The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the news that a decision by Police Scotland to shave off facial hair including beards and moustaches has been postponed for a year while the matter is reviewed.
Earlier in the year Police Scotland had said that the requirement to shave off facial hair was because it prevented protective masks, required in some policing situations, from fitting properly.
This was challenged by the Scottish police officers union and collective beard power has now forced a retreat.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said,Police Scotland have lost face on this and rightly so
Beard Liberation Front says Amol Rajan on University Challenge needs extra follicle modulation
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the new quizmaster of the long running TV programme University Challenge Amol Rajan.
He becomes the first presenter with a beard. Bamber Gascoigne was resolutely clean shaven and while Jeremy Paxman latterly sported a beard he never wore it for episodes of University Challenge.
Amol Rajan’s beard adds gravitas to the presenter’s role but the Beard Liberation Front has said that during the first episode some words got lost in his beard.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Amol Rajan needs a slight tweak to modulate his follicles to that his words are delivered with full hirsute gravitas rather than on occasion going missing in his beard.
Zoe Williams notes in a Guardian interview with Neal Lawson (24th July)
It was always rumoured that he banned beards from the shadow cabinet, for looking too leftwing. And sure, I haven’t forgotten that he did actually win.
Blair was not always successful despite winning three elections and it might be noted that the David Blunkett, Robin Cook and Frank Dobson did end up serving in an actual Blair Cabinet.
However when Frank Dobson stood against Ken Livingstone for the London Mayoral election in 2000 there were indeed rumours that New Labour had trialled pictures of a clean shaven Dobbo with electors to see if that would increase votes.
Whether this was really true or a piece of Mandelsonian spin (who shaved off his then trademark moustache) remains unclear.
However a subsequent Labour by-election candidate with a beard did tell me that the same process had been tried with him. He kept the beard but didn’t win the election.
Beard Liberation Front 23rd July contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Open Golf: campaigners salute Brian Harman, the second winner with a beard since 1882
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has saluted Brian Harman the winner of the Open Golf at Royal Liverpool as he became only the second person with a beard to take the claret jug since 1882. The first was Shane Lowry in 2019 although he did not make the cut in 2023
All the winners of The Open since 1945 have been clean shaven although there were some moustache wearers in the earlier years of the twentieth century.
The last winner to wear a beard was Scotsman Bob Ferguson who won The Open three times from 1880 to 1882
The campaigners say it’s not just about the beard but how golfers have managed to get their follicles to interact with what were often difficult air currents to allow maximum advantage in terms of both ball distance and accuracy.
Golf has been the most clean-shaven of sports for so long that the media have struggled to grasp the historic significance of a hirsute winner.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, golf has gone from being one of the most clean-shaven of all sports ten years ago to one where Beard Power was centre stage on the last day of The Open. It’s truly a sign of the hirsute times.
It has rained for much of the last two days in the 4th Ashes Test at Old Trafford. England need to win in order to square the series 2-2 with a final Test at the Oval on Thursday.
The question to be posed is what is to be done? Cricket stadiums with roofs is one theoretical answer. Probably too expensive and logistically difficult.
Perhaps its better to ask what would W G Grace do?
He would not(and actually did not) play on through the rain. His beard would have become waterlogged.
He would have applied the spirit of cricket, aka imperial advantage. This only works if its assumed English summers are wetter than those of other Test playing nations, which in a world of climate change may not be true.
Even so W G Grace did have form since he was clear people came to watch him. A reserve day or a replacement match for one abandoned as a draw would be in order. Of course that would hardly fit with the neo-liberal agenda of the ECB, determined to play five Ashes Test in July.
Perhaps its time to return to the Spirit of WG, particularly the beard.
Starmer: the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living
‘By-Elections predict nothing. But they do provide evidence as to whether what the opinion polls are telling is us is being corroborated. And the broad answer is yes, it is. Labour are well ahead. Prof. John Curtice says the Tories are in ‘very substantial trouble’
Labour’s victory in the Selby by-election represented the second highest swing ever in history. The narrow defeat in Uxbridge still saw a 7.6% swing. The LibDem victory in Frome suggests that the party is recovering in its traditional south-west power base. In recent times the LibDems do well when Labour does as Freedland points out in the Guardian (22.7)
Yet at Labour’s Policy Forum in Nottingham on Saturday Starmer managed to make it all sound little short of a disaster and argued there is a long way to go.
I prefer the professional expertise of Curtice over Starmer who has been an MP for less than 10 years. The past does however weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the living. The memory of the Kinnock debacle in 1992 remains.
Its true too that to win in 2024 Labour needs to take a lot more seats than it did in 1997. The Labour leadership seems to be obsessed with the idea that they will have only a small Parliamentary majority and therefore needs to purge anyone who disagrees with Starmer who might sabotage his plans once in Office (if he has any by then).
A lot of the undercurrent here however comes from the groupuscule around Starmer the Labour First/Labour to win clique. They are and always have been relentlessly one-dimensional. They are not interested in progressive coalitions as Blair was, hence they are not interested in Frome. They are also relentlessly factional so post Uxbridge Starmer led the attack on Sadiq Khan who is a classic centrist and a retreat from the politics of climate change, the green new deal is after all associated with the left.
There remains space just about to fight this inside Labour based on a more hopeful perspective. I heard Blair speak numbers of times when he was leader. No doubt I didn’t agree with what he was saying but that wasn’t the point. He made you feel that there was hope for the future. As even Starmer’s supporters in the media note, he does not.
There is also space fortunately in workplaces and communities for organising to fight for that more hopeful future that Labour at least once stood for but no longer, it seems, does
The BBC has reported that the Grundys have been having secret meetings about the village fete and why not if it succeeds in keeping the Ambridge bourgeoisie out of the matter. We back a traditional proletarian fete complete with ferrets and Grundy cider
George needs a Union Rep and a Counsellor
George continues to be annoying as well as being a misogynist. He needs a union rep to keep an eye on what he gets up to at work- currently at Bridge Farm, and a Counsellor for his prejudices. Alternatively he could pursue a career as an interwebs influencer.
The Tea Rooms
Discussions about the future of the tea rooms continue. Fallon is still trying to do a deal. If she wants a deal doing it with Damara Capital would probably work better. Their entire focus is profit. Sentiment aka Tom Archer doesn’t come into it.
The Party
No, not that one. Keir Starmer has yet to make his Ambridge debut though he would fit in admirably in a place where things change very slowly if at all. Rather it was the twins birthday party. There was a bouncy castle, cakes courtesy of Fallon (only one in reality as Tony ruined the other and had to change his shirt). They all lived happily ever after, at least until the next episode on Sunday evening anyway
Miles Titchener
It’s not clear what Miles does for a living but the Ambridge Socialist suspects he is a police officer
The cost of Liz Truss’s brief tenure at 10 Downing St in the autumn of 2022 is well known to millions of mortgage holders and businesses. It continues to have impact. After all Rachel Reeves fiscal rules actually add up to the idea that if you do anything to disturb ‘the markets’ economic consequences will follow, so best to do nothing at all. Its a kind of reverse Trussism.
This week a further cost of Truss was revealed- over £3m in severance costs. Nearly all of this is contractual.Hence Sir Tom Scholar the senior Treasury civil servant who Truss purged,leading to her own demise, is due over £500,000. Its a lot of money and there is a debate about how much senior figures in the public and private sectors get paid but that’s not Mr Scholar’s fault.
There were also severance payments for the never ending merry go round of Tory Ministers. Only Ben Wallace was exempt as he served under three Prime Ministers but didn’t notice
Truss got £18,660 and Kwarteng £16,876. If they had any contrition they would donate the sums to charity. They don’t have of course.
Meanwhile both remain Tory candidates for the next Election. One can only hope the electorate determine their futures as the Tory Party clearly is not minded to
Labour lost the Uxbridge by-election on Thursday by less than 500 votes. Before a recount the psephological view seemed to be that Labour would win and that there was only an ‘outside chance’ of a Tory victory.
Unfortunately that happened. The Tories claimed that a campaign focused on the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) to Outer London had got traction. No doubt petrolheads with rather clapped out four wheel drives were concerned as more importantly were those workers who do unsocial hours and have to drive to work in cars they can barely afford.
ULEZ which was originally a Tory policy imposed on London would mean that any petrol car over 17 years old would need to be scrapped. So why not pay compensation? The Government is not interested though it is (probably) Labour policy.
The whole point of ULEZ is to reduce air pollution which kills people. Given I live in the highly polluted area of Tottenham I back it.
Labour had imposed a candidate and after the result the Chair of the Uxbridge Labour Party resigned clearly unhappy with Starmer.
Starmer taking his cue as too often from the Tories blamed ULEZ for Labour’s defeat and attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Starmer is a weak leader and this just underlined it. Hard right Tories are weaponsising any environment related issue in yet another Culture War
In the days before the election Starmer had announced he would keep the cap on benefit at two children (which Labour is opposed to)for fiscal reasons. He also turned up at an event with Blair where pictures showed both men smiling at one another.
Whatever view you may have of all that it doesn’t seem particularly competent behaviour in a by-election week.
Sadiq Khan made the point that Uxbridge had not been Labour in his memory and that of course is why Johnson was despatched to the seat when the hirsute Tory MP John Randall stood down. The Tories knew Johnson would be a hopeless MP but also that this was unlikely to see the seat lost.
Of course Labour could have won. The 190 votes Count Binface got may not have gone to Starmer but since he suggested the door was open to the left to leave Labour, a good number of left votes in Uxbridge may have gone elsewhere or nowhere.
The whole point about Labour winning elections, which is urgently needed to boot the Tories out, is that a broad church electoral coalition is needed on voting days, certainly in marginal seats, to achieve it.
This apparently is beyond the comprehension of Starmer and has never interested the one-dimensional cabal of Labour First/Labour to Win that surrounds him,
Fortunately opposition to the Tories is not confined to the electoral ambitions of Starmer such as they are.
According to George Orwell in The Road to Wigan Pier, cheap and nutritious fish and chips was one of the things that kept Britain from revolution during the economic crisis of the 1930s. They remain nutritious, but no longer cheap or even always easy to obtain (The long read, 20 July). Surely sorting this out is worthy of a pledge from Keir Starmer?
Keith Flett
Tottenham, London
Guardian July 22nd
Time to say ‘Tartare!’ to years of Tory rule
Keith Flett expects Keir Starmer to pledge to sort out the cost and availability of nutritious fish and chips (Letters, 20 July). However, Labour’s first priority should be to batter the Tories at the next election, and, as of last Thursday, he has another Keir to help him. Toby Wood Peterborough, Cambridgeshire
