Tory MP Steve Baker’s proto beard spells the end for clean shaven Johnson
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that clean shaven Boris Johnson’s time as a Prime Minister, is coming to an end.
Hardcore right-wing supporter of Johnson Steve Baker MP spoke in the Commons on 21st April in the debate on an inquiry into whether Johnson had misled the House. He argued that it was more than time that the PM stepped down.
Significantly Baker who is invariably clean shaven had a proto-beard, developed beyond stubble level.
The BLF says this represents a split in clean shaven Toryism, and is a clear visual symbol that Johnson who has never had a beard is on his way out.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we don’t expect Steve Baker will be signing up as a supporter of the Beard Liberation Front anytime soon but his proto-beard suggests a hairy time ahead for Johnson.
Brewdog are currently running a publicity campaign marking 15 years of Punk IPA. Interestingly it is fronted up by Martin Dickie who has been remarkably absent from the many recent controversies regarding the Scottish brewer.
He rightly is credited with being the brewer back in 2007 but unfortunately the anniversary seems to be going no further than PR. There don’t appear to be any plans to re-brew the original Punk, or a 2022 version of it for example.
I checked back to discover when I first had the beer. This is a partly random task as I certainly didn’t keep a diary of when I drank it or anything else. Rather I’ve had to rely on twitter. I can see I definitely drank and enjoyed it at the Cambridge Beer Festival in May 2010. This would have been the 6.2% cask version.
It was indeed this original version that made Punk’s name as a beer and led the way for it to escape from a craft beer niche to the mass market beer it is today. Of course its not the same beer and it hasn’t been on cask for many years. Its now a 5.4% keg beer.
Making a beer like the original punk for a mass market would be problematic I suspect not only in terms of getting hold of an appropriate quantity of hops, but also whether the robust hoppy character it had would really be a mass market beer.
I still drink Punk very occasionally. On the rare moments I find myself in a Wetherspoons and there is no interesting cask on (Spoons invariably has cask on but sometimes rather dull beers) I’ll have a pint of Punk which they sell in many of their pubs. The price is usually around £2 a pint cheaper than in a Brewdog bar which I suspect means more is sold and the beer is fresher as a result.
Punk now is a perfectly drinkable well made beer for mass consumption. 15 years ago that was not something you could easily find reliably. Is it therefore progress? Perhaps. Is it what Martin Dickie had in mind in 2007? One wonders…
Boris Johnson becomes confused about Camden & Islington, suits & Jeremy Corbyn
Labour leader Keir Starmer lives in Kentish Town in the North London Borough of Camden. Boris Johnson lived for many years with his former partner Marina Wheeler in the adjacent North London Borough of Islington.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday Johnson argued that Starmer was a ‘Corbynista in a smart Islington suit’.
As Starmer noted in response he is not a fan of Jeremy Corbyn (who btw often wears a decent suit with his beard) but he does wear smart suits. Johnson by contrast is never smart and seems to be curiously ignorant about the area of London he lived in for so long. Quite in character…
Ambridge Socialist: Grey Gables closure & sackings. Stirling must face consequences
20th April
The fall out from Oliver Stirling’s sudden closure and sale of Grey Gables continues.
A birthday party for Elizabeth due to be held there on Thursday is in doubt due a lack of staff. Stirling noted on Wednesday that after the announcement numbers had left for other roles. He seemed unaware that there are significant labour shortages in hospitality but most particularly that under redundancy law, those made redundant, and the employer making them so, have a legal duty to look for suitable alternative employment to mitigate the impact of redundancy.
Stirling does not seem to realise that by failing to carry out a statutory consultation with Grey Gables workers, and by failing to report the redundancies using the HR1 form, he has broken the law. A recent change means that anyone failing to accurately report redundancies is now potentially subject to an unlimited fine.
This may not be of much use though to the core Grey Gables workforce and the Ambridge Socialist still thinks their best way forward is to occupy the hotel to stop the closure until an agreed way forward for them is found.
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, Stirling has done a P&O and he must face the consequences.
The Financial Times (18th April) has reported that there is a cheese crisis. The FT sees things in economic terms so they are looking at a very sharp increase in the US market price for cheddar cheese. It has gone up by around a third since the start of 2021.
In Europe the price of Mozzarella has gone up 44% since November 2021, while UK cheddar prices have risen by 55% in the last two years. There is a ‘tight’ milk supply for cheese and prices of fuel of course are considerably up.
The FT reports this is leading to an increase in cheese thefts. Recently 1600 kilos of cheese were stolen from a Dutch dairy farm. Parmesan thefts, a perpetual issue in Italy are increasing.
While cheese was a staple of the working class diet in England in the first half of the nineteenth century, good quality cheese has never been a cheap item. Cheese mongers were amongst the Yeomanry that rode at Peterloo in 1819. Boris Johnson(as Churchill who liked French cheese) is a cheese lover but no doubt gets someone else to pay for his supplies…
Campaigners say Macron needs his 2016 beard more than a hairy chest for electoral success
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged French Presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron to make an immediate start on re-growing his 2016 beard and to reduce the focus on his hairy chest.
Previously, shirt unbuttoned, Macron has displayed his hairy chest in media interviews. The campaigners say that while this may appear sexy to some, and a turn off for others, it does nothing for Macron’s gravitas deficit.
A key issue in the snap 2024 campaign is that many less well off voters do not believe that Macron has their interests at heart or the focus to pursue them. A beard can add gravitas and at least give the appearance that Macron is serious about defeating the far right this time
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, its obvious that Mr Macron is hirsute but in the generality a beard is more likely to get votes than a hairy chest. It goes without saying that the leader of the far right is a supporter of barberism..
Stirling makes illegal P&O style sackings at Grey Gables. Workers must occupy to save jobs
The owner of Grey Gables Oliver Sterling has claimed that the explosion at the hotel in early 2020 and the impact of COVID has meant that he has had to take the decision to shut Grey Gables and sell it to a company fronted up by Mr Shah who has recently been staying at the hotel.
Grey Gables will not be sold as a going concern but will now close for at least 12 months and be relaunched as a new upmarket venue and eaterie for Borsetshire.
The Ambridge Socialist now understands from reliable sources that Grey Gables has more than 20 staff but Stirling has clearly made no attempt to consult with them or trade unions and has not provided for a statutory 30 day consultation period or filed the appropriate HR1 form detailing the redundancies with the Government.
This is exactly the same behaviour as the rogue employer P&O used recently. It is illegal and Grey Gables workers will have a case for unfair dismissal.
‘Generous’ redundancy payments were mentioned but it’s not clear whether, as with P&O, this will extend beyond the current statutory maximum capped at £17,130 for 20 or more years service.
Given that Sterling plans to close Grey Gables by early May and make people redundant the workers now have no choice but to occupy the building to stop closure. Their demands will no doubt need to be democratically discussed and agreed amongst the workforce and with Unite, where they are members.
Some possible demands:
Follow the law and consult with staff and unions on the reasons for closure and alternatives to it
Keep existing staff on while the hotel is refurbished, ready for the re-launch
For those who prefer to leave, offer enhanced redundancy payments from day one of employment (statutory starts at two years) with higher payments for those with limited service and a lift on the cap at 20 years service
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, Oliver Stirling cannot be allowed to get away with tossing long serving and loyal employees on the scrapheap at short notice and breaking the law in doing so. We think Grey Gables workers should occupy the hotel and seek a way forward that is acceptable to them.
Oliver Stirling shuts Grey Gables & sells it. Workers must occupy to stop closure!
The owner of Grey Gables Oliver Stirling has claimed that the explosion at the hotel in early 2020 and the impact of COVID has meant that he has taken the decision to shut Grey Gables and sell it to a company fronted up by Mr Shah who has recently been staying at the hotel.
Grey Gables will not be sold as a going concern but will now close for at least 12 months and be relaunched as a new upmarket venue and eaterie for Borsetshire.
The Ambridge Socialist understands that Grey Gables has less than 20 staff so while individuals need to be consulted there is no legal requirement for collective consultation. While ‘generous’ redundancy payments were mentioned its not clear whether this will extend beyond the current statutory maximum capped at £17,130 for 20 or more years service.
Given that Sterling plans to close Grey Gables by early May and make people redundant the workers now have no choice but to occupy the building to stop closure. Their demands will no doubt need to be democratically discussed and agreed amongst the workforce and with Unite, where they are members.
Some possible demands:
Keep existing staff on while the hotel is refurbished, ready for the re-launch
For those who prefer to leave, offer enhanced redundancy payments from day one of employment (statutory starts at two years) with higher payments for those with limited service and a lift on the cap at 20 years service
Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, Oliver Stirling cannot be allowed to get away with tossing long serving and loyal employees on the scrapheap at short notice. He needs to offer enhanced redundancy for those that want it and agree an arrangement with the new owners for continuous employment for those that don’t.
Boris Johnson is at the Covid Inquiry today and he will be offering, indeed has already made, apologies. It is a regular Johnsonian event.
He offered a ‘heartfelt apology’ to the Commons for his participation in a Downing St garden party on 20th May 2020 which he claims he thought was a work event, earlier this year. When he was given a fine for breaking lockdown laws for attending a birthday party (for himself) at No.10 later in 2020 last week, he apologised again.
Johnson’s career is littered with apologies but they are invariably for the impact what he has done is on himself rather than what he actually did.
As Sonia Purnell noted in her biography of the current PM Just Boris he has become an almost habitual apologiser for ‘any offence’ that his earlier words, often racist, have caused.
Johnson has a long standing history of racist comments and of dismissing reports that highlight the role racism had and has in British society, to go along with his history of apologising for these when called to account.
One example is the 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence that found institutionalise racism in the Met Police. Johnson dismissed the findings as ‘Orwellian’ ‘weird’ and ‘crazy’.
Purnell pointed out that following discussions with his then wife, prominent lawyer Marina Wheeler, by 2001 he was prepared to concede that Macpherson may have had a point. Not of course that when he later became Mayor of London he did anything about this.
More recently Johnson made a speech about ‘levelling up’ on 15th July 2021. Afterwards he was asked by the Independent if he would disown earlier comments about Muslim women he said:
‘The best thing I can say is that I’ve obviously apologised in the past for the things that I’ve said that have caused offence and continue to apologise for them’.
So he is carrying on apologising and carrying on making remarks and doing things that cause offence too. As one of his tutor’s at Eton noted Johnson thinks that the rules which apply to others do not apply to him. The ‘Special One’…
There is a badge which echoes a US ‘redneck’ protest of the late 1960s that proclaims ‘long hair is communism’.
This may have come as a surprise to those associated with many Communist organisations (Stalinist variants of certainly pre-1968) where a smart dress sense including short hair for men was generally regarded as the norm. After all if the appeal was to industrial workers in heavy industry many of necessity had short hair. Long hair in a mine or steel works was probably not the best idea. In the old Eastern Europe long hair post-1945 was considered a sign of youth rebellion against official society and ‘hairies’ were sometimes persecuted and prosecuted by the State. The US rednecks may have been more like Communists than they thought..
The UK did not escape the trend. After the editors of OZ magazine were found guilty at an obscenity trial in 1970s they were jailed (released on appeal) and promptly had their long hair cut on arrival at jail. The Beard Liberation Front, which campaigns on all matters hirsute has long kept a careful eye on the politics of appearance and that is one reason why a founding principle is that people should be able to dress and appear as they want. That may be a statement in the case of some, or it may not, but in either case, so what?
