Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

11^th April

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Golfer Bryson DeChambeau not considered for Beard of Spring shortlist due to Trump links

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that US golfer Bryson DeChambeau was not considered for the Beard of Spring 2025 shortlist, published on 12^th April, due to his links with President Donald Trump.

Trump who owns a number of golf courses and frequently awards himself golfing championships, introduced DeChambeau at his Mar A Lago Election victory party in November 2024

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Bryson DeChambeau has a stylish and impactful beard. However the Beard of Spring is about those whose facial hair has had a positive impact in the public eye. Bryson’s links with Trump suggest the absolute opposite.

Teach Yourself Lord Gove 2025 Update #2

Michael Gove having stepped down as an MP is now Editor of the Spectator, now owned by Paul Marshall who also owns UnHerd and provides funding for KGB News. On 11^th April 2025 it was announced that he had been made a Life Peer in Rishi Sunak’s latest resignation honours list.

Gove has now taken his seat in the Lords and has opined on the whipping system in the second chamber(Times Diary 4th June 2025. See below)

House of Lords. Should be moved to Stoke on Trent (May 2022)

Apology : See Blue Moon

Guardian : A London based paper with a ‘style guide’ [content not approved of as Gove Speak]

Murdoch : A man of great intellect, second only to Paul Marshall

The Times : paper of record. Does not need a style guide*

Daily Mail: not appropriate reading (the Sarah Vine column used to be OK)

The Spectator, soon to be relaunched as the Soaraway Spectator

EU : career defining

Lenin: one step forwards, two steps back (as he wrote)

Boris : was yesterday’s man, still is

David Cameron : used to be a friend of mine

Rishi Sunak: Wykehamist

Education: see Another Brick in the Wall (Pink Floyd)

Plan: something to be worked out in the future

Theme song: One of these days, disco remix (Pink Floyd)

Extremist: Sayeeda Warsi

Drugs: See memoirs

Standing Down as an MP in 2024: see LibDem poll ratings

House of Lords ‘the whip in the House of Lords is a whip so gentle that it doesn’t even count as BDSM’

A By-Election in the St Ann’s Ward of Haringey Council (Tottenham Constituency) has seen the first ever Green Party Councillor elected.

Veteran observers and participants of North London politics might wonder how it has taken so long.

In the July 2024 General Election Green candidates ran second in most North-East London Constituencies (which Labour won).

In the days when Bernie Grant was MP for Tottenham and I was Chair of Haringey TUC we would run election hustings but only invite the Labour candidate. However as a nod to the reality that there is political life beyond Labour and broadly to the left I would always invite the Green Party to have a stall.

Just as I’ve seen Labour as a Party that has some socialists in it, I’ve seen the Greens as a party that has some left-wingers. Indeed the Green candidate in St Anns Ruiaridh Paton describes himself as a socialist on his Twitter avatar.

Labour also had a strong candidate, who hopefully will find his way on to the Council in 2026 but in a liberal-leftish Ward like St Anns the record of the Government (or at least how it was seen by voters) and the Council’s very poor record on Palestine and Gaza no doubt counted. There is clearly scope for further independent left candidates in the future on those points.

Notably Reform managed 3.6% of the vote and the turnout of 28% was at the high end of recent local Council Elections.

One can wish Paton good fortune in at last having the chance to make an impact for Green politics on the Council

St Ann’s (Haringey) Council By-Election Result: 🌍 GRN: 55.4% (+14.1) 🌹 LAB: 30.8% (-21.5) 🌳 CON: 4.3% (New) 🔶 LDM: 3.7% (-2.8) ➡️ RFM: 3.6% (New) 🧑‍🔧 TUSC: 1.8% (New) ⚒️ CL: 0.4% (New)

Beard Liberation Front

11^th April

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

Beard Liberation Front sends Birthday Greetings to Bob Harris, a standard bearer for beard power

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has sent birthday greetings to Bob Harris, veteran DJ and music aficionado on his 80th birthday

The campaigners say that he has been and remains a standard bearer for broadcasting beard power from the Old Grey Whistle on BBC2 in the 1970s to the Country Show and Sounds of the Seventies on BBC Radio2 today.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we hope there are more years to come for Bob’s broadcasting beard power!

Bob Harris (radio presenter) – Wikipedia

The Beard Liberation Front

10th April

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has revealed that the key thing that unites Donald Trump and Keir Starmer is pride in their follicles.

Trump has just issued an order to increase the water pressure in US shower heads so he can properly wash what he refers to as his ‘beautiful’ hair. Given that Trump is the owner of one of the most impressive political combovers currently around, its hard to see that Trump washing whatever hair he has left would take more than a few seconds.

Keir Starmer by contrast, at least until he entered Downing St in July 2024, was a regular at his North London barbers, where on occasion he posted exchanges with his barber Chris on social media. At least Starmer does actually have hair (at the moment).

The Beard Liberation Front says that if Starmer and Trump can unite around the slogan ‘every follicle is precious’ reaching a trade deal, focusing in part on hair cut products, should be achievable

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2eeggyppzo

On 10th April 1848 the Chartists held a rally for the vote on Kennington Common. They had mostly marched from north of the river. The plan was to take a huge petition for the vote to Parliament. However once the Chartists had passed south the police and soldiers blocked them.

A leader of left Chartism, George Julian Harney who worked with Marx and Engels, made his position on this clear at a Chartist delegate meeting on 11th April.:

‘He would never again consent to leave London to hold a meeting

Northern Star 15th April 1848

The above (unfortunately slightly blurred) is from David Goodway’s book on London Chartism.

How many turn-out for a protest is something still argued about in 2025.

The biggest demonstration in British history so far remains the 1 million plus who marched to Hyde Park to oppose war with Iraq on 15th February 2003. However in general the official police figure for a protest and that given by the organisers differs widely. The police have mostly stopped giving public estimates at the moment but clearly still do assess numbers to work out how many officers to deploy.

On 10th April 1848 the two London evening papers differed significantly with the Evening News reporting 150,000 and the Standard 9-10,000. This lower estimate- sometimes extended to 15 or 20,000 appears to be an officially approved one. The Times more or less stuck to it. Other morning papers on 11th April also carried similar numbers except the Morning Post.

The Chartist Northern Star which was published weekly claimed 250,000. That figure looks optimistic..

Historians have tried to estimate numbers based on the photographs of the protest and also on the size of the area the protest covered on the Common. Both are problematic in my view. We can’t really be sure at what point the photos were taken- as people were gathering, as they were dispersing, as the meeting was in progress? We also can’t be sure how closely packed a crowd might be in 1848 compared to modern day standards where, one hopes, safety considerations are important.

However one looks at it the Chartist gathering on Monday 10th April 1848 was bigly. The population of London in 1848 was around 2.3 million so if 100,000 were present (a sort of broad historical consensus…) that would be around 5% of the Capital’s population. Unlike 2025 in 1848 it was very largely a London only crowd. Train travel was available but it was expensive. Most people arrived on foot.

Vegetable antipasto, cream of nettles, using vegetables from the Presidential Estate

Ravioli containing capontana (aubergine & tomato), white pasta, red capotana, green basil sauce.

Sea bass in a salt crust, roast potatoes, fried artichokes and courgette flowers

Vanilla and raspberry ice-cream cake. Thin sponge jacket, tangy yoghurt & vanilla ice-cream, sharp raspberry, & raspberry glaze, served with warm brioche rolls

What cost of living crisis. Foreign Secretary David Lammy was also at the Banquet…

What comes out of the mouth of Nigel Farage rarely accords with anything approaching reality.

He has been involved in a stunt for the Lincolnshire Mayoral Election on May 1st where he called for the Nationalisation of British Steel.

Both Farage and Tice were in the Commons for the emergency debate on British Steel on 12th April. Tice called for nationalisation. It might be reflected that both men certainly had other plans for Saturday lunch

In Europe parties that combine reactionary social policies with leftish economic ones are hardly unknown. The Farage owned political outfit Reform is not on that model.

Farage was condemned by the steel union Community whose out of date flyers he was posing with but it needs to be underlined that when Labour’s Employment Rights Bill was in the Commons a few weeks back the only MPs to oppose it were the Tories and Farage.

British Steel should be nationalised. Its both a principle and the pragmatic thing to do. Farage should not be anything to do with it and where his ideas gain an audience the left needs to be there opposing them

Trump Tariffs, The Art of the Deal & the first US Golf Major of 2025

In another day of chaos Trump rolled many of the tariffs he had only just imposed while amplifying the trade war with China that the US has been engaged in for a while.

The timing may not have been accidental. On Thursday the first US golf championship of 2025 at Augusta starts (until Sunday). Since he came to Office in January Trump has spent a good deal of the time playing golf, on courses he owns at the expense of the US taxpayer.

Since 2022 golf in the US has been split between the traditional PGA and the Saudi funded LIV. Some key players have signed up for LIV including Trump favourite Bryson DeChambeau.

The two come together for the Masters golf but Trump has repeatedly said that he can do a deal that will reunite the two golf tours. So far no deal has happened and while LIV has some golfing stars, it attracts little in the way of spectators and media interest compared to the PGA.

Now Trump has adjusted his tariffs he is presumably free to watch the golf. He is not thought to be a member at Augusta (whose membership list is secret anyway) and the Guardian suggests that the organisers would prefer it if the next few days were a Trump free zone. We shall see..