The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has marked the 100th anniversary of the BBC by underlining that there is still work to do for it to lose its pogonophobic practices.
The campaigners say that while the BBC is relaxed about beards on the radio, for example the current Beard of the Year Michael Rosen presents Word of Mouth on Radio 4, it has been far slower to put beards on TV screens.
Jeremy Paxman accused the BBC of pogonophobia during a brief period when he wore a beard while presenting Newsnight and the BLF says that there is still a concern that a senior BBC levels beard are held to lack authority.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Lord Reith the BBC’s founder was perpetually clean shaven but a hundred years on its time for more beards to appear on our TV screens, particularly in the news and current affairs area
The Financial Times (15th October) has reported that Saudi Aramco has agreed a sponsorship deal with the ICC that will see it back the 2023 Cricket World Cup in India. It already sponsors Indian Premier League cricket.
Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest oil exporter and is effectively a vehicle for the Saudi Public Investment Fund. The Saudi Government owns 94% and the PIF owns Newcastle United football club.
Given the Saudi regimes human rights record one wonders if the world of cricket will be protesting..
36% lead over the Tories : Labour & the opinion polls
Following the debacle of the ex-Tory Chancellor’s Fiscal Statement Labour has a 36% lead in a RedfieldWilton poll published on 17th October
Poll leads are not everything. They usually appear because the incumbent Government is messing things up. They are maintained to a successful Election victory if the opposition in this case Labour is able to harness the discontent to a positive mood to support it
We can see this in the period 1992-1997
We can’t obviously be sure what moves the polls but I do think that there is some evidence that there are particular events which change people’s minds on a long-term basis, as Black Wednesday seems to have done in 1992
By 1992 Thatcher had been forced to resign over the Poll Tax debacle and was replaced by John Major. Major, unexpectedly and quite narrowly, beat Labour, led by Neil Kinnock, in a General Election on 9th April 1992. For the few months after wards the Tories led Labour on average by 5 points in the opinion polls.
Then came Wednesday 16th September 1992, ‘Black Wednesday’. On that day the Tory Government withdrew the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). In order to protect the pound Chancellor Lamont raised interest rates from 10% to 12% in the morning, and then up to 15% in the afternoon.
The following day interest rates returned to 10% but the damage was done in terms of electoral standing. Voters with mortgages, perhaps more inclined to vote Tory, had seen the spectre of the cost rising by 50% in a day. If it had happened once clearly it could happen again.
By November 1992 polls were showing ratings of around 30% for the Tories and 50% for Labour. They changed little until the eventual election in 1997. Labour’s lead was nothing to do with Blair, who wasn’t Labour leader in 1992, rather it was the late John Smith, but with an event so potentially cataclysmic in its impact that it stuck in voter’s minds.
It’s worth pointing out (thanks to Lindsey German for this) that the October 1992 pit closure crisis underlined and amplified the Tory crisis. The Tories had spent the mid-1980s demonising and defeating the miners on pit closures. But when Heseltine tried again in 1992 the mood was very different. Public support swung behind Arthur Scargill and the NUM’s efforts to stop further closures.
Whether you think Starmer is a decent Labour leader or not, it won’t be that much to do with anything he does or doesn’t promote, at least at the moment. What 1992 suggests is that it’s about Tory crisis and whether the left and labour movement can galvanise the mood around that which has the real impact. With a General Election now due and the economy in tatters thanks to Trussonomics, Starmer with a poll lead similar to Blair will face a very different economic and political terrain to 1997.
Work in Progress but what the left and labour movement do outside Parliament in the next few weeks will matter as much if not more than what happens in Parliament
The current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has now reversed nearly all of Truss and Kwarteng’s fiscal statement. Not great news for those who hoped for a degree of stability in already sky high energy prices for example.
Chris Mason the BBC’s political correspondent paraphrased a line from the Communist Manifesto which actually reads ‘all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned’. Holy that is to the hard right adherents of the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Gordon Brown may have claimed to have abolished boom and bust until the 2008 financial crisis proved him wrong. The reality is that capitalism is a system built on crisis and the current situation is just the latest one.
A reflection that perhaps Marx and Engels knew more about how capitalism works and doesnt work than Tory Governments
Looking at events of the last few weeks it is reasonable to suggest (though you might struggle to find the point in much of the media) that Parliamentary Democracy is undergoing a legitimation crisis.
The term was popularised by Jurgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists. Habermas broadly used it to look at how a Government run on the principles of a market economy dealt with a population that mostly preferred a moral economy. For Gramsci however legitimation crisis of Government took place when their hegemony over society fractured and was the basis for a political struggle
A bare majority of 180,000 Tory members elected Liz Truss as Tory leader and hence PM in early September. Within a month it has become clear that she is not capable of performing the role. Hence it appears there is talk amongst Tory MPs on who might be a suitable candidate to replace her. In short yet another PM without an electoral mandate.
The issues facing many on the cost of living, public services and housing suggest that a General Election is needed. Until one is called there remains a crisis of Parliamentary Democracy and its legitimacy.
It is not new. In 1820 after Peterloo in August 1819 when protesters calling for the vote and Parliamentary Democracy were cut down by the Yeomanry a series of gatherings around the country were held with a broad plan for rising. It didn’t come off but in the Making of the English Working Class E P Thompson noted the range of issues at stake:
Oppression of the Poor
Taxation
National Debt and was laid on the necessaries of life
The Corruption of Ministers and how many thousands a year were expended on them
Two hundred years ago but it sounds very contemporary
In recent years Rupert Murdoch has rationalised his global business empire. He no longer owns Sky. But in the UK he has been building the Times brand with Times Radio and in parallel the Sun with Talk Radio. Journalists come and go betwen these brands.
Murdoch may no longer have the clout that caused Blair to be so keen to get the Sun on board in 1997 but his verdict on a Government, entirely unaccountable and undemocratic as it is, still counts.
Certainly you would not expect to find an Editorial line in any of his brands that he does not personally back.
The Editorial in the Sunday Times (16th October) says in part:
it would be more strategically astute for the Conservatives to let Labour face the economic challenges of the next few years if they are to stand a chance of returning to power in the near future
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has disassociated itself from the self styled group of Tory MPs known as the ‘greybeard alliance’. According to the Sunday Times (October 16th) the group want Liz Truss to stay in Office long enough to allow Jeremy Hunt to prove himself as a successor.
The campaigners say that the perpetually clean shaven Hunt is not beard friendly
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while the last Prime Minister with a beard Lord Salisbury was a Tory that was before World War One. The current Government is not beard friendly and the sooner it is removed from office in its entirety, greybeards included, the better.
The shower scene with Jolene and the late Sid is part of Ambridge history but now we have the hot tub. Helen could feel the bubbles creeping up her thigh and that was before she and Lee were joined by Joy and Mick. Will it start an Ambridge hot tub craze…
Church Window. Central Committee says ‘yes’
Alan the Vicar does not want a window in the Church celebrating the Archers Dynasty paid for by the Godmother Peggy. He is in a minority of one on the Church Central Committee where forelock tuggers of Ambridge dominate. He will have to reflect as Lenin did on what is to be done
Pigeon Life
Meanwhile in an effort to clear pigeons from St Stephens Alan has succeeded in smashing the Jack Woolley window. It’s an omen.
Culture Wars: The Times supports the right to protest. Except protests it doesn’t like
For the second time in the last few days the Times has published an Editorial on the right to protest. It agrees that there is a democratic right to protest. However it draw the line at protests it doesn’t like. At the moment its focus is on Just Stop Oil protests in London which it thinks should stop.
The Editorial on 15th October is particularly exercised by a protest by two activists at the Tate. A can of soup was thrown over a Van Gogh painting. The protest was peaceful and the painting was not harmed. Even so, in an echo of Stalin era Russia, the Times calls the protests vandalism and demands exemplary sentences for the protesters.
The protest was certainly effective in getting publicity, although it might be argued more for the protest than the issues at stake- climate change and energy. The PCS Union, which represents attendants and cleaners at the Tate, issued a mildly critical statement pointing out that it worked with protest groups, but this had not been the case on this occasion.
I think that collective protests involving organised labour have more chance of promoting change but that is an argument to be had within the movement. The Times Editorial shows how authoritarian the official voices of reason are becoming.
The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote of the morbid symptoms that arise when an old political order is dying but a new one can’t be born. The parallel is not exact. Gramsci was referring to the fascist regime of Mussolini and the current British Government if there is one is certainly not fascist. There is a relation to the final days of Truss as PM though when it comes to an abundance of morbid symptoms, some more serious than others.
