable about this, both are popular beer styles.

The question arises however of how these beers are to make the passage from Watt’s LinkedIn into cans and then shops. Watt was not the brewer in Brewdog, that was Martin Dickie.

The Press and Journal reports that Watt is talking to a brewer about contract brewing them. However Watt is planning to buy three unnamed breweries to secure production.

Quite recently it was reported that Watt was planning to buy back Brewdog from Tilray but that story has not it appears progressed.

As above, it is August