Campaigners call for ‘beard friendly’ button on Twitter
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for Twitter to add a ‘beard friendly’ button to allow users to flag particularly beard friendly tweets.
The call comes after Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey appeared virtually before a US Congressional hearing this week with an organic lockdown beard.
The hearing was about the serious issue of how social media companies deal with tweets which have political content. However there was also a focus on Dorsey’s beard which has its own twitter account.
The campaigners say that there is some evidence that of male users of twitter a significant proportion are beard wearers. A button to allow tweets to be signified as ‘beard friendly’ would be a recognition of this.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, twitter is sometimes in the news for less than happy reasons. This is a chance for the social media platform to do something positive and progressive
Beyond Scary to Subversive: Halloween & the World Turned Upside Down
As you can hardly have missed 31st October is the commercial festival of Halloween, more traditionally known as All Hallows. It is also Celtic New Year. The following two days are All Saints Day and then All Souls Day- the Day of the Dead which was a major festival of the Catholic Church in the West.
These festivals mark the changing of the season from summer to winter but there is a lot more to it than the piles of commercial Halloween tat and oversize pumpkins you can find in supermarkets. While a Guardian Editorial in 2015 criticised the crass commercialism of the day as it is currently configured but it seemed unaware of some of the other meanings and ways of it being marked.
Traditionally (see Steve Roth, Hamlet the Undiscovered Country) 31st October was the time when disruptive spirits roamed. That is reflected in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The ghost appears on All Hallows Eve.
Roth notes:
All Hallows was also a time for election of “mock kings,” “lords of revels,” or “kings of misrule.” These lords would reign over the revels season through Christmas and Twelfth Night (5 January, another night of inversion and misrule), often ending their reigns at Candlemas (2 February) or Shrovetide (which had–and has–perhaps the greatest association with carnival and misrule).
31st October was a time of the carnivalesque, of festivities and the appointment of Lords of Misrule. In some parts of the UK November 4th is still marked as ‘mischief day’.
The Lords of Misrule would reign until at least Twelfth Night on January 5th and often until Lent.
They were not always as disruptive as they might sound. They were often a way of providing a safety valve in society to mock authority and important figures without actually in anyway challenging them. The reversal of roles, masks and rebellion were often play acting.
For example in Henry V Shakespeare depicted Sir John Falstaff as the Lord of Misrule. Falstaff is well loved Shakespearan character but I don’t think anyone expects him to lead a riot or a revolt.
That wasn’t always true though. Sometimes the Lords of Misrule genuinely did represent an element of the World Turned Upside Down or at least the potential for it. Winter parades through the streets could lead to confrontations with authority.
I was born on 31st October 1956 but it would be reasonable to say that the event that shaped my outlook on life was not the above but the fact that it was the date Russian tanks rolled into Budapest to crush the Hungarian Revolution, followed by the Allied invasion of Suez
Turning the World Upside Down does not come out of the barrel of a T54 tank or a Western war plane at Halloween or at any other time.
Nor, unsurprisingly for those of us still read it, is the Guardian in favour of turning the world upside down. The Halloween Editorial reads in part:
Some experts think Halloween’s appeal is rooted in its subversive elements: children ordering adults around, and trespassers making demands of home owners. The idea of a world turned upside down seems less appealing these days.
Jeremy Corbyn’s long record as an anti-racist campaigner and activist
I last saw Jeremy Corbyn in person just before lockdown in early March 2020 when he delivered the 20th anniversary Bernie Grant lecture at the Bernie Grant Centre in Tottenham. His speech that day ranged across issues from anti-racism, the history of slavery and the rise of Black Sections in the Labour Party.
Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to suspend him today from the Labour Party is an attack on all anti-racists and the left in general. Starmer has certainly made firm statements against racism, although his description of Black Lives Matter as a moment not a movement wasn’t one.
Its difficult to argue though that Starmer is an anti-racist activist and campaigner or has a record of it.
Corbyn by contrast has always been up front about it.
We were both young men with beards in the North London labour movement in the 1970s (and we still are except not young) even if we had diverging views on the best way to achieve socialist advance.
Corbyn played a key role in the Battle of Wood Green on 23rd April 1977, one of the landmark battles which grappled with the rise of the fascist National Front, eventually successfully:
Corbyn was the organiser of that demonstration. He made sure that Councillors of all parties were on board and managed to unite those who wanted a peaceful protest and those who wanted to confront the fascists as well.
The local Hornsey Journal paper had the following quote from him:
From Haringey Councillor Jeremy Corbyn on behalf of the organisers of the counter-demonstrations ‘Why did the police allow the National Front to march through the busiest shopping area of North London, an area populated by several of London’s largest immigrant communities? It must be clear from Saturday’s demonstration that there is the widest possible opposition to these modern day fascists. How much longer must it be before fascism is banned from our streets?’
Since then Corbyn has continued to be an anti-racist activist. Some politicians as they progress through their careers prefer to play down or rewrite their past. By contrast Corbyn is always prepared to remember what he did on that April day in 1977 and was the keynote speaker at the 40th anniversary event in 2017.
He continues too to appear on Stand Up to Racism platforms and, where appropriate in days like these, attend protests.
It is an impressive and principled record which is more I’m afraid than can be said for the current leader.
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is pleased to see that the pub voted the most Beard Friendly of the year, the Bumble Inn in Peterborough, is included in the newly published 2021 Good Beer Guide.
The campaigners say that while not automatic there are strong links between good pubs that sell good beer and a beard friendly drinking ambience.
The Beard Liberation Front has long lobbied for a ‘beard friendly’ category to be included in the Good Beer Guide. While this still remains to be achieved it is encouraging that the Bumble Inn has got recognition.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, these are tough times for pubs and breweries. Where individuals feel they want to and where the opportunity arises, drinking safely in a beard friendly pub remains an important element of national lufe,
The Beard Friendly Pub of the Year vote will take place as usual in January 2021.
The impact of the first lockdown on the jobs of people the Tories don’t know exist
The Resolution Foundation has published an 80 page report detailing responses from 6,000 people it surveyed on the impact of the first lockdown on employment.
One key finding is summarised below:
While more than half of those furloughed during lockdown had returned to work by September, 9 per cent of those previously furloughed had lost their jobs. This rate was highest for 18-24-year-olds, Black, Asian and minority ethnic workers, and the low paid.
They found that 21% of the sample in the most deprived quartile had lost work, were furloughed or had lost hours or pay in early September. Of that sample 28% were based in London.
The impact has been disproportionately in hospitality and amongst younger workers.
I doubt too many readers of this are surprised. Ministers may be if they trouble to read the report. As with the impact of other epidemics over the last two centuries the hardest hit are people who the wealthy don’t know exist.
Ultimately however, historically, there has usually been a price to pay for Governments who don’t know or don’t care about the impact their policies have or don’t have on sections of society.
40 years ago: E P Thompson on Britain as a police state
In 1980 the now defunct journal Camerawork published an issue (No.19) which contained amongst other things a page long commentary by the socialist historian E P Thompson together with a photomontage by Peter Kennard.
Thompson focused on the inquest into the death of Blair Peach, a socialist who was killed by a blow from a police truncheon at an anti-fascist demonstration in Southall in 1979. Thompson was very critical of the decision of the Coroner in the case Dr Burton not to appoint a jury.
He went on to criticise the views expressed in the memoir of the Head of the Metropolitan police Sir Robert Mark (1972-1977) as ‘illiberal’
Thompson concluded that:
They wish to push us into a managed society, whose managing director is money, and whose production manager is the police…
The complete issue of Camerawork 19 is at this link
THE SCARIEST HALLOWEEN BEARD POLL CREAKS TOWARDS A CLOSE
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that the Scariest Beard of Halloween 2020 poll is creaking to a close.
The title, awarded each year on October 31st, takes a wry look at Halloween festivities by identifying the scariest beard in the public eye. The winner is likely to win by the narrowest crack of a squeaky floorboard.
The BLF does not generally believe that beards are scary, a view promoted by generations of pogonophobes.
It is accepted though that on a dark moonless night as a beard looms through the gloom, nerves may rise a little as to what lies behind the beard.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we like beards, but there are a few out there that are genuinely, concerningly scary. Halloween is approaching. Vote now before the poll creaks to a close
The vote closes at midnight on Thursday 29th October
After Marcus Rashford on school meals, Johnson’s record on letter writing
Marcus Rashford is reported to have sent a ‘personal letter’ to Boris Johnson about the school meals issue and received no response.
One might conclude that Johnson only writes something when he commissioned to and paid by the word for it.
A scan of the growing number of biographies of Johnson reveals that he doesn’t seem to write speeches he makes personally but simply scribbles a few key words and speaks to those. It is a decent oratorical technique if you can do it.
The letter writing balance sheet does not look so good.
When he was Editor of the Spectator one account suggests that his desk was ‘appalling untidy, with piles of papers, letters, empty sandwich boxes and old coffee cups..he would simply sweep them all to one side when he needed to write’. Purnell, Just Boris)
To be fair it does sound like my fairly rarely visited office desk (aka the archives)but it doesn’t seem to suggest a pro-active approach to writing letters.
When be became MP for Henley Purnell reports that he might receive 200 e-mails and as many letters a day. These of course were answered not by Johnson but by an aide.
Again that is not that unusual although Johnson was mostly in this period a backbench MP.
There is some evidence that Johnson did on occasion indulge in letter writing to pursue a love interest or on occasion to ‘grovel’ for one of his numerous faux pas but there is nothing to suggest he does this in the twenty-first century.
The epistolary art may be declining but there is no question that Johnson does know how to write letters, its just that in the last 20 years or so he cant mostly be bothered too. There are inevitably some scribbled exceptions…
Campaigners mark 10 years of the I Paper: a beard friendly decade
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has marked 10 years of The I Paper by celebrating its beard friendly decade of publication.
Hirsute newspaper Editors were once as rare as BBC TV Newsreaders with beards but the I Paper started with Simon Kelner in 2011 and since 2013 Oly Duff has been in the Editor’s chair.
Only Stefano Hatfield presided over a brief clean shaven interregnum between Kelner and Duff.
Simon Kelner was named Hirsute Personality of the Year in 2011 while Oly Duff was runner up for Beard of Winter in 2014.
It is unparalleled record in UK Print Media in the Twenty-First Century.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we are pleased to recognise the I Paper’s Beard Friendly decade. Beard Power is an important issue in 2020.
What the law says about substantial pub meals (not much)
The question of what is or is not a substantial pub meal has received a good deal of focus recently. Areas under Tier 3 COVID-19 restrictions can only have open pubs if they also sell food. But how much food counts?
Common Bar in Manchester has been the source of social media and media commentary because a gauleiter of some description (I mean an overbearing official not a Nazi btw) decreed that a large slice of a 22 inch pizza did not qualify.
The law can be open to interpretation but it cant just be made up. In fact the pizza slice was suitable food.
It does remain the case though that legal definitions of what counts as pub food are quite thin. It is certainly more than a bag of crisps or nuts but beyond that it is fairly loose as Kim Howells then a Government Minister found out when he tried to find out in 2003.
The exchanges below are the most recent and relevant discussion of pub food. The key points here are:
Eating it at a table is essential
Pizza is a meal (how much not defined)
The are two legal judgements. One from 1965 determined that a substantial sandwich (not defined)met the definition provided it was accompanied by pickle and beetroot and of course eaten at a table. The other from 1955 defined substantial pub food as sandwiches and sausages on sticks
I suspect that more or less any pub staying open and serving food is likely to exceed the legal definitions such as they are by some distance.
Mr. Hoban (Tory): I cannot let the clause pass without raising the question of a table meal. What precisely does ”table meal” mean? The Minister gave examples of situations in which food might be served and referred to people of various ages between 16 and 18 consuming pizzas. If there is a group of people between the ages of 16 and 19, and the 16 and 17-year-olds have a sandwich in front of them, does that sandwich constitute a table meal and can they use it as a defence over consuming alcohol?
Dr. Howells (Labour Minister): It just so happens that I asked for and received an authoritative definition of what constitutes a table meal. The Licensing Act 1964 refers to
”a meal eaten by a person seated at a table, or at a counter or other structure that serves the purpose of a table and is not used for the service of refreshments for consumption by persons not seated at a table or structure serving the purpose of a table.”
I take that to mean that someone cannot get away with eating at the bar. Timmis v. Millman of 1965 states
”a substantial sandwich accompanied by pickles and beetroot was a table meal”.
I hope that that helps the hon. Gentleman. If I could, I would try to find for him a better definition
Commons Select Committee on 2003 Licensing Act,15th May 2003
Solomon v Green 1955 ‘Sandwiches & sausages on sticks’
