Last week the Ambridge Socialist ran a poll on the identity of Kyle a new Ambridge resident living close to Helen and Lee who appeared to be a thoroughly obnoxious individual.
Most respondents thought Kyle was in fact Nigel Farage. While the odious racist himself has a new temporary job on an obscure TV channel, it has become clear that Kyle is indeed the ex-leader of Borsetshire UKIP.
Several encounters with Helen and Lee have so far concluded with Helen threatening to tell Kyle’s wife of the presence of another woman in his house. Entirely true to form for an upholder of true British values of course.
The Ambridge Socialist quiz. Ian thinks Adam is having an 'affair', but who with?
With Ben and Ruairi off to study for degrees in September it’s a final summer together and Thursday saw them blag their way into the VIP area of a club. Here they met an influencer. Who the influencers of Ambridge are is not clear, and possibly even less clear to a section of Archers listeners who have never heard of the concept..
Is Adam having an affair?
Actually we don’t know and don’t much care. It’s unlikely to make him less boring. Unfortunately now that Alice has (possibly) left the storyline again it looks like we will be hearing a good deal more about this in the weeks to come.
2021 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season Suspended until Noon Tues 27th July
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2021 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season is suspended with immediate effect.
The suspension will run until midday on Tuesday 27th July. It relates to weather warnings for thunder, lightning and torrential rain. These are forecast to be in the southern half of England and Wales on Saturday moving up to Scotland by Monday.
There are several reasons for the suspension
1] Beard follicles can become water logged if exposed to torrential rain which can lead to beard rot
2 The feet and legs may also become extremely wet leading to a move to full length trousers and shoes rather than sandals
3 While lightning poses a number of serious risks, beard wearers in particular need to completely avoid any possibility of frizzled follicles which will destroy the beard altogether
There are amended guidelines for the 2021 Season and a new framework to facilitate social distancing.
1] Shorts should ideally be three-quarter length-‘culottes’ for the 2021 season. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt.
2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leaves parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some does not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.
3] Socks should generally not be worn during the official season. However if the beard, shorts and sandals are to be displayed in relatively busier urban areas it is likely to be prudent to wear closed rather than open casual footwear and ankle socks, not visible to others may be worn.
4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This is left up to the individual.
5] Social distance should be kept where appropriate and required. On no account should there be any large groups of beard, shorts and sandals wearers. Discussion of styles should be confined to small groups or social media.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course the suspension can only be advisory but the BLF has a duty of care to the hirsute. The Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season is officially suspended until noon on Tuesday and we ask the hirsute to respect this.
181 years ago this week the world’s first working-class party was formed at a meeting in a Manchester pub
The National Charter Association, the first working class party anywhere in the world, was formed at a delegate meeting which began 180 years ago this week on 20th July 1840.
The NCA provided an organised structure to attempts to win the vote for working men around the Six Points of the People’s Charter.
It had an elected provisional Executive, and a branch structure with a paid membership. It lasted until 1860.
The concept of a trade union focused party came much later in the nineteenth century, although the NCA did work with the trade unions of the day which were often Chartist focused. The NCA did however encompass a wide range of views from moderate Parliamentary reformers to those who supported a socialist revolution such a George Julian Harney.
The meeting took place in the Griffin pub in Great Ancoats St, Manchester. The pub dated from 1791 and was closed in 2005 by which time it was known as the Land O Cakes. It is now the Bem Brasil restaurant*
Perhaps typically of how much of Britain’s working class history is either forgotten or not remembered at all I don’t believe there is any current plaque on or near the spot to mark the event.
Perhaps its something that Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden who claims to be keen on erecting monuments to British history could have a look at the matter
*thanks to @gwilty200 for info on what the pub is now
Who attended (the conference started on a Monday)
Source: Manchester Conference 1840 | chartist ancestors
The following names are those of the delegates to that first Manchester conference (source: History of the Chartist Movement, 1837-1854, by R.G.Gammage ).
John Arran and Joseph Hatfield, West Riding of Yorkshire. James Leach and James Taylor, South Lancashire. J.Deegan, Staleybridge and Liverpool. David John, Merthyr Tydvil and Monmouth. J.B.Hanson, Carlisle. W.Tillman, Manchester. George Halton, Preston. Samuel Lees, Stockport. Richard Littler, Salford. Mr Andrew, Glossop. Mr Lowe, Bolton. Samuel Royse, Hyde. William Morgan, Bristol, Bath and Cheltenham. James Cooke, Leigh. George Black, Nottingham. James Williams, Sunderland. Thomas Rayner Smart, Leicester and Northampton. James Taylor, Loughborough. Richard Spurr, London. Richard Hartley, Colne.
What the meeting decided
A NCA Executive Council, consisting of seven full-time, paid members, was responsible for the co-ordination of the national Chartist movement.
The general secretary was to be paid £2 a week, and members of the executive were to receive 30 shillings a week while they were sitting.
The Executive Council was to be elected annually by a ballot of all NCA members with each county being able to nominate one candidate.
Members of the NCA had to sign a declaration agreeing to the Association’s principles and buy a 2d quarterly membership card. Where possible members were organised locally into classes of ten under a class leader who was responsible for collecting each member’s 1d subscription.
Classes were grouped into wards or divisions and monthly ward meetings heard reports from class leaders.
There was to be a ‘collector’ for each ward responsible for forwarding subscriptions to the National Executive.
The membership was divided into classes of ten, whose leaders fed into was, town, ‘county and riding’ that had its own councils with officers elected democratically.
There were to be local branches, and an annually elected general council and an executive.
Half of the money collected by local branches was to be at the disposal of the executive and plans were formulated to stand Chartist candidates at the next general election.
Steve Bell’s Inner London Wildlife. Keir Starmer’s dragon will never kill it
One of the enduring features of Steve Bell’s long running Guardian cartoon strip was the Inner London Wildlife branch of the Labour Party. The strip ended earlier this year but not before a final appearance where the Chair of a Zoom meeting was castigating members for failing to wear Union Jack waistcoats.
Bell still does large op-ed cartoons though and one this week had an echo of the Inner London Wildlife branch in the context of the decision by Labour’s NEC to proscribe some groups that it for one reason or another did not like.
In British mythology St George slays the dragon. Here Keir Starmer is sitting on the dragon (Boris Johnson)while pointing his lance at three moles who have emerged from their burrows. One at least is raising two fingers.
The mole of course is a symbol of revolution, burrowing underground and surfacing in the most unexpected of places. The analogy was made by Marx but Robin Goodfellow (Puck) in a Midsummer Nights Dream has a similar function.
Political leaders often appreciate well made criticisms of themselves perhaps because they mark them out as people worth criticising. I’m not sure Sir Keir is quite in that place.
Steve Bell the still hirsute cartoonist drew the original Beard Liberation Front logo and the BLF has made occasional appearances in his cartoons. Its supporters in the Inner London Wildlife branch of the Labour Party have of course been on difficult ground since the leadership of the Party changed from the person who has won the Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award most often to someone who appears to relish nothing more than a visit to the barber.
Full marks to Labour MP Dawn Butler for telling it like it is in the Commons today and calling Boris Johnson a liar. She was booted from the House for the day but that is a badge of honour. Labour MPs didnt exactly seem to be rushing to her support in some cases but it was good to see Angela Rayner doing so on Twitter.
The issue of Johnson’s lack of a relationship with the truth has a long history.
Indeed when he bid successfully to become London Mayor in 2008 the Guardian ran a series of articles correctly pointing out that he was unfit for Office.
Polly Toynbee described him as a ‘jester, serial liar and self-absorbed sociopath’ (Guardian 17th July 2007)
Indeed but as Marx noted philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it’.
Its good to call out Johnson as a liar but it helps if you are actively backing those who can make sure he can only lie out of Office in future.
The Hundred ban on Sweet Caroline. Haven’t they heard of the Techno mix?
For those who watched the first game in the new cricket competition The Hundred on Wednesday night it may have been quite difficult to spot any significant changes from other limited over contests.
One was the addition of DJs and music though they couldn’t’ really be picked up on the broadcast. There was an interview with one of the official DJs who said it was all ‘amazing’. No doubt but what was the specific connection to cricket?
One difference however was the there was no singing of Sweet Caroline despite occasional mutterings from BBC commentators Tufnell and Vaughan that there should be.
Anyone who has attended an big cricket match in recent times will be familiar with the singing of the Neil Diamond song Sweet Caroline by many in the crowd. This year it was also taken up by England football fans at the European Cup. It is certainly better than some of the alternative songs. Some like David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd complained but the song isn’t the property of any particular group of fans.
According to a report in the always reliable Daily Telegraph, The Hundred has cancelled the song. The Hundred is as much about DJs and live music as it is about cricket, and the DJs won’t be playing Sweet Caroline.
Apparently the cricket authorities think the song is associated with raucous and indeed not sober fans and this is not the family image The Hundred wants.
It suggests perhaps to few people’s surprise how out of touch the ECB is. There are dance, techno and dubnbase mixes and remixes of Sweet Caroline which would surely fit well with the DJ aspect of the Hundred.
However so far the song remains cancelled. Cue an intervention by Culture and Sport Secretary Oliver Dowden and heated ‘discussions’ on GB News.
There is of course nothing that can really be done if fans just sing it anyway
It may come as a surprise to those who know Dominic Cummings from his Vote Leave and No.10 period but he took a first in history at Oxford, studying under the late Prof. Norman Stone.
Stone was a right-wing historian and fan of Mrs Thatcher and idiosyncratic in his views. Of historical actors in the modern era he favoured Churchill and Bismarck as significant historical figures.
Cummings picked up his interest for Bismarck from Stone and has blogged about the German Chancellor (1815-1898). Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’ was instrumental in creating a unified German State. His Wiki entry notes that he ‘distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong well-trained bureaucracy’.
Cummings returned to the Bismarck question in answers to questions to subscribers to his social media site. Not just Stone but Eric Hobsbawm supported the historical significance of Bismarck. Cummings may warrant a footnote in the history of post-Brexit Britain.
Studying Bismarck was the best help to understand what politics really is and how it’s possible to radically outperform – but also that you should never ever expect anybody to say ‘oh I was wrong you were right’. In politics you never really know if what you’ve done is a mistake! And even very smart people struggle to escape fashion and gang mentality
And in another answer he said:
If you want to study effective action in politics there is no better case study than Bismarck.
He was playing a completely different game to everybody else and you can trace a lot of how he did it and how he thought in the record.
Guardian report 21st June 2021
Bismarck was not an enthusiast for democratic politics and judging by the views Dominic Cummings relayed to Laura Kuenssberg , neither is he. He talked of a plan to oust Johnson as Prime Minister once he had been elected as he was entirely unsuitable for the job.
I don’t expect many would disagree but that happens via a democratic vote not because those who think they know better than others say it should.
That doesn’t make Cummings a fascist but he is clearly a supporter of a significantly more authoritarian society than Britain currently is. There will be those who argue that this isn’t possible given how dismissive of civil liberties the current Government (and often Labour too unfortunately) currently are. It is. Look around Europe for examples.
There is quite a bit to say about the new cricket competition The Hundred (ten, ten ball overs) and I expect I’ll say some of it.
As it finally starts a year late due to the pandemic on Wednesday there are some headline thoughts, or in fact one thought. Its cricket for management consultants.
The ruling body of English and Welsh Cricket Board employed management consultants (usual fees) to construct a new cricket competition to attract people who don’t watch cricket. One of the key reasons why there are people who don’t watch cricket is that some years ago the same ECB sold exclusive TV coverage to Sky. The pay TV cricket they show attracts small audiences so there is a generation that has rarely or never seen a great cricket match.
However cricket is not WH Smith. Smug is meant to be a newsagent and bookseller but anyone who goes in there in order to find either item knows one has to get through lots of other items that are not papers or books first.
However the ECB wanted some of The Hundred on terrestrial free to air TV and that meant the BBC. The BBC was happy to screen something that looked like cricket but not something clearly that looked nothing like it.
Having watched a couple of trial games on TV (at Lords) I found that the Hundred did indeed seem very familiar indeed to those who currently watch cricket. You know, batters, bowlers, wickets, umpires, ball, runs, scoreboard etc etc.
So the next challenge for the management consultants to justify their fees was how exactly was the Hundred going to be different from existing cricket?
Firstly they introduced the idea (from the IPL) of a players auction where generic squads were bid for against specific cost ranges (women players are not paid equally-very far from it).
Next they tweaked the language of cricket slightly and changed the length of an over.
None of this to a long term cricket fan used to changing competitions and format tweaks since the Gillette Cup in the 1960s is particularly new.
Hmmm. Ok so it’ll have to be off the pitch. Here lots of entertainment building on the T20 model is being sold as key. There are DJs and live music (popular music groups m’lord) and lots of non-cricket entertainment just in case the cricket is a bit a dull or one sided, or it rains.
The existing 20 and 50 over competitions seem popular and the County game has a solid membership base and support that many might see as a huge potential strength.
Still none of that attracts fees for management consultants..
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued guidelines for the hirsute as much of Britain continues with a period of hot weather.
The Met Office has issued a heatwave warning valid to Sunday
Steps to protecting the Beard in warm weather
1: If the beard is above six inches in length significant hot weather trimming may be in order
2: If the beard starts to overheat immersing it in a chiller cabinet of the nearest supermarket will provide an instant remedy. Alternatively a hand cranked fan may be used.
3: During warmer weather it is important to fully air the follicles by exercising the beard out of doors
4: If the beard starts to dry out in the heat and follicles become brittle regular immersion in a glass of craft beer or lager will moisturise and nourish the beard
Do not use beard oils. In heat these may make the beard a sticky mess
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, as well as hot temperatures the UV index will be high. There is an additional danger to the follicles here. Shielding the beard with a mask or bandana may be prudent.
Boris Johnson is currently 59 years old and will be heading towards his bus pass and pension more quickly than he might imagine. In that context, although unsurprisingly, he seems cavalier for a former Parliamentary politician about old age.
On Monday Dominic Cummings repeated a claim he made to Laura Kuenssberg in 2021 suggesting that Johnson resisted an Autumn 2020 lockdown on the basis that it was only the over 80s who were dying from Covid.
Actually its mainly the over 60s (I’m 67 and fully vaccinated) but anyone dying from COVID is a loss not to be casually dismissed, as with other illnesses. People’s longevity was increasing for many years (on average) in the UK thanks to improved material conditions and the work of the NHS. Until that is the austerity years from 2010 since when it has slightly declined.
When Johnson expressed his alleged view his father Stanley was actually 80 (August 2020)and is now 83. Moreover its thought that 38% who voted in the Tory leadership election that Johnson won in 2019 were over 65(by far the largest age group) while in the December 2019 Election 67% of those over 70 voted Tory.
Its not really clear whether Johnson’s plan was, after Brecht, to elect a new Tory membership or simply to get rid of it altogether. Getting rid of the actual Electors presents an even bigger conundrum..
