Kmflett's Blog

Cost of living. Bank of England predicts most severe slump since the 1930s. Policies for the few not the many

The Bank of England has raised interest rates to 3% which will mean more expensive mortgages for many. That is just the start however. The increase will lead to higher rents and place jobs at risk. The Bank knows all this which is why its also predicted the worst slump since the 1930s.

ONS figures which looked at the cost of supermarket own brand and budget products over 12 months have shown increases that one suspects will not be discussed or even recognised around  Rishi Sunak’s Cabinet table.

The hike in the prices of staple food items is huge. What is not huge in many cases are the pay rises to cover it. Meanwhile the Chancellor still seems to be pondering not raising benefits in line with inflation which stands at over 10%.

The ONS figures represent really useful knowledge, an index of a crisis where millions will struggle to pay to heat and eat in the months to come.

The economic policy chosen by the Bank is one designed to protect the few at the expense of the many. There are alternatives, including taxing the rich and large profitable companies more. Don’t expect this to be the agenda when Jeremy Hunt presents the Tories latest economic statement on 17^th November

The need for pay rises that at least match the 10% inflation rate is another side to the story

The People’s Assembly backed by a range of unions and campaigns has called a national protest for Saturday 5^th November in central London (Embankment, midday). It’s a start

Teaching Global History & the marketing of history

The historian Simon Sebag Montefiore has called for there to be less teaching of English history and a focus on history from across the world (Times 1^st November). He argued at the Petworth Literary Festival that teaching about the history of the British Empire, whether seen as good or bad, is not as important as understanding the histories of people from across the world. He noted for example that the Great African War which took place in the Congo between 1998 and 2003 which involved nine countries and saw five million dead was hardly known about in Britain.

Dominic Sandbrook has put a counter argument that there were few teaching materials available for the kind of history Sebag Montefiore is calling for. Further given that school history lessons were brief the key thing was to attract pupils and ensure they got good results.

Sandbrook emphasises the role that the market plays in history education  but one wonders if teaching the real history of the British Empire would not fulfil much of Sebag Montefiore’s call for global history. There are surely texts available to do that, even if they are not on the approved reading list of Tory Central Office.

Beard Liberation Front

3^rd November

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Liberation Front consultation rejects beard of political defeat for Rees Mogg

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has dropped its call for Jacob Rees Mogg to grow a beard of political defeat. He resigned as a Minister on 25th October and becomes a backbench MP.

The decision comes after a consultative poll where BLF supporters narrowly rejected the call by 52% to 47%

The campaigners say that there is a tradition of beard growth after a political defeat going back to Al Gore’s narrow failure to become US President in 2000.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Jacob Rees Mogg’s great great grandfather Henry Stiles Savory had a magnificent beard. However BLF supporters have decided that were Rees Mogg to grow a beard it would bring the hirsute into disrepute so, as a democratic network, we have dropped the call

Whose effigy should top the November 5^th Bonfire?

The burning of effigies of public figures who are disliked for various reasons is piece of political theatre stretching back into history.

It hasn’t always been politically progressive. The historian David Cannadine has pointed out that until the late nineteenth century the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes was associated with reactionary anti-Catholic sentiment.

That specific tradition in England at least has almost passed into history itself.

However the burning of effigies on 5th November has continued and the current British political crisis suggest plenty of potential candidates

Should it be an effigy of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, Suella Bravermen or perhaps their guiding light, Margaret Thatcher

So, farewell then the fax machine

OfCom has agreed that BT (and a few others)will no longer be required to provide telephone land lines over which faxes can be sent. This decision has some wider implications but the key issue, that very few use a fax machine now, is undeniable.

After all there is e-mail, text, social media, what’s app and pigeons remain available as well.

It marks the end of a chapter in social and cultural history, and also has a wider industrial context, as the present dispute in the Royal Mail (I support the CWU) underlines.

The fax was the first technology that allowed the move away from physical post. I well remember feeding official documents into a fax machine for work purposes and, of course, sending fletters on my personal fax machine. At the time it seemed a remarkable development but several decades on the old style fax at least is nearly obsolete.

All that is solid melts into air…

From Thatcher’s Swamped to Theresa May’s Hostile Environment to Suella Braverman’s invasion: Stand Down Tories

Ranking Roger former lead of The Beat died at the far too early age of 56 in 2019.

The original Beat split up in 1983 so is this just a bit of cultural history now? Sadly and definitely not.

The Beat were of course on Two Tone, deliberately focused on black and white coming together to fight the racists.

Before the 1979 General Election Tory leader Margaret Thatcher had made a speech claiming that people felt ‘swamped’ by those of a ‘different culture’.

The official Thatcher Foundation archive detail is here:

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103485

Fast Forward 40 years and we find the policy of former Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, architect of the hostile environment towards ethnic minorities, a policy which led directly to the abuse of numbers of the Windrush generation, rightfully in the UK but harassed by the authorities.

Now we find Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman talking the language of the far and fascist right about an ‘invasion’ of migrants into Southern England.

I suspect that none of Thatcher, May or Braverman owned or own any Beat records…

Before the 1832 Reform Act there were Rotten Boroughs where MPs represented places with very few inhabitants. Conversely there were large urban areas with little or no Parliamentary representation.

The 2022 Parliament seems to be moving towards a version of this where MPs who are paid out of public funds to represent their constituents in Parliament are in fact doing something else altogether:

Boris Johnson: on holiday or on the lecture circuit at around £135,000 for a 30 minute speech

Liz Truss: on holiday

Matt Hancock: appearing in a new run of I’m a celebrity get me out of here

Time for a General Election

In the House of Commons on 31st October the current Home Secretary Suella Braverman made racist comments about refugees talking about an ‘invasion’ of southern England. No doubt her words were music to GB News presenters, Britain First and other far right to fascist types.

The late Tony Benn warned that a Government’s attitude to refugees is a sign of how they would treat others is they thought they could get away with it.

Braverman clearly does think she can get away with it. One of the last things she did in her earlier spell as Home Secretary was to push through a Public Order Bill which made it a criminal offence to even think about protesting and increased penalties for some acts of civil disobedience that were not even specific offences at all at the start of 2022.

Protest and survive..

Braverman: Rupert Murdoch’s Verdict revised

In 2022 Suella Braverman admitted to at least six breaches of the Ministerial Code in respect of e-mails to her personal account. She also stood charged with dereliction of duty by failing to do anything about the Manston detention camp for refugees.

A 66 year old man from High Wycombe appeared to have carried out what many would regard as a terrorist attack at Manston before apparently killing himself.

Braverman’s response to all this was to spout racist rhetoric in the Commons about ‘illegal immigrants’.

She should undoubtedly have been sacked again by the PM except that he owed his position to her support in the last Tory leadership contest.

British politics has other even less accountable and transparent forces at work however and one of them remains Rupert Murdoch.

He is building the Times brand in Britain and its clear that the media he owns want Braverman gone

The Sunday Times Editorial on 30^th October 2022 called her attack on tofu eating wokerati ‘juvenile’. It noted that she had yet to prove she could be trusted as Home Secretary.

On 31^st October 2022 the Times reported that Braverman who was licensed to practice as a lawyer in New York had been suspended since 7^th October 2021 for failing to pay for a renewal of her licence.

A year on, 24th October 2023, a Times Editorial on Braverman’s most recent rants argued ‘a period of silence from Ms Braverman would now be in order’

Murdoch is unlikely to stop until Braverman goes although British politics would be better off without both of them. He appears to favour the equally politically deranged Kemi Badenoch

All Saints Day: The World Turned Upside Down as the season of the Lords of Misrule starts

As you can hardly have missed 31st October is the commercial festival of Halloween, more traditionally known as All Hallows. It is also Celtic New Year. The following two days are All Saints Day and then All Souls Day- the Day of the Dead which was a major festival of the Catholic Church in the West.

These festivals mark the changing of the season from summer to winter but there is a lot more to it than the piles of commercial Halloween tat and oversize pumpkins you can find in supermarkets. While a Guardian Editorial in 2015 criticised the crass commercialism of the day as it is currently configured it seemed unaware of some of the other meanings and ways of it being marked.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/the-guardian-view-on-halloween-disorganised-and-irreligious-and-all-the-better-for-it

Traditionally (see Steve Roth, Hamlet the Undiscovered Country) 31st October was the time when disruptive spirits roamed. That is reflected in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ghost appears on All Hallows Eve.

Roth notes:

All Hallows was also a time for election of “mock kings,” “lords of revels,” or “kings of misrule.” These lords would reign over the revels season through Christmas and Twelfth Night (5 January, another night of inversion and misrule), often ending their reigns at Candlemas (2 February) or Shrovetide (which had–and has–perhaps the greatest association with carnival and misrule).

31st October was a time of the carnivalesque, of festivities and the appointment of Lords of Misrule. In some parts of the UK November 4th is still marked as ‘mischief day’.

The Lords of Misrule would reign until at least Twelfth Night on January 5th and often until Lent.

They were not always as disruptive as they might sound. They were often a way of providing a safety valve in society to mock authority and important figures without actually in anyway challenging them. The reversal of roles, masks and rebellion were often play acting.

For example in Henry V Shakespeare depicted Sir John Falstaff as the Lord of Misrule. Falstaff is well loved Shakespearan character but I don’t think anyone expects him to lead a riot or a revolt.

That wasn’t always true though. Sometimes the Lords of Misrule genuinely did represent an element of the World Turned Upside Down or at least the potential for it. Winter parades through the streets could lead to confrontations with authority.

I was born on 31st October 1956 but it would be reasonable to say that the event that shaped my outlook on life was not the above but the fact that it was the date Russian tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution, followed by the Allied invasion of Suez

Turning the World Upside Down did not come out of the barrel of a T54 tank or a Western war plane then or at any other time. It comes from revolt from below, and often from the streets and workplaces. The traditional season for that is now firmly open.