Kmflett's Blog

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…

House of Commons July 2024

Its a structural feature of any organisation where Nigel Farage is the boss that sooner or later a bust up occurs. Beyond the current Reform debacle there are wider questions. In 1961 the BBC ran a series or programmes critical of what was then the new left. The historian E P Thompson proposed a response which the BBC declined. He published it anyway as the Segregation of Dissent. His point was that Parliamentary politics had quite narrow and strictly policed boundaries.

Views beyond the boundary got little coverage. Reform, on issues like immigration, is part, albeit a hard right part, of an official consensus. After the purge of Mr Lowe Reform now has the same number of MPs as the Greens and Plaid and one less than the Independent Group. We should now hear a lot less from Messrs Farage, Anderson and Tice and a good deal more from the Greens and the wider political left including the left Independent MPs and Plaid.

The 1990 London Drinker beer festival took place 35 years ago this week (14-16 March 1990) at the Camden Centre in central London opposite St Pancras Station.

I posted the cask beer list a few days ago but the above is reminder that beer festivals were and are about more than just British beer. The foreign beer list is limited compared to what it became as is the cider and perry list, The food menu is a reminder that the festival wasn’t just about good beer but also good food, although of course this was before the rise in vegan, vegetarian diets, and for that matter pescatarian diets as well.

Laura Hadland has a book coming out from CAMRA shortly celebrating the tradition of beer festivals and as someone who has been attending them for 50 years I will certainly be reading it with interest.

It is perhaps a sobering thought that anyone old enough to have attended the 1990 festival (I was of course there), that is 18 years or older, will now be somewhere in their mid-50s at the youngest end.

Traditions are invented and require renewal..

When even Alan Tichmarsh suggests that eating avocado should be swerved we can sense that this particular culture war has entered the mainstream

There are indeed good reasons to avoid the avocado. See the Telegraph from 2023

The Times devoted an entire Editorial to Avocado eating on 11th March 2025. It would clearly like to say that eating avocado is something only done by the Woke and so its not approved of. The problem is, its letters page has carried several letters about how to open an avocado without cutting yourself.. The Times reluctantly concedes that an ‘occasional naughty munch’ of an avocado is acceptable.

Where does it think this naughty munching is going on?

‘Distressed wooden dining tables from Camden to gentrified parts of Hackney..’

And so a new chapter in the Avocado Culture War opens

Wetherspoons International Women’s Day Beer Festival

Wetherspoons are the marmite of pub companies largely due to the activities of founder Tim Martin.

I’m not here to defend him or his right-wing views on Brexit, but note he does at least pay his taxes.

Wetherspoons of course also does not recognise a trade union. It should do but its also worth noting that union recognition in the pub chain sector is, how shall we say, not as good as it could be. That’s not a get out for Martin though.

Spoons started out in Haringey in 1979 (Muswell Hill) and as a resident of the North London Borough I knew Martin when his main business objective was to open lots of pubs in, er, Haringey where he lived (and one in Hackney which is still open unlike most of the Haringey ones). He always had robust views but not so much on the right as now. Still material being determines consciousness.

Anyway this week is Spoons regular Spring beer festival (until March 16^th). There is a list of 30 cask beers sold at reasonable (some might say too reasonable) prices.

I stopped by at lunchtime on Tuesday (my brother in law an inveterate Spoons visitor)rang. As he was in my local Spoons, 5 minutes’ walk away, Megan my partner and myself joined him for lunch.

The festival beer list is perhaps not what you might expect. All of the thirty beers have been produced not by a bloke with a beard but by Brewsters. I suspect it may be a first but even if isn’t its worth a modest cheer as Spoons have 800 pubs across the UK doing this.

I had a pint of a 4.5% pale from a Canadian brewery (somewhat topical) brewed by a Canadian Brewster at the Hook Norton brewery. A decent lunch time pint, £1.99. I’m a very infrequent Spoons visitor these days preferring independent bars but even if we accept that Martin is piggy backing on something that is hardly his cause, the exposure of Wetherspoons customers to beer produced by female brewers is worth a nod…

Unsurprisingly ‘historically’ is a cancelled word for Trump & Musk. The past is a foreign country….

The Times has published a full page investigation into what Liz Truss has been up to since her downfall as PM in October 2022 & her election defeat in July 2024.

Liz Truss won’t speak to the Times which she thinks is part of the deep State, so the figures are unverified.

£8000 a month in public funds to run her private office (she has a full time press secretary). Estimated to now be £225,000 in total

Her book Ten Years to Save the West has sold 7,700 copies in total, so not a significant source of income

In the 18 months after she left Downing St Truss recieved £348,533 in outside earnings and £107, 504 in donations

There’s no success like failure as Bob Dylan reminded us..

The London Drinker Beer Festival was organised by the London branches of CAMRA and took place in March each year at the Camden Centre in central London opposite Kings Cross station. It no longer runs not because of lack of demand (it was always packed) but because Camden decided to do something else with the hall,

The beer list for the festival is above. Its good to see that at least some of the breweries are still going. There are a few stronger beers and some broadening of styles beyond mild and bitter reflecting the influence of CAMRA.

Foreign beer and home cooked food were in a side hall

And yes I attended every London Drinker Beer Festival….