Kmflett's Blog

The Campaign for Real Conkers

Media Release. Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

30th September

Exercise & relaxation in restricted times: conker playing

The Campaign for Real Conkers, that opposes bans on conker playing and unnecessary rules and regulations in games has said that that with the 2020 conker season now well underway it is the ideal game for exercise with new social distancing regulations.

2020 has seen a good crop of conkers in many areas, helped by often windy weather

The campaigners say that while they are maintaining their usual ‘anything goes’ approach to conker games, to encourage people to play without arbitrary rules, in 2020 some COVID-19 safety guidelines will apply.

Campaign Organiser Keith Flett said, conkers requires only two people and they would normally be socially distanced. Our 2020 guidelines however provide additional safety measures. We were pleased to see Shadow Justice Minister David Lammy propose a conker game with Boris Johnson earlier this week. Its just the thing needed for safe exercise in these restricted times.

Guide on how to play real conkers safely in 2020

1] Select your conker. Do this yourself. DO NOT use a conker provided by someone else who may give you a poor specimen.

2] Do not allow your chosen conker to be handled by others and once selected immediately sanitise it.

3] There is no specific kind of conker that makes a good game winner. Large conkers may more easily splinter for example. Some prefer conkers with flat and sharp edges

4] You may use the conker ‘as is’ known as ‘organic’. Alternatively you may seek to harden it by baking it, soaking it in vinegar etc. There is no guarantee that an artificially enhanced conker will perform any better than an organic one.

5] Drill a small hole through the conker. A nail will often achieve this. Again you must do this yourself

6] Thread the conker through the hole you have drilled. A strong chord, perhaps a shoelace is best

7] You are now ready to play.

8] Please wear a mask when playing and make sure your opponent is also wearing one

9] Make sure that the chord is long enough to allow you to stand at least 1 metre plus away from your opponent. This would generally be the case as space is required for the conker swing.

10] Players take alternate turns to try and hit and destroy their opponent’s conker

11] Those with poor aim may hit the knuckles of their opponent more often than the conker so you may wish to wear gloves.

12] If the conker does come into contact with an opponent please sanitise it before a further round

13] The winner is the player who determines their opponents conker unusable in further rounds, usually by causing it to splinter into two or more pieces

14] Play safely and enjoy!

Beard Liberation Front

29^th September

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Tory Ex-MEP Daniel Hannan makes false ‘can’t grow a beard’ claim

Former Tory MP Daniel Hannan has written in the Sunday Telegraph (27^th Sept) criticising the trend towards beard wearing, while claiming he can’t grow one himself anyway.

His piece begins:

I wish I could tell you that I had gone clean-shaven on principle. I could then write a column about how beards carried the stale whiff of Corbynism, how they were redolent of scruffy lecturers on their way to SWP meetings imagining that they looked like Marx or Lenin or Trotsky….

The Beard Liberation Front says that Mr Hannan’s grip on reality on issues like Brexit has seemed to many doubtful in recent times and this has been amplified by his approach to beards.

As recently as 2018 Hannan did in fact have a perfectly reasonable beard.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, we suspect that the real reason Daniel Hannan shaved his beard off, while oddly claiming he couldn’t grow one, was because he realised that if he wore it any longer he would become a Marxist.

London Socialist Historians Group

Media Release 28^th September

Contact Dr Keith Flett  07803 167266

Historians warn guidelines could see E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class banned from schools

The London Socialist Historians Group, which organises the socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research at London University, has warned that new Department for Education guidelines could see books like E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class banned from schools.

The guidelines prohibit use of material from organisations that take ‘extreme political stances’ and in part say:

a publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections”; opposition to freedom of speech; the use of racist, including antisemitic, language; the endorsement of illegal activity; and a failure to condemn illegal activities done in support of their cause.

The historians say that there are two key issues involved.

Firstly while the guidelines apply specifically in this version to the relationships, sex and health sections of the curriculum it seems likely that they are intended for wider use.

Secondly a book like E P Thompson’s 1963 classic Making of the English Working Class is actually centrally about how people built relationships and joined together as communities in the first half of the nineteenth century.  An extract from it might well be useful in the classroom in understanding how people interacted in the past.

LSHG Convenor Dr Keith Flett said, E P Thompson was a member of the Communist Party until 1956 and later a leading member of CND. Neither organisation one suspects would meet the Government’s new guidelines. However The Making of the English Working Class remains in print and is read all over the world. The one place where it might not be read in future are school classrooms in England.

Guidelines

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/plan-your-relationships-sex-and-health-curriculum

Beard Liberation Front

28^th September

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners urge Trump to go ‘follicle free’ after spending £55,000 on hair styling

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged Donald Trump to adopt a follicle free approach after a leaked tax report showed he spent £55,000 ($70,000) on styling his hair.

The campaigners say that Trump was wasting his money- something he is thought to be good at. His artificially constructed comb-over is a pretence too far.

The BLF says that Trump should go follicle free and shave his head and grapple, hard as it is for him, with the realities of his age.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, some men who lose follicles on the top of their head grow a beard to compensate but we are clear this is not acceptable in Trump’s case. Bald may not be beautiful here but it will at least save him some money which he can use on buying fake tan for the top of his head.

Tottenham jobs hardest hit from COVID-19. People the Tories don’t know exist (again)

The Murdoch Sunday Times carried an article on 27^th September reporting that a combination of soaring jobless and furlough meant that 45% of working people in Tottenham were not in employment with no great prospect of returning.

The number of claimants has tripled, the report says, to 12% (12,450) and the numbers in furlough are estimated to be 33% (32,500).

While the furlough numbers are an estimate its reasonable to assume that Tottenham does have amongst the highest jobless total in the UK.

Of course we have been here before. The Lea Valley, of which Tottenham is a part, was once one of the major industrial centres of the UK. Then came Margaret Thatcher’s tour of destruction in the 1980s. She neither knew or cared about the impact this had in areas like London N15 and N17.

The local MP David Lammy is right to have concerns about social unrest although it remains the case that you can’t predict a riot.

What does exist are several local food banks including the Selby Centre in North Tottenham which, very much in tune with the area, welcomes all-comers no questions asked.

The reality is though that just as in the 1980s we need a fightback.

The Labour Government elected in 1997 did make a real difference to the lives of many ordinary people in Tottenham. It was a small one perhaps but when you are in tough times that can still mean a lot. That finished in 2008 when the idea that boom and bust could be ended was shown to be wrong.

After that we have had 10 years of austerity focused on getting people in areas like Tottenham to pay the price for the economic crash.

Trade Unions, political and community activists need to come together now to make sure that Boris Johnson does know that people in Tottenham exist and takes specific action to protect and create jobs and pay decent benefits where that can’t work.

Protest and Survive and in the times of COVID-19 in a socially distanced and safe- way.

Keith Flett is a former Secretary and President of Haringey TUC and remains an active trade unionist and socialist in Tottenham

Ambridge Socialist

27th September

The most recent Office for National Statistics data indicates that calls to the Modern Slavery Helpline are increasing as are prosecutions- although undoubtely COVID-19 will have had an impact in the last six months.

The top two reports are for sexual exploitation and labour exploitation.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/modernslaveryintheuk/march2020

The question is posed as to who in Ambridge will ring the Helpline and report suspicions about Philip and Gavin Moss. We can be sure it wont be Sgt Sherlock Burns

Walter Benjamin d 26^th Sept 1940: flashing up at a moment of danger

The critical theorist and philosopher Walter Benjamin committed suicide 84 years ago on 26^th  September 1940. He had been detained at the French/Spanish border and feared being handed over to the Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin#Exile_and_death

Benjamin’s writings were wide ranging and complex although he was associated with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and influenced by Adorno and Brecht amongst others.

Many of his writings still speak to our times perhaps particularly.

His brief piece on the Concept of History (1940) for example grapples with how historical memory is understood in the present day is an important example:

To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm

Like numbers of important left-wing thinkers from the past Benjamin was much discussed in the period after 1968. While his writings continue to be collected- particularly the Arcades Project- one fears he had become less well-known again now.

Perhaps the anniversary of  Walter Benjamin’s death will spark some renewed interest in and discussion of his work. Indeed he was the answer to a question on University Challenge on 22nd September 2025 which was correctly answered.

The Ambridge Socialist

27^th September

Slavers fall out: Are Philip & Gavin Moss split over the ‘horses’?

There is trouble brewing with the Moss’s gangmaster operation and any resolution is likely to be less than pleasant for someone.

Philip Moss wants to sell slave worker Blake who was injured in the Lower Loxley explosion which he very probably caused- due to Gavin Moss’s negligence.

Thanks to earlier efforts to evade police interest Moss has spun the story in Ambridge that Blake is in Norfolk whereas in reality he is in the slave quarters which Gavin Moss maintains.

Gavin apparently thinks that there was an agreement not sell on the slaves which Philip is proposing to break.

In the mean-time Susan has picked up on Gavin talking about problems with the horses and spread the rumour that he has a gambling problem. This has caused Philip and Gavin to engage in yet more lies when Kirsty raises it.

The modern slavery that the Moss’s practice is bad enough and entirely illegal. As so often though it may be the increasing number of cover-ups that brings them down. Eventually even Sergeant Sherlock Burns will notice.

When the World falls apart the flower & produce show goes on

Nothing is certain in days like these it might seem but there is one thing that goes on (and on). It is of course the annual Ambridge Flower and Produce Show. There will be cheating and Ambridge Socialist reporters will be keeping a close watch.

Alice is pregnant

Kate was not it seems pregnant but Alice is. Chris is delighted but Alice is less convinced, perhaps understandably given recent events. Of course the Archer Dynasty must go on so except further discussion…

Beard Liberation Front

26th September

Beard Liberation Front confirms Dominic Cummings is barred

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that after further evidence emerged of beard growth by Dominic Cummings, its stubble/beard advisory panel of beard experts has confirmed that he remains barred from being a supporter of the Beard Liberation Front.

The updated ban relates to Cummings public appearances on 2^nd January, 23^rd and 24th May 2020 where he has been pictured with facial hair growth and picture that appeared on the Guardian newspaper site on 25th September suggesting a renewed growth of follicles

The campaigners stress that Cummings has not been in touch directly but underline that there is a general expectation that the BLF will defend beard wearers in the public eye unless there is a good reason not to.

Barring someone from the BLF is rare but action is taken when the BLF believes that the association of someone with the organisation may risk bringing not just it but beard wearers into disrepute.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, It remains the case that we don’t bar supporters lightly but Cummings is not someone we feel we brings any positive associations to hirsuteness. We will continue however to take guidance from our stubble/beard advisory panel.

Really Useful Knowledge & GB News

A new TV Channel is to be launched- available on Freeview- GB News

It is apparently not a UK version of the hard-right US network Fox News but an alternative to the BBC, ITV and Sky which it says are similar

The Chair will be Andrew Neil, who heads up the Spectator, and Fraser Nelson who edits the magazine has duly welcomed it.

The mission statement is worth a read because it may not be what it seems:

The premise of GB News is fairly simple: that the current players – BBC, Sky, ITV – are so similar in tone and format that there’s space for a bit more diversity. For intelligent, discussion-based show coming from a more independent mindset. Not a British answer to Fox News (the analogy often reached for whenever a rival to the BBC is mentioned) but a station that might broadcast good news a bit more often, or would not be so quick to assume that everything that goes wrong is the fault of the government. One that takes a more even-handed approach to culture wars, and doesn’t see coverage of US politics an exercise in exorcism.

What good news might it broadcast one wonders. A strike victory or a successful anti-racist campaign? After all that is hardly news on the existing channels.

Secondly it won’t assume that if things go wrong it’s the fault of the Government. It is actually, because they are in Office and should own up to mistakes- which they don’t.  One suspects they mean however that if there is a problem Jeremy Corbyn is lurking somewhere and Keir Starmer is to blame. Unfortunately one also suspects that ‘Sir’ is already planning his contributions.

Finally it wont see US politics as an exercise in exorcism. So Trump is ok then.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/andrew-neil-to-chair-a-new-british-television-news-network

Many on the left might think that the BBC, ITV and Sky are right-wing enough as it is but at least the first two recognise unions.

Perhaps the first challenge for GB News is whether it will recognise the appropriate unions.