The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that vote is now open for the most Beard Friendly Sandwich of 2021.
Each year during National Beard Week in June the campaigners search for a sandwich that does not have excessive mayo or salad which tends up in the beard rather than the mouth.
With the rise of designer sandwiches the bread around the sandwich filling, whether a traditional slice, flat bread or ciabatta, often fails to contain the contents which can then spill out into the beard even with the most careful eating.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, With the fish finger sandwich being voted the most beard friendly in2020 and cheese and pickle the runner-up it will be interesting to see where the hirsute snack trends are in 2021
National Beard Week 2022: Michael Eavis named Hirsute Personality of the Year
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has named Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis as Hirsute Personality of the Year. The campaigners say that while Eavis’s beard is not iconic in itself it represents a positive view of what the hirsute can bring to society
National Beard Week, organised by the Beard Liberation Front runs from June 27th to July 2nd
It is a long standing annual event designed to highlight positive images of hirsuteness and to call out beard haters- Pogonophobes.
A summary of the 2021 results is below. They were achieved by a mixture of social media polls and, for more specialised areas such as Beard Friendly Employer, careful checks by BLF researchers
National Beard Week 2021
Monday 21st June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year. 2021 winner Gareth Southgate
Tuesday 22nd June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard. 2021: fish finger
Wednesday 23rd June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact. 2021. Michael Rosen
Thursday 24th June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year; 2021 Boris Johnson
Friday 25th June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2021 Five Points Brewery
Saturday 26th June: Beard of Summer 2021: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards 2021 Richard Osman
Private Eye (1517) in February 2020 carried a lengthy analysis of the structure and finances of Brewdog. Private Eye doesn’t really do much on-line but a summary which is below
The piece is interesting because Brewdog is far from transparent about how it works despite its Equity for Punks ‘ownership’ scheme.
The nub of the Eye’s analysis is contained in these sentences
‘it is not suggested that any of these transactions are illegal or improper. The question is whether they are appropriate for a company with 100,000 other shareholders’
Of interest it notes that while a profit of £3.8m was made in 2016 this had reduced to £1.4m in 2017 and by 2018 had become a pre-tax loss of £576,000.
Brewdog have continued to expand since with more bars even during the pandemic and recent statements on its financial performance suggest that a move to canning beer has helped.
The Eye piece also noted:
When the private equity deal with TSG was announced in April 2017, it was stated to have involved a total of £213m, including £100m for new shares to fund Brewdog. The normal private equity playbook would look for an exit by sale or listing within five years
The Eye analysis focuses on a Company named JBW77 that appears to be linked to Brewdog founder James Watt and various holdings, transactions and deals that it has been involved in. As a union official that deals with very large companies (which Brewdog is not) I’m not sure there is anything hugely unusual about it.
The issue of course lies between how Brewdog markets itself, as a sort of rebel against the traditional beer industry, and the reality of the business it carries on which might well be described as traditional.
This has been highlighted again in the last few weeks by well documented issues about the very traditional, indeed almost Victorian, way Brewdog manages its employee relations.
Scotland on Sunday (20th June) has published a piece highlighting further concerns about Brewdog’s structure.
TSG are of course the main private equity investors in Brewdog. The Company is not publicly quoted so you cant buy shares directly on the market (the Equity for Punks schemes are crowdfunders) but can invest in equity via brokers.
Why TSG needs to have its holding in the Cayman Islands is not clear except obviously for potential tax issues. TSG is a significant equity investor across a wide range of companies and given that a TSG representative now chairs Brewdog this is at least a matter of concern.
On the other hand Brewdog might be excused for not knowing the details of other private investors (unless they courted them directly) since they might well have come via a third party.
New crisis as a member of the Ambridge ruling class has made an ‘oversight’.
Adam Macey, who despite what some may think, is a member of the Ambridge ruling class has made an oversight. He used £5,000 of farm funds to rewire the residence he shares with Ian. Brian looking for funds to help pay for Alice’s detox found that Adam had ‘borrowed’ the money without telling him.
Questions of trust (but definitely not solidarity) are taken very seriously in ruling class circles. Adam has taken a bank loan and replaced the money but Brian wonders whether he can believe what he is told by his farm manager in future and invited him to resign.
Adam has suggested that Brian is victimising him because he is gay and brought up Brian’s own lengthy history of transgressions
It is just the latest crisis to hit ruling class Ambridge. The problem is that the proletarians of the village are not mobilising to take advantage of the weakness of their opponents. Yet.
In other news
Peggy had her 102nd birthday this week.
Joy has been accepted as a candidate member of the Fete Committee after an interview with Lynda
Joy has managed to destroy some of Lee’s superhero figures. Not even Lee seemed to be that bothered…
Its carry on camping at the rewilding project after Roy sourced some temporary lighting for Rex and Phoebe.
Helen Barrett has written an interesting piece on the post pandemic crowd (FT Magazine 19.6- paywalled but you may have access or be able to find a free link) which should really start a debate. Indeed author and activist Dan Hancox has already made relevant points on twitter.
Crowds vary a lot. There are those involving mass transport for example- trains and buses. I’ve used both inter-city trains and London buses throughout the pandemic (but not on a regular basis. My office is in the City of London but even before March 20 I worked virtually a good deal, much as I, as a Londoner, actually like being in the City). I wear a mask and I’m now fully vaccinated but I’m 64 so I still take care. In short if its too crowded for my liking I get off and wait for another.
Then there are the crowds at events, sport, concerts etc. Tbh I’m still not that keen. Its summer so Ive thought about going to the cricket (which I’d usually do in summer) and perhaps I will a bit later in the year. The point here though is that these are paid for events and along with taking care yourself, there is an expectation that the organisers will ensure and have a legal duty to ensure safety.
Demonstrations and protests are another matter. As Hancox noted who knows how many will turn up or what will happen. If we did life would much simpler and we could retire financially safe as crowd consultants. Now physical events have restarted I’ve certainly been on demos-for Palestine for example. Again one knows what to expect and can stay or go as appropriate.
Finally there are those things like pubs and restaurants. Of course I go in, but *only* to those where I know those who run it and know they will do the safe thing.
There are complexities here but then whoever said understanding crowds was easy? The added issue now is keeping safe and how safe one needs to be. Its called a risk assessment. One expects authorities to make them in many cases but you also have to do it yourself. After all the best kind of crowd is about doing it yourself…
Chesham & Amersham: A provisional history of the present
The Liberal Democrats won Thursday’s By-Election in Chesham and Amersham overturning by some margin the previous Tory majority.
It may have been a surprise but only because since December 2019 the presence and impact of the Liberal Democrats at national level has been close to zero. Even so at local level in England they retain pockets of residual activism and activists. One thing they have been very good at for decades is winning Parliamentary By-Elections.
Perhaps there are a few who think they do this by promoting progressive politics. Mostly they don’t. In fact they major on whatever they perceive to be the key issue in the seat- in the case of Chesham changes to planning laws that would allow more houses to be built. In short Nimbyism.
There is media talk about cracks in the Tories Blue Wall in the South. Perhaps but this is not mostly at the ideological level. The Tories remain a hollowed out party with few activists. In a national election that can be overcome by spending money, social media etc. In a By-Election that gets much less publicity its difficult. They had a serious disadvantage compared to the numbers the LibDems could put out.
Labour lost their deposit getting just 622 votes and 1.6% of the vote. According to the media it’s the worst ever Labour By-Election result which is a fairly meaningless point without context. In fact in By-Elections where anti-Tory voters see a chance to unseat a Tory candidate by voting LibDem, Labour losing its deposit is far from unheard of.
A more serious question is why it was the LibDems and not Labour who were in a position to win. In 2017 Labour came second with 20.6% of the vote. For comparison in 2019 the LibDems came second with 26.3%. Not so very different.
The difference between 2017 and 2021 is perhaps that the current Labour leader doesn’t seem keen on encouraging Labour’s still considerable activist base to be active.
What this means for Labour it is of course (as usual) too early to say- I’m an historian after all. Perhaps 2017 marked the highwater mark of Labour managing to avoid the process of decline of social-democratic parties across Europe and that has now resumed here too.
Some no doubt (one hears this from Mr Blair in his ‘rare’ interventions)think that a LibDem-Labour progressive alliance which almost happened after 1997 (John Prescott sabotaged it, Blair told the Hay Festival a few weeks back) is a way forward. A key question is exactly how ‘progressive’ it would be, remembering the 5 years the LibDems spent in coalition with the Tories up to 2015.
The answer for the left may lie mainly outside of the confines of Parliamentary politics, what the Victorians called, pressure from without. The current election for the General Secretary of Unite while not the be all and end all(there are other things than GS’s) is important in determining how the left will grapple with the post-pandemic period for example.
The current prognosis for left electoral challenges does not look great. The Northern Independence Party managed 0.8% in Hartlepool. In Chesham the Breakthrough Party got 0.5%. There may be reasons for this but this is for another post.
Others may say Labour would do better with another leader. I tend to agree. The policies might not be much better, if at all, but the current leader doesn’t appear to be very good at actually leading. Indeed they seem rather uncomfortable with it. Someone who can actually lead and is capable of doing so might be better in purely electoral terms, if that is your thing as it were.
Kohli & Williamson face off in Beard of Summer 2021 vote
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that as the delayed World Test Championship gets underway on Saturday, Indian captain Virat Kohli and New Zealand captain Kane Williamson are set to face off for the Beard of Summer 2021 vote.
The two captains are included in the 8 contenders for the coveted Award.
There will be two rounds of voting each consisting of 4 contenders. The top 2 in each round will go forward for a final Beard Off vote. The winner will be announced on Saturday 26th June as the culmination of National Beard Week 2021.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Beard Power is a key part of modern cricket. The Test at Southampton is to determine the World Test Champion and which captain, Virat or Kane, has the most influential beard could be crucial to the result.
Of course Marxists support that but then so do lots of other people who are not Marxists but just hate racism. Those who boo taking the knee tend to be racists.
That doesnt mean Marx did have good tactical advice on football to offer.
let us think of the basic principle of the International: Solidarity. Only when we have established this life-giving principle on a sound basis among the numerous workers of all countries will we attain the great final goal which we have set ourselves.
The geographical areas where Covid has hit have been extremely defined, where the biggest problems have been repeated.
So, you see in situations in Bradford, in Leicester, in bits of London for example, in bits of the north west, you see repeated areas where places have been hit over and over again in areas of deprivation.
Indeed in many of them, if you had a map of Covid’s biggest effects now and a map of child deaths in 1850, they look remarkably similar.
These are areas where deprivation has been prolonged and deeply entrenched.
Extract from speech to NHS Confederation 17th June
Campaigners renew call for first ever hirsute Northern Ireland First Minister after Poots departure
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with Edwin Poots resignation as DUP leader it may be problematic for his nominee, clean shaven Paul Givan, to continue as First Minister in Northern Ireland.
The BLF says that there is still time for a clean break, and the appointment of a hirsute FM.
While the gender balance of First and Deputy First Ministers since the Good Friday agreement in 1998 has been better than several other UK nations, there has never been an incumbent with a beard.
The campaigners say while Northern Ireland has traditionally been a clean shaven culture, in recent times beards have bristled and politicians from across the spectrum have featured in the annual Beard of Ireland vote:
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, obviously there are many factors which go to determine who will be the First Minister but we believe diversity should be one of them. If Mr Givan is unable to continue following Mr Poots departure it is more than time to consider a first ever hirsute First Minister
