Liz Truss speaks at a Tory fringe & backs Herbert Morrison: socialism is what a Labour Government does’
Liz Truss has been speaking at a fringe event at the Tory Conference in Birmingham. It wasn’t that fringe because it was behind the security cordon and open to conference attendees only.
Even so Hall 5 at the ICC was reportedly packed-it holds 300 people- for a Q&A between Truss and a Telegraph journalist.
As might be expected Truss said a number of interesting things:
She backs Trump to win the US Presidency as the anti-Establishment candidate
She think Boris Johnson should not have been purged as Tory leader and thinks she would have done better than Sunak on July 4th
She notes that Electors in her former SW Norfolk Constituency did not want to elect a Labour MP but this took place by accident thanks to the intervention of Reform UK (who came third)
She argued that Britain is already ‘in socialism’ echoing the view of Herbert Morrison (Attlee’s Deputy in the 1945-51 Labour Government) that socialism is what a Labour Government does. Keir Starmer hasn’t used that line yet..
Finally Truss noted she hadn’t yet decided if she would stand again as an MP. In other words, she may be back…
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has paid tribute to musician Kris Kristofferson who has died aged 88.
While Kristofferson started out as clean shaven as his music grew in stature so he also grew a beard to add even more gravitas.
Kristofferson regularly featured on the ‘Beards That Are Loved’ list of the annual My Hairy Valentine Award announced in February each year.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, Kris Kristofferson’s impact on modern music has been exceptional and in recent decades his beard has been part of that impact
You might think that the last thing that the Tories grappling with their worst election result since at least 1906 and possibly 1832 is for Liz Truss to pop up at their Birmingham Conference.
However she will be in conversation on Monday with a Daily Telegraph journalist in Hall 5 at the ICC. It holds 300 people. Its behind the conference security cordon so it is officially a conference event…
I missed the original announcement at the end of August (see James Beeson in The Grocer) but thanks to the indefatigable Beer Guide London I note that at some point early in 2025 Brixton Brewery is to move production to Beavertown in Ponders End.
For those who think there is something of a difference between North and Sarf London its concerning. Both breweries are owned by global big beer outfit Heineken and such companies only real focus is the bottom line not where the beer is brewed or indeed the jobs of those that brew it.
The official reason is that Brixton want to expand production but can’t do so on their current site. They will reportedly maintain a facility for small batch brews in Brixton much as Camden, also based at Ponders End have with their original site.
Brixton branded beer brewed in Ponders End doesnt sound quite right but as above Big Beer really could not care less about that.
Russell Findlay was elected as the latest Scottish Tory leader on Saturday. He received 2,565 votes from the total Tory membership in Scotland of 6,941. Turnout was 60%.
The Tories are quite secretive about membership numbers but the 2020 figure is thought to have been 10,911. Figures in the House of Commons Library suggest that Scottish Tory membership numbers are typically 12% of the UK total which would put the current UK total at around 75,000. That is likely an understatement but possibly not a huge one
George Grundy’s sentencing hearing has been fixed for 10th October. He is unlikely to find Judge WhoHe who hands out draconian sentences to environmental protesters. His likely fate has however split the Ambridge ruling class. Oliver, who may be one of the last patrician Tories left in Britain, has provided a character reference. So too has Pat Archer, which will not go down well with the rest of the Ambridge ruling dynasty.
The Ambridge Socialist continues to offer unconditional but critical solidarity
Flower & Produce. Much Ado About Nothing
Kenton’s apple pie was judged the best at the Flower and Produce Show after most of the other entrants ended up on the floor due to a collapsed table. Who sabotaged the table? Lynda Snell who had failed to read the instructions on how to put it up
Clarrie Grundy
Clarrie is away looking after a sick relative. She hasn’t been heard of on the Archers since February 2024. We need more not less Grundys
Cricket Club Dinner
Shires was the drink of choice at the cricket club dinner hosted by Ambridge after they rather surprisingly topped the league. It was certainly a more progressive occasion than the Hunt Ball
Charging Station Café bid
Fallon has presented her bid to run the Charging Station café to a secretive committee. In reality Justin will probably decide and Fallon who swap one dodgy employer for another
Lymeswold cheese was a mild soft blue cheese dreamt up by the Milk Marketing Board in 1982. There were two reasons. Firstly to use up a surplus of milk. Secondly to combat the rise of Brie & Camembert cheese in the UK, now common in supermarkets but 40 years ago much less so.
The cheese was launched at the Savoy in London by Tory Minister Peter Walker in 1982. Unfortunately demand far exceeded the amount that could be produced and after 10 years the cheese ceased production.
Dominic Sandbrook (Times 28th Sept) provides a brief history of cheese focusing on Cheshire and Stilton, righly tying the rise of both-as well as cheddar- to the rise of market capitalism.
Lymeswold however was a failure of market capitalism, although it was said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite cheese. Even here contradictions abounded. Churchill’s favourite cheese was Gruyere.
2024 Conker Season: conkers are NOT in short supply, nor do they only last a week
The Campaign for Real Conkers, which opposes bans on conker playing and unnecessary rules and regulations in games, has said that the stormy weather over the past few days has been ideal, if very wet, conditions to collect conkers
Early indications are that 2024 will see a good crop of conkers.
The Campaigners say that conkers has always been associated with an element of folklore and myth making and the 2024 season is no exception.
Two of the most common 2024 myths are:
1 Conkers are in short supply. They aren’t. Even a cursory check of areas around conker trees will reveal, sadly, an abundance of fallen but uncollected conkers
2 Conkers only last a week and then go ‘out of date’. In fact conkers do not have a ‘use by’ date and will often be better after a few weeks from collection.
The campaigners say that for 2024 they are maintaining their usual ‘anything goes’ approach to conker games, to encourage people to play without arbitrary rules.
Campaign Organiser Keith Flett said, comments from the self-styled World Conker Championships that conkers will somehow go out of date or be unusable after a week are of course entirely wrong. In fact conkers age well particularly if you bake them or soak them in vinegar
Guide on how to play real conkers safely in 2024
1] Select your conker. Do this yourself. DO NOT use a conker provided by someone else who may give you a poor specimen.
2] There is no specific kind of conker that makes a good game winner. Large conkers may more easily splinter for example. Some prefer conkers with flat and sharp edges
3] You may use the conker ‘as is’ known as ‘organic’. Alternatively you may seek to harden it by baking it, soaking it in vinegar etc. There is no guarantee that an artificially enhanced conker will perform any better than an organic one.
4] Drill a small hole through the conker. A nail will often achieve this. Again you must do this yourself
5] Thread the conker through the hole you have drilled. A strong chord, perhaps a shoelace is best
6] You are now ready to play.
7] Make sure that the chord is long enough to allow you to stand at least 1 metre plus away from your opponent. This would generally be the case as space is required for the conker swing.
8] Players take alternate turns to try and hit and destroy their opponent’s conker
9] Those with poor aim may hit the knuckles of their opponent more often than the conker so you may wish to wear gloves.
10] The winner is the player who determines their opponents conker unusable in further rounds, usually by causing it to splinter into two or more pieces
The Tory Party Conference opens in Birmingham on Sunday. It will be primarily a platform for the four contenders to be the next Tory leader.
One, the hard right figure of Robert Jenrick has been tying himself in knots this week after claiming he supports Englishness and then being entirely unable to explain what it means. I’d go for an obsession with the weather btw.
A further theoretical problem for Jenrick, not it appears a great thinker, is that King Charles has been claiming to be Scottish again (Act of Union 1707) by turning up in a kilt to mark the 25th anniversary of the Scottish Parliament on 28th September.
There were of course protest not just from those who don’t want a monarchy at all, but also from those who think Scotland should be a separate and independent country.
Presumably Jenrick promoting Englishness backs at least the latter option…
56th anniversary of the publication of the Making of the English Working Class EP Thompson on William Blake, Beast & Whore
The historian EP Thompson wrote extensively about William Blake and the religious traditions he stood in. There is a review of his Witness Against the Beast from a Blake related website which gives a flavour in overview of what he was looking at:
In another age these minority traditions were perhaps better understood. The paperback edition of Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class was published as the 1000th Pelican book in September 1968. To mark the occasion the Guardian published a special supplement to which Thompson himself contributed a piece headlined ‘Beast and Whore’. In Blakeian terms the reference was to Church and State but wonders if such a piece could appear now without attracting the attentions of Guido..
Below is a letter I wrote in 1993 to the London Review of Books defending Thompson’s treatment of Blake. Sadly he died later the same year.
It is thirty years since Edward Thompson first published The Making of the English Working Class, and while the phrase he uses to criticise what Post-Modernism has tried to do to William Blake, ‘the somewhat attenuated discourse of analytic academicism’, is perhaps not quite on a level with ‘the enormous condescension of posterity’, we may give thanks that Thompson’s brain is razor sharp still and that, unlike some of his contemporaries, he has never been bought off by academic life or cheap fame in the press. Where, however, are the Edward Thompsons for the Nineties and beyond?
