Prince William, who according to the BBC, is a lifelong Aston Villa fan, has been pictured having a drink with some Villa fans at Birmingham New St Wetherspoons before they set off for the game with Everton on 15th January.
Villa won 1-0 as new (& old) Everton manager David Moyes failed to make an immediate difference.
The BBC report that the Prince drank Bulmers cider which will have done his beard no good at all.
It does however suggest that Wetherspoons & Sir Tim Martin may soon be by Royal Appointment.
A point of note for future social historians of Britain at least, and a pity the Prince did back traditional British craft brewing by having a pint of cask ale. There were six cask ales on, including two porters
Brooks in Pall Mall, central London, is one of the oldest gentlemen’s clubs in the world, and one of the few in the UK that still refuses to have women as members.
The Guardian (link below) has the story that last month Nigel Farage attended the launch of a climate denial group at the club.
Farage was the ‘guest of honour’ at the UK launch of Heartland a US based group of climate deniers that is linked with Trump and big oil companies.
Liz Truss was also in attendance, presumably signed in as a guest
The UK branch is headed by former UKIP boss Lois Perry who, the report notes, has called the climate emergency a ‘scam’
Since Farage is due in Washington at the end of the week for Trump’s crowning perhaps he will also stop by Los Angeles to admire the devastation caused by fires there as well.
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
Tottenham Win Trophy. Antwerp Arms voted Beard Friendly Pub of the Year
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the Antwerp Arms Pub in Tottenham has been voted the most Beard Friendly Pub of the Year in the annual vote.
There were four Finalists in the annual vote for the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year.
The Antwerp took 38.6% of the 15,000 votes cast in the on-line final. 2024 winner Tom’s Tap and Brew in Crewe took 35.1%.
The Antwerp is a community focused pub near to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium now run by local Tottenham brewery Redemption which is just a few minutes walk from the pub
In Round One (London) North triumphed over South with the Antwerp Arms N17 winning the vote and the Cock Tavern E8 second. For Round Two (Rest of the Country) the Indian Brewery Tap topped the poll with Tom’s Tap and Brew second
For 2025 the BLF has looked again to a focus on beard friendly pubs with a strong community presence.
BLF Inspectors drew up a shortlist comprised of pubs which are independently owned, inclusive of the communities in which they are located, have a welcoming presence and sell good beer, broadly defined
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, its tough times for hospitality particularly in January and tough times for pub goers too as the cost of living crisis continues. The Beard Friendly Pub of the Year vote aims to encourage people to stop by their local and engage in some hirsute socialising.
He continued, we congratulate the Antwerp, winning the coveted award at the first attempt. Let’s face it Tottenham needs a trophy, and this may bring some good luck to Spurs….
*the vote also covered bars, taprooms and bottle shops
There were two preliminary rounds of voting with the top two in each round going to a final vote on the weekend of 11th & 12th January. The winner is declared on 15th January
MI5 files on 1966 seaman’s strike released at National Archives. The report(13 June 1966)is from Thistlethwaite MI5 link to the Labour Government. However protocol applied. The discussion had to wait for the Queen’s birthday parade before the report could be discussed.
Wigg was the Labour Paymaster General. (Bert) Ramelson was the recently appointed industrial organiser of the Communist Party. Sir Burke Trend was the Cabinet Secretary.
The 1966 seamen’s strike was according to Wilson run by a tightly knit group of politically motivated men. MI5 reports suggest this wasn’t quite the case..
The Masters snooker is taking place at Alexandra Palace in North London. Between 1913 and 1919 Ho Chi Minh was in London working as a waiter in a West Ealing pub. At some point he lived in Crouch End near Ally Pally. The picture shows him playing snooker on a visit to China in the 1960s
Its ten years since the US socialist and cricket fan Mike Marqusee died far too young at 61.
He deserves to be remembered not least for his writing on cricket and on Bob Dylan (see link below for details).
I knew him over many years. First as a socialist in Haringey (he later defected to Hackney). In the 1980s I and others worked with him on various left-wing causes. He was in the Labour Party (Labour Briefing) and we were not but it made no difference. The key thing was to try and do something about changing the world.
Later I platformed him as a speaker on several occasions. One memorable one was the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, where he addressed a packed socialist history seminar on Bob Dylan’s politics. It was an electric occasion which is not always the case with academic seminars…
His work on Dylan, cricket and much else stands the test of time, a lasting contribution to our understanding of the world and what needs to be done to change.
YouGov have produced their first state of the parties poll since July 2024.
It shows:
Labour 26%
Reform UK Ltd 25%
Tories 22%
The problem is that YouGov polls (along with others) don’t just have a margin of error but an accuracy problem
The YouGov poll on 3rd July 2024 together with the actual Election result on 4th July
Labour 39%- 33.7%
Tories 22%-23.7%
Reform UK Ltd 15%-14.3%
There is plenty of commentary on the exaggerated Labour lead and why this was but it gave the wider impression that there would be a Labour landslide (which there was).
The January 14th 2025 poll is being spun as showing Reform UK Ltd as the main challenger to Labour.
In reality however accurate the polls the striking thing is that in July 2024 the two main parties took 57% of the vote between them. The January 2025 poll shows this at 48%. In the 1959 General Election as a benchmark Labour and the Tories took 93% of the vote between them.
The numbers either not voting or not opting for either Labour or Tory is at historically high levels. Farage is picking up on this and so, to a lesser extent, is the left (mostly outside Labour).
Meanwhile a reminder of why polling-Psephology is really Ephology
It is an exercise not in assessing opinion but rather trying to shape it. E P Thompson as long ago as 1959 called it Ephology
A psephologist is a man employed by the mass media to research into what people think the mass media has told them to think. An ephologist is a man employed by the ‘Observer’ or BBC to interpret the results of psephology and who makes an ephing good thing out of it
The graphic (Times 12th January) suggests one challenge to Test cricket- the increasing space taken in the cricket year by franchise competitions. There are 80 England and Wales First Class cricketers involved in franchise competitions in the December-February window.
The draft for the Pakistan Super League takes place this week and its likely some England players notably Hampshire captain James Vince will be picked. The ECB that runs cricket in England and Wales has threatened to bar players who are in summer franchise competitions..
The major threats to the future of Tests are however two fold. Firstly as Michael Atherton argued (Times 11th January) market forces are key. Players can earn far more in franchise cricket than Test and if forced to choose the latter may win out. Secondly as Lizzie Ammon argued in the same paper climate change is a major threat to the future of global cricket. Global cricket with players flying the globe on a regular basis has a massive carbon footprint
Liz Truss who apparently is still trying to promote her worst selling book, Ten Years To Save The West, has been attacking the ‘left-wing’ media in an interview with the Voice of America.
Truss thinks the UK media reports the wrong things and instead should report what she thinks is important.
In particular she has listed what she thinks is the left wing media which she says must be ‘fixed’:
The BBC
The Guardian
The Financial Times
The Times
This last may particularly disturb the paper’s owner Rupert Murdoch and Editor Tony Gallagher who it must be suspected will regard it as serious insult to be labelled left-wing.
Truss is currently a fan of Elon Musk’s version of free speech even though in the summer of 2024 he was tweeting about lettuce Liz.
