Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

17^th January

Snow & Ice Guidelines for beard wearers. Act to prevent frozen follicles

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued updated guidelines to beard wearers after many areas of the UK are set to have snowy and icy conditions for the next few days.

The BLF says that while beards have been protecting against cold weather since 1854 it is also important to protect the beard itself against snow and ice penetration.

One way to do this may simply be to remain indoors and away from all possible contact with snow and ice.

However this is not possible for all including many workers and those who venture out for essential reasons.

When venturing out in the ice and snow, the following guidelines for beard wearers are advised-

Snow and Ice Guidelines for Beard Wearers

1] Protect the entire beard with a scarf or roll neck jumper. If snow is heavy a snood is advised.

2] Sweep any drifting snow from the beard on a regular basis. Do not allow snow to accumulate in the beard under any circumstances.

3] Comb the beard through regularly to remove any residual snow

4] If the beard becomes chilled or frozen due to snowy or icy weather it is essential to thaw it out slowly.

5] When temperatures drop below zero freezing follicles can be a significant issue

6] If follicles do freeze or develop icicles these should be thawed slowly but as quickly as possible

7] Dry the beard slowly in a warm room and check for any damaged hairs and follicles

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said snow or ice in the beard can cause serious damage to hairs and follicles and the hirsute are urged to make sure they are protected before venturing out in snowy weather. If snow does accumulate in the beard or follicles become frozen it is essential to follow the BLF guidelines to prevent serious damage. In particular if the beard suffers from icing, gradual thawing following the guidelines is equally important to avoid damage.

Beard Liberation Front

17th January

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Tory MP Jonathan Gullis and GBNews presenter Neil Oliver have been excluded from the Beard of Winter shortlist 2024.

The shortlist will be announced later this week, followed by a vote with the winner announced at the end of January.

The shortlist focuses on organic beards suitable for winter weather, although not exclusively so.

As usual the BLF reviews the profile of beard wearers who have been in the public eye in the weeks and months before the shortlist is announced.

Both Gullis and Oliver have organic beards and a public profile that would qualify them for the shortlist but on this occasion both have been excluded because of a high probablity that would bring the hirsute into disrepute.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the focus of the quarterly seasonal beard awards remains beard wearers with a positive public image. It is clearly a matter of judgement but we dont think Jonathan Gullis and Neil Oliver meet that criteria.

Really Useful Knowledge was the term used by radicals in the 1830s and 1840s to cover ideas which explained what was really going on in the world as opposed to what the Government and employers said was going on. It might for example look at the labour theory of value and argue that it was not bosses but workers that created wealth, even if bosses kept most of it for themselves.

The concept still has relevance in 2024.

The December CPI inflation figure announced on 17th January was 4%. This was a small rise where commentators had been expecting a small further decline. It may be recalled that the same commentators and the Bank of England spent much of 2023 arguing that inflation was caused by wage rises. With a tightening labour market- fewer jobs available- they have left that point for now and suggest that the reason for the increase was due to higher alcohol and tobacco prices.

Where will inflation head. Hunt and Sunak who not only have little control over it but also dont want to have as a matter political principle think it will still head to the 2% target.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the resulting disruption to shipping through the Red Sea may suggest otherwise.

Beyond that however while market capitalism is anarchic, at least a nod to a planned economy where Government pursues an economic framework focused on the many not the few would be a very modest step forward.

After all another right-wing Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell styled himself as a ‘man with a plan’

Carlsberg has taken a 20% stake in the craft brewer Mikkeller. The purpose is reportedly to improve the distribution and availability of the beers in Denmark.

Founder Mikkel Bjergso remains in control but Carlsberg has bought some shares from the private equity group Orkila who, again, reportedly are the second largest shareholder.

The interest of Big Beer in craft beer companies in recent times has ended with a Big Beer buy out but there is a more immediate issue.

Mikkeller has faced allegations of a toxic workplace culture having grown quickly as craft beer company without an appropriate governance framework. It remains unclear how far these issues have been addressed and if they have been resolved..

However the position with Big Beer is different. The key issue with Big Beer is that it is far more interested in business than it is in beer. It does have a plus side. Carlsberg like any large multinational company has to be seen to be behaving itself corporately and ethically (whether it actually does or not is another matter but it needs to have statements and statistics for the annual report). That usually means recognising trade unions and having agreements on workplace practices and cultures.

One wonders what Carlsberg has done to check this out at Mikkeller

https://www.mikkeller.com/news/mikkeller-signs-agreement-with-carlsberg-new-partnership-to-strengthen-mikkellers-sales-and-distribution

Beard Liberation Front

16th January

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is no surprise that Roma manager Jose Mourinho has been sacked by Roma.

His stubbleist approach to matches, neither clean shaven or bearded, suggested a level of indecision that was clearly impacting his football management and the performance of players on the pitch.

Roma have appointed Daniele de Rossi a former Roma player who featured in 616 games for the club to 2020. As significantly he has a full beard.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, Beard Power is an essential prerequisite to successful football management. Mourinho’s stubbleism doesnt work in 2024

The Daily Telegraph (extract below, 16th January)has reported that Highgate Cemetery is looking to make profit by selling space for new graves near to where Karl Marx is now buried. Their ability to do this was cleared by legislation in 2022 and its worth keeping in mind that cemetery was originally designated specifically as a profitable enterprise.

Even so Marx would surely have appreciated the irony and marxists may be concerned if the wrong type of leftist ends up being buried near him…

Some older grave-sites, where the monuments are crumbling and contemporary relatives of the deceased are also long dead, have been earmarked for new burials, and the prime real estate near the occasionally defaced tomb of Marx will be first to be developed.

Mr Dungavell has set up an objection system, allowing surviving relatives of the 173,000 people buried in Highgate to stop individual graves being redeveloped.

The exiled Marx died in London in 1883 and was buried in a modest grave, before his body was reinterred in 1954 under a vast tomb paid for by the Communist Party of Great Britain, close to which were later buried Saad Saadi Adi, the Iraqi communist leader, Dr Yusuf Mohamed Dadoo, the chairman of the South African Communist Party, and Paul Foot, the Socialist Worker journalist.

Update 17th January

The Times has run an Editorial on the issue (17th January) which of course celebrates the idea of making money out of proximity to Marx’s grave. As often with Editorials in the Murdoch era it is short of important detail and wrong on others. For example pre-Covid the Cemetery attracted around 100,000 visitors a year, not a day as the Times thinks.

Highgate Cemetery was opened in 1839 by the London Cemetery Company specifically as a profit making venture. By the 1970s the Company was in financial trouble and no longer maintainig the Cemetery properly. A local group the Highgate Cemetery Trust stepped in to run it.

It is a charitable trust and receives no public funding, although it has received a £100,000 grant from the National Lottery Fund. The plans to exploit the area around Marx’s grave are hence not for profit but specifically not for profit

Rosa Luxemburg was murdered 105 years ago today (15th January 1919) by a the far right German Freikorps on the orders of the social-democratic Government of the day.

She had opposed the First World War and left a formidable legacy of theory and practice.

Rosa Luxemburg described what happened when her cat Mimi met Lenin:

“She also flirted with him, rolled on her back and behaved enticingly toward him,” Luxemburg writes. “But when he tried to approach her she whacked him with a paw and snarled like a tiger.”

Protesting on Gaza 13/14^th January. The Media & Reality

On Saturday a central London demonstration called by the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, CND and others saw around 500,000 people march. The numbers are not exact but it was large enough to require two speakers platforms, one in Parliament Square and one in Trafalgar Square. The march was entirely peaceful but the police who have an ideological perspective on such marches mobilised 1700 officers and arrested 9 people. Its called wasting police time and public money.

The BBC (link below) managed to report that ‘thousands’ had attended. It also reported on Sunday that ‘thousands’ had attended a ‘I Stand With Israel’ rally in Trafalgar Square. A reasonable question might be how many thousands as pictures showed the Square to be far from entirely full.

On Sunday also the Jewish Labour Movement held a conference. Given that you don’t have to be a Labour Party member to be in the JLM it attracted a significant number of senior Labour figures (unlike Saturday’s demonstration) including Keir Starmer.

Starmer’s speech was mostly worthy sentiments about communities working together but it also included the following passage:

He said Jews could see “hate marching side by side with calls for peace”, and “people who hate Jews hiding behind those who support the just cause of the Palestinian state”.

It is indistinguishable from the thoughts of Dave Cameron on the matter and it is also notable for a lack of evidence on who ‘hate marchers’ were or are and a refusal to recognise that thousands had marched under the Jewish bloc banner on the Saturday protest.

Sunday’s rally seemed to focus on returning the remaining hostages taken on 7^th October home, which is absolutely right but also requires a ceasefire. Some of those in attendance including the Israeli Ambassador and Suella Braverman definitely fulfil Starmer’s ‘hate’ category. I didn’t spot any Starmer thought on this.

So what you might say? There is a significant gap between the lived reality of people in workplaces and colleges and what the media and Westminster politics regard as reality. When 500,000 march that lived reality will bump against the official one in every community in Britain. And questions will be raised

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67968812

The Sunday Times (14th January) had an interesting story about the Government’s decision with Starmer’s backing to bomb Yemen. Far from being a claimed ‘one-off’ the bombing is continuing.

The story was written by Tim Shipman and to be clear it was not the result of investigative journalism but information he has been given by Tory sources who wanted it spun in this way.

Hence not all of it may be true and those bits that are may not accurate.

Even so there are interesting details. The first security meeting on bombing Yemen was held in the week before Xmas. The second in the week between Xmas and the New Year and the third in the first week of the New Year. Starmer does not appear to have been told. Rather (the article does not say) the only Western politician the US could find who was on board with the bombing was Sunak. Given his dire poll ratings presumably he thought a bit of warmongering would help.

Starmer was only told on the Thursday bombing started and not by Sunak but by Oliver Dowden the self styled Deputy PM.

As Laura Kuenssberg reminded Starmer on her Sunday show his 2020 position had been that there should be a Parliamentary debate and vote before military action. He wanted neither before agreeing with the bombing of Yemen because it did not involve soldiers on the ground. This was a detail he had either forgotten in 2020 or just made up.

The story also notes that the US was pissed off with idiot Defence Secretary Shapps for leaking the news of the bombing before it took place (hence media stories before it happened). Were it not an election year Shapps might be moving on to his next Ministerial role by now.

Meanwhile more bombing and no Parliamentary vote. Lord Dave Cameron recalling he lost a vote when he was PM, has decreed that one is not needed. Starmer has led the Opposition by agreeing with him

Beard Liberation Front

14th January

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett @kmflett

Crewe Brew Pub, Tom’s Tap voted Beard Friendly Pub of the Year 2024

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has revealed the most beard friendly pubs of the year. The top 4 were named after an on-line poll which attracted over 500 votes

A Crewe Brew Pub, Tom’s Tap, has been voted Beard Friendly Pub of the Year in its annual poll, even though the brewer has only recently grown a beard!

The final vote for the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year saw competition bristling.

Tom’s Tap shaved the 2023 winner the Shirker’s Rest in New Cross, South London. Newcomer Cardiff based Pop’n’Hops was third while previous winner the Cock Tavern in Hackney came fourth this year

For 2024 the BLF looked to a new 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.

He continued

Tom’s Tap didn’t even exist when the Award was first voted on and its victory is a testimony to the growth of community focused pubs, welcoming a diverse range of customers and selling good beer. That combination really sums up a beard friendly pub

Commiserations go to the runners up, all of whom are of course definitely worth a visit too.

After two preliminary rounds of voting the top two in each round went to a final vote.

Tom’s Tap & Brew and the Cock Tavern E8 won the first round and went to the final together with the winners of round two, the Shirkers Rest and PopnHops

Final Shortlist

Cock Tavern, Hackney

Pop’n’Hops, Cardiff

Shirkers Rest, New Cross

Tom’s Tap, Crewe