You should see the pleasure which this whole thing gave my
wife. She is infinitely grateful to you for bringing all these
infamies to light, and sends you the enclosed twig of SHAMROCK, for
today is St Patrick’s day and we don’t know if you have any
there. There is also a SHAMROCK for Tussy.
Give my affectionate greetings to Moor , your Mama , Tussy and
Ellen.
Engels to Jenny Marx 19th March 1870
Lizzie Burns was Engels partner
Tussy, Marx’s daughter Eleanor
Moor- Karl Marx
Beard Liberation Front
17th March
Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT ASSEMBLY MEMBER GERRY CARROLL VOTED BEARD OF IRELAND 2025
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that competition for the Irish Beard of the Year 2025 has concluded with People Before Profit Northern Ireland Assembly member Gerry Carroll winning 39.3% of the 2,400 votes cast in the on-line poll. Actor Jamie Dornan came second with 29.5% of the votes
The 2017 winner was politician Colum Eastwood who bearded broadcaster William Crawley for the annual Award.
In 2018 the DUP’s Lee Reynolds shaved writer Dominic O’Reilly for the honour with Colum Eastwood in a steady third place.
In 2019 Lee Reynolds retained the title
The 2020 winner was Maynooth academic Peter Coles
In 2021 Aodhan Connolly shaved opponents to win the coveted title and he retained it in 2022 2023 and 2024
The BLF says that while traditionally a land of predominantly clean-shaven cultures, Ireland has in recent times become something of a centre for stylish and trendy beards.
Contenders for the title in 2025 include a diverse range of the hirsute- an academic, rugby player, political activists, a broadcaster, an actor
The campaigners say the poll is specifically about the impact the beard of an individual has made in Irish public life and no other factor.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, competition for the Beard of Ireland Award bristled again this year. Gerry Carroll’s beard without question adds heft and gravitas to his role in the Northern Ireland Assembly, a true example of Irish Socialist Beard Power.
Gerry Carroll Wiki
There were two preliminary Beard Off votes. The top two from each round went on to a Best Beard of Ireland vote
Beard of Ireland 2024
William Crawley, broadcaster
Gerry Carroll, politician
Jamison Gibson-Park, rugby player
Roy Keane, football pundit
Peter Coles, academic, Maynooth
Aodhán Connolly, Business Advocate
Colum Eastwood, politician
Jamie Dornan, actor
I’ve posted on this before but the issue is continuing to evolve. Sir Niall Ferguson is a right-wing historian and in 2025 co-founder of the University of Austin. The University is the kind of place where if you have a liberal let alone a left-wing thought you will be cancelled.
Ferguson has written some very good history in the past and you don’t need to agree with his politics to grasp that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niall_Ferguson
Most recently however he has been batting for Trump and Musk and in a quite widely syndicated article at the turn of the year he looked at the Vibe Shift. What does this term mean? In essence it just means the political mood but actually its specifically about being anti-Woke (which can mean anything). Its also about brand and image rather than a substantial material reality.
Its quite an interesting subject for historians to look at and situate historically. Not however Sir Niall who seems to be just cheerleading it
The vibe shift has gone from the world of the fashionistas to the world of four-star admirals by way of the tech bros and the Trump–Musk campaign. It began as a revulsion against pronouns and piercings; it is culminating in a global repudiation of the liberal international order that inspired two generations of Democrats.
Yale Law School is out. The world is going to look a lot more like Gotham City from here on.
Niall Ferguson on the Vibe Shift
This picture was taken (camera phones have improved in the last five years) in the Cock Tavern, Hackney on Sunday evening 15th March 2020. I was having a drink with my partner Megan.
COVID was rife in London at that time, and while we didn’t of course know what was about to happen there was a sense that dramatic measures were coming. Certainly we were already social distancing on that evening.
On Monday 16th March 2020 Boris Johnson urged people to avoid pubs, restaurants etc. On Friday March 20th he ordered the closure of all pubs. They did not reopen until July 4th 2020.
I left for Cardiff on 16th March 2020 and did not return to London until July 2020. In fact the first beer I had in a pub on my return was in the Cock, which I’m pleased to say is still thriving.
I suspect that most people reading this already know that when it comes to Reform UK the political vehicle owned by Nigel Farage absolutely nothing is as it appears.
On 15th March the Times carried an interview with Farage where he claimed that the vetting process for candidates was now more thorough. On the 16th March the Guardian carried a report about the individual who is now in charge of the vetting. He may of course be thorough but if the Guardian report is anything to go by may not be particularly inclined to reject those of a far right persuasion.
Will that matter to those minded to vote Reform UK. In some cases not, but in others it will. A pattern repeated over the last 50 years or so with far right and fascist parties that have on occasion done well in Elections
Farage says Reform is introducing more thorough vetting after the 2024 candidates list was riddled with former British National Party members, antisemites, antivaxers and assorted cranks.
Times 15th March 2025
A Reform UK general election candidate who said Hitler was “brilliant” at inspiring people and described Bashar al-Assad as “gentle by nature” is now in charge of the party’s vetting process.
Guardian 16th March 2025
16th March
Protest makes a difference
The protest at Borsetshire Water, backed by the Ambridge Socialist, was well attended and noisy. Its already got results with the Borchester Echo printing details of the financial affairs of the Company. Emma and Pat are planning further protests, although whether consulting a 188 ways to peacefully protest document will help is less clear
Brad and George
George has written to Emma from prison which has given the Professor the opportunity to praise the ‘ancient art of letter writing’. At least George didn’t use AI. Meanwhile Brad, having found he doesn’t have the hand/eye co-ordination to be a decent cricketer has agreed to be the Professor’s apprentice scorer at cricket matches
Demonising the Grundies
BBC reports from Ambridge have rarely been particularly favourable to the Grundys and currently Eddie is being made to look particularly tiresome. The Ambridge Socialist still reveres the memory of the late Joe Grundy
Akram and Khalil
More media comment has focused on the marking of Ramadan in Ambridge by Akram, Khalil, Azra and family. It’s actually a perfectly normal part of British life, just one that much of official society and media prefers to ignore.
Pink Wellies at the Dairy
The Pink Wellies were nice but post sewage the business is suffering and Helen is looking at a redundancy. Hopefully Emma and Susan are in a trade union, the BAFWU in this case.
Abattoir and Academies The Abattoir tour seems to have been successful, but for whom? Vince Casey probably and the privateers running the Academies very likely
On Friday one of Britain’s leading Fashionistas was at the Cheltenham races. They also own the far right political party Reform UK. It is reported they had a ‘small bet’ on the winner of one race but the actual purpose is revealed by the Sunday Times (16th March)
Also enjoying the £900-a-head hospitality at Cheltenham was Nick Candy, the former Tory donor who is now treasurer of Reform. Vatche Manoukian, a millionaire partner at the tech investment firm IMS Digital Ventures, was spied on the terrace behind Farage. Sources say other potential donors were present, including some who have given to the Conservatives in the past. Farage’s Cleeve View Box 6 would have cost between £27,000 and £45,000 depending on the number of guests he was entertaining.
Marxism & Education: the case of Karl Marx’s 1856 Speech to the People’s Paper
A couple of days I was involved in a social media campaign with a well known Arsenal fan, author and broadcaster. The occasion was some comments by well known Head Teacher Katharine Birbalsingh who was involved as she often is in a Culture War with the Government about education. She claimed Government policy is Marxist in favouring equality rather than equality of opportunity.
In fact as most large companies (at least in the UK and who haven’t had their heads turned by the far right rants of Musk) the two go together. Unless there is equality in recruitment and promotion, rather than the rule of clean shaven white men in suits, equality of opportunity will not exist.
None of that however is Marxist. It is arguably social democratic but it does not address questions of wealth and power.
There are alternative ways of looking at things. One might be that the outcome of education is to produce people who think critically about the world they live in and understand that to grasp what happens one needs to look beyond surface events.
Marx’s speech to a meeting of supporters of the Chartist People’s Paper in 1856 put the matter well. Marx gave the speech in German and he was not, reportedly, a great speaker anyway, so how many of those present (who would have included German emigres) understood it at the time we don’t know. It was however reprinted in English in the paper.
He draws clearly the difference between what is said to be happening and what is actually happening. For example:
In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it
He goes through a number of other examples. If education can produce students who look beyond what is said to the reality of what is taking place we may be on the way to a better world
The Speech (14th April 1856)
The so-called revolutions of 1848 were but poor incidents — small fractures and fissures in the dry crust of European society. However, they denounced the abyss. Beneath the apparently solid surface, they betrayed oceans of liquid matter, only needing expansion to rend into fragments continents of hard rock. Noisily and confusedly they proclaimed the emancipation of the Proletarian, i.e. the secret of the 19th century, and of the revolution of that century.
That social revolution, it is true, was no novelty invented in 1848. Steam, electricity, and the self-acting mule were revolutionists of a rather more dangerous character than even citizens Barbés, Raspail and Blanqui. But, although the atmosphere in which we live, weighs upon every one with a 20,000 lb. force, do you feel it? No more than European society before 1848 felt the revolutionary atmosphere enveloping and pressing it from all sides. There is one great fact, characteristic of this our 19th century, a fact which no party dares deny.
On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces, which no epoch of the former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman Empire. In our days, everything seems pregnant with its contrary: Machinery, gifted with the wonderful power of shortening and fructifying human labour, we behold starving and overworking it; The newfangled sources of wealth, by some strange weird spell, are turned into sources of want; The victories of art seem bought by the loss of character.
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to other men or to his own infamy. Even the pure light of science seems unable to shine but on the dark background of ignorance. All our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force.
This antagonism between modern industry and science on the one hand, modern misery and dissolution on the other hand; this antagonism between the productive powers and the social relations of our epoch is a fact, palpable, overwhelming, and not to be controverted. Some parties may wail over it; others may wish to get rid of modern arts, in order to get rid of modern conflicts. Or they may imagine that so signal a progress in industry wants to be completed by as signal a regress in politics. On our part, we do not mistake the shape of the shrewd spirit that continues to mark all these contradictions. We know that to work well the newfangled forces of society, they only want to be mastered by newfangled men — and such are the working men. They are as much the invention of modern time as machinery itself.
In the signs that bewilder the middle class, the aristocracy and the poor prophets of regression, we do recognise our brave friend, Robin Goodfellow, [1] the old mole that can work in the earth so fast, that worthy pioneer — the Revolution. The English working men are the firstborn sons of modern industry. They will then, certainly, not be the last in aiding the social revolution produced by that industry, a revolution, which means the emancipation of their own class all over the world, which is as universal as capital-rule and wages-slavery. I know the heroic struggles the English working class have gone through since the middle of the last century — struggles less glorious, because they are shrouded in obscurity, and burked by the middleclass historian. To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the middle ages, in Germany, a secret tribunal, called the “Vehmgericht.” [2] If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the “Vehm.” All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross.
History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian.
Beard Liberation Front
15th March
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the final weekend of the 2025 Six Nations Rugby its trial of a new system of Beard Bonus points is concluding.
England lead the Beard Bonus Points table but only by a whisker from Ireland and Scotland
Beard Bonus Points Table after four games
England 4
Ireland 3
Scotland 3
France 0
Italy 0
Wales 0
In 2025 a winning team will get a bonus point for scoring four or more tries. A losing team will get a bonus point on the same basis and a further bonus point if they lose by less than seven points.
The campaigners say that in each game a Beard Bonus Point will be awarded to teams that field at least 50% of players with facial hair across 80 minutes.
A final tally of Beard Bonus Points will be issued on March 15th with the final round of games
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, there is no question that Beard Power is important in men’s rugby and the Beard Bonus Points can be a key indicator of the winner of the Six Nations 2025
It’s five years this week since Private Eye published an analysis of the financial affairs of the ‘crafty brewer’ Brewdog. The brewer and pub company last made a pre-tax profit in 2019 of £1.1m. Its most recent results in October 2024 showed a £59m loss albeit on increased turnover
The nub of the Eye’s analysis was contained in these sentences
‘it is not suggested that any of these transactions are illegal or improper. The question is whether they are appropriate for a company with 100,000 other shareholders’
Of interest it notes that while a profit of £3.8m was made in 2016 this had reduced to £1.4m in 2017 and by 2018 had become a pre-tax loss of £576,000
It also notes:
When the private equity deal with TSG was announced in April 2017, it was stated to have involved a total of £213m, including £100m for new shares to fund Brewdog. The normal private equity playbook would look for an exit by sale or listing within five years
The Eye analysis focuses on a Company named JBW77 that appears to be linked to Brewdog founder James Watt and various holdings, transactions and deals that it has been involved in. As a union officer that deals with very large companies (which Brewdog is not) I’m not sure there is anything hugely unusual about it.
The issue of course lies between how Brewdog markets itself, as a sort of rebel against the traditional beer industry, and the reality of the business it carries on which might well be described as traditional.
In fact Brewdog has just appointed its second CEO in a year as the replacement for James Watt has departed.
The issue is surely whether, particularly given current global market conditions, and IPO is on the cards or alternatively whether there any buyers interested in taking it on
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