Kmflett's Blog

The region of north-east France that produces the world’s finest champagne has seen its worst sales for two decades, discounting the 2020 pandemic.. 270 million bottles have been despatched this year compared to 325 million in 2022.

David Chatillon who represents the Union of Champagne Houses which covers Bollinger, Moet & Chandon etc blamed global customer gloom including Ukraine, Gaza and French political instability and noted the ‘world is not in a party mood’.

Price rises of up to 40% may not have helped.

And for the rest of us there is always Prosecco

Report, Times 24th December 2024

Drove to Chesterfield and found an absolute mass of boxes of beautiful toys from the French CGT, worth tens of thousands of pounds,enough to give every miner’s child two toys..went to the club and began talking to people about calling a general strike in Chesterfield..talked to some of the French CGT| people who were charming. They gave me a lovely medallion ‘Solidarite Mineurs Britanniques which I shall put on a red ribbon and wear on my jacket

Tony Benn, Diary 21^st December 1982

Tony Benn (1925-2014) was MP for Chesterfield (1984-2001)

The Miners Strike ran from March 1984 to March 1985

Tony Benn’s Christmas Diaries

Tony Benn, who died in 2014,kept a very long running diary. Far from all of it is in the public domain but there is enough to get some sense of how a leading politician of the left spent Christmas from the 1960s through to the 2010s. It provides an interesting social history insight into Christmas’s that are still in living memory but very different to 2025.

Benn left an enduring legacy to the British Christmas. As Postmaster General in 1966 he promoted the introduction of Christmas postage stamps.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in that context Benn was something of a Christmas card sender himself.

On Saturday 12th December 1998 Benn wrote, ‘I stuck labels on the Christmas cards- a terribly time consuming job. We’re only sending a few hundred this year.

By Saturday 4th December 2004 Benn noted that he had ‘bought £100 worth of stamps…signed, stamped and posted well over 350 Christmas cards. However he added ‘I have a wonderful computerised system’.

On 25th December in the same year he received from Cherie Blair a signed copy of her book ‘To Tony who’s been an inspiration throughout my life’. The bearer of the gift had added that Cherie had told them ‘don’t tell my husband’..

The diary also contains (20th December 1992) Benn’s record that he decorated the Christmas tree ‘as best he could’ and then taken the children to a ‘pizza parlour’ in Chiswick.

There are other entries down the decades a fascinating mixture of the personal and political at Christmas

The Guardian, policing of protests & Love Me I’m a Liberal’ syndrome

For those unfamiliar Love Me I’m a Liberal is a song by the late US singer Phil Ochs which suggests that beneath at least some who profess to support radical causes lies a view that they should be kept firmly within bounds

It was this thought that came to mind when reading a piece by Daniel Boffey, apparently the chief reporter, in the Guardian about ‘two tier policing’ (24^th December). Two tier policing at least in current usage is part of the manufactured outrage narrative of the hard and far right.

Mr Boffey’s article shows no sign that he has ever been on a demonstration but that is not essential to write about them. People who organise protests and march on them can be spoken to. Except he hasn’t done that.

The core of the article is that a Freedom of Information request has found that out of 24 protests banned by the police in recent times 21 have been from the fascist right. To any anti-racist this is no great surprise. Such demonstrations are designed to intimidate and often end in drunken punch-ups.

Boffey takes the specific example of demonstrations held in London on 11^th November 2023. The right-wing media & Tory MPs had rebranded the occasion as ‘Remembrance Weekend’. In fact it was a Saturday, Remembrance Sunday was the following day.

Suella Braverman tried to ban a Palestinian march on the Saturday. The Met police refused. Braverman then gave (at least) a nod and a wink to hard right types. They duly turned up at the Cenotaph, drunk, and started fighting with the police. The Palestinian march went nowhere near, was never designed to and passed off peacefully.

All this has passed Boffey by.

I’m not in favour of bans on demonstrations, which I accept is a minority view. If the far right want to protest then its better by far to oppose them peacefully by mass mobilisations. The August riots provide good examples. Of course it doesn’t always work.

The other reason for opposing bans, and here Boffey really should have talked to the organisers of Palestinian protests in central London (they are easy to find and speak to) is that it’s the left who are mostly the focus of them.

There have been numerous protests on Gaza in central London since October 2023, many involving hundreds of thousands of people. They have not been weekly (more manufactured outrage) because organising protests of that size takes time and logistical effort. Every one of them has been faced with any manner of restrictions and demands from the Met Police, despite the fact that every one has been peaceful with small numbers of arrests, commensurate with any large gathering.

Anyway the Guardian does have people who write well with understanding about protests so let’s hope we hear from them in 2025

‘Protests that were not allowed’: does Britain have a two-tier policing problem? | Protest | The Guardian

Concern as Marmite is purged from 2024 Royal Warrant List

23^rd December

Concerns have been raised by the Marmite Defence League after Marmite was purged from the new 2024 list of Royal Warrants.

All existing Royal Warrants lapsed with the death of Queen Elizabeth 11 including that for Marmite. Existing Warrant holders and others were invited to apply for a Royal Warrant of King Charles and Queen Camilla.

The new Royal Warrant list has now emerged and Marmite is excluded

The Marmite Defence League holds no brief for the multinational Company that owns Marmite and understands that a key reason why Marmite has not been given a Royal Warrant is because of concerns about the sustainability agenda of Unilever

Nevertheless Marmite is an iconic brand and one which is both truly organic and healthy, something it might be thought would be appreciated by King Charles. 

Where we stand on Marmite

Marmite is a natural product deriving from brewer’s yeast. It is historically a by-product of brewing

It was ‘invented’ by a German scientist Justus von Liebig

Originally Marmite was derived from the Bass brewery in Burton on Trent.

Marmite is salty but also has some health enhancing elements to it including vitamins.

Its recent marketing focuses on a ‘love it or hate it’ element to Marmite, and it is a ‘which side are you on’ food.

Organiser Keith Flett said, while Marmite or a similar product is manufactured and eaten elsewhere in the world it is a quintessentially British item associated with the country’s brewing heritage. It is concerning that its Royal Warrant has been purged.

Boris Johnson’s Unleashed ‘memoir’. There’s no success like failure

Boris Johnson’s memoir officially called Unleashed was released on 10th October 2024 and sold just under 43,000 in its first week making it the best-selling ‘non-fiction’ hardback in that week. Decent sales but well below the memoirs of Thatcher and Blair.

In its second week sales declined by 62% and while the book retained top slot it was just 133 copies ahead of Tim Spector’s The Food for Life Cookbook.

Third week sales were 8,370 and the book was down to 4th in the best sellers list. Top slot was some drivel from Jeremy Clarkson. Johnson was reportedly booted off Channel 4’s US Election Night programme on 5th November for repeatedly trying to plug the book

Johnson was paid a reported £2 million suggesting that the publishers Harper Collins expected it to be a Christmas best seller akin to Prince Harry’s memoir which sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

The Top 50 best selling books for 2024 list is now out (Sunday Times 22^nd December) and Johnson’s book is not in it. It has sold 110,000 copies spending nine weeks in the best seller lists leaving it around 7,000 copies short of making the Top 50. In short the book like Johnson himself is a dud.

There’s no success like failure

December 22nd

Like so much else about Boris Johnson his beard and claim to be Santa is fake

Christmas Menu, The Farmers Dog
Available 2nd to 24th December – £40 for three courses
Starters:
Scotch broth, crispy kale
Smoked ham & turkey terrine, pear chutney
Baked Brie, Cumberland sauce
All with Cotswold sourdough
Mains:
Turkey breast, pigs in blankets, sage & onion stuffing, roast potatoes
Pan Haggerty, mushrooms, Jerusalem artichokes, pickled apple
12 hour slow cooked beef, horseradish mash, crispy onions, Hawkstone Black gravy
All with seasonal veg
Desserts:
Beauvale Blue cheese, quince jelly, crackers, honey walnuts
Warm treacle tart, whisky mascarpone, apple syrup
Damson bread & butter pudding, Cotswold ice cream

Wetherspoons

Prices vary by location but unlikely to be more than £15 for a main Christmas meal & alcoholic drink(KF)

No need to book, just turn up and enjoy the festive offering.

The Christmas menu will be available from Wednesday 13 November until Tuesday 31 December (excluding Christmas Day).

Festive meals for 2024 include the ever-popular dish of sliced turkey breast and winter vegetables.

Turkey
Enjoy four slices of turkey breast, with a pork, apricot & cranberry stuffing, roasted Chantenay carrots and parsnips, Maris Piper mash, two pigs-in-blankets, peas, cranberry sauce and gravy.

This meal, together with all the festive meals and Deli Deals^®, includes a drink* (soft or alcoholic).

Following the huge success of the big cheese burger (Brie slices, topped with two halloumi fries and blue cheese dip on the side, with chips – and a choice of patties), available once again this year, a NEW 11″ big cheese pizza has also been added, to the festive menu.

Cheesemas
Also served as a small-plate 8″ big cheese pizza option, both pizzas are topped with mozzarella, Brie, Cheddar cheese, blue cheese sauce and rocket, for a truly indulgent ‘cheesemas’ feast.

If you are a true cheese-lover, check out the Christmas menu small-plate options and the big cheese chips – with Brie, Cheddar cheese, mozzarella cheese and blue cheese dip.

Wetherspoon’s Brie & bacon burger, as well as the chicken & stuffing burger, has also been joined on the menu by the NEW vegan five gold rings burger.

Vegan
The vegan option comprises a Beyond Meat® plant-based patty, BBQ sauce, iceberg lettuce, tomato and red onion, topped with five onion rings.

Deli Deals^®
All of the Deli Deals^® (which are chicken, stuffing, bacon & cranberry panini, Brie & cranberry panini, small southern-fried chicken & stuffing wrap and southern-fried chicken & stuffing wrap) include a drink* (soft or alcoholic) and can be ordered with additional side dishes.

Sweet Treat
Finish off your Christmas meal with a sweet festive treat of a cookies & cream blondie.
This gooey, warm white chocolate brownie is packed with white chocolate and crushed cookie pieces, served with vanilla ice cream and more chocolate cookie crumbs.

CAMPAIGN FOR REAL SANTAS

Organised by the Beard Liberation Front

18th December

Contact Keith Flett @keithbeard.bsky.social

CAMPAIGN FOR REAL SANTAS WARNS ON CHRISTMAS FAKES

The Campaign for Real Santas, which campaigns for Santas to have genuine organic or knitted beards, has warned on Christmas Fakes after self styled MP for Clacton Nigel Farage posted a picture on Twitter showing himself with an absurd false bearded and fake Santa

The Campaign says that the Santa in the picture is about as genuine as the MP he is greeting, that is not at all.

The Campaign for Real Santas believes that only Santas with genuine, organic or knitted beards should be deputies for Santa, world famous for his organic beard, in the run up to Xmas

CFRS organiser Keith Flett said, the Real Santa is popularly supposed to have a naughty and nice list when it comes to Christmas presents and Farage will be at the top of the naughty list. He stand opposed to all the things that Santa stands.