BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we’re sending virtual beard power to Paul Mackney on his 74th birthday. He was one of the great early supporters of and advisers to the Beard Liberation Front and we’re pleased that he and his beard remain very much intact.
So, Farewell then IndyMan Beer Festival. An icon of craft beer
I was sorry but perhaps not entirely surprised to find that the organisers of IndyManBeerCon at the Victoria Baths in Manchester have decided, at least for the time being, to call it a day.
I attended most of the festivals up to the pandemic but not since.
The organisers statement rightly paid tribute to some of the great beers and stall holders that have featured down the years, rather than adding, as perhaps they might have done, a further chapter on the woes of hospitality in the midst of a cost of living crisis.
That is a general point as the organisers haven’t attributed any particular reason to the decision not to continue. It may well be, and I write as a former union organiser, and someone who still organises events, that just the toll of keepin on keepin on got a bit much. It can do and it does.
Its time to reflect on the considerable contribution that IndyMan made to the current beer scene in the UK and beyond and look forward to future developments. There will always be some.
And most of all to thank the organisers for all the hard work down the years. It meant a lot
Below is my memoir of IndyMan 2019, unedited
As usual I was at the Independent Manchester Beer Convention in early October with my partner Megan.
It is in one of the best venues for a beer festival, the Victoria Baths, and this year even more spaces were utilised, for example by the Mikkeller bar.
Its well organised and invariably sold out. It works on the admission charge (£10) for entry and glass and then tokens for beer plan. The (good) principle is that the tokens are priced for one third pours across a range of strengths to encourage people to sample. This year an individual token cost £2.80 while you could get 11 for £29. Certainly against beer prices in London, or indeed in craft bars in Manchester, the pricing is very much in line with what you’d expect to pay, so no complaints there.
This year there seemed to be a rise in 2 token beers (£16.80 a pint for any tabloid journalists reading this). I didn’t drink any but can see the logic for beers air-freighted in from the US at substantial cost or above 10% imperial stouts. I did notice one 8.2% dipa requiring 2 tokens and I’d suggest the organisers need to take action to stop that or perhaps at least do half tokens if we can accept that it might not be unreasonable to expect to pay £3.50/4 on occasion.
The beer range provided much of interest and quality.
I wrote last year that the organisers need to bring cask and that remains the case, but more so now. Obviously you don’t want huge amounts to be sold in a limited time but some cutting edge cask perhaps particularly in a location like Manchester should be possible
I particularly enjoyed several beers from Burning Sky perhaps especially the Raspberry Monolith and a cider/beer mix saison. They were all one token btw. A Thornbridge imperial stout at 12% impressed as did a Wild barrel aged plum beer. In short as you hope for and expect at IndyMan some examples of the best in where beer in the UK currently is and is going.
Elsewhere there was perhaps a little too much of the familiar (but then I’m familiar with the London beer scene). I really enjoy many of the beers that breweries like Deya, Siren and Verdant do. Equally I can find them on a bar near me in North London any day of the week. I accept that this is not the case for many and there were some excellent up and coming breweries also there. It’s a matter of balance.
Still all this is a matter of detail. IndyMan remains an essential part of the beer year and the organisers should be congratulated on that.
Liz Truss was Prime Minister for 49 days in the autumn of 2022 during which time she crashed the economy and was outlasted by a lettuce.
Ordinarily that might have been sufficient for a period of silence or even a withdrawal from public life. Not at all. Truss has ploughed on, embarking on well renumerated world tour making increasingly crazy utterances. One of the most recent noted that the deep state- which is conspiring against her- is indeed very deep.
During her global tour she has occasionally landed in the UK and reports have had her at small gatherings of hard and far right Tory MPs.
The Mirror has now carried a report of her activities in February 2024. She spent most of the month in the US and accrued £32K. Not exactly on the Boris Johnson scale of remuneration but her actual paid job is meant to be as an MP representing her constituents in Westminster.
Some of the month was spent at a five star hotel on an island off the coast of Georgia. This apparently was a gathering of the ‘great minds of today’. She also spent 10 days skiing in the US and attended a conference of hard right Republicans in Washington where Farage and Trump were present. She notably said nothing when Steve Bannon praised fascist Yaxley Lennon.
On each occasion going through Heathrow she used the Windsor Suite normally reserved for Royalty and actual Prime Ministers at a total cost of £7,200
One wonders why Rishi Sunak does not bar Truss from standing as a Tory at the forthcoming Election. Whatever her masterplan is, serving her Constituents comes a long way down the list.
29th March is Palm Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Lent, and the start of Holy Week in the Christian Calendar. It marks the beginning of a week of ceremonies ending on Easter Sunday.
Historically the key thing for most was that it marked the beginning of the end of the privations of Lent when the poor at least were supposed to stick to a restricted diet. Lent ends on Maundy Thursday or Easter Sunday depending on which version of the tradition is followed.
Palm Sunday was marked in English and Welsh Churches from Medieval Times. It could involve readings from the Gospels and the singing of the Passion. Mostly however it focused on the consecration of newly cut ‘palms’ Yew or Willow in this case.
This marked for many a sign that Spring, and a rather easier life after the passing of winter was firmly on the way.
From 1490 a ‘prophet’ also did a reading in some Churches. Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun records St Peter Cheap(off Cheapside in the City of London, destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666) hired a false beard for their prophet to give them greater gravitas.
By contrast E P Thompson in the Making of the English Working Class notes that Easter Week was the occasion for pace egging. One part of this tradition were Mystery Plays where St George saw off all comers while the fool, Toss Pot, laughed.
However actual eggs were also involved, often wrapped in onion skin and groups went from place to place pace egging. Beer was also involved as it was on Palm Sunday when those involved in Church services invariably consumed cakes and ale. Lent did not apply on Sundays.
Its the 191st anniversary of the birth of William Morris (1834-1896) the Victorian designer, socialist and environmentalist who prefigured many of the protests of recent times in his Utopian novel News From Nowhere.
He saw the Houses of Parliament replaced by an environmentally friendly dung heap and democracy taken to the grassroots with people’s assemblies across the country
‘Now,’ said I, ‘I have come to the point of asking questions which I suppose will be dry for you to answer and difficult for you to explain; but I have foreseen for some time past that I must ask them, will I nill I. What kind of a government have you? Has republicanism finally triumphed? or have you come to a mere dictatorship, which some persons in the nineteenth century used to prophesy as the ultimate outcome of democracy? Indeed, this last question does not seem so very unreasonable, since you have turned your Parliament House into a dung-market. Or where do you house your present Parliament?’
The old man answered my smile with a hearty laugh, and said: ‘Well, well, dung is not the worst kind of corruption; fertility may come of that, whereas mere dearth came from the other kind, of which those walls once held the great supporters. Now, dear guest, let me tell you that our present parliament would be hard to house in one place, because the whole people is our parliament.’
Robert Snell ponders the way forward for the Ambridge cricket team
Cricket
The Ambridge Cricket Team has long been useless, although it has yet to try Bazball. Ahead of the start of the season, a reconfiguration has been taking place. Sgt Knacker Burns remains in charge but the previously unknown position of Chair has been contested between Robert and Lynda Snell. Meanwhile Stella and Hannah have also signed up. Whether any of this will make the team less useless remains to be seen.
Justin Elliott exposed
Miranda, Justin’s Ex and now Brian’s special friend has revealed that Justin is not in fact an astute businessman. He apparently was cleaned out in ‘Black Monday’ and was bailed out by Miranda who has family wealth in shipping. Whether in the Red Sea or otherwise was not revealed. The class war between Brian and Justin continued at the Charity Ball on Friday.
Robert Snell relaunched
After an appropriate gap following the sad death of the previous actor Graham Blockey Robert Snell has been recast. He is now represented by Michael Bertenshaw whose CV says he is a specialist in playing characters in the 65-80 bracket. He is at the upper end himself. There has been criticism that the new Snell is a bit grumpy, presumably from those who don’t recall how grumpy the previous one was
England Shirt Culture War. Woke hit back. One of the biggest selling of last decade
I’m not an expert on England football shirts, but the current culture war over whether the 2024 England kit should feature a tweaked St George’s flag caused me to investigate. The fact that Farage, Starmer and Sunak all think it’s bad suggested very high degree of culture war humbug
The BBC article at this link provides a degree of enlightenment
Its reported that the St Georges flag did not feature on kits until the early 2000s and it did not feature at all in 2022. The core emblem is the Three Lions. You may recall a song.
Gareth Southgate’s view is in ‘I don’t know if the debate is about the St George Flag needing to be on the England shirt because it hasn’t always been,” said Southgate’
It’s a reminder of the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger that all traditions are invented.
It seems in this case however that England fans rather liked the newly invented tradition. Nike has reported that the shirt is one of the biggest sellers of the last decade (Times 23rd March)
Starmer did correctly suggest the shirts should be cheaper-all sports shirts are something of a profit focused rip-off- the reality that Nike pays the people who produce them far too little is missed. This should really be the centre of any debate about the shirts but, Culture War it is, albeit like many one that has backfired
Rachel Reeves gave the Mais speech to City suits in mid-March. I’ll post further on that but James Meadway on X @meadwaj has correctly made the headline point. Namely that Reeves plans a departure from neo0-liberalism with the State regulating the market to some extent. At the same time she is sticking with austerity (which was hardly news, and remains highly problematic).
The Murdoch owned Times opined on Reeves speech on 23rd March. The Times runs quite frequent Editorials claiming Labour has no policies, and while those of us on the left might agree, what the paper means is it doesnt have enough policies that Rupert Murdoch likes.
The Editorial claims Reeves will be the first Chancellor in generations to enter Government with an industrial strategy. The Times is not great at history. The Labour Governments of 1974-79 certainly had industrial strategies. It can be argued this was two generations ago. However Blair also had one even if it was PFI, which one suspects is also part of Reeves strategy too. Of course Reeves is concerned with employers only here not all who work in industry
The Editorial particularly dislikes the plan for the State to regulate privateers (although the Tories reluctantly do this as well). It moans about the idea that the ‘private sector needs to be cajoled or supplanted into meeting social needs’ even though anyone who has used a train in recent times will understand what nonsense that line is.
Finally, a favourite subject, the Times moans about Labour’s plans for workers rights which apparently are to please the Party’s ‘militant paymasters’. They mean unions not businessmen by the way.
It might have helped here if the Editorial writer had actually read Reeves speech where she underlined that the reason for repealing Tory employment laws passed since 2010 is that they had actually created more industrial strife and therefore damaged not promoted the economy.
Expect a lot more on all these points from Murdoch before the Election even if the front page of the S*n (23rd March)suggests that the pivot to supporting Starmer is already in progress
Beard of Spring 2024 poll opens with competition bristling
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that voting for the coveted Beard of Spring Award will take place in the run-up to Easter weekend.
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.
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 improves.
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
By which it will be correctly assumed that I am (North London) Scots.
Recently a hegemonic issue has arisen. Every time I type my name autocorrect tries to change it to Keir.
I sense autocorrect has in mind Keir Starmer not Keir Hardie.
Here’s the thing.Keir is an Arsenal fan. Keith is a Spurs supporter.
Tom Baldwin’s recently published biography of Keir Starmer touches on the Keith & Keir issue.Baldwin ponders if Starmer can be the ‘nasal non-entity snobbishly named Keith Starmer’. The implication of course is that Keiths are plebeian if not proletarian types of no particular note while Keirs are person of standing and social worth. T
