Kmflett's Blog

Reminded that the CockTavern opened 10 years ago in July 2012 is also a reminder that the Beard Friendly Pub the Year vote will run again later in 2022.

A reminder that the Cock has always been a contender and often a winner

Shortlist for Beard Friendly Pub 2012

Beard Liberation Front

press release                                                  2nd December

Contact keith flett                                            07803 167266

_____________________________________________________

SHORTLIST FOR BEARD FRIENDLY PUB 2012 ANNOUNCED

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that after extensive research by BLF Inspectors the shortlist for Beard Friendly Pub of 2012 has been agreed.

The winner will be announced on 15^th December

The BLF says that the number and range of Beard Friendly Pubs has increased significantly this year and it has determined to list pubs in several categories:

Beard Friendly Pub: a pub that welcomes the hirsute and often has a significant number of hirsute customers

Beard Friendly Ambience: a pub that may have fewer hirsute customers but is welcoming to the hirsute through bearded bar staff and beard friendly beers such as imperial stouts

Provincial Beard Friendly Pub 2012

Last year a London pub, the Jolly Butchers in Stoke Newington High St, won the accolade of Beard Friendly Pub of 2011. It beat the Evening Star pub in Brighton for the coveted title. The Southampton Arms in Gospel Oak was third.

The campaign group says it welcomes diversity in both appearance and drinking but does think that there is a link between stylish beards and beers and good pubs

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are delighted in the growth of Beard Friendly Pubs across all categories in the last year and we expect the race for the winner to go down to a whisker.

The 2012 Short List

Beard Friendly Pub [London]

Cock Tavern,Hackney

Craft Beer Co, Islington

Jolly Butchers, Stoke Newington

Southampton Arms, Gospel Oak

Provincial Beard Friendly Pub

Brewdog, Bristol

Evening Star, Brighton

Port Street Beer, Manchester

Beard Friendly Ambience

Bag of Nails, Bristol

Queens Head, Kings Cross

Goat Major ,Cardiff

The 2012 winners will be announced on December 15th

The Guardian reported in December 1989 that I was the Editor of the glossy magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Living Marxism. This was an error. Both party and magazine are long since defunct but various successors such as Spiked and the Battle of Ideas flourish. In the meantime the politics moved from left to right, not unknown across the world it might be noted.

The Guardian has reported that Rishi Sunak was involved with an East London Free School between 2013-15 that was associated with the RCP’s successors. No doubt he saw no great issue with the right-wing ideas on offer but might perhaps have wondered who was purveying them.

After all his ex-mate Boris Johnson had employed another ex-RCP member Munira Mirza (resigned Feb 22) as a Culture Wars promoter in the Government of which Sunak was a member.

Anyway suffice to say I’m no fan of the RCP or Sunak wherever they pitch up on the political spectrum

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/19/rishi-sunaks-bizarre-ties-to-rightwing-libertarians-highlighted-by-labour

The long delayed Forde Report into Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour since 2015 and the 2017 General Election has at last been published. It documents a shameful period when Labour officials sought to undermine Corbyn and ultimately, perhaps, to lose the 2017 General Election.

It was a shameful and corrupt period. Such behaviour is not unknown in the labour movement. One thinks of Frank Chappel’s electricians but no one involved has any place in the labour movement.

Jeremy Corbyn has issued his own statement on Forde and he is right to argue that if Labour isnt a party of social progress and socialism then what is it. Of course whether this is something that can be achieved via Parliament is something we’ve discussed since the 1970s

Beyond Forde its worth recalling why Jeremy Corbyn’s Haringey years have led to lasting respect in the area

I last saw Jeremy Corbyn in person in April 2022 at the Bernie Grant lecture. In 2020 he delivered the 20th anniversary Bernie Grant lecture at the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham. His speech that day ranged across issues from anti-racism, the history of slavery and the rise of Black Sections in the Labour Party. David Lammy who later distanced himself from his earlier decision to nominate Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015 was also there and spoke. Its true as David Lammy says that no one including Jeremy Corbyn himself I suspect expected him to become Labour leader but that is another matter.

Corbyn has always been up front about his politics and his staunch anti-racism

We were both young men with beards in the North London labour movement in the 1970s (and we still are except not young) even if we had diverging views on the best way to achieve socialist advance.

Corbyn played a key role in the Battle of Wood Green on 23rd April 1977, one of the landmark battles which grappled with the rise of the fascist National Front, eventually successfully:

The Battle of Wood Green 23rd April 1977

Corbyn was the organiser of that demonstration. He made sure that Councillors of all parties were on board and managed to unite those who wanted a peaceful protest and those who wanted to confront the fascists as well.

The local Hornsey Journal paper had the following quote from him:

From Haringey Councillor Jeremy Corbyn on behalf of the organisers of the counter-demonstrations ‘Why did the police allow the National Front to march through the busiest shopping area of North London, an area populated by several of London’s largest immigrant communities? It must be clear from Saturday’s demonstration that there is the widest possible opposition to these modern day fascists. How much longer must it be before fascism is banned from our streets?’

Since then Corbyn has continued to be an anti-racist activist. Some politicians as they progress through their careers prefer to play down or rewrite their past. By contrast Corbyn is always prepared to remember what he did on that April day in 1977 and was the keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary event in 2017.

Jeremy Corbyn’s Haringey years are still remembered and respected by many in the Borough as is of course is his friend and political ally the late Tottenham MP Bernie Grant.

Forde shows what treachery such politics can meet. The fight in several arenas goes on

The long delayed/withheld Forde Report into was going on in the Labour Party from 2015 has at last been published. Well its hot and summer hols beckon.

The BBC predictably claims the report is about anti-semitism. It is but as Michael Rosen repeatedly asked is the UK Lbour Party the only place where anti-semitism exists? Infact its a major issue in societies across Europe.

There is another story to tell. Forde looks at the period between Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015 and the 2017 General Election. Corbyn’s victory was unexpected by the Labour Party bureaucracy and Corbyn himself.

Labour Party HQ imagined hordes of Trotskyists seizing the machine (if only). In fact Corbyn’s forces were isolated at HQ level, despite some outstanding people. This happens in organisations sometimes. Labour HQ sought to frustrate Corbyn’s policies.

It was not that successful, given the strength of grassroots support for Corbyn. The 2017 Election presented another challenge. Given Labour HQ didnt think Corbyn’s politics represented their view of what Labour should be they backed candidates they preferred.

Anti-democratic and shameful certainly. But its worth recalling the opening line of Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary Road to Socialism(1960). He argued that Labour is the most dogmatic of parties, not about socialism but Parliament.

The Forde Report underlines the point

Climate change is leading to record high temperatures across Europe and the UK is no exception.

Some of a certain age can be found talking about the long hot summer of 1976, a month long heatwave, leading to the appointment of a Minister for Drought when the obvious happened.

Tony Benn made reference to the weather in his diary for 1976.

Sunday 27th June.still boiling hot

Tuesday 6th July Cabinet. We sat around the table in our shirt sleeves on a very hot July day

Saturday 10th July.To Stansgate. Still unbelievably hot.Its been in the eighties or nineties for about a month now and the grass is absolutely brown..

Benn recorded that the maximum temperature reached was 35C

The Tory leadership debate such as it is has seen rather odd accusations that two of the candidates Rishi SunakandLiz Truss are ‘socialists. Since materialbeing determines consciousness this seems unlikely.

Even so Marx and Engels did touch on the matter in the Communist Manifesto

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

Paul Foot, the campaigning journalist and revolutionary socialist died on 18th July 2004 aged 66.

A formidable speaker and writer like William Morris it mght be said that Foot died simply of being Foot.

I heard him speak many times but a more specific memory. He coined the term ‘fletters’..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Foot_(journalist)

My thanks to Michael Rosen for a twitter alert on the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the deportation of Jews from Vichy France ultimately to be murdered in Auschwitz. 77,000 Jews were despatched by the authorities before liberation in August 1944.

The days of 16th and 17th July 1942,80 years ago,marked the start when thousands were sent to their deaths.

Most were selected for being Jewish and not born in France. Rounded up by local police not the Nazis. The process of grappling with Vichy in France continues with Macron today unveiling a new memorial and pointing to continuing anti-semitism

It is indeed a history of the present and not just for France. The current UK Government still plans to deport some people who have every right to be here but were not born here to Rwanda. Of course they are not being sent to a concentration camp but one sees a similarity of thought process

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vel%27_d%27Hiv_Roundup

In a hot summer a new crisis has arisen according to the Murdoch Times.

The ice cream vans that sell the soft scoop MrWhippy ice cream cones often with a chocolate flake, a 99, are under threat. They run off diesel and need to keep running to produce Mr Whippy.

However rightly the pressure is on to move to electric vans.The Times reports this can be expensive and there is some doubt if the conversion really works for Mr Whippy.

One of those involved in developing the ice cream when a chemist at JLyons was Margaret Thatcher.

Which Tory headership candidate will be the first to speak out in support of Mr Whippy and sod climate change one wonders

17th July

Its not the first time this question has been asked but in a week when the Archers focused on work and also the week of the annual Tolpuddle Festival why was there not a signle mention of unions?

Back in the day Ambridge had union reps. Firstly Neil Carter and then Mike Tucker but in recent years nothing.

This was the week however when thanks to Oliver Sterling’s purchase of a hay baler Brad Horrabin found himself laid off a week early. At the same time Chelsea expressed discontent at her Lower Loxley job. Her ambition to be a hairdresser so far amounting to free haircuts for Call Me Russ. Meanwhile Tracey thinks her job at the chicken factory is bearable if you can have a joke with mates. Management may think otherwise.

Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, a Unite the Union recruitment campaign is needed in Ambridge as is BBC coverage of it.

The Ambridge Socialist poll. Should the Archers feature a Unite the Union recruitment campaign?

— keith flett (@kmflett) July 17, 2022

Oliver Sterling:patrician or class enemy

Oliver Sterling was back in the Archers this week,helping with the hay making. The Grundys,Ambridge’s premier proletarian family remain friendly, reliant perhaps on some funding. Elsewhere few can excuse Stirling’s role in the closure of Grey Gables and mass sackings. Whose side are you on?

Profit and loss at the stables

Shula is developing plans for the Stables. Justin who is a significant financial backer was concerned that Shula was taking her eye off the ballof profit. He was relieved to find she wasnt..

Pizza Wars

Ian and Adam’s new pizza operation has not impressed the WI who are attempting to ban it from the village fete. Culture Wars in Ambridge