The Ambridge Socialist
14th May
Another week of classic Archers episodes concludes this week, and memories a plenty have been stirred.
However there are still classic episodes that deserve to be heard again. Which are you favourites? Scenes of class war, fear & loathing, drug taking & crime are surely at the very centre of Ambridge life
Beard Liberation Front
14th May 2020
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Turning Rebellion into Money: Lockdown Beards set to be good for Business
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that lockdown beards may be one of the ways that economies can grapple with recession.
Latest market analysis in the US suggests that spending on beard care products is set to boom up to 2025 and with many now working from home and wearing lockdown beards this is likely to increase further.
Key findings of a market report on beard products are:
The report also notes:
The 50+ age segment consists of beard enthusiasts and grooming activists in Europe and North America only. The beard and moustache growing competition in these regions provides an additional opportunity for the age group to use maintenance products such as wax, balms, moisturizers, and shampoos.
The Beard Liberation Front generally prefers more natural methods of beard care including regular washing with soap and water, shampooing and on occasion margination in imperial stout. However there is no question that numbers do use beard care products and this is clearly set to increase.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, its clear that lockdown beards, and their care will be an important way for economies to grapple with recession. We don’t like haircuts, either physical or economic and this underlines why they are a bad idea.
Memoirs of a London transport user
As a Londoner I neither own a car or know how to drive. Indeed I declined an offer from my employer 40 years ago to take free lessons and a test on the grounds that public transport was quite good enough. I agree entirely that the present crisis should mean a focus on less car use and more walking and cycling. I still do a good bit of walking, although demonstrations are out currently, but at 63 my knees are not what they were and riding a bike would put both myself and others in danger.
At the moment, public transport is rightly restricted but it too must form a key part of the future. The key issue at the moment is the personal safety of the workers who run London’s transport system and of course the safety of those who use it, either because they are key workers or because Johnson’s return to work ‘strategy’ has forced them to do so.
I can work from home and don’t anticipate much if any use of public transport for a bit though.
One sees social media comments from various hard right types who one suspects wouldn’t recognise a London bus even if it ran over them, that travel should be more expensive or that the ‘freedom pass’ for over 60s should be stopped. Indeed like everything else London’s transport is all about class
Not everyone, these days myself included, can simply rely entirely on walking and cycling, even if Boris Johnson says so. Cycling lobbyists have their moment and rightly so but care must be taken in a few cases not to echo Johnson’s ableism. Inviting people of my generation to get on their bikes would be an alternative version of Cummings herd immunity. No doubt the fittest would survive the rigours of the Capital’s roads (which will be there for a bit yet even with hopefully much increased cycling space and lanes) but that mostly would not be people like myself.
13th May
A YouGov poll has found that of those able to work from home during the current crisis, those doing work meetings via Skype, Zoom,Microsoft Teams etc mostly wear casual clothes rather than work attire.
The Beard Liberation Front has noticed a considerable rise in Working From Home beards (where appropriate) in the last weeks but, perhaps typically the YouGov poll didnt ask a question on beards.
The BLF is running its own survey
According to the Murdoch Sun-Times (a more or less identical story has appeared in both) North Korea has been getting around Trump’s sanctions by exporting goods to China which are then stamped ‘made in China’ and then further exported. So far so unremarkable.
The report is simply based on a story that most likely emerged from US intelligence which is probably why it contains an unexplained mystery. According to the Sun-Times report the exports include false eyelashes and fake beards to Belgium and France. False eyelashes are perhaps understandable as a fashion item worn by some. It is rather more difficult to understand what the European requirement for fake beards is and, if there is actually one, why these are not manufactured in Europe.
Kim Jong-Un who for better or worse is clearly not dead, has never been known to wear a beard, false or otherwise.
Sun-Times report 13th May
North Korea is secretly exporting thousands of tonnes of fake beards and eyelashes as well as hundreds of accordions to Europe via China in a successful effort to evade sanctions.
International sanctions ban the import of North Korean wigs, false beards, eyebrows and eyelashes, along with other “luxury goods”. Americans are banned from doing any business whatsoever with Pyongyang. Last year the US Treasury Department fined an American company that had unwittingly imported North Korean false eyelashes via China.
Like George W Bush with Katrina, Johnson discovers ‘people we didn’t know exist’
When Henry Mayhew started the series of social investigations into the London working-class in 1849 that was to become London Labour and the London Poor he laid out a prospectus in the Morning Chronicle. He wrote of investigating the ‘large and comparatively unknown body of people’ who comprised the labouring poor who lived in slum housing often in insanitary conditions with at best uncertain employment.
He set a pattern that has emerged at times of crisis since.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 revealing a Government and President in George W Bush that was not only unprepared to deal with it but had reduced funding previously for measures that might have helped, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Michael Brown said, “We’re seeing people that we didn’t know exist’.
The former Guardian journalist Gary Younge who reported from New Orleans at the time recently made the link to the situation now.
The pattern of Katrina has indeed been echoed in the Government’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
Only after sustained pressure by a few media critics did the Government agree to publish the daily totals of deaths in Care homes. These were and remain sadly substantial. Some have argued that the residents of homes were not hospitalised when seriously ill but left to die where they were to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed. An independent inquiry will need to examine that as well as the failure to provide adequate PPE for workers in the homes.
Yet picking up on Younge’s point another perspective might be that the Government didn’t really know what the scale of the problem in Care homes was and, based on its earlier herd immunity strategy- now changed-believed that numbers of the elderly and vulnerable would die anyway.
Reality has a way of intruding into right-wing ideological fantasy strategies as George W Bush found out in 2005.
This came recently with the publication of details, broken down to local authority areas, by the Office of National Statistics of all COVID-19 deaths from March 1st to April 17th. This wasn’t some exercise in constructing a league table of deaths-important though it is to record every death and value every life.
Rather it focused attention on where COVID-19 deaths had been particularly high and implicitly invited discussion of why this might be.
Of the 11 areas with the highest death rate everyone was in London
The pattern of poverty, housing & health identified 171 years ago by Henry Mayhew in London’s poorest districts continues.
The highest UK COVID-19 mortality rates per 100,000 population in the UK are in the London Boroughs of Newham 144.3, Brent 141.5, Hackney 127.4, Tower Hamlets 122.9 and Haringey 119.3.
Philip Glanville, the Mayor of Hackney, quoted in the Financial Times on the 2nd May argued that “the links between inequality, poverty, ethnicity and health” were the key to his borough’s death rate of 127 per 100,000.
Indeed these are people, overwhelmingly poor, working-class, many from ethnic minorities, who have suffered years of Tory austerity, of public services and the NHS cut and cut again and housing conditions which are far from ideal as the cost of homes in London has soared and Tory policies meaning little Council housing has been built.
Yet these same people are those who keep the NHS going, who drive buses and tubes, who clean streets and work in supermarkets. They are low paid but as the last two months have underlined absolutely essential.
The Tories may not have known such people existed, but they do now, and political change is on the agenda.
This post originally appeared in the Morning Star
Beard Liberation Front
12th May
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Jeremy Paxman at 70 is role model for 2020 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the 2020 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season now open, Jeremy Paxman who marked his 70th birthday on Monday is the role model for others to follow.
Paxman was pictured in a daily paper wearing an organic beard, sensible length shorts and enclosed sandals/trainers of the type suitable for the mixed weather of a British May
The BLF says that it has amended guidelines for the 2020 Season and brought in a new framework to facilitate social distancing.
1] Shorts should ideally be three-quarter length-‘culottes’ for the 2020 season. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt.
1a) Shorts of the length worn by Nigel Farage in a video recorded in April are strictly forbidden
2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leaves parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some does not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.
3] Socks should generally not be worn. However if the beard, shorts and sandals are to be displayed in relatively busier urban areas it is likely to be prudent to wear closed rather than open casual footwear and ankle socks, not visible to others may be worn.
4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This is left up to the individual.
5] If venturing out in accordance with lockdown rules in force at the time social distance should be kept at all times. On no account should there be any groups of beard, shorts and sandals wearers. Discussion of styles should be confined to social media.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, ever since his Newsnight beard caused a crisis at high levels in the BBC Paxman hasn’t worn a beard on air. However at 70 he is without a poster boy for the 2020 Beard, Shorts and Sandals season
Beard Liberation Front
12th May
Media Release
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Lockdown Beard Week 8. Stay Safe, Stay Home, Don’t Shave
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that people should resist pressure to shave off their lockdown beards and return to work..
The campaigners say that the new normal must be a place where people feel its safe to return to workplaces and safe to do so still wearing their lockdown beards
BLF Organiser Keith Flett, safety must be key to any return to work but so must guarantees that the days of shaving before going to work are at an end.
Working From Home beard. How to maintain your beard
1 Check twice daily for any split ends or misplaced hairs and remove them
2 Wash & comb through the beard every day at least once, preferably more often.
3 To maintain hair quality beard oils or balms are used by some, while others marinate briefly in imperial stout or porter.
4 Occasional pruning will help to strengthen hair growth and make sure you desired style is maintained. Pruning where required and appropriate should be on a weekly review basis
5 Don’t forget to post the occasional picture of your well maintained beard on social media to encourage others.
Beard Liberation Front
Press Release
11th May
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Beard Liberation Front says cloth face masks can be safely worn with beards
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has urged its supporters to follow new Government guidelines to wear cloth face masks on public transport and in other confined spaces where social distance cannot be kept when outside.
The campaigners have previously agreed that, aside from religious and cultural reasons, medical face masks worn in care and hospital settings may require the temporary shaving of the beard.
However the BLF says that the cloth face mask does not serve the same purpose. Rather it is designed to capture any coughs or sneezes, perhaps particularly significant as the hay-fever season gets underway.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, I wear a cloth mask myself in appropriate settings. Whether to cover the whole beard depends on personal preference and indeed beard length, but clearly the mouth and nose should be covered. It is a sensible thing to do and as much as anything a matter of social solidarity.
Beard Liberation Front
11th May
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
2020 Beard, Shorts & Sandals Season is now officially open. Strict guidelines apply
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the 2020 Beard, Shorts and Sandals Season is now open.
The BLF says that it has amended guidelines for the 2020 Season and brought in a new framework to facilitate social distancing.
1] Shorts should ideally be three-quarter length-‘culottes’ for the 2020 season. The length of shorts is particularly important as climate change may mean that unprotected legs get sunburnt.
1a) Shorts of the length worn by Nigel Farage in a video recorded in April are strictly forbidden
2] Footwear should be casual. There is a considerable range of sandal type footwear now available. Some leaves parts of the feet and toes open to public view, while some does not. The BLF is not prescriptive about the matter.
3] Socks should generally not be worn. However if the beard, shorts and sandals are to be displayed in relatively busier urban areas it is likely to be prudent to wear closed rather than open casual footwear and ankle socks, not visible to others may be worn.
4] There is no prescription or definition on what type of beard may be worn, or how this may match with the shorts and sandals. This is left up to the individual.
5] If venturing out in accordance with lockdown rules in force at the time social distance should be kept at all times. On no account should there be any groups of beard, shorts and sandals wearers. Discussion of styles should be confined to social media.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the Beard, Socks and Sandals season has been a major influence on summer fashions in recent times but just at the moment the key message is: no flaunting outside of the rules laid down above.
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