This picture of a too well-known far right politician and grifter was taken at the Cheltenham Festival on the 14th March 2025.
The fashion sense is admirable…
The fashionista was in fact entertaining guests in a private box with a view to obtaining donations to a far right political party they own
The Guardian has reported an issue reported to the Commons authorities of payments and assistance to Nigel Farage, the MP for Clacton, which have not it says been registered in the Parliamentary process, either at all or correctly.
Farage has reportedly responded that he is not an accountant (and neither am I, although I do represent accountants as a union officer..)
The wider point (see below) is that while Farage is meant to be the MP for Clacton he spent over three months travelling to or in the US in 2024. Some of this may have been before his election in July 2024 but it does suggest that his interests and focus are far from the Essex seafront
US filings show that Capital HQ, run by Alexandra Preate, helped Farage on more than 100 days in 2024 with organising speaking engagements, media appearances, political activities and travel in the US.
Five Years Ago tonight Jeremy Corbyn, then still just about Labour leader, gave the Bernie Grant Memorial lecture at the Bernie Grant Centre in central Tottenham.
Roger McKenzie was the compere, Linton Kwesi Johnson read a poem and the local MP David Lammy (!) also spoke. This was before he discovered that he was not friendly with Jeremy Corbyn of course.
The event was remarkable for another reason. It was held as COVID spread in London. I had assumed it would be called off (as the Spurs game that weekend had been). In fact it went ahead and it was of course packed.
Jeremy Corbyn began his speech by warning about COVID and demonstrating the then idea of elbow bumps rather than handshakes. It wasn’t of course an effective strategy but he demonstrated far more awareness and concern than his then opposite number Prime Minister Boris Johnson
An interesting meme I appropriated from BlueSky feeds into an historic debate about the protest crowd or the mob. Both might throw projectiles, the issue is, is it a collective endeavour or an individual act? See also perhaps Charles Tilly’s Repertoire of Contention
I asked an AI tool to write a Fletter in the style I might use in writing to the Guardian.
The result is below. For those not particularly familiar with my efforts it mentions Chartism, Marxism and beards. So broadly in the right area.
However.. it goes on (and on) a bit and the language is what might be described as rather less than to the point.
Fletters are entirely my own work and always will be of course
13 March 2025
To the Editor, The Guardian
Dear Sir or Madam,
Your recent coverage of the government’s latest economic measures—or, perhaps more accurately, their lack thereof—brings to mind the sage observation of the 19th-century Chartist leader Ernest Jones: “Wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit.” Plus ça change, as they say. In an age where neoliberal dogma still clings to Westminster like damp rot to a Victorian terrace, one might hope for a flicker of radical imagination. Instead, we are served reheated platitudes about “tightening belts” while the City feasts unabated.
I note, too, the accompanying photograph of a clean-shaven chancellor, a visual reminder of the persistent pogonophobia afflicting our political class. The Beard Liberation Front, of which I am a longstanding member, has long argued that facial hair correlates with a certain independent-mindedness—a quality conspicuously absent from this latest fiscal fudge. Perhaps it’s time for a hirsute revolution, if not in policy, then at least in appearance. History, after all, favors the bearded: think Marx, Engels, or even Keir Hardie, whose whiskers surely bristled at lesser betrayals than these.
Yours faithfully,
Keith Flett
The current JD Wetherspoon Spring Beer Festival which runs until 16th March is marking International Women’s Day with 30 beers brewed by Brewsters.
Its a welcome idea but CAMRA got there a long time ago. A media view of CAMRA is that its basically blokes with beard and bellies (not even slightly like me) but part of the beerlist for the 8-10th March 1995 London Drinker Beer Festival highlights an IWD focus.
The festival was held at the Camden Centre opposite St Pancras Station in central London and continued until recent times when Camden decided the building needed to be modernised.
The full list can be found in the March 1995 edition of the London Drinker magazine
This in Seven Sisters Rd near to the Rail station entrance should wish to view it before it disappears
Parliament passed the Employment Rights Bill on 13th March by 333 votes to 100.
Its a welcome measure, although as ever more could have been done, and changes are not likely to happen in practice until the autumn of 2026. Again it could have been quicker in some cases.
Even so its fared better than New Labour’s Employment Relations Bill which didnt reach the Statute Book until July 1999 (from May 1997) and was less extensive than the current measure. Although I did end up with a document certifying me as a union official…
The Tories who turned up voted against of course as did Farage the only one of the four Reform MPs present
List of those voting
I posted this five years ago on 13th March 2020.
On the anniversary of COVID being recognised as a pandemic I’m re-posting it.
Michael Rosen tweeted at the time (13th March 2020):
The reason why the UK is not doing what other countries are doing is because we know more about everything than foreigners.
Michael Rosen almost certainly had contracted COVID by this time underlining Boris Johnson’s disgraceful (at best) lack of action five years ago. His eventual decision to order a lockdown on 23rd March 2020 was arguably at least a week too late.
Whatever one thinks of Boris Johnson’s statements on the coronavirus they are notable for how they differ from more or less every other European country. One senses a perspective of Podsnappery (a character in Charles Dickens, Our Mutual Friend) who would dismiss ‘Other Countries’ and being ‘Not English!’
Mr Podsnap’s world was not a very large world, morally; no, nor even geographically: seeing that although his business was sustained upon commerce with other countries, he considered other countries, with that important reservation, a mistake, and of their manners and customs would conclusively observe, ‘Not English!’
Monty Python’s Dead Parrot Sketch was first performed on BBC2 on 7th December 1969
At this distance the cultural reference may well have been forgotten or never known about
Fortunately Wiki can explain
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Parrot_sketch
The bird at issue in 1969 was a Norwegian Blue…
View more by category: Uncategorized (14,117). .
