Tradition resumed: Beard Liberation Front banner at the Karachi Test
The Beard Liberation Front has been around the world but has not appeared outside of the UK since early 2020 when it featured at South Africa v England Tests.
Its back again for the Third Test between Pakistan and England at Karachi.
The banner features three well known beard wearers but who are they are and how are they linked?
Thanks as always to Hazel Potter and Ian Marriott for taking the BLF banner on tour
SHORTLIST UNVEILED FOR REAL ‘ORGANIC’ SANTA OF THE YEAR
The Campaign for Real Santas, which campaigns for Santas to have genuine organic or knitted beards, has named its shortlist of people who could be the ideal organic Santa of 2022.
The nominations for Real Santa of 2022 are:-
Ray Winstone, Actor
Brian Blessed, Actor
Michael Rosen, Author & Broadcaster
Ricky Tomlinson, Actor and Activist
The Campaign for Real Santas believes that only Santas with genuine, organic or knitted beards should be deputies for Santa, world famous for his organic beard, in the run up to Xmas
CFRS organiser Keith Flett said, We don’t know for sure that any of the people on the shortlist do help Santa at this time of year but we do think they are potentially excellent role models for real Santas as opposed to the absurd false bearded types.
An On-Line poll for the Organic Santa 2022 is now open
Campaign for Real Santas. Organic Santa of the Year vote
The Times (26th December) reports that researchers think Henry V111 was responsible for bringing the turkey to Britain. Its Editorial rightly notes that it is the bird of choice for those who eat poultry and that it features in Dickens Christmas Carol. It misses the point perhaps deliberately about why Dickens had Scrooge buy the Cratchits a turkey. The poor in the 1840s would eat goose at Christmas if they could afford it. Turkeys were unaffordable except for the rich. Dickens was attacking a market system that rationed food by class. The Times does however admit that turkey only became the Christmas bird after 1945 when production techniques in the farming business allowed for a vast expansion of availability
A warning from history. On 17th December 2020 Liz Truss outed herself as a Foucauldian. We are now living with the results
On 17th December 2020 then Equalities Minister Liz Truss launched a Tory Culture War on equalities.
It didn’t of course actually say much specific except that the Tories plan to end unconscious bias training in the Civil Service. They still do. These things take time…
Unfortunately the reference to Foucault was deemed to be party political and not allowed in an official speech and cut from the version now on-line in what we now can now understand as a typical Truss refusal to conform to accepted protocols.
Foucault was a student of another French philosopher Louis Althusser, the nemesis of English Marxist historian E P Thompson. Indeed in the Poverty of Theory, Thompson’s attack on Althusser, Foucault does get a passing mention.
Thompson is critical of both Althusser and Foucault’s structuralism. He argued:
One can study how concepts are engendered one after the other within determined categories. But neither time itself nor, consequently history, can be made the object of a concept’
Thompson’s point is that it is not structures but people that make history.
Truss’s argument was that equalities agendas have focused too much on polices and statements and not enough on grappling with the problems faced by individual people.
Perhaps but that doesn’t mean the policies need to be abandoned. They are there as a way of holding power to account if it doesn’t actually act on them.
Judging by the very unequal composition of employees in Truss’s own department it could be a good place to start.
Truss on Foucault
“While we were taught about racism and sexism, there was too little time spent making sure everyone could read and write.
“These ideas have their roots in postmodernist philosophy – pioneered by Foucault – that puts societal power structures and labels ahead of individuals and their endeavours.
“In this school of thought, there is no space for evidence, as there is no objective view – truth and morality are all relative.
“Rather than promote policies that would have been a game-changer for the disenfranchised like better education and business opportunities, there was a preference for symbolic gestures.”
In her 44 days in Office as Prime Minister it turned out that Truss was actually a Foucauldian. How else to explain the economic wreckage she created but by being someone whose own views triumphed over objective reality
Beard Liberation Front backs Beard Baubles & Lights but warns on beard glitter
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has warned beard wearers against participating in neo-hipster trends for pre-Xmas ‘glitter’ beards.
The campaigners say that the glitter can be difficult to remove and may cause serious damage to the beard.
In contrast the BLF is backing Beard Baubles, miniature Xmas decorations that hang in the beard, provided they are worn in a measured way. It has also backed Xmas beard lights while underlining that those attached with plastic ties rather than clips are most appropriate.
BLF organiser Keith Flett said, beard glitter is a pre-Xmas step too far and any beard wearer using it risks serious damage to their follicles. By contrast Beard Baubles & appropriate Beard Lights can be decorative.
E P Thompson’s Writing by Candlelight (1980) revisited. Times letter writers on the nurses strike (Dec 15th)
The late socialist historian E P Thompson (1924-1993) was an enthusiast for letter writing. He wrote many himself although most unfortunately are locked away in the Bodleian for the time being.
He researched the history of aspects of letter writing, along with his researcher E E Dodds, and one result was his essay The Crime of Anonymity which has considerable relevance in 2022 although it was about the first decades of the nineteenth century. It looks at the writing of anonymous letters as threats- often to the rich and powerful-and official efforts to track down and punish the writers. The parallel with social media is considerable.
Thompson also wrote letters to the papers and was entertained particularly by the reactionary nature of some letter writers to The Times.
He would certainly have found those in The Times (15th December) to be of interest.
The Murdoch owned Times papers have slightly different positions on the current strikes. Last Saturday the paper argued that public sympathy for strikers would soon wain and Keir Starmer must decide whether he backs business or the unions (many might think he has already decided). On Sunday the Editorial argued that the economy isn’t doing that badly and why unions and strikes are bad Sunak would do well to copy Mrs Thatcher when she came to Office in 1979 and settle the disputes.
Times letter writers have now had their say on nurses strikes. They are at root reactionary of course but there is clear backing for the nurses against the Government. E P Thompson I sense would have been interested…
It is reported that since being given the boot as Tory leader Boris Johnson has made a million pounds or so from speeches.
The one to US investment bankers has been previously reported but sums in excess of £200,000 from the Hindustan Times and a Portuguese TV station have not. What the precise content of the Johnsonian waffle was on each occasion is reported but quite probably warmongering about the Ukraine featured.
Mr Johnson is still employed as an MP for which he is paid £84K a year. It is a job he shows little interest in doing a sign of a Parliamentary system whose democracy needs a complete refresh
Michael Rosen’s poem on the NHS & why collective action deserves our support
Like Michael Rosen I owe my l life to the NHS, doctors, nurses and support staff. His poem rightly points out that nurses must look after their own well-being to be able to look after others. Equally the collective power of industrial action to improve pay and conditions will be a source of strength beyond what individuals can achieve on their own.
In particular I owe thanks to nurses, doctors and support staff at the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff (Heath & Llandough) who through four major operations kept me going between May and July and in November this year. The Tories don’t care about the NHS we must
The past weighs like a nightmare. The Times on ‘Spanish practices’
Marx noted that the past weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living and that certainly seems to be the case with Times leader writers.
It is a sign of how long the Tories pursued an ideological dispute with the train drivers union ASLEF that the Editorial above dates from 14th September 2022. While the term Spanish Practices was not further explained it went on to moan that rail workers won’t accept ‘modernisation’. By this it meant driverless trains- which it refers to- no ticket offices and no staff on stations to help passengers. These are some of the ‘Spanish practices’ the rail employers (and actually the then Government) wanted rail unions to agree to in return for a 4.5% pay rise.
In an Editorial (16th August 2024) marking the welcome decision of the new Government to actually settle the dispute the Times refers to ‘Spanish practices from the steam age’
The term ‘Spanish practices’ was used in the 1970s and 1980s and refers to industrial practices which were agreed between employers and unions because it suited both. If that changes then the way to deal with it is not by diktat but negotiation.
‘Spanish practices’ have nothing whatsoever to do with Spain although Wikipedia suggests that the origin may lie in C16th anti-Catholicism which makes the term even more reactionary than I suspect its meant to be.
Suffice to say that you’d probably need to be over 50 to grasp what the Times is on about here, which may suggest that its not strongly in touch with the modern world despite its love of modernisation
Rupert Murdoch no longer owns Sky TV but its reasonable to suggest that Sky Sports interest in cricket coverage relates to his period of ownership. Audiences for Sky’s cricket coverage in the UK are far from recording breaking other sports from Formula One to darts being more popular.
At the moment Murdoch is building the Times brand in Britain with Times Radio and various other media ventures. He is thought to scrutinise the front page of the paper and no doubt has a word about the Editorials.
In that context its interesting that the third Times Editorial on 13th December praised the England cricket team’s Test victories in Pakistan. Particular praise was reserved for England captain Ben Stokes and team coach Brendan McCullum. Together they have developed a strategy known as Bazball.
Broadly this relates to using a good bit of fast bowling, pitched well up, with the aim of winning(or if it comes to it) losing games rather than drawing them. As The Times notes it’s a sort of hybrid between short form T20 cricket and the longer Test form.
So far its working, with England winning eight out of nine Tests under McCullum. It certainly makes Test cricket more interesting but not thankfully shorter in duration
