Beard Liberation Front welcomes return of Sean Dyce’s beard to the Premiership football
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the return of Sean Dyce’s beard to the Premiership as the latest Everton manager.
The campaigners say Dyce has a unique beard and voice combination rarely seen.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beard power is a proven influence in football games and Everton will be hoping that Sean Dyce’s beard is in full working order.
I’m not a vegan so I’m not doing Veganuary. That said I often find vegan food very tasty. I don’t mean facon or cheeze or even a seitan burger. If you like eating meat or dairy products perhaps just eat them without advertising you are. There is excellent vegan food out there that stands as it is without the need to pretend its something else.
That said supermarkets have noticed that there is money to be made from plant based food. They regularly charge more for vegan ready meals than for their non-vegan equivalents. The claim is that it costs more to produce which is another way of saying its highly processed. That surely is the antithesis of what vegan should be and why capitalism needs to stay out of it
The graphic above is from the Financial Times (27th January 2023) It underlined that things were falling apart for the Tories. Whether you like or dislike Keir Starmer there is a sea change in the political preferences of many.
A year on a YouGov poll taken in the last two days (16/17th January 2024) shows Labour on 47% and the Tories on 20%. In other words 12 months of Sunak, Rwanda Bill and all have achieved nothing for the Tories except arguably to create further splits amongst themselves.
Its time surely for a General Election to get the Tories out, given other means have not worked. The slogan kick out the Tories and keep on kicking surely applies. That is very much work in progress but also a reminder that far from all change in society comes through Parliament.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has announced the shortlist for the Beard of Winter 2023 poll.
Mick Whelan and David Tennant won the first Close Shave round with Prince Harry just missing out. Brazilian President Lula won the second Close Shave round with Michael Rosen second.
The list contains a diverse range of contenders for the annual seasonal accolade.
It is the first of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year Award in December 2023.
The Beard of Winter focuses both on fuller organic beards, suitable for winter weather but also on beards that have made an early New Year impact in the public eye.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it is as ever a wide ranging, eclectic, list but one very much focused on the winter season. We have been keen to make sure we don’t miss beards that have been making a significant positive impact in the public eye in the last few weeks.
The poll opens on 24th January and closes on 30th January 2023. There are two preliminary rounds and a final Beard Off vote
Holocaust Memorial Day: Tell Suella Braverman, Never Again
My late father Graham Flett served in the Durham Light Infantry during World War Two and was one of those who was at the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in 1945. He never spoke in any detail about what he had seen but it stayed with him for all of his life. He was a regular at Anti-Nazi League protests
Speaking at a London Socialist Historians seminar at the Institute of Historical Research in October 2017 the historian Merilyn Moos reminded of the scale of the Holocaust
Jews were not the only people targeted by the Nazis during the
I have a great deal to do at the office just now, hence the irregularity of my correspondence. Nor, for the time being, do I see that anything can be done about this excessive drudgery, unless, as I hope there is a crisis
Lenin paid a number of visits to London in the years before the First World War, to research in the old British Museum Reading Room and to attend congresses of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party.
Details can be found in Robert Henderson’s The Spark that Lit the Revolution- Lenin in London. The book is published in paperback in February
After 1917 Lenin took a robust view of drinking in Russia- he tried curtail it. Getting drunk on vodka and beer was a massive issue and one Lenin feared could be exploited by counter revolutionary forces. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin from 1925 took a different view and nationalised vodka production so that at least the young Workers State got the profit.
Lenin himself however was known to enjoy a glass of beer and in this he stood in the tradition of Marx and Engels. Both liked Pilsner beer. Marx wrote to Engels from Karlsbad in August 1875 about the difference between craft and commercial versions of the beer. In 1880 Engels was praising the quality of the beer sold on Bridlington Pier.
According to Henderson in 1902/3 Lenin enjoyed a glass of beer with exiles in a German café on Pentonville Rd a short distance from Angel. What was the beer? The demand for Pilsner and lager more generally was considerable in late Victorian London.
One well know purveyor was the Tottenham Lager Beer and Ice brewery. A substantial enterprise located near where Seven Sisters tube station is off Tottenham High Rd it brewed from 1886-1903. It produced lager in bottle and cask.
Its entirely possible therefore that Lenin did drink cask beer brewed in Tottenham
CAMPAIGNERS SAY BURNS FOUND HAGGIS ‘BEARD FRIENDLY’
On Burns Night on 25th January the Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has declared haggis, whether in its traditional or vegan form, to be amongst the most beard friendly of foods.
Burns called the haggis the ‘Great chieftain o the pudding’-race.
The poet was clear himself on how beard friendly haggis is, ending his poem with the verse:
Old Scotland wants no watery stuff,
That splashes in small wooden dishes;
But if you wish her grateful prayer,
Give her [Scotland] a Haggis!
It is clear here that Burns was contrasting the haggis, whose consistency, with oatmeal to bind the ingredients together, means that it can be eaten without the danger of getting any in the beard, with other dishes where this was an issue.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the debate about whether Burns himself ever wore a beard continues. It is clear however that he thought haggis was amongst the beard friendly of foods.
Times Editorial claims Cancel Culture started in 2007
Cancel Culture is a feature of the Tory Culture Wars which have been in progress since 2019. Figures from the right of politics and culture claim they have been cancelled, usually across numerous media outlets. Try getting a piece supporting the general ideas of Jeremy Corbyn in similar outlets and a sense of perspective may dawn. It can be done but its infrequent.
The Times (Editorial 24th January) has claimed that cancel culture dates back to 2007 when the comedian Benny Hill was determined by the BBC to belong to an ‘older, more retrograde England’ and therefore repeats of his programmes are no longer aired. No doubt that can be found easily enough via the interwebs.
Hill most often played a lecherous older man in pursuit of scantily clad young women. As he pursued them he picked up speed accompanied by musical backing. It was perhaps for its time amusing in a way. It was also relentlessly sexist and it wasn’t just fun either. I don’t Hill was advocating sexual harassment and rape but such behaviours were in a way legitimated. Just a bit of ‘fun’. Not really, ever.
Benny Hill may have been funny to at least some 50 years ago. The fact that he was cancelled represents modest progress not to getting rid of humour but to some of the reactionary interests it sometimes appealed go and on occasion still does.
CAMPAIGNERS SET TO CELEBRATE RABBIE BURNS UNSHAVED
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the annual celebration of the life and poetry of Robert Burns due on Wednesday, it is ready to celebrate the Bard Unshaved.
The campaign group says that while Burns appears clean shaven in official portraits and clearly felt Establishment pressure to appear without a beard, there is some evidence that suggests that for much of the week he was unshaven
The BLF says that some of Burn’s shaving implements have survived and there is no doubt that he did shave. However in late eighteenth century Scotland it would have been an unusual for anyone but the very wealthy to shave every day meaning that for a good part of the week
This was a society with no artificial light and over a century before the safety razor was invented. At this time of year natural light for shaving would have been very limited.
In a poem dedicated to his publisher William Smellie in 1787, Burns underlined the point:
‘Twas four long nights and days to shaving night’
pointing clearly to the practice of occasional shaving and frequent beard wearing
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said we’ll be raising a glass to the unshaven Rabbie Burns on Wednesday, in the knowledge that this is truer to the image of the poet than the official clean shaven portraits that exist.
