CAMPAIGNERS SAY BURNS FOUND HAGGIS ‘BEARD FRIENDLY’
On Burns Night on 25th January the Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has declared haggis, whether in its traditional or vegan form, to be amongst the beard friendly of foods.
Burns called the haggis the ‘Great chieftain o the pudding’-race.
The poet was clear himself on how beard friendly haggis is, ending his poem with the verse:
Old Scotland wants no watery stuff,
That splashes in small wooden dishes;
But if you wish her grateful prayer,
Give her [Scotland] a Haggis!
It is clear here that Burns was contrasting the haggis, whose consistency, with oatmeal to bind the ingredients together, means that it can be eaten without the danger of getting any in the beard, with other dishes where this was an issue.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the debate about whether Burns himself ever wore a beard continues. It is clear however that he thought haggis was amongst the beard friendly of foods.
Daniel Norcross to beard Brian Blessed and Michael Rosen in ‘Beard Off’ vote for Beard of Winter 2021
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that cricket broadcaster Daniel Norcross and author Michael Rosen have won the second ‘Trim-Off’ poll for Beard of Winter.
Norcross is arguably the most well known beard wearer to commentate on Test Match Special since the late and much missed Bill Frindall, a former Beard of the Year
In the first ‘Trim-Off’ vote Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and actor Brian Blessed shaved Arnie Schwarzenegger and Tim Farron. The four now go through to a final Beard Off vote.
The Beard of Winter is the first of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year Award in December 2021.
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, all of those in the Beard Off vote have gathered considerable support to win the two Trim Off rounds so expect the Beard Off to be a close shave.
The on-line poll is open now and closes on 30th January 2021
The new blended Twitter and web based poll will be in use.
There were two ‘Trim-Off’ rounds from 17-20 January and then from 21-24 January. Each featured four contenders. The top two from each round now feature in a final ‘Beard-Off’ vote from 25-30th January
Close shave expected as 4 join final ‘Beard Off’ vote for Beard of Winter 2021
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that cricket broadcaster Daniel Norcross and author Michael Rosen have won the second ‘Trim-Off’ poll for Beard of Winter.
In the first ‘Trim-Off’ vote Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and actor Brian Blessed shaved Arnie Schwarzenegger and Tim Farron. The four now go through to a final Beard Off vote.
The Beard of Winter is the first of four seasonal awards that lead to the Beard of the Year Award in December 2021.
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, all of those in the Beard Off vote have gathered considerable support to win the two Trim Off rounds so expect the Beard Off to be a close shave.
The on-line poll is open now and closes on 30th January 2021
The new blended Twitter and web based poll will be in use.
There were two ‘Trim-Off’ rounds from 17-20 January and then from 21-24 January. Each featured four contenders. The top two from each round now feature in a final ‘Beard-Off’ vote from 25-30th January
Campaigners call on Nicola Sturgeon to recognise that Rabbie Burns had a beard
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called on First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to use Burns Night as an occasion to both celebrate the poet’s work and acknowledge that the traditional image of him as clean shaven was manufactured.
The campaigners say that while Burns had employment for some years as an Exciseman and was likely to have been clean shaven at times in reality he probably shaved at best two or three times a week and wore a beard for the remainder of the time.
It is thought that images and paintings of Burns which show him as clean shaven date to a period when the London based political and culture Establishment was determined to claim Burns as what it saw as a ‘cultured Scot’, a supporter of the Union, rather than the hirsute anti-Establishment rebel he clearly was.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it’s time for Nicola Sturgeon to rectify an historic wrong and recognise that the real Rabbie Burns had a beard
Gangmaster and slave trader Philip Moss is on remand in jail. It appears that Gavin has spoken to the police and revealed more of their operations. Moss is maintaining his innocence as he was doing his three slaves a good turn by looking after them. Moss could have a future ahead as Tory Minister but in the meantime he is of course innocent until proven guilty. Given current delays that could be a while.
‘Saint’ Shula has decided to visit Moss in jail. This seemed a slightly improbable BBC story line but Shula felt she could offer Moss some guidance. In return Moss felt he could do the same for Shula. One might be tempted to see an equivalence of hypocrisy but in reality Shula is only guilty of humbug. The same is not true of Moss.
Meanwhile there is the issue of the aftermath of Moss in Ambridge. Thanks to a robust social media post by Rex David and Rooth have finally had to confront the reality of who built their new barn extension and at what price to whom.
Vince Casey calls out Call Me Russ
Vince Casey has been inspecting Russ’s Lower Loxley art gallery. Russ is concerned that not many people come to view the paintings on display. Vince, who is not the philistine David Archer thinks he is, has pointed out that this may be because the paintings are rubbish.
Meanwhile Vince has stayed overnight at Lower Loxley and has used one of the bathrooms but there has been no shower scene. Yet.
According to the weather forecast there may be some snow in London on Sunday. The forecasts are made by professional weather forecasters, often trade union members of the professionals union Prospect, and so whatever Michael Gove may think, they both deserve to be taken seriously and are highly likely to be accurate, or at least as accurate as is possible when forecasting snow.
That said you don’t need a weather forecaster to tell you that in recent times it has snowed infrequently in the Capital. A northern colleague said to me once that despite it being the middle of winter if it does actually snow in London it is headline news.
The inability of perhaps particularly London to cope with even modest amounts of snow is legendary, although one might hope that in a period of lockdown when many *should* be working from home it will be less of an issue.
The expectation of snow in London is one of the great things of London life nevertheless. People peer anxiously out of windows for signs of snow and search for reports of approaching snow (these days much easier to find with social media). In the mid-nineteenth century London, 170 years ago, when it snowed a lot more than now, it was the Chartists who got people looking out of windows, checking for any sign of impending trouble.
Suffice to say that in the revolutionary year of 1848 the Chartists did indeed come, on April 10th 1848 and on many occasions in May and June 1848 but actually they were rumoured to be coming far more often than they actually arrived.
Snow and the Chartists two of the great imponderables of London life.
Beyond Dry January and alcohol: the key role of the pub
As we enter a New Year the Dry January campaign is once again active. It is a registered charity and it aims to persuade people to abstain from alcohol for a month after a supposed festive season of excess.
While no doubt Boris Johnson and Co. did manage some seasonal excess that was far from the reality of Christmas 2020 for many.
Dry January, although it never says so, has a particular place historically in wider campaigns to cut down on drinking. In calling for people not to drink at all, albeit only for a month, it is at the extreme end of what used to be called the temperance movement. That is those who were teetotalers. Others were happy enough for people to drink beer and focused their concern on consumption of spirits. Hence the slogan ‘strong drink is raging’.
In the Carlisle State Pub Scheme from 1916, which was partly inspired by temperance motivations, while the strength of the beers sold in Carlisle pubs was reduced(and the quality improved) consumption of spirits required special treatment. Large glasses were used and water to dilute the spirit accompanied the drink.
Dry January is however about promoting alternatives to all alcoholic drinks and it is correct in saying that there is an increasing demand for this.
Writing in The Guardian, veteran beer expert Roger Protz noted correctly that while low or no alcohol beer used to be hardly drinkable it has improved a lot. He cited Adnams Ghost Ship which is a 4.5% pale ale but also has a low alcohol version that sells well. There are also specialist low/no alcohol brewers such as Big Drop. Meanwhile Kernel Brewery in South London has done much to promote very hoppy Table Beers usually at around 3% alcohol.
That wouldn’t satisfy Dry January but it is very popular with those who like a beer but don’t want to become intoxicated.
One of the key motivators of temperance supporters (accepting that it can have a positive side, which I’ve written on before) is that people only drink to get drunk and behave in a socially irresponsible way.
That seems to be very much in the mind of all four UK Governments as they have closed hospitality without any significant evidence that (for example) pubs which have had strict controls in 2020- even more so than usual-are a particular source of COVID infections.
There is an alternative campaign, run entirely on a voluntary basis and loosely linked with the Campaign for Real Ale amongst others.
Try January (@tryanuary on Twitter) is about continuing to try new beers and styles of them. Of course that is mostly done virtually at the moment- by ordering beer for delivery- many craft brewers now have significant on-line shops- or from off licences.
The consumption of the beer is then often discussed and ‘shared’ on social media and sometimes via zoom meetings.
It still offers some sense of the social that the pub provides and indeed CAMRA branches have run on-line pub meetings as it were.
It also means keeping breweries going by buying beer they can’t sell in pubs, keeping people in work and where pubs are doing take away, keeping them going too. Rather different from the idea of Dry January!
It also suggests a wider agenda about the pub, community and social relations that both myself and Phil Mellows have previously touched on.
During one of the brief-ish non-lockdown periods in 2020 I looked through some issues of the weekly socialist paper The Clarion published in the early 1900s. The paper has been fully digitised and is available on-line, although paywalled except in academic locations such as the British Library where access is free.
The Clarion promoted socialist fellowship and culture perhaps notably with cycling. It straddled an audience that used pubs and those who didn’t and carried some reports of temperance hotels and pubs. These were attempts to emulate the social atmosphere of the pub but with (at least nominally)non-alcoholic drinks such as ginger beer, dandelion and burdock and Vimto. The view was, even from those who were well disposed to temperance, thatthese were that these were austere and unfriendly places.
This reminds us that the role of the pub is very far from just being about drink. This was the point of Labour’s 2019 pub is the hub policy.
The reality that pubs and bars (at best)were shut more often than they were allowed to be open in 2020 rests on an official assumption of what happens in pubs. One can find numerous statements on the matter written fairly obviously by people that either never or only rarely visit a pub.
The caricature is that pubs are places where people gather to drink as much as possible, shout loudly at one other, crowd together and generally engage in behaviour that encourages the spread of infection.
No doubt examples can be found, just as very occasionally a Tory MP can say something sensible.
In general however pubs are socially controlled environments and that is one of the key reasons for the legal and licensing framework in which they sit. Pubs are licenced by law and the landlord or manager must also hold a personal licence-someone who is of, as it were, good character.
For people to be drunk (or for that matter asleep) on licensed premises is an offence.
In addition in 2020 pubs, where open, were COVID-19 safe environments in a way that very few other places were.
On occasion, but rarely, this was recognised. The Welsh Labour Government did keep pubs open a little while longer than some, because, it was noted, it was safer for people to mix there than in unregulated private homes.
Further they were also places where people, perhaps those who lived on their own, could meet and enjoy the company of others in a social way.
Fundamentally it as much the social context of the pub and drinking that temperance promoters dislike as the drink itself. Here we can make a useful distinction from those, primarily in the medical profession, who voice concerns about drink because they have to deal with those who over indulge and the impact on their health.
This returns us to the Carlisle State pub scheme which ran until a Tory Government privatised the operation in 1971.
The pubs offered a decent quality of beer, food and quite often leisure facilities such as games. The combination, welcoming to a cross section of the community, proved to be both very popular and very profitable. So much so that before long temperance campaigners who had pressed for the move during World War One were demanding its end
In times like these the social role of the pub, safely done, should be valued and promoted.
Emergency update: Snow & Ice Guidelines for beard wearers
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has issued emergency guidelines to beard wearers after many areas of the UK have weekend forecasts for snow and ice again.
The BLF says that while beards have been protecting against cold weather since 1854 it is also important to protect the beard itself against snow and ice penetration.
One way to do this may simply be to remain indoors and away from all possible contact with snow. This should be easier to achieve for many in a period of lockdown restrictions.
However this is not possible for all including key workers and those who venture out for essential reasons.
When venturing out in the ice and snow, the following guidelines for beard wearers are advised-
Snow and Ice Guidelines for Beard Wearers
1] Protect the entire beard with a scarf or roll neck jumper. If the snow is a heavy a snood may be advisable
2] Sweep any drifting snow from the beard on a regular basis. Do not allow snow to accumulate in the beard under any circumstances.
3] Comb the beard through regularly to remove any residual snow
4] If the beard becomes chilled or frozen due to snowy or icy weather it is essential to thaw it out slowly.
5] Brief immersion in a glass of imperial stout may help the thawing process but this is optional
6] Dry the beard slowly in a warm room and check for any damaged hairs and follicles
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said snow or ice in the beard can cause serious damage to hairs and follicles and the hirsute are urged to make sure they are protected before venturing out in snowy weather. If snow does accumulate in the beard it is essential to follow the BLF guidelines to prevent serious damage. If the beard suffers from icing, gradual thawing following the guidelines is equally important to avoid damage.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph (17.1) Tory Minister Robert Jenrick complained of the ‘baying mob’ who apparently remove statues of slave traders across the UK, joined by ‘town hall committees of woke worthies’. He made a Commons statement on the matter on 18.1 outling new laws he planned to make sure that statues of slave traders stay firmly in place:
It didnt take long for Jenrick’s plans to run into trouble as those well known woke worthies the City of London Corporation voted to remove two statues of politicians with links to the slave trade at the London Guildhall. As a result of a consultation of Black Lives Matter they also agreed to review other statues and place names in the Square Mile:
Once again it seems the Tories are at odds with business. The City knows racism can cause reputational damage and hit profits. The Government is not bothered.
From Michael Foot’s Jacket to Bernie Sanders Parka & mittens: sensible warm clothing
Male politicians of a certain kind love suits and wont be seen anywhere much without wearing one. Yet in winter the desire to be a suit wearer has been subsumed by politicians who understand that keeping warm is more important.
Appearing at Joe Biden’s Inauguration on 20th January Bernie Sanders wore a parka and giant designer mittens. Cue huge media commentary. Sanders noted
“In Vermont, we dress warm – we know something about the cold. We’re not so concerned about good fashion. We want to keep warm. And that’s what I did today.”
An earlier example was Michael Foot at the Cenotaph in 1981. He was derided for a wearing a ‘donkey jacket’ which was in fact a rather smart and warm coat. Its now in the National Museum of Labour History
one of the museum’s most striking exhibits – the coat worn by the Labour Party leader Michael Foot at the National Service of Remembrance, held at The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, on Remembrance Sunday, 1981. This coat was depicted in the press as a donkey jacket, which is something a manual worker might wear. As a result, it was widely believed that Foot, whose party then supported unilateral nuclear disarmament, had disrespected those who had sacrificed their lives in defence of the nation. He was, the argument went, consequently unfit to become Prime Minister. Yet, if you see the coat in the museum it is perfectly respectable and indeed Foot was praised by the Queen Mother for his choice. But, as Foot’s private papers held in the museum archive show, he received many letters from those who believed he had worn a donkey jacket.
