The Bookseller has published its list of the 50 best selling books of 2024.
Rory Stewart’s Politics on the Edge is at No.28, with 168, 856 copies
Miranda Hart’s I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You is at No. 40 with 143,700 copies
Boris Johnson’s Unleashed is at No.45 with 138,940 copies
Johnson received a huge advance for the book with the publishers expecting it would be a 2024 version of Prince Harry’s Spare which sold 450,000 copies in its first week (Johnson sold 42,000)
If some reason you want a copy it can be found widely remaindered at half price or less
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that prejudice against beard wearers is likely to be at the root of the dismissal of Everton FC manager Sean Dyche on Thursday evening.
While Everton have a poor Premiership record this season so far, Dyche has kept the club in the Premiership for the last two seasons under the most difficult of circumstances.
The campaigners say that serious questions must be asked about Everton’s new owners the Friedkin Group and what their policy is on hirsute managers. To dismiss one of the most well known Managerial beards in football in such circumstances just before a Cup Tie raises serious questions
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we know that Sean Dyche was far from universally popular with Everton fans. Even so his combination of a well crafted goatee beard and gravel laden voice was the personification of football gravitas in the technical area.
Its reported that Jay Shah the new Chair of the ICC plans to meet those who run cricket in India, Australia and England with a view to looking at how global Test cricket is run in future and who plays who.
One plan seems to be a two tier system where those teams are in the top division and others in a second division. The issue is whether this would be permanent or a relegation and promotion system would operate.
It sounds rather like the football European Super League which was mooted a couple of years ago but did not proceed.
As Michael Atherton has argued in the Times (8th January) it would be a ‘cosy anti-competitive world, beloved of franchise and private equity’. It would be a spectacle no longer the classic ebb and flow of cricket.
Atherton makes another point. Namely that what Shah is looking at already up to a point de facto exists. India, Australia and England already play each other more frequently than other Test playing nations. To illustrate the point is a graphic showing that Joe Root has played 152 Tests in his career out of which 64 have been against India or Australia
Peter Cook the satirist and major figure in Private Eye (amongst many other things) died too young at 57 on 9th January 1995. The BBC has placed a number of the Not Only But Also programmes he did with Dudley Moore on the IPlayer.
What will perhaps not be said on the anniversary of Cook’s death is that he was a Spurs fan and as Tariq Ali notes in his new volume of memoirs You Can’t Please All a conservative anarchist with the emphasis on the second word.
That combination was perhaps what led Cook to appear at a Spurs Against the Nazis football tournament held at Down Lane Recreation Ground in Tottenham (a few minutes from the Spurs ground) on 28th October 1978. Although I long time Tottenham resident and active supporter of Spurs Against the Nazis I wasn’t there that day, being otherwise engaged doing a postgraduate teacher training course in Birmingham.
Reportedly Cook was in goal for some of the time (cigarette firmly in mouth) and a team from Tottenham Bus Garage won the day.
You can Google a picture of Cook wearing a Spurs Against the Nazis T-Shirt but I havent used it here for copyright reasons
James Watt was until recently in charge of Brewdog and still retains a seat on the Board. The brewer and pub chain has had persistent issues with employee relations and notably it still does not recognise a trade union.
One thing that the trade union movement fought for as far back as the late nineteenth century was the 8 hour day. That is to say 8 hours work, 8 hours leisure, 8 hours rest. The fight of course continues because long work hours cultures still exist and the battle for the right to disconnect from work remains an important one.
James Watt has a different view. Posting a video on Insta he has noted:
“I think the whole concept of work-life balance was invented by people who hate the work that they do.
Watt believes in work-life integration (he says) which means you are never not working.
Meanwhile people can take pride in their work and do it well without feeling they need to be doing it every waking hour. That will likely result in mistakes and poor work.
In short Watt has revealed one reason why Brewdog had employee relations issues when he was in charge and provided a compelling reason why it really does need to recognise a union.
More good news for Clacton. Farage paid c£189,000 for 24 hours work promoting gold bullion
Aside from his actual job as MP for Clacton, Nigel Farage continues to drone on as a commentator on Reform UK Ltd’s broadcasting arm GB News.
The Guardian has also revealed that he is acting as an ambassador for Direct Bullion. Although words like grift immediately come to mind with Farage in fact it is a perfectly legitimate company which promotes the sale of gold coins.
As Farage notes the value of gold has maintained and is capital gains tax free in the UK.
The Sunday Times (12th January) reports that Direct Bullion has offices in London, Miami and Los Angeles. The average customer is over 50 and often looking for pension security. The paper quotes a financial advisor with AJ Bell who notes that gold does well in a recession but is volatile in terms of its value. Between 2015 and 2020 the US Dollar was a better investment
The gold coins Farage promotes are produced by the Royal Mint and can be acquired direct from them at a current cost of £2,139 a coin.
The latest Parliamentary Register of MPs interests shows that Farage was paid £189,000 for 4 hours work a month promoting Direct Bullion from July-December. The sum also included a back payment for work before July 2024.
There are one or two problems. Jaywick in the Clacton Constituency is one of the most deprived areas of the UK whose residents are unlikely to have a few thousand quid spare to buy gold coins. Secondly you can’t buy a pint in Wetherspoons with one.
Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social
Beard Friendly Pub* of the Year 2025 Four Finalists announced
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the four Finalists in the annual vote for the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year have been decided after on-line polls
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.
*the vote also covers 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 be declared on 15th January
The Final Vote is pinned on Twitter @kmflett Because of known issues with Twitter, votes can also be posted in response to this post as an alternative
The festive season here ends tomorrow. Schorlemmer will be re- turning to Manchester, and then it’s back to the grindstone. I am looking forward to it; things were really getting too much
Engels had retired and was living in Regents Park Road
Schorlemmer was Professor of Organic Chemistry at Manchester and one of thirteen people present at Marx’ funeral
You wouldn’t know it from all those who spend their time defending British traditions but Wednesday 7th January is Distaff Day. The distaff is part of the spinning wheel and the day marks the return of women’s work after Christmas (it might be thought that women were quite busy during that period too).
It falls the day after Epiphany which is 6th January. As that was on Tuesday in 2026 the traditional day for men to return to work, Plough Monday, is on 12th January this year.
Of course in the neo-liberal world of 2026 the idea of people taking a break for the full twelve days of Christmas is regarded with great concern by some. The Times pondered in 2025 why people had not returned on 2nd January and even worse than that if they had returned they might be *working from home*.
CLR James talks to Stuart Hall, about cricket, Trotsky, the Black Jacobins…
This is a brief extract from a transcript of a TV programme made by the BBC in 1976 and then shamefully not used. The programme was a lengthy discussion between CLR James and Stuart Hall. There is a link to the whole transcript below (you may need to register-free). CLR James was the author of Beyond a Boundary (1963) which John Arlott thought was the greatest book on cricket ever. The link that James made between politics, history and cricket is far too little known
Is it in that period when you are watching and writing reports that you first come to see cricket as something really important in terms of the whole historical presence of the West Indies?
No. No. I had always seen cricket in a manner beyond the ordinary. Chiefly in the writings of C.B. Fry,
who to this day I know as one of the finest nonintellectual writers of the twentieth century. He analyzed cricket with an insight and a severity and yet with a breadth of view that you don’t find normally. I had been trained on him. I had been brought up on his books. Then I played cricket in Trinidad, where we all played together. I was not an international cricketer, but I used to play with Constantine, and Wild, Cipriani, and the rest used to play with him.
Then I come here and I get mixed up with cricket in the Lancashire League. On a morning, a Saturday morning in Lancashire League cricket in Nelson, there would be 10,000 people present; there were many Lancashire League matches that were far more interesting and important than county matches. So I got into that, and I got into county cricket reporting for The Guardian, reporting test matches.
