Kmflett's Blog

Solidarity from the London Socialist Historians Group, organiser of the Socialist History Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, School of Advanced Studies

2025 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Pre-Season now open

9th April

Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the weather set fair for the coming period the 2025 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Pre-Season has been declared open.

The campaigners say that it is far from the earliest start to the pre-season in recent years. The 2016 pre-season opened on 13^th March

In the Pre-Season the framework of guidelines for appropriate Beard, Shorts and Sandals deportment are relaxed.

The decision to open the Pre-Season has been taken after a careful review of the Met Office weather forecasts and will be reviewed again on Easter Sunday.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, Shorts and Sandals season has been a major influence on summer fashions in recent times and we expect the 2025 season to be no different. We’re pleased to be able to announce the opening of the pre-season after carefully studying the Met Office’s beard friendly weather guidance. It is ideal beard flaunting weather

The Long March of Everyman was a 26 part programme broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 1970. It reflected the continuing struggles of ordinary people over the centuries. Charles Parker who had produced the Radio Ballads was a strong influence. The series was produced by Michael Mason.

Its a reflection that the struggles of working people for a better life and world go on in good times and bad times

The series was created and produced by Michael Mason.
The central consultants for the series were Professors Asa Briggs and Gwyn A. Williams. The literary consultants were Raymond Williams, University Reader in Drama in the University of Cambridge, and Michael Alexander, Lecturer in English at the University of Stirling. The ecological commentary throughout was given by Jaquetta’Hawkes and the demographic commentary by Michael Drake, Dean and Director of Studies in the Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University.

The New Testament declared that ” That the labourer must be first partaker of the fruit ;” and he ought doubtless to have the largest share : it also declared that, ” He that will not work, neither shall he eat,” and yet the legislation of this country, and the preachings of our religionists, had brought about a state of things in which he that worked hard had scarcely anything to eat, and he that never worked revelled in luxury and abundance.

Mr Hetherington addressing a Chartist meeting at Newtown, Wales (Northern Star 20th April 1839)

The Tories launched their local election campaign for May 2025 in Buckinghamshire on Thursday. Nigel Farage was of course critical. Actually, as the Times noted in a recent interview, Farage is not actually a social media type of person. He prints his e-mails off and it can be assumed that whatever appears on his Twitter account is not posted by him.

All that is probably just as well because Farage is in the US again attending a fund raising dinner for Trump in Florida. He is the ‘special guest’ and those attending can pay to attend a ‘VIP reception’ with the boss of Reform UK.

He claimed earlier in the week that he would campaigning in the local elections and not in Westminster. There is indeed an election for a Congress representative in Florida on April 1st so perhaps Farage had a point

COVID 5 years on. The absences of Boris Johnson in the first months of 2020

Not a memory that most will wish to revisit but in 2020 Boris Johnson was Prime Minister as the COVID epidemic seized the country

In the crucial weeks before March (2020) Boris Johnson did not attend any of the five virus meetings held by Cobra, the emergency committee, in January and February and spent 12 days out of the public eye while on a ‘working’ holiday at (Chevening) in Kent.

Sunday Times 19th April

The reality is though that Johnson has a lifelong history of absence

James Griffin, then Professor of Classical Literature at Balliol…was tolerant of Boris’s absences and late or non-existent work

Sonia Purnell, Just Boris

Boris’s persistent absences meant that mistakes were made that a more meticulous editor might have avoided

Sonia Purnell on Johnson’s period as Editor of the Spectator

‘not for the first time..the cry went up: Where is Boris’.

Sonia Purnell on attempts to contact Johnson, Mayor of London, after the start of rioting in London on 6/7th August 2011

The Dimbleby Lecture: Before Gareth Southgate, when the BBC disinvited E P Thompson in 1981

Former England football manager Gareth Southgate has given the 2025 Dimbleby Lecture. Southgate may be controversial with Lee Anderson but that aside he is known as a thoughtful and erudite individual even if opinions on his footballing strategies may vary

BBC One – The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Sir Gareth Southgate

In 1981 the socialist historian and peace campaigner E P Thompson was invited to give the Dimbleby Lecture but was then disinvited by the BBC. His views on Britain’s nuclear policy were censored, which Thompson, long someone who had pointed out the narrow range of official views which found their way into mainstream media quite probably anticipated.

The lecture went ahead unofficially however at Worcester Guildhall and was published as a pamphlet, Beyond the Cold War.

Below is a brief extract (and a link to the full document)which might well sum up the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years on

History never happens as the actors plan or expect. It is the record of unintended consequences. Revolutions are made, manifestoes are issued, battles are won: but the outcome, twenty or thirty years on is always something that no-one willed and no-one expected. Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet, reflected in Dr Zhivago on the ‘indirect results’ of the Russian Revolution, ‘which have begun to make themselves felt, the fruits of fruits, the consequences of consequences’

https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113717.pdf?v=ab87222b5505d946095b42b5abf757ce

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has sent birthday wishes to cricketer and First Class Umpire John Holder who announced his retirement from the BBC’s Test Match Special’s Ask The Umpire feature in 2024.

Ask The Umpire a long standing part of TMS takes place in the lunch interval of at least one Home Test Match each summer. Holder answered listeners questions on Umpiring decisions. Given the complexity of the Laws of  Cricket there is always much to discuss.

Questions from BLF Organiser Keith Flett are a regular item each year. Holder provides knowledgeable answers while also grasping that they are not always entirely serious.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, John Holder’s knowledge will be much missed on Ask The Umpire. It is a sign of his knowledge and gravitas that he always deal with beard related questions in an entertaining way.

Below is a question from the 2022 Ask The Umpire

We asked if a player with a luxuriant beard had dived to take a catch but it wasn’t clear if the ball was grounded on TV replays would be a player be out if the ball was lodged in the beard and therefore not on the ground.

John Holder ruled that the beard was part of the player and under their control so the batsman would be not out as the ball would be grounded in the beard.

Wiki

John Holder (umpire) – Wikipedia

King Charles & Queen Camilla have been on an official visit to the Six Counties of Northern Ireland.

Given how touchy they are about all matters republican (think 30th January 1649) its not surprising they stopped off at the Friend at Hand whiskey shop , Commercial Court, Belfast.

Their experience was clearly enhanced by a whiskey expert with a magnificent beard

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy054lk45y7o

The Mirror (link below) has reported that Nigel Farage was absent from Prime Minister Questions on Wednesday, despite the hugely controversial issue of benefit cuts being on the agenda.

The report notes that Farage had recently told supporters of his Reform UK business that he would not be seen at Westminster much until the May local elections as he’d be on the campaign trail.

Unusually for Farage this was not a complete lie. He is on the campaign trail but he’s in the US as a guest speaker at fund raising dinner for Trump in Tallahassee which takes place on Thursday.

Representing Clacton on the world stage has never been done better

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/nigel-farage-skips-pmqs-local-34892328