Kmflett's Blog

Jacob Rees Mogg discovers Wales

Leader of the Commons Jacob Rees Mogg has been opining on the decision of the Welsh Labour Government to restrict travel into and out of Wales in order to more effectively control COVID-19 infections.

The First Minister Mark Drakeford had asked Boris Johnson to act but he declined to do so on several occasions.

Mr Rees Mogg could not of course resist having a pop:

He blamed those “voting for socialists” and replied: “What would you expect of a hard left Labour government?”

While I’m not really sure the Welsh Government is ‘hard left’ it has certainly done a rather better job overall (obviously there is scope for criticism) at managing the crisis of 2020 than Johnson has.

Rees Mogg made the point that England and Wales are part of the same country. That is correct if and until the Welsh people decide differently. Its also true that there is no legal border between the two countries. If one wanted history Wales has played a significant role in the development of British capitalism and imperialism, not of course to the benefit of ordinary people anywhere.

However as the Welsh Government has made clear the travel restrictions relate not to any of that but simply as a practical measure to try and grapple with rising COVID-19 infections. When one considers that there is a longish list of places from which people who travel into the UK have to quarantine for the same reason one can understand that it is not a particularly exceptional move.

More might have been done to counter the reactionary ‘Wales is closed to the English’ voices that one hears as part I’m afraid of a rising tide of right-wing and reactionary sentiment across the world. Perhaps a wall is needed?

Beyond all this the really important question is what does Rees Mogg know of Wales?

Speaking to Bridgend Tories he has opined that a relation on the Rees side of the family came from Wick (Vale of Glamorgan). The Moggs come from Somerset. The links between Somerset and South Wales are well known though probably not to Rees Mogg. The miners leader during the General Strike, A J Cook, who worked in the Welsh coalfields came from Somerset.

Turning to Rees Mogg’s recent book of ‘historical’ essays The Victorians Rees Mogg is to be found mentioning ‘England and Wales’ as if they were always had been and always will be one country together with a few mentions of the Prince of Wales.

In short one suspects that like so many who are not in Wales Rees Mogg struggles to intellectually understand that Wales does exist as a country. Hence when it is proposed that travel into it is restricted for specific reasons for those not travelling for work or education (etc) the ‘does not compute’ sign starts flashing.

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 16th October

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

THE CRYPT DOOR SWINGS OPEN ON THE SCARIEST HALLOWEEN BEARD POLL

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that the crypt has opened on the  Scariest Beard of Halloween 2020 poll

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 as midnight approaches the poll could get scary. To be safe. Vote now

Scary Beard of Halloween 2020

Richard Branson

Bono

Noel Edmonds

Laurence Fox

Philip Green

Lord Sugar

Antony Worrall Thompson

Eric Trump

Wetherspoons has made its first loss since 1984.

The reasons in 2020 are obvious enough and its not I’m afraid because people have got fed up with Wetherspoons or because the workers have taken successful action for decent wages.

Tim Martin’s pubs are popular with many because they offer well priced beer (etc) & edible food in relatively pleasant (mostly) surroundings. When money is too tight to mention that is important to many.

Of course Martin himself is rightly reviled for his hard-line Brexit views, Tory politics and in recent times eccentric views on COVID-19.

Many wont be shedding tears for Martin’s bank balance but there are wider issues at work:

1 Breweries,’the Beerage’ and pubs are historically associated most with the Tory Party. Whether that association still holds in 2020 is hard to tell not least because of the random policies of the Johnson Government.

The initial decision on Small Brewers Duty Relief back in July which favoured larger regional to national brewers, some of who do fund the Tories, suggested the Beerage lives on. Tim Martin’s enthusiasm for Sunak’s Eat Out scheme suggested that the Beerage had been extended to large pub companies. Now as furlough ends and pub restrictions abound, who knows..

2 If big pub companies are making losses- Wetherspoons will survive- imagine the situation for smaller independent pubs and their ability to carry on

3 Finally but not least take into account the impact on workers. Martin announced today that 108 people at Wetherspoons Head Office had been made redundant. One wonders if he is taking a pay cut?

Beard Liberation Front

16th October

contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Michael Rosen wins Beard of Autumn vote to take record Trio of 2020 Beard Awards

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has said that the poll for Beard of Autumn 2020 has concluded with author Michael Rosen shaving the newly elected Mayor of Haringey Adam Jogee for the honour. Wolves manager Nuno Espirito Santo was third.

Michael Rosen took a 42% share of the vote compared to Adam Jogee’s 28%

It is the last of the four seasonal awards that conclude with the Beard of the Year in December 2020.

As usual there was a wide ranging field of beard wearers who have made a positive impact in the public eye recently.

Michael Rosen has already won the Beard of Summer 2020 and the Beard of Lockdown Awards in on-line polls. His victory in the Beard of Autumn poll brings him a record third award

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Award confirms that Michael Rosen’s beard is in fine form. After his dreadful experience with COVID-19 and the impact of Long-COVID we hope the rest of him will follow before too long.

Beard of Autumn shortlist

Lenny Henry, actor

Adil Rashid, cricketer

Nuno Espirito Santo, football manager

Julian Alaphilippe, sportsman

Vaughan Gething, Welsh Health Minister

Harry Kane, footballer

Jofra Archer, cricketer

Michael Rosen, author & Arsenal fan

Benjamin Zephaniah, author

Adam Jogee, Mayor of Haringey

EP Thompson, spies & the Freeborn Englishman

Oliver the spy

Government spies have been used for undercover and often illegal purposes since the late eighteenth century. They were active around Peterloo in 1819 and Cato St in 1820 and have remained a feature of Government efforts to disrupt the labour movement and radical politics into the twenty-first century.

Traditionally spies who were responsible for illegal activities would conveniently disappear- often abroad- before trials where they might have to appear.

Its more difficult to do that now and the Government has a SpyCops Bill currently in Parliament. This will in effect absolve spies of anything illegal they might do.

As E P Thompson notes below neither the Freeborn Englishman or the forbears of the modern labour movement would be impressed that Labour Leader Keir Starmer plans to abstain on the Bill.

It would be wrong to suggest that either the Labour Party or unions dont have and have had right-wing figures who are not sympathetic to civil liberties. That however has not been the dominant position.

One wonders if Starmer has ever read any labour history.

Thompson was spied on himself by the security services from after 1945 certainly up to 1963 (where most official documents are now available at the National Archives). Perhaps needless to say Thompson was not involved in anything untoward unless you view trying to democratise society and advance socialist measures in that light.

Thompson however was the historian above others who revealed the origins of Government spying in the modern British State, discussing the activities of Oliver the Spy in the Making of the English Working Class. The State was concerned about the activities of the Luddites in the early years of the nineteenth century and sought to infiltrate them.

Thompson by contrast drew attention to the Freeborn Englishman, someone who cherished liberties, albeit limited ones, (for most the vote did not come until much later in the nineteenth century or even 1918). More particularly he did not like being interfered with either by his own State or by the agents of other States.

Thompson summarised the perspective in this introduction he wrote to the Secret State (1978):

By the end of the eighteenth century, this was an all-pervasive Whiggish rhetoric, shared by Tories, Whigs and Radicals alike. Moreover, it was a rhetoric taken over and applied to greatly more democratic ends, by the rising popular reform movement. The parliamentary oligarchs wished to contain their debates within the privacy of the walls of parliament; they did not wish the British people to overhear how their governors talked, in private, about them. Wilkes and the printers defied ‘the law’ and breached this privacy; we owe Hansard to this defiance. In area after area, the ‘common people’ insisted that the civil rights of the ‘freeborn Englishman’ were not the privileges of an elite but were the common inheritance of all: freedom of press, speech and conscience, rights of assembly, inhibitions upon the actions of military or police against crowds, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment or unwarranted arrest and entry upon private premises. The insurgent British working-class movement took over for its own the old Whiggish bloody-mindedness of the citizen in the face of the pretentions of power. Even when labouring under the manifest class discrimination of the Combination Acts, the secretary of an illegal trade union branch of framework knitters in Mansfield in 1812 was able to protest against a clause in a Bill proposed by the workers’ representatives themselves, which authorized the search for shoddy goods in the houses of manufacturers : ‘if iver that bullwark is broke down of every english mans hous being his Castil then that strong barrer is for iver broke that so many of our ancesters have bled for and in vain.’ The workers had appropriated the democratic precedents and practices of past generations for their own; the ancestors were not ’theirs’ but ’ours’.

There is a difficult symmetry between the Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s repeated statement that he cant save every job and news this week from breweries and pub companies long associated with the Tory Party, the Beerage, that they are cutting jobs.

Greene King announced pub closures and job losses a few days and now Marstons have said they will cut up to 2.150 jobs:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54551477

The reasons given are perhaps understandable in terms of the impact on trade of 10pm curfews and lockdown closures.

Given that such restrictions have at best an arguable scientific basis and given that thousands will now spend winter on too low benefits with little prospect of work those who lose their jobs might well feel angry at the Tories.

A serious effort to get a proper and full furlough in place should be a political priority. Senior Labour politicians are saying this but it needs to go further.

It is also a reminder to those experts whose answer to any question they are asked is ‘shut pubs’ that such statements have human consequences. Unfortunately I’m not sure they are that concerned in some cases.

Beard Liberation Front

14th October

contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of Autumn poll set to be a close shave. Closes midnight Thursday 15^th October

The Beard Liberation Front the informal network of beard wearers has said that the poll for Beard of Autumn 2020 will conclude at midnight on October 15th with the result increasingly looking like a close shave.

It is the last of the four seasonal awards that conclude with the Beard of the Year in December 2020.

As usual there is a wide ranging field of beard wearers who have made a positive impact in the public eye recently.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, of course the close shave will only be a metaphorical one but hairs will certainly be split by midnight on Thursday

The vote for the Beard of Autumn is open and will close at midnight on 15th October

Lenny Henry, actor

Adil Rashid, cricketer

Nuno Espirito Santo, football manager

Julian Alaphilippe, sportsman

Vaughan Gething, Welsh Health Minister

Harry Kane, footballer

Jofra Archer, cricketer

Michael Rosen, author & Arsenal fan

Benjamin Zephaniah, author

Adam Jogee, Mayor of Haringey

Not back in March. The Authorities now know bus drivers are at risk of COVID-19

As COVID-19 infections rise again, various authorities are making portentous statements that we are now back where we were in March.

To a degree that is true because the Government failed to put fully working track and trace in place. In addition despite warnings-all ignored-it re-opened schools (important certainly) but without adequate safety. It also stood by while Vice-Chancellors opened Universities for the Autumn term apparently in most cases without any significant safety framework in place.

However in the period March to May we were to some extent in the period of ‘people we didn’t know exist’:

Like George W Bush with Hurricane Katrina, Johnson discovers ‘people we didn’t know exist

There were large numbers of infections and too many deaths but an understanding of where these took place and who they particularly impacted only started to become clear to Government in the late Spring.

Mostly at the start the rich and powerful were not infected. Then both Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings got COVID-19. Clearly this was serious. Just as in the nineteenth century epidemics were taken seriously by Government when it itself was impacted.

One area which showed a particularly high death rate was that of London bus drivers. At least 29 died of COVID-19 at a time when safety precautions were less than adequate. The union UNITE had to press TFL and the Mayor to act which eventually they did.

The risk to bus drivers is now known as is what adequate safety looks like.

Unfortunately another London bus driver has now died of COVID-19. Kofi Opoku based at Croydon died sadly last week.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/bus-driver-death-kofi-opoku_uk_5f804b97c5b6da9ba1eff10d

Unite again have called for specific measures to be taken including checks that safety measures are properly in place (drivers screens etc) the cleaning is adequate and that union safety reps are released from the day job so they can monitor matters on the ground.

Rather than  grandiose and hyperbolic statements from above these are practical measures that need to be taken to make sure bus drivers have safe working conditions this autumn. The authorities know the risks now if it isn’t done, they can no longer claim they didn’t realise the problem exists.

Below is a report of the concerns of London bus drivers as winter approaches.

Epidemics: capitalism still struggling with nineteenth century solutions

Radicals in the nineteenth century pursued something called spearhead or really useful knowledge.

This was about how the market economy really worked- as opposed to how it claimed it did-and crucially what could be done about that.

When it came to the epidemics of disease that swept Europe and elsewhere in the nineteenth century there were two solutions. They were never applied at the same time.

The first, sometimes but not always applied, was what we now call lockdown. This was usually fairly effective in temporarily controlling disease. Unfortunately not just for capital but also for those who relied on it for work in order to live it also seriously damaged the economy.

Invariably lockdowns were lifted because of the economic impact.

One might think that in the twenty-first century capitalism might have moved on a bit and be able to control epidemics while keeping the economy going and supporting workers where this didn’t work.

Fairly obviously it hasn’t and not just in Britain but across much of the globe where market economies are in place.

Looking at the Tory Government’s latest Tiered lockdown approach we can see nineteenth century factors at work.

Scientific advisers suggest a short lock down to control COVID-19. This might well work although it probably wouldn’t be short anymore than it was earlier in the year. In fact parts of the economy still haven’t re-opened after the 23^rd March lockdown.

Of course the economic impact of this would be huge. The unemployment rate is already at 4.5% and set to go much higher even without another lockdown.

The Government could of course step-in and actually save every job. The cost however would seriously dent profits, so it hasn’t.

This was the conundrum Labour Mayors in the North-West of England were grappling with. Ideally lockdown with closures of hospitality, Universities and much else is probably needed. The Government wont pick up the cost for that and so the result if implemented would mean huge job losses and impact on the physical and mental well being of many of the poorest in society.

David Nabarro from the World Health Organisation told Rado 4’s World at One on 13^th October that Covid-19 was becoming “a disease of poor and disadvantaged people, so we really have to pay attention to those who have the least resources.”

This will not be something the Johnson Government is prepared to do

The answer in a really useful knowledge framework is that the reason why this dilemma occurs is the existence of a market capitalist economy.

It needs to be replaced. Of course that just doesn’t happen but making the point and keeping making it at least raises the idea that there is actually a sensible way forward here.

Eric Hobsbawm, Arsene Wenger and nationalism in football

I’ve looked at the question of whether the late marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm was an Arsenal fan previously.

He lived in the right area of North London for it and it is known that he was a football fan.

He occasionally mentioned Arsenal (and Spurs) in his writings, for example (Labour in the Great City, New Left Review 1/166, 1987)

On one occasion at a literary festival he specifically referred to a point made by the former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, which is circumstantial evidence and no more that he was a Gooner.

The reference is in the Times (6th October 2007)

“This is a type of internal contradiction. There was a nice interview with Arsene Wenger [the manager of Arsenal] the other day which sketches it out very well. He said: ‘I’m not interested in national teams but I know we have got to have them because that’s what keeps the money coming in’.”

Interestingly answering a question from the MP whose Constituency covers the Emirates in the Observer on 11^th October, Wenger made a very similar point again.

Whether or not Hobsbawm was an Arsenal fan perhaps Wenger is a Hobsbawmite?

Jeremy Corbyn

MP for Islington North

I always felt that your philosophy as a manager reflected the ethos of the local community. How did you stay true to those principles when it came to be so difficult in football?

Overall, we know today that a football fan loves their national team. They love the big club and they support the club where they were born, their local club. Arsenal has the advantage of being a big club and a local club, but you have to continue to cultivate that local spirit. The luck we had when we built the [Emirates] stadium is that we could stay with our fanbase.

But for most clubs, the local support is shrinking, especially if you go down to lower divisions. So out of 92 clubs today, we have 20 Premier League clubs, and out of the other 72, 65 are losing money, because the local support is shrinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/oct/11/arsene-wenger-arsenal-manager-football