As COP27 starts Boris Johnson & Climate Change. Changing his mind to suit
In September 2021 Boris Johnson defended comments made about climate change by the then new International Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan in 2010 and 2012 noting that just like him she now saw things differently.
“I don’t want to encourage you, but if you were to excavate some of my articles from 20 years ago you might find comments I made, obiter dicta, about climate change that weren’t entirely supportive of the current struggle, but the facts change and people change their minds and change their views and that’s very important too,” he said, adding: “The fact is the UK is leading the world and you should be proud of it.”
As recently as 2015, Johnson claimed “global leaders were driven by a primitive fear that the present ambient warm weather is somehow caused by humanity; and that fear – as far as I understand the science – is equally without foundation”.
He also wrote an article in 2013 suggesting the government should consider preparing for a mini-ice age caused by solar activity, drawing on a discredited theory by the climate denier Piers Corbyn –
Appearing at COP27 Johnson has criticised those who want to ease net zero targets and re-start fracking. He had in mind Liz Truss of course and he isn’t PM anymore, so he can say what he likes. But then as above he always does that anyway
Media Release: contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266
Tory MP excluded from Parliamentary Beard of the Year vote for third year running
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Tory MP Jonathan Gullis has been excluded from the shortlist for Parliamentary Beard of the Year 2023.
The shortlist will be unveiled later in November with the winner announced on 15th December.
The campaigners say that comments by Mr Gullis where he revealed details of hotels where asylum seekers were being housed, placed people at risk and might be seen as bringing the hirsute into disrepute.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Jonathan Gullis has a decent beard but the annual Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award is about MPs who present the hirsute in the public eye in a positive way. Here we feel Gullis doesn’t meet the criteria.
Keir Starmer has opined in an interview with BBC Scotland that Britain needs to train more NHS staff (and pay them properly, he didnt seem to mention that). I agree. He also opined in an echo of Tory Culture Wars that there were too many migrants working in the NHS.
As I wrote in the Guardian (18th July 2022) when you are seriously ill in hospital you don’t mind where your carers come from. You are just grateful they are there. They are welcome here
More resourcing should be put into training doctors and nurses in the UK (Letters, 17 July). However, having just spent two months seriously ill in hospital – now recovering – I was just glad of the excellent porters, ancillary staff, nurses, doctors and consultants, wherever they came from. They are surely welcome here. Keith Flett Tottenham, London
Class War & Toxic Masculinity: Vince Casey versus the Archers Dynasty
Big Abattoir owner and special friend of Elizabeth Archer is upset, Vince Casey is upset with Ben Archer. Ben has caused his former partner Beth Casey angst over his brief liaison with Chelsea. Vince has threatened Ben with physical violence which has in turn peed off both Beth and Elizabeth.
Casey has been looking to do a deal with the Archer Dynasty lending David Archer money for Brookfield’s improvements. But he is now seeking revenge against the Archer Dynasty by withdrawing his investment.
He seriously weakened his chances of upsetting the Dynasty however by a display of toxic masculinity in the Bull on Thursday evening. Threatening Ben who was also in the pub and making Chelsea’s pregnancy public knowledge. Unacceptable and unforgiveable behaviour.
The Ambridge Socialist poll. What term best describes Vince Casey?
In earlier news Vince Casey had just returned from Manilla where he had been recruiting skilled labour for his Abattoir business. He told Elizabeth that he was using a Government skilled worker migration scheme. He’d better hope Suella Braverman doesn’t listen to the Archers
Message in a bottle
After detective work Lynda has worked out that the message in a bottle found in the rewilding project was written many years ago by a youthful Tony Archer. It included a reference to domestic rows between the God Mother and Jack Archer who she was then married to
The Financial Times has published a graphic demonstrating the impact of 12 years of Tory Government on the NHS, focusing on the ability to get treatment.
The accompanying analysis concludes:
With a lengthy recession looming and spending cuts on the agenda, the future for Britain’s peripheral class looks bleak, but bringing them back into the fold should be the country’s top priority
Discrimination against accents: what is the authentic voice of the North London Wokerati?
The Sutton Trust published findings this week that showed that some regional accents still find prejudice.
The sociologist Basil Bernstein argued that language has elaborated and restricted codes. The former reflects if not Reithian Received Pronounciation then certainly a standard form of English that one might find, for example in a news reader. The latter is used locally, with friends (for example) and might include regional words and saying. Bernstein noted that people can switch between the two.
Indeed I don’t use my Tottenham accent when I’m in meetings in the City of London, while often being in Cardiff someone occasionally remarks(in a friendly way) that I’m not Welsh.
The Times, perhaps surprisingly, ran an Editorial backing attempts to get rid of accent prejudice. What then is the authentic voice of the North London Wokerati?
The takeover of twitter by Elon Musk, who is currently a billionaire as opposed to a millionaire, has created turmoil on the social media site.
Musk might charitably be described as eccentric although megalomaniac might be a better description.
I’ve been on twitter since 2009 and I’m not planning to leave at the moment. The bottom line of what has happened is that one owner has been replaced by another. As I wrote in the Guardian (3rd November) twitter really needs to be run by an independent and accountable trust whoever owns it.
There is a more pressing matter however. Musk, claiming a drop in profits- some at least of which has been caused by his own actions- has been sacking twitter workers. This includes those in the UK where he has not followed employment law by giving appropriate notice and entering into consultation.
Prospect which organises twitter workers has accused Musk of doing a digital P and O. One of the most effective ways to counter Musk is to join and get active in a Union
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has warned of Guy Fawkes pogonophobia as the 5th November is marked in household and public events.
Pogonophobia is the ancient Greek for an irrational fear or hatred of facial hair, known as beardism in modern English.
The BLF says that the period around November 5th is the traditional highlight of the pogonophobes year as, in other times, they burn an effigy of what they assume to be a dangerous radical figure with a beard, although few will openly discuss their often deep-seated concerns about beard wearers
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said the irony is that Guy Fawkes was a deeply reactionary character who, had he lived now, would almost certainly not have had a beard under any circumstances
The BLF is calling on people having Guy Fawkes bonfires in their gardens not to burn effigies with outlandish beards and to discourage pogonophobic remarks and behaviour. The group says that there is some evidence that beard burning bonfires have been in decline with events to mark 5th November often confined to fireworks only and welcome this positive development.
4th & 5thNovember in some parts of the UK are Mischief Nights.
The date as with many things traditional can vary and appears to sometimes be marked on Halloween or Guy Fawkes Night. It is however certainly connected with the season of Misrule that starts on All Saints Day 1st November.
Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun argues that Mischief Night primarily represented a rebellion of youth against an ordered and conservative adult world. According to Hutton it involves mainly what might be termed pranks, knocking on doors and running away, tapping on windows and potentially pulling apart bonfires ready for the 5th November.
As a tradition it might be noted that it’s not in any way commercialised
Newport 4th November 1839: 22 Chartists demanding the vote shot dead by the army
It is 186 years on 4th November since the Newport Rising in South Wales.
The events of that day may have had a revolutionary character but the specific aim was clear. The Chartists were after the kind of political democracy- adult suffrage and secret ballots- that we take for granted now, up to a point. They had tried petitioning Parliament, they had tried a General Strike in August 1839 (National Holiday]. They had been ignored. The resort to arms was a last attempt.
The traditional histories note that male (and some female] Chartists marched from a number of mining areas outside of Newport such as Merthyr and Pontypool with the aim of rallying in the town itself.
As many as 9,000 Chartists gathered on the Saturday and Sunday 2nd and 3rd November 1839 before marching into Newport early on the Monday morning of 4th November. In the days before the telephone let alone social media, to co-ordinate a series of marches, some miles in distance, to arrive at the same time was problematic. Probably around 5,000 Chartists had rallied near Tredegar House on the outskirts of Newport on the Monday morning ready for the final push on the town centre.
Many were armed, some with guns others with pikes and clubs. Certainly numbers had visited pubs on the march in- hardly surprisingly given the time taken and the weather- and it hardly amounted to a revolutionary army. Even so their thousands far outnumbered anything the authorities could muster.
What exactly the plan was is disputed. It may have been to liberate the occupants of the Workhouse on Stow Hill and some Chartists that were held there and then to move on to Monmouth to free the jailed Chartist leader Henry Vincent.
In practice they marched to the bottom of Stow Hill and encountered the British Army at the Westgate Hotel in the centre of Newport. There was a confrontation and numbers of Chartists were left dead, 22 is the most recent estimate, with many more seriously wounded. Numbers were arrested and sentenced to prison. A few leaders such as John Frost, originally sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered were despatched to Australia. They were later pardoned. A few escaped altogether.
One perspective is that the Chartists were no match for the forces of the British State and that the whole thing was a disaster.
Well, not quite.
In fact the Chartists were much better organised and led than the traditional histories suggest. They were shot down too not by a regular army unit but by a detachment of the crack regiment of the British Army at the time, the 45th, sent to do a particular job. Soldiers from the same regiment had shot down rebels at the Battle of Bossenden Wood in Kent in 1838.
Amongst the Chartist leaders on the day was someone known as Jack the Fifer [John Rees] who had fought at the Alamo with the Free Texan Army in 1835 and so had revolutionary military experience.
Moreover the Newport Chartists did not act alone. Their rising was to be the signal for other Chartists around the UK to do the same.
Clearly tactical mistakes were made. Leaving aside whether many of those who participated in the march in Newport understood exactly what was planned and what opposition they might meet, it must be questioned why it was necessary to confront the 45th Regiment in the Westgate Hotel when they did.
The Chartists easily had the numbers to occupy and control Newport in the face of which a small number of even crack troops could have done little.
It was not to be, but the problem lay with tactics and strategy not support.
The impact of defeat on Welsh Chartism and Chartism more generally is perhaps worthy of further research. The late Malcolm Chase picked up some themes.
Certainly it was to be almost 10 years-in the summer of 1848 and in the Year of Revolutions that further attempts at armed revolt were to take place, for example in Bradford in June and London in August.
Again however the conspiratorial model of organisation was foremost and the results arguably all too predictable.
My wider thoughts on models of revolution and Newport 1839 are here:
