Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

29th December

Michael Sheen shared the Beard of the Year 2020 Award with Michael Rosen on 28th December.

In conversation with Guardian columnist Owen Jones Sheen has celebrated his hirsute victory

Beard Liberation Front

29^th December

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners confirm Trump tweet contesting Beard of the Year result was fake

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that a tweet purporting to come from Donald Trump which queried the result of the 2020 Beard of the Year was fake.

Beard of the Year 2020 was shared between Michael Rosen and Michael Sheen. While Sheen won the popular vote the BLF Electoral College judged that the Award should be shared with Rosen whose beard had shown resilience and consistency throughout 2020:

Vintage Year for Beards as Michael Rosen & Michael Sheen named Beards of the Year 2020

The tweet apparently from @realDonaldJTrump read:

I won 46.8% of the popular vote and THEY SAY I LOST. Yet Mickey Rosen gets 34.7% of his popular vote and THEY SAY HE DREW. More proof that I won the election BIGLY #fakebeard

The tweet was sent at 23.21 on 27^th December

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, our suspicions were aroused as it seemed unlikely that Donald Trump had ever heard of the Beard of the Year poll and also because the tweet appeared to be far too coherent for him. We are satisfied that it was the work of a mischief maker.

Beard Liberation Front

28th December

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

A Vintage Year for Beards as Michael Rosen & Michael Sheen named Beards of the Year 2020

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has confirmed that the author Michael Rosen and the actor Michael Sheen have shared the 2020 Beard of the Year Award.

Rylan Clark-Neal won the coveted award in 2019

Michael Sheen achieved 53.2% of the popular vote to Michael Rosen’s 34.7%. However looking across 2020, while Sheen won the vote for the Beard of Wales in March, Rosen won votes for the Beard of Summer in June, the Beard of Lockdown in July and the Beard of Autumn in October. In the circumstances the BLF Electoral College meeting on 27^th December determined that the 2020 Beard of the Year Award is shared.

The campaigners say that it has been a vintage year for beards, if for not much else. Lockdowns and stay at home policies across the world have led to a significant growth in beards

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, as usual for Beard of the Year we were looking not just for a style or length of beard but those that had a positive impact in the public eye. In 2020 both Michael Rosen and Michael Rosen have been superb ambassadors for the hirsute. We congratulate them.

Beard of the Year 2020 Finalists

Michael Rosen (author & broadcaster, winner Beard of Summer & Beard of Autumn)

Michael Sheen (actor, winner Beard of Wales)

Peter Coles (cosmologist, winner Beard of Ireland)

Bill Bailey (dancer & comedian)

Tony Benn, who died in 2014,kept a very long running diary. Far from all of it is in the public domain but there is enough to get some sense of how leading politician of the left spent Christmas from the 1960s through to the 2010s.

Benn left an enduring legacy to the British Christmas. As Postmaster General in 1966 he promoted the introduction of Christmas postage stamps.

Perhaps unsurprisingly in that context Benn was something of a Christmas card sender himself.

On Saturday 12th December 1998 Benn wrote, ‘I stuck labels on the Christmas cards- a terribly time consuming job. We’re only sending a few hundred this year.

By Saturday 4th December 2004 Benn noted that he had ‘bought £100 worth of stamps…signed,stamped and posted well over 350 Christmas cards. However he added ‘I have a wonderful computerised system’.

On 25th December in the same year he recieved from Cherie Blair a signed copy of her book ‘To Tony who’s been an inspiration throughout my life’. The bearer of the gift had added that Cherie had told them ‘dont tell my husband’..

The diary also contains (20th December 1992) Benn’s record that he decorated the Christmas tree ‘as best he could’and then taken the children to a ‘pizza parlour’ in Chiswick.

There are other entries down the decades a fascinating mixture of the personal and political at Christmas

Beard Liberation Front

28th December

Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Michael Rosen & Michael Sheen share Beard of the Year 2020 Award in hirsute year like no other

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said the author Michael Rosen and the actor Michael Sheen have shared the 2020 Beard of the Year Award.

Rylan Clark-Neal won the coveted award in 2019

The BLF Electoral College met on Sunday to verify the 1,329 votes cast in the annual on-line poll for Beard of the Year and to review the record of the four finalists in terms of positive beard impact across 2020. These two elements combined determined the outcome.

Michael Sheen achieved 53.2% of the popular vote to Michael Rosen’s 34.7%. However looking across 2020, while Sheen won the vote for the Beard of Wales in March, Rosen won votes for the Beard of Summer in June, the Beard of Lockdown in July and the Beard of Autumn in October. In the circumstances the Electoral College has determined that the 2020 Beard of the Year Award is shared.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we congratulate both Michaels who have proved outstandingly positive examples of beard wearing in 2020 a year when beards have flourished like no other, albeit often due to force of circumstances.

Beard of the Year 2020 Finalists

Michael Rosen (author & broadcaster, winner Beard of Summer & Beard of Autumn)

Michael Sheen (actor, winner Beard of Wales)

Peter Coles (cosmologist, winner Beard of Ireland)

Bill Bailey (dancer & comedian)

Tony Benn & Christmas Postage Stamps

I didn’t write Christmas cards this year and I received a handful in the post, several from persons unknown….

10 years ago before the rise of social media I, and I’m sure others, received quite large numbers of cards.

Christmas has been and no doubt still is, the busiest time for the Royal Mail dating back to the 1840s.

What is less well known is Tony Benn’s role in making sure that the then Post Office produced special Christmas stamps.

Benn was Postmaster General for a period in the 1964-70 Labour Governments and had to overcome considerable resistance to get the stamps introduced.

He recorded in his diary for 1st February 1966,

I talked to Downes about the Post Office Christmas card. He had put in an absolute negative in the best Postal Services Department fashion. He came in grim faced and I talked him out of it. We will have a card with a Christmas stamp and simple greetings selling at 6d.

The focus however was on the stamps. On Friday May 13th 1966 Benn wrote

I have decided to go ahead with the children’s competition for the Christmas stamp, even though the local authorities are opposed to it. It will give us an idea of the sort of quality you might expect from children.

Benn, through the Post Office, organised a competition among schoolchildren aged under 15.  The competition was launched on Blue Peter, which at the time received viewing figures of around 8 million twice a week. Response to the competition was huge.  Over 5,000 designs were submitted which were assessed by a team of eight professional stamp designers.  These first British Christmas stamps featured a design by Tasveer Shemza (of King Wenceslas) and James Berry (Snowman).

https://blog.westminstercollection.com/tag/tony-benn/

The Royal Mail still produces Christmas stamps, this year the nativity as depicted in the stained glass windows of some Anglican churches.

The Ambridge Socialist

27^th December

70 Years of Class Struggle in Borsetshire

We demand 10 years jail for Moss

As flagged in the Ambridge Socialist Gavin Moss has finally had enough of the behaviour of his father and walked out. Before he did however he said enough to Kirsty to signal to her just how dodgy her new husband is. Returning from a night in a Travelodge on the A5 Kirsty quizzed Moss about where he had been and what he is up to. She stumbled across the reality of his life as a gangmaster.

Moss claimed that he helped the slave workers because otherwise they would have been on the streets (a usual and historic ‘excuse’ of slaveowners down the centuries) but Kirsty aided inevitably by Roy Tucker called the police.

No doubt Moss has a few lies left to tell yet but it seems unlikely that 2021 will see him moving to Wales. The Modern Slavery Act (2015) has a range of offences and sentences for them, but the Ambridge Socialist is calling for 10 years for Moss, a high profile gangmaster.

Boxing Day Hunt cancelled

The Boxing Day Hunt is a traditional pastime for a section of the Ambridge ruling class. It is rarely covered by the BBC and it wont be in 2020 because even though the village remains in Tier Minus Zero COVID means its not safe to proceed.

More details:

The Ambridge Socialist: is the Borsetshire Boxing Day Hunt going ahead?

Archers Dynasty cracks on Eddie Grundy & the Christmas Show

With erstwhile supremo of the Ambridge Christmas Show Roman having cleared off abroad, a crisis arose as this left a key part vacant. Needs must and the Archer Dynasty’s attempt to ban Eddie Grundy from the show had to go. He told a story about his much missed father Joe Grundy and his craft Tumble Tussocks cider..

Before Scrooge and Johnson: the early modern origins of Boxing Day

The origins of Boxing Day are in 2020 perhaps obscure. It was not, despite it now being a major sporting day, traditionally a time for boxing matches for example.

Rather the early modern traditions of the day go back to the 1660s (just after the period when Christmas had been officially banned) where Christmas gifts (usually money) were left in a box by the better off for those who had done work for them during the year.

Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that Samuel Pepys recorded putting money in five or six such boxes on Christmas Day 1667 to allow the recipients to have a more enjoyable festive season.

The following year Pepys was complaining (December 28^th 1668) : “Called up by drums & trumpets; these things & boxes having cost me much money this Christmas.”

The wealthy being what they are complaints were not slow in coming. In 1710 Jonathan Swift complained that he would be ‘undone’ by the giving of Christmas boxes and in 1756 Sir John Fielding that the total cost of such boxes could amount to £30 (when the average wage was around £1 a week).

The Daily Telegraph, which knows about these things, notes:

British servants to the wealthy in the 19th century were given time off to visit their families as their services had been required for the Christmas Day celebrations of their employers. They were therefore allowed the following day for their own observance of the holiday; each servant would be handed a box to take home, containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes leftover food.

As Hutton notes the practice of the Boxing Day ‘box’ was not easily given up by the less well-off and in 1871 Boxing Day itself became an official day off, a Bank Holiday.

In modern neo-liberal times, COVID restrictions notwithstanding, the pressure particularly in retail and services is making Boxing Day a working day again. The only effective break here is trade union organisation.

The Ambridge Socialist

26^th December

70 years of the class struggle in Borsetshire

Is the Borsetshire Boxing Day Hunt going ahead?

The BBC’s focus will be elsewhere in 2020, well away from the seasonal event of real importance in Ambridge- the Boxing Day hunt.

For some years the South Borsetshire Hunt was led by patrician Oliver Sterling but this important job in the ruling class structure of the County is now with horse lover Shula Archer.

Whether or not the Hunt will go ahead in a period of COVID restrictions remains unclear and Ambridge Socialist reporters have been investigating.

For understandable reasons Ambridge is in Tier minus zero but the area of England where Borsetshire is situated is in fact in Tier 2 as of Boxing Day.

The Government which is of course very friendly with the hunting fraternity has waved COVID restrictions for Boxing Day hunts except in Tier 4

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/boxing-day-hunts-exemption-lockdown-restriction-808540

Aside from stalwarts of the local ruling class the Hunt has attracted some of the most unpleasant of Ambridge residents from Rob Titchener to Philip Moss

Ambridge Socialist Editor Keith Flett said, we expect a report in the Daily Telegraph later in the week about how the Hunt got on, if it goes ahead. We are less sure the BBC will cover it. We don’t mind hunting providing Tories are the subject of course.

Update

While its possible that in line with Hunting Office guidelines the Borsetshire Hunt went ahead well away from Ambridge it seems more likely that in common with other hunts in the area it was cancelled. Let’s hope a tradition has been started:

https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/18939816.hunts-cancel-boxing-day-meets-covid/

Christmas Day riots

As is (hopefully) fairly well known Parliament attempted to ban Christmas, a law of June 10th 1647 forbade its celebration. This was not entirely successful but there were reasons. Christmas was associated with Catholicism, and in effect the ‘old’ ruling orders, while the Parliamentary majority now represented the Puritan ascendancy that disliked the traditions and ideas of the Catholic church.

The Puritans were also concerned, at an official level and certainly amongst local ‘activists’ that Christmas was a time of dissolute behaviour which they felt was ungodly.

Parliament was certainly not totally successful in banning Christmas activities, partly because the less well off in society liked to mark the occasion, if and where they could, their lives being quite tough enough at other times, and also because celebration was associated with the Royalist cause and in the 1650s a symbol of attempts to overthrow the Commonwealth.

Certainly at Christmas 1647 a number of Church Ministers were jailed for attempting to mark the occasion.

Down below Christmas 1647 saw a number of riots in defence of celebrating the day.

Mark Stoyle has written in History Today about some of those that were recorded;

On 25 December 1647, there was further trouble at Bury, while pro-Christmas riots also took place at Norwich and Ipswich. During the course of the Ipswich riot, a protestor named ‘Christmas’ was reported to have been slain – a fatality which could be regarded as richly symbolic, of course, of the way that parliament had ‘killed’ Christmas itself.

In London, a crowd of apprentices assembled at Cornhill on Christmas Day, and there “in despite of authority, they set up Holly and Ivy” on the pinnacles of the public water conduit. When the lord mayor despatched some officers “to pull down these gawds,” the apprentices resisted them, forcing the mayor to rush to the scene with a party of soldiers and to break up the demonstration by force.

The worst disturbances of all took place at Canterbury, where a crowd of protestors first smashed up the shops which had been opened on Christmas Day and then went on to seize control of the entire city.

There is some interesting new-ish research on this here:

http://roy25booth.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/riotous-christmas-at-canterbury-1647.html

As with the Gordon Riots in London in the 1780s we need to be careful in applying modern labels of ‘reactionary’ or ‘progressive’ to such events. They may well have been Royalist influenced, and hence in the context of the 1640s counter-revolutionary, but once they were in progress they became a force that could challenge the existing order, whoever was in charge of it.