Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

29th May

Media Release contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

2023 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season. The Big Issue Vote: socks

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with another Bank Holiday weekend the 2023 Beard, Shorts and Sandals is fully open

The BLF says that it has relaxed guidelines again for the 2023 season and brought in a new framework governing types of footwear, length of shorts and the controversial issue of socks:

1] Shorts may be half length (to the knee) or three-quarter length-‘culottes’. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt.

2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leave parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some does not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.

3] Socks may be worn, depending on individual preference. If the beard, shorts and sandals are to be displayed in busy urban areas it is likely to be prudent to wear closed rather than open casual footwear and ankle socks, not visible to others may be worn.

4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This again is left up to the individual.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, socks are always the most controversial issue during the Beard, Socks and Sandals season. It is an issue that seems to divide the beard, shorts and sandals community. As a result we are holding our annual advisory vote.

Vote result: 60% are ideologically opposed to wearing socks with sandals. This will therefore be the official Beard Liberation Front position for 2023.

29^th May Oak Apple Day. Cancelled in 1859

Oak Apple Day was from 1660 to 1859 a public holiday to mark the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. It is supposed to relate to the escape of King Charles 11 at the Battle of Worcester in 1651 by hiding in an oak tree.

It wasn’t the only public holiday proclaimed at the Restoration. Guy Fawkes Day was also a holiday designed to mark the plot’s failure rather than its potential success.

In addition 30^th January was designated as a public holiday to mark the execution of King Charles 1^st on that day in 1649.

The whole lot were abolished by the Anniversary Days Observance Act in 1859 presumably in an early act of cancel culture.

Although obscure the actual reason for abolition seems to have been a move towards a degree of religious toleration in the 1850s. The abolished holidays were linked to prayers in the Book of Common Prayer (1662)which were no longer viewed as appropriate. Perhaps Victorian liberalism was more confident than that of 2025..

No doubt GB News and the Daily Mail will be celebrating Oak Apple Day nevertheless keen as they claim to be on British tradition…

The Spa at Buxton

Both Marx and Engels were frequent visitors to English seaside resorts mainly in the south of England. Marx liked Margate and in later life Ventnor while Engels rented a property opposite the pier in Eastbourne.

Records of their visits to locations in northern England are less easy to find. Engels enjoyed several visits to Bridlington, including the beer available.

However at Whitsun 1873 Marx wrote to Engels from Manchester (25 Dover St 31st May 1873). Engels had by this time retired and was based in North London while Marx was spending some time in Manchester.

He wrote to Engels that he had been to Southport(a seaside resort also frequented by Engels) and on that day was off to Buxton until 2nd June with Samuel Moore. He was a friend of Marx and Engels and translator of the first English edition of Capital.

Buxton in this period was famous for its spa waters and Marx was keen on taking the waters for health reasons.

In his letter to Engels, Marx noted that he was enjoying relaxing and not doing anything much (he was usually a workaholic when well enough) which seems a like a good way to spend what was then for some Whitsuntide, a week rather than a day off

Socialist History Seminar Mon 5^th June 5.30pm. Ralph Darlington on Labour Revolt in Britain 1910-14

Room N301, Third Floor, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St London WC1E 7HU

This is an in person seminar only. Free. You can register here:

https://www.history.ac.uk/events/labour-unrest-1910-1914

Ralph Darlington will talk on his new book on the Labour Unrest 1910-14. This is an important period in British labour history with some possible lessons for the struggles of today

Times Literary Supplement: “Something genuinely unprecedented was going on. This incisive, erudite book shows us in detail what that was’’

More information contact Dr Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Ambridge Socialist

28th May

Will franchise cricket come to Ambridge?

The cricket season has started in Ambridge, as elsewhere beyond the professional game. Football is little mentioned although we know Jazzer is a Celtic fan. Cricket though is a consistent feature of BBC reports from Ambridge

This year the long running single wicket competition has been replaced by a village T20. There has been an issue about which side Chris will be on, Tracy’s or Tom’s. The big issue however is whether franchise cricket will come to Ambridge. There are some potential South Asian players and a Botham has already been mentioned

Public Meeting on EV charging station

A full report will appear in next week’s issue of the Ambridge Socialist. We are for not for profit electric vehicle charging run by local communities

What will be in Brian’s Will and what is the future of Home Farm?

Ruling class dynasty wars have been a feature of Ambridge life for a while. The issue of what Brian might put in his will is the latest focus. This assumes of course that Brian is departing. We are not so sure

Titchener: we say lock him up

The Titchener saga continues. Why there has been no Editorial in the Daily Mail demanding his arrest and imprisonment for being an ill-intentioned individual (which he is) continues to be a mystery.

Hen Party

Tracy had her hen party at the newly refurbished Grey Gables bar courtesy of Oliver, who it may be recalled had previously shut the place and sacked all the staff. It sounded like a chance to get the names of some favourite cocktails socialised but the Ambridge Socialist remains happy with a pint of Shires.

Whitsun Church Ales: the origins of the pub-crawl..

Whit Sunday is the 7th after Easter, hence 19th May in 2024 (not always the same date, since 1965,as the UK Bank Holiday)

In the traditional calendar Whit Sunday and Whitsuntide, the days after it, are a period of festival and holiday. It represents a time when the weather is warmer and the agricultural calendar less pressing. It allows for outside gatherings.

Part of this is the Church Ale a practice which declined with the Reformation but like all the best customs continued on here and there.

The Church Ale was not a beer as such but a wider name for a festival where specially brewed beer was certainly consumed as was food. The aim was to raise funds for charitable causes, often as the rhyme below indicates the church itself.

It was also perhaps the origin of the pub crawl. It was not unknown for numbers of Church ales to take place at the same time allowing for an ale-crawl between several of them.

As usual I don’t expect we’ll hear anything from those who claim to stand up for an English or wider British way of life on this but it’s no less of a tradition for that.

The churches must owe, as we all do know,

For when they be drooping and ready to fall,

By a Whitsun or Church-ale up again they shall go

And owe their repairing to a pot of good ale

— ”Exaltation of Ale”, by Francis Beaumont

Orange paint powder & the traditions of protest

Just Stop Oil protesters have developed an affinity with orange paint powder as a means of making a protest. It was thrown over one of the tables at the Championship snooker in Sheffield in April, at a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show this week and today at a rugby match No great harm was done in any of these instances. Whether it amounts to criminal damage is a matter for the Courts not the police whose knowledge of the law might be described as at best patchy.

Publicity followed and whether people applauded or booed there was an impact. How effective such protest is compared to other forms of protest can be debated but the right of people to protest in a way they feel appropriate (certainly where it is peaceful) should be defended in a democratic society.

Moreover there is a long tradition of such protests

The Stop the Seventies cricket tour comes to mind, which successfully stopped an England tour by the apartheid South African cricket team.

Some have criticised the protests on the basis that snooker or rugby has no connection to fossil fuels. Protest doesn’t always work like that  as the George Davis is Innocent Ok protest that stopped the 1975 Headingly Test Match underlined (he was innocent btw)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-13519771

In Victorian times objects in protests were a good deal more robust than paint powder though

Recent assaults with milk shakes, eggs and vegetables are (at least from a candidate’s point of view) presumably preferable to the early custom of using dead animals as election projectiles. Dead cats seem to have symbolised hatred towards an individual. When the unpopular John Fitzgibbon, Earl of Clare, died in Dublin in 1802, dead cats were flung on his coffin. Even earlier, public executions at Tyburn were characterised by the crowd flinging “the dead carcasses of dogs or cats.” Young boys were reported as throwing dead cats during the Gordon Riots in 1780. When such carcasses became an election weapon is unclear, though jokes about “poll-cats” were apparently abroad by 1812. In 1818 in Bristol candidates were reported as being pelted with “stinking fish, dead dogs, cats [and] rats.” Two years later Edward Jeremiah Curteis was commended for not faltering “at the thought of the rotten eggs and dead cats of Chichester” which he would have to face on the Sussex hustings. Thirty years further on, in 1852, the Ulster newspaper, the Northern Whig, reported that “there is seldom a contested election without broken heads… Honourable Members seldom escape the salutes of rotten eggs and dead cats.” There may have been a connection with his vote in favour of the Night Poaching Bill when M.T.Bass was pelted with dead dogs, cats and rabbits, at Derby in 1865. As this was an indoor meeting, the dead animals had clearly been brought  in by the audience with deliberate intent.

Only a Pawn in Their Game?: Bob Dylan and Trotskyism

Bob Dylan in the early 1960s is the subject of a good new film, Complete Unknown, but at this distance the politics of his early period have largely passed into history.

Dylan in the first years of the 1960s didn’t just sing protest songs he had far left politics. The lyrics of some of his earlier songs could not have been written as they were without an understanding of such a perspective.

Much of that work was inspired by Dave Van Ronk who was then and remained until his death in 2002 a (broadly) orthodox Trotskyist.

Dylan picked up a great deal from Van Ronk’s music- not least his re-working of House of the Rising Sun but his profound grasp of the politics of early 1960s America may well have owed something to Van Ronk as well. Several commentators have highlighted for example Dylan’s Only a Pawn in Their Game as a complex analysis of racism and the US white working class. It still has great relevance.

Van Ronk, again broadly, was the subject of the Coen Brothers film Inside Llewelyn Davies which featured both beards and cats. His Guardian Obit from 2002 is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2002/feb/13/guardianobituaries

There is a good deal on this in a book by the late Mike Marqusee on Dylan and the 1960s,Wicked Messenger, a very good way to understanding where Dylan came from for those unfamiliar

This post is primarily about the London beer market, perspectives from elsewhere are welcome

Guinness has long been predominant when it comes to nitrokeg stout on pub bars. Being of a certain age I preferred bottled Guinness when it was bottle conditioned. Those were the days etc.

A new Guinness brewery and tap is due to open in Covent Garden in the autumn and that will be an interesting and welcome development.

Guinness is of course firmly Big Beer, owned by Diageo. In the recent period a surge in popularity has seen independent craft bars look to have a stout on the bar. Step forward Anspach and Hobday’s London Black. In my a very good stout, given that while Guinness is by far the market leader, there should be space at the bar for others.Of course the market doesnt often work quite like that.

Guinness has clearly noted the development and has started appearing in a few craft bars that generally would have nothing to do with Big Beer.

Now Camden Town Brewery owned by ABInBev have announced a new 4% nitrokeg stout for the pub trade to which it will apparently add ‘extra value’. Camden also brew a rather good stout called Ink and did even before Big Beer got hold of them.

It will be interesting to see how the Stout Nitrokeg wars develop.

We are talking about beer here btw although two of the three brewers mentioned above are talking primarily share price

I havent dwelt on Brewdog’s Jet Black stout here since I doubt that will appear in craft bars. Perhaps I’m wrong

Beard Liberation Front

3rd June

Cadbury’s 99 Flake crisis for beard wearers

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has expressed concern at reports that Cadbury’s 99 flakes are now too flaky to work properly in ice cream cones.

The production of the 99 flake was outsourced to Egypt in 2020 and ice cream sellers have reported that the flake often falls apart in the ice cream cone.

The BLF says that getting chocolate flakes in the beard particularly in warm weather is of considerable concern to beard wearers. A sticky mess may be created that can seriously damage the follicles.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, eating ice-cream is in itself something that the hirsute need to do with care. The news that a 99 flake may fall apart and end up in the beard rather than the mouth is very worrying

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/may/26/cadbury-flake-now-too-crumbly-for-99-cones-say-ice-cream-sellers

Beard Liberation Front 99 cone beard friendly test

Over the week starting 30th May the Beard Liberation Front Research Department carried out beard friendly tests on Cadbury’s 99 cones. The cones tested were from frozen rather than with soft ice cream. Further tests in this area are planned.

The chocolate flake was found to be moderately robust in all the cones tested but with a moderate possibility of flakes getting into the beard.

The bigger issue was than in taking care with the chocolate flake an ice-cream-beard interface was noted.

In conclusion 99 cones are safe for beard wearers provided care is taken. There is a moderate risk of damage to the follicles