Emily Maitlis on the Newsagents podcast interviewed Labour leader Keir Starmer about his trip to Davos this week. She also asked him, as an Arsenal fan, which of two well known Gunners supporters he’d prefer to sit next to at a game, Jeremy Corbyn or Piers Morgan. Without pausing Starmer answered Morgan.
I ran a quick twitter poll on what answer people who had not seen the podcast thought Starmer would answer. 39% said it would be Corbyn and 61% Morgan. Still I’m sure Keir was only joking….
Beard Liberation Front
Media Release
16th October
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Campaigners provide seasonal guidelines on porridge eating
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers has said that it backs porridge as a beard nutrient.
The central component of porridge- oats- is important for a healthy beard although porridge is by far the only way to consume them. Cereal bars are a more beard friendly alternative while oat-based beers, often characterised by a hazy appearance are also popular with many beard wearers.
While porridge is eaten year-round it is more commonly seen in winter months
The campaigners say that there is no doubt that porridge is healthy, nutritious and tasty. However while it is a beard nutrient getting porridge in the follicles can have serious consequences
Guidelines
Eating porridge with a beard must be done with care. Getting porridge in the beard can lead to serious follicle damage.
A simple answer is to wear a beard snood- a form of beard scarf- while eating the porridge to make sure none goes in the beard and damages it.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the BLF recommends porridge for the hirsute but care must be taken in eating it.
Which way for democratic politics: Westminster or Davos
Each year at this time industrialists, the rich and would be rich and a range of hangers on gather at Davos to discuss the world economy, or at least how they can profit from it. Labour leader Keir Starmer was there to declare that a Labour Britain would be open for business. Indeed this is the kind of thing that Labour leaders traditionally say (it may be that not the history man Starmer doesn’t know that). The spin is that this marks him out from Jeremy Corbyn who obviously wanted to smash capitalism. Except of course he didn’t. What he was after was a more socially responsible and accountable capitalism.
Starmer spoke to Emily Maitlis about Westminster politics and Davos:
‘Westminster is too constrained..once you get out of Westminster, whether its Davos or anywhere else, you actually engage with people you can see working with in the future. Westminster is just a tribal shouting place’
Certainly Westminster can, thanks mainly to Tory MPs (think Jonathan Gullis) be a rowdy and boorish place. That said everyone there has been elected in a broadly democratic election. Very few people at Davos have been elected to anything or even thought about trying.
In his 1961 book Parliamentary Socialist Ralph Miliband argued that Labour was the most obsessive of parties, not about socialism but about Parliamentary process and procedures.
It can of course be agreed that Westminster is not particularly democratic or representative of popular feeling, However compared to Davos it doesn’t do quite so badly.
Maitlis also asked which Arsenal support Starmer would prefer Piers Moron or Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer said Moron. Perhaps it was a sort of joke but I don’t think the Labour leader will have a career as a stand up comic
20th January is National Penguin Day in Britain and what better way to mark it than by recalling Steve Bell’s anti-Tory penguin. The penguin originated with Thatcher’s Falklands War and the Falklands have more penguins than anything else, something the crazed far right Argentinian President probably doesnt know while the current UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps probably thinks penguins are the new enemy within
The Penguin was a feature of Bell’s long running Guardian cartoon strip, If, and still occasionally featured in his cartoons for the paper until he was sacked in 2023. Hopefully his penguin tradition will resume elsewhere
Dry January & Temperance. A matter of choice
I don’t do Dry January but fully respect those that do. There are now excellent low and no alcohol beers which mean socialising can take place while remaining entirely sober.
I have rather less time on that basis for those who argue that because they are doing Dry January everyone else must too. The Guardian carries regular articles along these lines which is to an extent fair enough. Its roots are in support for the Liberal Party which was strongly associated with temperance. Naturally this doesn’t go quite as far as turning down alcohol advertising
There is no direct temperance campaign in the UK at the moment. The Institute for Alcohol Studies is a descendant but not a campaigning organisation. Historically temperance campaigners saw those that drank as morally defective, weak individuals that were likely to end up being criminals.
In 2024 this has been replaced by claims that drinking is bad for the health. Indeed drinking too much IS bad for health and alcoholism is a real issue that can lead to serious ill health and hospitalisation.
A recent Canadian study claims that any drinking is bad for the health. Its difficult to avoid the thought that this sounds like the temperance message that any drinking is bad. There are plenty of other studies that show that moderate drinking can be good for health.
Of course many people don’t drink for reasons other than health. However in Britain a lot of socialising and community gatherings are pub based. That may not always be ideal but it’s much easier not to drink alcohol in a pub now without signing up for the idea that no one should.
Beard Liberation Front
19th January
Campaigners caution on Jess Philips view that all men should wear beards
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has cautioned against the view of Labour MP Jess Philips that all men should wear beards. Ms Philips husband is a beard wearer. Writing in the New Statesman (13th January) she declared ‘I’m a fan of beards’ and stated ‘I would decree beards for all’.
The Beard Liberation Front’s view is that while it encourages people to grow beards where appropriate, it believes that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. If people want to be clean shaven that must be respected.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, I rather suspect that Ms Philips doesn’t know that the MP who has won the coveted Parliamentary Beard of the Year more than times than any other is Jeremy Corbyn
Co-ordinated strike action on 1st February & really useful knowledge on why
The TUC has called for a day of protest over the latest Tory anti-union laws on 1st February.
Separately but no doubt with this in mind a number of unions representing public service workers (PCS) rail (ASLEF & RMT) and University staff and lecturers(UCU) have balloted for and will strike on that day.
Tory MPs’ and media claim of course that this is politically co-ordinated to attack the Government. Why not seems a reasonable response although in one of the many Tory anti-union laws the Tories have forgotten Thatcher actually made such strikes illegal in the 1980s.
The co-ordination in fact rests with the Government. While inflation remains over 10% the Tories have intervened to prevent public sector pay settlements of anything like this. Ministers have opined that it would actually cost less to settle but this is about class war not pragmatic Government.
Food price inflation in December, according to a Which survey was 13.3%. The price of butter is up 29.4%, milk 26.3% and cheese 22.3% for example. Really Useful Knowledge about the material reality that leads people to take action on 1st February.
French General Strike reminds the neo-liberal attack on worker’s rights is international
The Tory Government’s latest anti-strike laws in Britain have rightly met with a wave of protest. They are aimed at (though won’t stop) workers taking action to defend terms and conditions in the light of 10%+ inflation.
Tory Minister Grant Schapps has declared that the proposed law to mandate minimum service levels during strikes in a range of areas of the economy is already the case in much of the rest of Europe.
There is a General Strike today in France and nearly all trains and most schools are shut. Clearly whatever minimum service level law exists doesn’t work.
The strike is over French Government plans to increase the State pension age from 62 to 64 (its 66 in Britain and rising). The measure is being introduced not by a Government of the right but the centrist administration of Macron. Macron, a former Socialist MP, is probably in political terms quite similar to Keir Starmer.
A reminder that the neo-liberal imperative to attack workers rights to maintain profits is not something uniquely British but an international one.
Winter nights: the history of the poor & night shelters. A permanent feature of a market economy
This week will see snow, ice and below freezing temperatures across the UK, not unusual for January
In recent times in London the Mayor has made efforts to provide overnight shelter for those on the streets as winter weather sets in. This is replicated in many but not all areas of the country.
In his essay Comers and Goers (in Dyos, the Victorian City), the late historian Raph Samuel surveyed the seasonal migration of labour into and out of cities in the late Victorian period.
He noted that many came to winter in London, where, depending on the weather, night shelters, straw yards as they were called by those who used them, funded by private charity, opened up each November. The shelters were free and without obligation. People could stay for up to a month and they were heated with a huge open fire. The largest was at Playhouse Yard Cripplegate. The alternative was the Poor Law funded Casual Ward where a stay was limited to two nights and had to be paid for by a day’s forced labour.
Samuel lists many other places where people slept rough in London including railway arches and around the main hotels where heat was to be found, but the picture remains disturbingly similar 150 years on. Progress….
We may at least be thankful that Suella Braverman is currently occupied elsewhere and is not organising vigilante night sleeper patrols
Liz Truss & the Society of the Spectacle
The Society of the Spectacle was a book by Guy Debord (1967) that argued that capitalist society was now focused on images rather than reality. Hence advertising provided a framework for what was ‘real’.
The report that 44 day Liz Truss’s Jenga podium cost £4,175 of public money suggests that she may have been the first Prime Minister of the Spectacle. It was not what Truss was doing (disastrously) but how it appeared. In this case Jenga bricks which collapse in a heap made the point image wise.
Truss however had form on this as Out of the Blue (Cole/Heale 2022) underlines. As Foreign Secretary she was obsessed with appearing at locations which allowed photos to be taken and posted on her social media. What she was actually meant to be sorting out politically was secondary to the image.
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