Issues around workplace culture have rightly been a significant issue at Brewdog this year.
They have still not recognised a union for their workers but instead employed yet more HR advisors and consultants to run surveys and so on. The guarantee of independence in these without workers having a genuinely independent voice is zero.
Most companies of any size who rely to some degree on public awareness of how ‘good’ a company they are across a range of issues from workplace culture to equality to environmental impact, are aware that negative perceptions can significantly hit business.
Many might query how much large companies are really on board with fairness, equality etc but most don’t stint on telling us they are and often producing back up details for those interested.
A report (below) suggests that Brewdog’s negative publicity has seen a significant reduction in their BrandIndex score as measured by YouGov. No doubt there are other measures and perhaps fortunately for Brewdog since they haven’t yet made an IPO share price is not one.
Even so it does indicate that more than cosmetic changes and a new publicity campaign are required here.
Industry publication Marketing Week reports that the brewery’s score on YouGov’s BrandIndex, which measures impression, quality, value, satisfaction, likelihood to recommend and reputation, fell from 18.9 to 4.7 in the wake of the publication.
Bradley Wiggins shaves Richard Osman in vote for Best Sideburns 2021
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with National Sideburns Day on Wednesday Sir Bradley Wiggins has shaved Pointless’s Richard Osman for the best sideburns of 2021.
The ninth National Sideburns Day is on 11th August, reflecting the growing popularity of a range of facial hair styles.
National Sideburns Day was originally held to mark Bradley Wiggins Olympic victory in 2012
The campaigners say that sideburns, sometimes known as mutton chops, and named after US Civil War General Ambrose Burnside were often worn by Victorian politicians
Bradley Wiggins reinvented the post-1945 tradition of sideburns from Elvis Presley to Noddy Holder and the late Lemmy and Alvin Stardust, turned them into something no self-respecting hipster would be without
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, this year National Sideburns Day underlines the resilience of the style over centuries of changing facial hair fashions. In an Olympic year with memories of 2012 its perhaps no surprise that Sir Bradley Wiggins has won the on-line vote for Best Sideburns shaving the 2020 winner Richard Osman.
2021 contenders
Jonathan Bailey: played the lead role in Bridgerton but has noted that his sideburns are genuine, fertilised daily like a bonsai
Richard Osman, quizmaster on Pointless
Sir Bradley Wiggins, still a sideburn wearer
JPR Williams, veteran ex-rugby player still sporting iconic sideburns at 72
Marx on the relative merits of Brighton & Ramsgate, August 1870
Marx to Engels Manchester 4th August 1870
DEAR FRED,
I shall not get away until tomorrow (I’ve been held back by BUSINESS for the INTERNATIONAL). I shall not be going to Brighton after all, but to Ramsgate, since the former place turned out on inquiry to be too hot,
Boris Johnson & exams. Fecklessness & falling asleep but ‘one of us’
Boris Johnson, has tweeted that those getting A level results today should be proud of their achievements in a challenging year.
Johnson has an interesting history when it comes exams.
Despite consulting three biographies of Johnson (Bower, Gimson, Purnell) its not possible to discern exactly how did in his A Levels at Eton. They were not however in such exclusive ruling class circles the key to Johnson’s advance. Rather that was passing the scholarship exam to Balliol which he certainly did.
At Balliol College, Oxford University he narrowly missed a first after a viva (personal examination by tutors).
As Sonia Purnell notes in her biography Just Boris, he had spent much of the last term partying rather than studying. After falling asleep in a classics class shortly before his final exams his Master at Balliol noted that he might just get a third class degree.
Instead he managed a good Upper Second on the basis not of hard work or intellectual achievement but because as one Don quoted by Purnell suggests he was ‘so evidently a good egg’.
Both at Eton and Balliol one can find numerous comments from tutors. They don’t doubt his intelligence but also his ‘fecklessness’ and laziness. He was more interested in rugby or at Oxford the Union.
His success at both places rested of course on his ability to pass exams but also clearly because he was regarded as ‘one of us’ whose numerous failings could be overlooked in favour of his, to his tutors, attributes.
Boris Johnson & Climate Change. Waiting for things to happen
Boris Johnson described the UN report on the impact of climate change (9th August)as ‘sobering’. It was lunchtime and that suggested perhaps that he had already been following a Churchillian regime that morning (i.e alcohol for breakfast).
At least however he managed to appear to take the matter seriously, which is rare for Johnson and also marks him out from a swathe of right-wing politicians, including some in his own party, who don’t think the matter deserves serious consideration.
Of course its unlikely Johnson will do anything beyond words.
As Sonia Purnell notes in her biography of Johnson, Just Boris, he has developed, as in other areas a method of moulding his views on climate change to what he thinks is the current mainstream.
She writes:
He was once noted for scorning the global warming agenda, with caustic rants about the cult of climate change. Since then he has flipped sides so many times that petrol-heads and eco-warriors take turns to denounce him.
We might expect better from Labour who after all at the 2019 General Election had a well thought through policy around a Green New Deal. Keir Starmer has written recently about climate change but whether he actually backs doing something I suspect may be only marginally more likely than Johnson.
As ever action from below by climate activists, trade unionists and others will be essential
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with National Sideburns Day on Wednesday it is running a snap poll to judge the best sideburns of 2021.
The ninth National Sideburns Day is on 11th August, reflecting the growing popularity of a range of facial hair styles.
National Sideburns Day was originally held to mark Bradley Wiggins Olympic victory in 2012
The campaigners say that sideburns, sometimes known as mutton chops, and named after US Civil War General Ambrose Burnside were often worn by Victorian politicians
Bradley Wiggins reinvented the post-1945 tradition of sideburns from Elvis Presley to Noddy Holder and the late Lemmy and Alvin Stardust, turned them into something no self-respecting hipster would be without
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, this year National Sideburns Day underlines the resilience of the style over centuries of changing facial hair fashions
What Marx & Engels found at the Victorian seaside: spies & temperance campaigners
With many, time and money allowing, set to holiday in the UK again this year it’s interesting to look back to some of the seaside experiences of Marx and Engels. Both were great enthusiasts for English seaside resorts although not often together.
The issue of Government spies and infiltrators into radical and labour movement organisations is a current concern. It is however nothing new.
On 25th August 1871 Marx wrote to Jenny Marx from Brighton, where he had gone for his health, that he had encountered a familiar individual… He doesn’t speculate on why he was being watched but it is likely to have been in the wake of the defeat of the Paris Commune. Marx and Engels had been central in helping Communards who had escaped brutal repression in Paris and made their way to England.
He wrote
I forgot to tell you yesterday of a curious événement. The second day after my arrival here, I met a chap in a waiting posture at the corner of my street. He was the same man whom I had told you about before as having accompanied Engels and myself on our way HOME on a number of occasions. Engels had thought he was a spy and we once gave him a ‘hint’. As you know, GENERALLY SPEAKING I am not good at detecting spies. But this fellow has obviously and undeniably dogged my every step down here. Yesterday, I became fed up with it, so I stopped, turned round and stared at him with my notorious EYEGLASS. WHAT DID HE DO? He doffed his hat very humbly and today he no longer honoured me with the pleasure of his company.
The previous year on 30th August 1870 Marx wrote to Engels noting that he was leaving Ramsgate (on a steamer) the following day for London.
He complained to Engels that ‘the English have thronged all the seaside resorts on account of the war’. This had raised the price of the lodgings the Marx family had and made them ‘expensive’.
The war that Marx referred to was the Franco-Prussian War which had started on 19th July 1870 and by his account meant that tourists destined for France (quite probably via Thomas Cook) had decided to holiday at the English seaside instead.
Marx had other complaints. Firstly his accommodation was ‘damned draughty’. Secondly he wrote that he was almost paralysed in a ‘certain place’ and needed to consult is doctor in London.
Marx had written to Engels on 8th August noting he was off to Ramsgate on the 9th rather than Brighton because on investigation he thought Brighton would be too hot
On 15th July 1874 Marx was in lodgings in Ryde, Isle of Wight. He wrote as he did regularly to Engels who was in Ramsgate. This was rather a reversal of locations since Marx was often in Ramsgate and Engels frequently in Ryde.
Marx noted that one of his daughters Laura had been to stay and he had accompanied her to the Portsmouth ferry when she had to leave:
When we went down to the pier to see her off we witnessed the arrival from Brighton of a temperance gang back from an excursion. Half of them were drunk. As an old Englishman next to me remarked ‘it was the worst lot he had ever met with in his life’ and neither have I ever encountered such a mob of stunted, loutish and smutty-minded idiots all at once…For foreigners this sample of Freeborn Britons would have been an amazing sight
British history which the Tories probably does not want to be remembered
This is what solidarity looks like: Spurs fans applaud Saka
Spurs played Arsenal at White Hart Lane today in a pre-season friendly. Spurs won 1-0 via a Son goal. It’s a which side are you on question? One half of North London will be happy tonight (my side) and the other half wont.
There are some things more important than football though.
When Arsenal player Saka came on in the second half he was applauded by Spurs fans.
Saka was on the receiving end of a lot of racist sh*t after the European Cup final and the applause was a gesture of anti-racist solidarity. A banner was also displayed.
It’s the kind of solidarity that the likes of Boris Johnson will never understand. But North Londoners often stood united against racism and the tradition continues
Marx on northern Church of England clergymen, 1873
In late 1873 Marx was staying (health reasons) at the Old Swan Hotel in Harrogate. It opened in 1840, is Grade 2 listed and remains open.
While staying he came across a vicar. Given the views of the Archbishop of York on Englishness and metropolitan elites in the Telegraph (8.8) one can understand that the clergy and class prejudice are not new things:
When we arrived, the season had already gone, so that we occupied our hotel ‘in single blessedness’, being only disturbed and somewhat amused during the last days of our sojourn by the dropping in of a Church of England parson, a worldly wise old man, with no smack of cant about him, of fluent and trivial talk, with conventional varnish of manners and caring indeed for nothing save his belly. He was the true model of a modern Christian, using that word itself only with respect to the dishes our hotel-keeper provided and saying for instance: this is no Christian mutton chop, if that same chop happened to lack some virtue or other. The man had overrun most countries of Europe and was in himself a recording office of all the merits and demerits of its several hotels, always hunting in vain for that paragon of mankind—a perfect man—cook. At the same time he never tired of bitter sarcasms against the overstrained pretentions and the extravagant living of the miners of the black country,being himself an incumbent at Durham
Ruari has come out as bi-sexual to Jennifer and Brian. She is enthusiastic. Brian has had to check to see what that means but is prepared to admit that he is a dinosaur. Who knew?
Shula falls off a pony but finds lurve
Shula has fallen off a new pony while speaking to Neil on the mobile about a shed. As a result she has a broken arm and has had to postpone the latest round of her vicar training. Neil has been round to ‘help’. Shula has now confessed to Alistair that she might be in ‘lurve’ with Neil.
The Ambridge Socialist poll. What is the future for Shula & Neil?
Josh’s eggs business is in crisis because the shells are too thin after he failed to make sure the hens were adequately dosed with various things. Daveed is unhappy but is prepared to accept that Josh is getting better at crisis management an essential requirement for any long term Ambridge resident
Amy
Chris has been whingeing again and after ringing Amy and discovering that Alice has been carrying on drinking has suggested that she returns to Ambridge. It’s a serious story line but not one we suspect with a happy ending
Village Fete Celeb update
The Ambridge Socialist vote has found that Kathy Burke and Michael Rosen are joint favourites to open the Village fete. Is Lynda Snell listening?
