Kmflett's Blog

Liz Truss’s lunch at 5 Hertford St. A sense of place more than fine dining

Liz Truss’s claim for £1400 to cover a 2021 lunch for herself a US Government official and it would seem some others has rightly raised considerable criticism. Coming from the Government that has cut Universal Credit and thinks £96 a week sick pay acceptable the hypocrisy is outrageous but not surprising.

The significant cost of the lunch appears to have been more for wine and gin than the food. Obviously 5 Hertford St is not the kind of place I frequent or would be allowed into (although I have been in some similar West End clubs over the years by invitation for some event or other- the beer is always crap). Its owner is Robin Birley a donor to UKIP and the Tory Party and it seems to be frequented by assorted members of the upper class and Tory MPs.

Given that it’s a members club- yearly cost £1800 (possibly more now) that’s not surprising and nor is any detail of what its actually like easy to find. There are it seems several bars, a downstairs night club and a cigar room. What reviews that can be found suggest that the cocktails are decent (if expensive) but the food (the point of lunch I would suggest) seems to be thought at best OK and certainly over priced even compared to similar places in the West End.

The wages paid to those who actually keep the place running is another matter. Mirror reporter Dan Bloom tweeted that kitchen porters are paid £10.55 an hour. An advert for an assistant chef ( 4 shifts 9am-11pm a week) indicated a salary of ‘up to’ £25,000- that’s a year btw not a week.

None of that unfortunately is out of line with the notoriously poorly paid hospitality sector.

Clearly 5 Hertford St is somewhere that people go to be seen and to see others of a like-minded world outlook (i.e the haves not the have nots). In a class society perhaps that’s not surprising but why the taxpayer should foot the bill for any of it I’m not sure.

Their Holidays and Ours: Does Christmas still have twelve days?

January 5th is Twelfth Night, in the traditional calendar a festival to rival that of Christmas Day, and January 6th Epiphany. These dates mark the end of the Christmas holiday period.

How far people in work in 2025 observe a 12-day holiday or take time off depends on occupation, employer practices and individual circumstances. It may be that some official statistics are collected on the matter- although I’m not aware of them.

Whether time off is extended or otherwise over the Twelve Days has been the subject of employer and class led change.

For example Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that in 1797 the Customs and Excise Office in London closed for six days between December 21st (St Thomas’s Day) and 6th January (Epiphany). By 1838 it opened on every day except 25th December. Hutton notes that between 1790 and 1840 ‘employers, led by the Government, carried out a ruthless pruning of the Christmas holidays..’ The 1833 Factory Act had decreed that, Sundays aside, the only days when a worker should not attend work were Christmas Day and Good Friday. The 1871 Bank Holiday Act added a few Mondays into the equation as well as St Stephens Day (Boxing Day)

However from the early 1840s, led by Charles Dickens, efforts to reclaim and promote Christmas as a popular festival of harmony and social peace, certainly for the middle classes were well underway. Hutton notes that in 1847 the Poor Law Commission allowed a Christmas dinner in all Workhouses. The modern Christmas was under development.

The point being that time taken off work at Christmas (or not) although dictated to an extent by the 12 days of the traditional calendar has also been about the promotion or denial of people to take time off work.

The modern retail Christmas, as shopworkers union USDAW underlined again this year, seems to consist of Christmas Day (if you are lucky).

Others may take time from 24th December to 3rd January, 10 days but not 12.

However long you do or do not take in 2025 things are guaranteed to be better ordered and regulated if you are in a trade union.

Beard Liberation Front

 January 3rd

Beard of Winter 2022 Vote. Call for nominations

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for nominations for the Beard of Winter 2021 poll.

The list will contain a diverse range of contenders for the annual seasonal accolade.

It is the first of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year Award in December 2022.

The Beard of Winter focuses both on fuller organic beards, suitable for winter weather but also on beards that have made an early New Year impact in the public eye.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it will be as ever it is a wide ranging, eclectic, list but one very much focused on the winter season. We are keen to make sure we don’t miss beards that have been making a significant positive impact in the public eye in the last few weeks.

The poll opens on 17^th January and closes on 30th January 2022

There will be two ‘Trim-Off’ rounds from 17-20 January and then from 21-24 January. Each will feature four contenders. The top two from each round will feature in a final ‘Beard-Off’ vote from 25-30th January

Vote on possible 2022 nominations

Reminder of the Beard of Winter 2021 Shortlist

Arnie Schwarzenegger, actor

Tim Farron, MP

Brian Blessed, actor

Daniel Norcross, broadcaster

Jack Dorsey, CEO Twitter

Steve Bell, Guardian cartoonist

Jimmy Wales, founder Wikipedia

Michael Rosen, author and broadcaster

The Wit of Wisdom of Peter Mandelson. The Key message & press conference backdrops (Feb 1998)

The end of year release of official papers from the National Archives in 2021 included a significant number of documents from the early years of the Blair Premiership starting in May 1997.

One file-strategy- is largely the work of the then Minister Without Portfolio, Peter Mandelson. One suspects that in 2024 Mandelson still sees himself as a key Labour strategist but in 1997 he actually was (before the first of his several forced resignations).

I’ve copied below the opening para from a Strategy document produced in February 1998. Whether the message worked would require further investigation but its good to know that press conference backdrops required attention even then.

Minister Without Porfolio

Strategy/Office Meeting

Message to be: Nobody ever said it would be easy; but we are getting there; step by step we making Britain better’. Alun Evans to ensure message deployed by Ministers in the course of the next week and monitor how far it is used. Philip Gould to test effectiveness. Alun Evans/Alastair Campbell to explore new backdrops for press conferences.

Peter Mandelson, Minister Without Porfolio (May 1997-July 1998)

Alastair Campbell Downing St Press Secretary (May 1997-July 2000)

Philip Gould (1950-2011) Pollster and strategist

Alun Evans, Head of Strategic Communications Downing St

(Note prepared by Jonathan Powell 2^nd February 1998)

National Archives File PREM 49/244

The Iraq War, British Justice & ‘Sir’ Tony Blair. Unfinished business

There is, rightly in my view, considerable protest at the decision to make Tony Blair a Knight of the Garter. It’s the highest form of Knighthood restricted to 24 living people and granted by the Queen rather than the PM. The convention is that former PMs in due course are elevated but there has been media speculation that the non-appointment of Blair was holding up eventual advancement for Dave Cameron…

It should never have come to this and the reality that it has tells us something about British justice.

In the wake of Ghislaine Maxwell being found guilty of various charges last week by a New York jury several UK commentators have wondered whether such a case would ever have come to trial in the UK. The French justice system prosecutes former senior politicians for alleged wrong doings but this has rarely been a feature of British justice.

The biggest demonstration in British history against the Iraq War on 15^th February 2003 continues to have an influence on the politics of the present, perhaps not least because Blair is still active politically.

Gordon Brown set up the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War which held hearings between 2009 and 2011. Sir John Chilcott (who died in October 2021) did not report until 2016 when the then PM Dave Cameron decided it was all in the past and nothing needed to be done.

The Guardian’s view of Chilcott was that it ‘could hardly have been more damning of Tony Blair’ but Blair himself claimed he had acted in ‘good faith’. The fact that the original war was illegal and its impact continues to cause significant global issues today remains unacted on.

The point being that Blair should have faced a Court after Chilcott (The Inquiry itself didn’t have the status of a Court of Law) either in the UK or at the Hague and if he had done the issue of him being appointed a Knight of the Garter would probably have never arisen.

The fact that it has will simply underline that the Iraq War, and the millions who died as a result, remains unfinished business in British politics and life in general.

The Ambridge Socialist

2^nd January

New claims that David Archer is innocent of Pargetter murder

11 years ago Nigel Pargetter fell to his death from the roof of his ancestral home Lower Loxley. He had gone up there with David Archer to take down a festive decoration. The view of many at that time was that Archer had pushed Pargetter and in a bid to consolidate the Archer family as the ruling class of Borsetshire. It being Ambridge the police did nothing.

The Ambridge Socialist ran an anniversary poll which found that 43% now think Archer was innocent of Nigel Pargetter’s murder. By contrast 32% still believe him to be guilty. Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, we suspect that Archer mobilised his network of ruling class forelock tuggers to fix this poll.

Sgt Burns skinny dip in the Am

Sgt Burns has been skinny dipping in the Am to prepare, he said, for his role as Jesus in the Mysteries. He was spotted emerging by Chris and Martha who were out for a walk. Fortunately it was radio.

Ruairi: Dodgy in the best Aldridge tradition

Ruairi returned home after Christmas and was somewhat unpleasant to Alice suggesting that she might clear off out of Ambridge. A real chip off the old Aldridge block clearly. The Ambridge Socialist however suspects that Ruairi is in fact deeply dodgy. No doubt, at Archers speed, this will play out in due course.

Roooth and Stella

The Guardian think that Roooth and Stella may be embarking on a lesbian affair. The Ambridge Socialist would welcome such a development. It would just remain to get rid of David Archer, and as the Guardian, which knows about these things, has suggested there are plenty of options.

The Return of Mike Tucker

Mike Tucker (Terry Molloy) has returned from Birmingham for the New Year. He was the last union representative in Ambridge and there is plenty of work for him to do…

Engels was keen on both eating and drinking but even it could get too much for him at this time of year…

Manchester, 3 January 1868

Dear Mrs Marx,

I must apologise for leaving your letter unanswered for so long. But the Christmas period is the only time in the whole year when, apart from business, I am made to feel that I stand with one foot in the bourgeoisie, and here in Manchester this entails a lot of eating and drinking and upset stomach, and the obligatory ill humour and waste of time. This is now fairly well over, and I am beginning to breathe freely again.

Engels

Twelve Days of Christmas: Lords of Misrule, bans on football & rebellion

As time allows I’ve been continuing to delve (research wise) into the Lords of Misrule that appear at various times in the traditional calendar but certainly in the twelve days of Christmas after 25th December.

There is an interesting discussion in correspondence between the US historian Natalie Zemon Davis and the late EP Thompson in 1971/2 published in Past and Present (May 2017).

Thompson was interested in charivari or rough music as forms of revolt and protest but certainly didn’t think that all forms of it were of a progressive nature.

The discussion refers back to an article Davis wrote in Past and Present 50 (1971) the Reasons for Misrule.

Here she argues that the Lords of Misrule elected on 26th December were categorised by age and gender, that is they were young men.

She writes in a footnote about English examples:

The Lords of Misrule seem to be an example of youth officers..not the Lords of Misrule elected at the Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn or at Court but the ‘wildheads of the parish’ (described in 1585 by Philipp Stubbs in his Anatomie of Abuses) who elect a captain of mischief called ‘my Lord of Misrule’ and who go about with hobby horses and pipers and drummers..’

Was this subversive of the existing order, a real rebellion or a licensed way of ‘letting off steam’ at a time of year when little rural work could be done?

One piece of evidence that weighs in favour of rebellion is that on the first Christmas that Parliament succeeded in officially banning festivities,1647, in Canterbury part of the response was to engage in a mass game of street football (which was definitely banned)

It’s work still in progress. There are issues about gender and whether there were examples of Ladies of Misrule but also about understanding how rebellious they were. It may have suited some to overplay or downplay the matter much as they would do now

‘Sir’ Tony Blair; A history of the present

Giving someone who was Prime Minister 15 years ago a Knighthood wouldn’t normally excite a great deal of comment. They are after all ‘yesterday’s men and women’. That is not the case with Tony Blair who has accepted a Knighthood in the New Year’s Honours. This is primarily because Blair has a group of supporters who believe, as he possibly also does, that the ideas he worked out in the mid-1990s which became known as ‘New Labour’ are just the thing not only Britain but the world needs in the 2020s. People can take their own view on that.

The history of Blair and honours is an interesting one. There are of course those who argue that he should stand trial at the Hague for the Iraq War and not get a Knighthood at all. However if one checks who the British State has given Knighthoods to down the years it can be seen that the two are far from mutually exclusive.

Blair wanted to modernise or reform the Honours system when he was  PM and a long running investigation resulted in more honours going to people who were actually doing something of note rather than getting them because of the position they held. It was a change but like so much of New Labour not much of one.

In 2006 he was interviewed by police three times in a Cash for Honours inquiry and nothing further was done. That did however underline what successive Governments including the present have used the Honours system for.

When Blair stepped down as PM in 1997 he said he did not want a Knighthood. He did not get the offer anyway. According to some media reports one reason was because the Queen remained unhappy at his, again modest, efforts to drag the Monarchy into the modern era after the death of Princess Diana. Given the current Prince Andrew issue, perhaps they should have paid more attention to Blair, or Sir Tony as he now is….

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE  1st January

Contact Keith Flett    07803 167266

JANUARY 1st is NATIONAL NO SHAVING DAY

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that 2022 is set to start with the highest numbers of beard wearers since 1945, after significant growth of beards in working from home restrictions.

National No Shaving Day takes place on Friday 1st January.

The BLF says numbers are set to mark the day by starting a beard similar to Beard of the Year winner Michael Rosen.

The hirsute campaigners say that 1st January is the best day in the year to start a beard. With many celebrating until the early hours the last thing most want to do in the morning is to shave. As it is a Saturday with two further days before the official working week begins the beard can be started in the privacy of the wearer’s own home.

The BLF has provided the following guidelines to starting a beard on Friday:

Step 1: do not shave

Step 2: by early afternoon, wash the face and comb through the developing stubble

Step 3: during the afternoon rub some craft beer, or alternatively lemon juice, into the developing facial hair to nourish it and promote growth

Step 4: In the evening you can begin to trim and style the proto-beard

BLF organiser Keith Flett said, Beards are set to be big again as 2022 dawns, with not only record numbers of designer beards but also a continued resurgence in the traditional organic full bearded style