Former Beard of the Year Jay Rayner with prudent advice on how to live as a alte kaker*
Occasionally, I hear of colleagues and friends a few years my senior who have retired to the country. This is not sensible. As we get older and bits of us stop working, we do not want to be out in the wilds, saluting every magpie that passes, and luxuriating in the bucolic. We want to be in the heart of things, close to a chemist, primary health care and other people.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said bread beards of the kind posted on Twitter by Jim Moir are fun but not sustainable.
One of the campaigns founding principles is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. For sustainable false beards, organic knitted material is preferred. However using bread temporarily is fun, with the proviso that clearly before long it will go stale and then mouldy.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there is a strong link between bread, beer and follicles. A bread beard may nourish the hairs other things can’t reach.
Image is key in politics and Liz Truss is clearly sending a political message with her Easter photo. For Truss politics is mainly about image so deconstructing what she posts is essential
Could it be that she plans to star in a political re-make of Silence of the Lambs (1991).
In the new version Truss aims to become a serial killer of the economy, returning again and again, often through willing accomplices, to wreak economic havoc. Can she be stopped?
There are those who claim that cricket is boring. It can be,but so can watching the England football team. The pre-season affairs of the Ambridge cricket team have occupied a good deal of the BBC’s reporting from Ambridge this week. Central to this has been a tussle between Lynda and Robert Snell over who should be Club Secretary. What’s wrong with a job share? Robert Snell was voted about right for Ambridge in respect of his grumpy demeanour in this week’s Ambridge Socialist poll. This week has he gone too far.
Where are the farmers protests
Farmers protests have been taking place across Europe for months. They have been a mixed affair with right-wing big farming interests and small farmers with a broadly anti-capitalist focus. The general point is that farmers are struggling to survived with a cost of living crisis and the impact of climate change combining.
There were protests at Parliament this week. Not really by farmers as such but by operatives directed to drive tractors around Parliament Square. Perhaps because the peasantry became a minority in Britain as long ago as 1850 such protests are invariably reactionary. There has been no sign of an Ambridge presence but perhaps we can expect to see Starmer hitching a ride on a tractor for a beer at the Bull to listen to the views of the assembled Archer-ites
The Snells: Fascism arrives as your friend
For reasons unknown Robert and now Lynda Snell have decided to act as Ambridge vigilantes trying to catch those who attacked Kenton. Door bell footage is being sought, extra security measures dreamt up etc. As Jolene knows too well none of this will curb the activities of the gang responsible, but it has the capacity to turn Ambridge into a village of curtain twitchers & whisperers.
In Other News
George is being obnoxious again
Bartleby lives on, helped by Jakob
Jolene is unwell & needs help. Predictably this has passed by the residents of Ambridge
Protesting for Gaza: Making history on the streets
200,000 people marched for Gaza in central London on Easter Saturday. It was the 11th national march since October. Given that numbers are away or at events at Easter and transport is even more unreliable than usual the number was impressive.
It was not course comparable in size to the biggest ever march in British history the 1.5m or so who protested against the Iraq War on 15th February 2003. The march was not a one off, but the sustained level of mass protest is likely to be unique in British history going back to the first ever mass demonstration at Peterloo in 1819.
The importance of marching in London is the impact it makes. Such marches will sometimes get coverage in UK media but they are guaranteed to be noticed around the globe. Britain after all was the former colonial power in Palestine.
That said its not just London and this what also makes the Gaza protests unique. On 30th March there was a static protest in Liverpool,a march in Halifax and a demo at a Manchester venue that had cancelled an evening of Palestinian politics and culture.
I was in Cardiff and attended the march from the Nye Bevan statue. There has been a protest every Saturday in Cardiff since October with the exception of Christmas and when Newport and Swansea saw protests instead. Cardiff is not a big city centre but the impact of being on the streets and generally being well received is important. A particular focus as often were McDonalds and Barclays.
The protests around the UK are not always organised by Stop the War and the PSC but in the moment that underlines the breadth of the movement. It is an issue in terms of sustaining longer term protest and keeping people involved but that is a discussion for another moment.
Just now history is being made on the streets and more needs to be made yet
After the British Army lifted its beard ban just before Easter- with some exceptions- the Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for the classic BBC sitcom Dad’s Army to be remade as Dad’s Hairy Army.
The campaigners say that while it is sadly the case that the original actors are no longer available, new actors could be used to stick as closely to the original as possible, but this time wearing beards to reflect what a citizen army might look like, in part, in 2024.
Brian Blessed would clearly make an excellent Captain Mainwaring
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Dad’s Army is a classic but remakes are far from unknown. A Dad’s Hairy Army would add Beard Power to the efforts of Walmington on Sea’s finest
Protests can work. 31st March 1990. The demonstration that led to the downfall of Thatcher
Its 35 years since the London poll tax demonstration (31st March 1990, the last Saturday of the month) that led in November 1990 to the resignation of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister.
The protest was around 100,000 strong and marched from Kennington to Trafalgar Square (as the Chartists had planned to do on 10th April 1848).
It ended in what the media reported as disorder or riot but perhaps because of that gave an impetus to the national campaign that led to the scrapping of the poll tax.
Thatcher who was speaking at a gathering of the central council of the Tory Party on the day noted in a private letter (3rd April 1990) that what had taken place was ‘disgraceful’, still not prepared to grasp the point that the tax was unworkable because numbers would not pay it.
I of course was there but remember little beyond the fact that it was a sunny day and I cleared off to the British Library when the march got to its destination not being a great fan of listening to speeches from politicians who I had heard speak quite frequently as it was.
The detail of the demonstration is important history but three and half decades on its also a reminder that protests can change things where Parliament sometimes does not
Acclaimed writer & journalist David Jesudason voted Beard of Spring 2024
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that award winning journalist & beer writer David Jesudason has been voted Beard of Spring 2024. He shaved author Michael Rosen in the Beard Off Final.
David Jesudason is the British Guild of Beer Writers, Beer Writer of the Year 2023 and author of Desi Pubs (CAMRA 2023) a widely acclaimed book that looks the history and current status of Anglo-Indian pubs that sell excellent Indian food combined with good beer.
Beard of Spring is the second of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year in December.
The campaigners say that while the second seasonal award of the year traditionally focuses on new beard growth, the focus in 2024 is as much on those whose beards have appeared in a positive public light during the quarter. There are rather too many well-known public beard wearers who do not show the hirsute in a positive light at the moment.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard of Spring poll sets the beard-benchmark for the period ahead when beards can be flaunted in public as the weather hopefully improves. We congratulate David Jesudason on his poll victory. He is someone who without doubt promotes a positive public image of the hirsute.
Close Shave Round One March 26th Sir Lenny Henry & Gareth Southgate shaved Owen Jones & Scottie Scheffler to be the first in the Beard Off Final
Close Shave Round Two March 27th Michael Rosen & David Jesudason shaved Vaughan Gething & Andy Murray to complete the Beard Off Final list
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the long overdue lifting of the ban on beards in the Army.
Predictably a Culture War has started. At the moment its in the Telegraph but the paper’s co-thinkers at GBNews surely can’t be far behind.
Former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has claimed that the lifting of the beard ban will make no difference to the Army recruitment crisis. He suggests the problems relate to the length of the recruitment process. Time will tell if he is right but assuming he is, and the beard question makes no difference, what was stopping him from lifting it?
More robustly Col Richard Kemp who admits to harrumphing from his armchair has argued that a willingness to get a haircut and a shave may reflect a willingness to make greater sacrifices later. This sounds like a BDSM perspective on army service, which the BLF firmly believes is actually meant to be a professional job
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the amount of noise generated by a decision to bring rules for male appearance in the Army into the modern era underlines why the Beard Liberation Front still has much work to do thirty years after its foundation
The tradition of protest Grosvenor Sq 17th March 1968,Vietnam; Russell Sq 30th March 2024,Gaza
On Saturday 30th March thousands will gather in Russell Square in central London to march in protest against continuing genocide and starvation in Gaza.
Such protests have a long tradition now and the actions of America are often the key focus of them
1968 was a year of demonstrations and protests across the world. The May events in France are often taken to be the starting point for this but in reality matters had been stirring well before that.
A key influence was the Vietcong’s Tet Offensive in Vietnam from the end of January 1968. It had underlined that the might of US military power and imperial policy was not invincible and the atrocities committed as the US pushed back the advance of Communist forces gained worldwide media attention.
The well-known demonstration against the Vietnam War in London in 1968 took place on 27th October. There were books written about it and no doubt we will hear something of the 55th anniversary later in the year.
There was however an earlier protest that took place on 17th March 1968 and set much of the tone for what was to follow.
It gathered in Trafalgar Square for a rally and then marched to Grosvenor Square. The official police estimate for attendance was 10,000 which it may be taken was somewhat on the low side. The October demonstration was officially estimated at 25,000 but generally agreed to have been 100,000 strong.
According to the BBC’s report of the day the demonstration ‘turned violent’. It noted that ‘More than 200 people have been arrested after thousands of demonstrators clashed in an anti-Vietnam war protest outside the United States embassy in London’.
One of those arrested was the author Michael Rosen who recounts the episode in his recently published memoir ‘So they call you Pisher!’. Rosen refused to give his name and a police officer simply noted him as being ‘big’. This was not sufficient for the police to proceed with a charge and in the end he was released.
According to the BBC ‘stones, earth, firecrackers and smoke bombs were thrown’ and pictures and footage of the day do bear that out. Much was made of injuries to police officers, with less media interest in injured protesters.
Such was the impact of the day that it led to a debate in the House of Commons. While an uproarious demonstration hardly seems unusual 50 years on, it was unusual in 1968 and likewise while the numbers involved appear limited compared to more recent times, again such sizeable protests, those of CND aside, were also not common.
The debate was initiated by the Labour MP Peter Jackson who had been present in Grosvenor Square. He told the pre-Murdoch Times: “I was particularly outraged by the violent use of police horses, who charged into the crowd even after they had cleared the street in front of the embassy.”
Again while police violence was hardly unknown against, for example, anti-fascist protesters the crowd on 17th March had included well known 1960s public figures such as actress Vanessa Redgrave and Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger. That changed the context. It was one thing giving a working-class protest outside of the public eye a good kicking but this was a high profile media occasion.
56 years on it can be reflected that those who marched on 17th March 1968 played an important role in starting to mobilise wider opposition to imperial wars that led to the 2 million strong anti-Iraq war march in 2003. A tradition of protest against war that continues today.
There was and is certainly work to do. The ‘liberal’ Guardian reported of Grosvenor Square that ‘the demonstrators seemed determined to stay until they provoked a violent response’ while an Editorial argued that far from exerting violent force the police had merely acted in ‘self-defence’.
Not all the writers to the Guardian’s letters page agreed with that assessment however, even then.
