Kmflett's Blog

Letter writers have something to be thankful for even in times like these and that is the hard work that postal workers do.

Much correspondence that was until a few years ago sent by hand written or typed letter in the post now goes by e-mail, but the role of the physical letter remains essential to society as does that of those who deliver them.

When a few weeks back Boris Johnson decided to impart his guidance on the current crisis to the nation, this was done by letter, delivered by postal workers. Whatever one’s views about the contents of that letter, and perhaps the cost of it, there was a serious point to sending it in this way.

While most have access to e-mail nowadays many dont read their electronic mail all that often if at all. A considerable number, running into millions, do not have regular access to e-mail or the internet at all.

Of course there is no guarantee that people will read a physical letter but at the very least they have to pick it up and glance at it to see what it is about.

The role of postal workers remains an essential one to the social fabric of society and indeed to a democratic politics too.

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 29th April

Contact Keith Flett      07803 167266

HIRSUTE PREPARE FOR TRADITIONAL, SOCIALLY DISTANCED, MAY DAY BEARD WAGGLE

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the ancient May Day tradition of Beard Waggling will be revived once again on Friday May 1st as, with the weather set reasonably fair in many areas, the hirsute will celebrate the coming of Spring by waggling their beards

The beard waggle, a traditional British May Day custom, involves shaking the beard vigorously from side to side and in doing so stimulating air currents that can cause objects to levitate slightly.

In 2020 beard wagglers are instructed to make sure that their beard waggling is socially distanced and that each waggler is at least six beard lengths away from anyone else.

A mask may also be warn and separate guidance will be issued on this

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, the Beard Waggle is one of the great May Day traditions but it went into decline with the rise of the safety razor. Now with the hipster culture of beards, the waggle is firmly back and is gaining in popularity each year, albeit this year it MUST be socially distanced and done as part of daily exercise in the UK.

Beard Liberation Front guide on how to train for May Day beard waggling

1] Ensure the beard is supple. This may be done by moistening is slightly with water or, if preferred, craft beer.

2] Choose a suitable location to waggle, preferably in the sun rather than the shade. Keep distanced from other wagglers

3] Move the beard vigorously from side to side and then up and down while otherwise standing still. Repeat several times. You may prefer to wear a mask for this.

4] While waggling the traditional chant is, Hail the Beard, Hail Spring

5] Alternatively beard wagglers may simply intone Om, Om, Om

Beard Liberation Front

28^th April

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of Wales 2020 Michael Sheen praised for stylish Lockdown beard

Michael Sheen’s Lockdown beard

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has praised Michael Sheen, voted Beard of Wales 2020 on 1^st March, for wearing one of the most stylish lockdown beards in the public eye.

Sheen posted a picture of his lockdown beard on Twitter and described it as reaching the ‘Catweazle’ phase. However while Catweazle had a rather straggly, if stick on, beard, Sheen’s beard showed clear signs of careful beard maintenance.

The Beard Liberation Front while welcoming the growth of lockdown beards has raised concerns that some are not properly maintained and has issued guidelines on how to do this.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Michael Sheen’s lockdown beard is a model of positive hirsuteness underlining that he was a worthy winner of this year’s Beard of Wales vote

Beard of Wales 2020 details

Michael Sheen shaves opponents to be named St David’s Day Beard of Wales 2020

Sleeping rough in central London 1870-2020

In his essay Comers and Goers ( in Dyos, the Victorian City), the late historian Raphael Samuel surveyed the seasonal migration of labour into and out of cities in the late Victorian period.

He noted that many came to winter in London, where, depending on the weather, night shelters, strawyards as they were called by those who used them, funded by private charity, opened up each November. The shelters were free and without obligation. People could stay for up to a month and they were heated both with a huge open fire and generally. The largest was at Playhouse Yard Cripplegate. The alternative was the Poor Law funded Casual Ward where a stay was limited to two nights and had to be paid for by a days forced labour.

Samuel lists many other places where people slept rough in London including railway arches and around the main hotels where heat was to be found.

The ‘migrating classes’ as they were called by the promoters of the Leicester Square soup kitchen in 1850, have left remarkably few traces of their existence…No railway hotels mark the terminal point of their journeyings. No imposing clubs stand as memorials to the seasons they spent in town. The back street lodging houses where many of them put up have long since been swept away, though not their forbidding institutional successors- the ‘Free Dormitories’ and ‘Night Shelters’ promoted and endowed by late-Victorian philanthropy…it is not easy to imagine a time when men slept rough in the dark recesses of London Bridge and lined up in their hundreds with tin cans or basins at Ham Yard Soho or the midnight soup kitchens of Whitechapel and Drury Lane

150 years on some progress had been made. Earlier this year if night temperatures were around zero the Mayor of London opened night shelters for those sleeping rough who preferred to be indoors. Not all did of course for many reasons but the facility was there and advertised.

With the COVID-19 crisis Government funds were made available to temporarily house rough sleepers in hotels which many although not all took up.

Amelia Gentleman’s report for the Guardian on rough sleeping in central London in late April 2020 reveals a very Victorian situation. Not so much perhaps in terms of conditions which remain very tough but in terms of who is on the streets.

She details precarious workers pitched out of hospitality jobs when lockdown approached with little money to keep a roof over their head or eat and often below any kind of safety net that the Government has constructed.

It’s a reminder of what lockdown means for some but also of the kind of economy we should not be going back to once it is lifted…

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/27/london-coronavirus-sacked-hospitality-workers-sleeping-rough?CMP=share_btn_tw

. .

Drink & Sobriety formed 30% of all signatures on petitions to Parliament 1833-1918

Demonstration in favour of the 1908 Bill

The journal Past and Present has published on-line an article covering new research into Parliamentary petitions in the Nineteenth Century (free to read at the moment)*.

The researchers have analysed and where appropriate re-categorised all petitions to Parliament after the 1832 Reform Act through to changes in 1918 which allowed some women the vote for the first time.

They found that 30% of all petitions and all signatures on them in this period were from temperance or pro-drink campaigners.

The temperance campaigners were mainly religious, while pro-drink petitioners came from the licensed trade.

In 1908 when the pro-temperance Liberal Government brought forward a Bill to allow local vetoes on licensing laws 1.2 million signed petitions in favour. However 1.6 million people signed petitions calling on the State to remain neutral on such matters.

The Bill was passed in the Commons but defeated in (the unreformed) House of Lords.

In current circumstances one hopes there is still interest in defending the interests of drinkers and pubs by signing petitions. An important one is here:

Rishi Sunak – Chancellor of the Exchequer: Urgent Government Support For The Hospitality Industry – Sign the Petition! chng.it/Bnm5DHxZ via @UKChange

*Petitions, Parliament, and Political Culture. Petitioning the House of Commons 1780-1918. Richard Huzzey & Henry Miller

Beard Liberation Front

27^th April

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard Campaigners welcome news that Boris Johnson has not grown an isolation beard

How Boris Johnson could have looked this morning

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has welcomed the news that after several weeks out of the public eye recovering from illness Boris Johnson has appeared outside 10 Downing St on Monday clean shaven.

The campaigners say that many people who have been working from home have taken the opportunity to grow lockdown beards. While it has welcomed the development it has also expressed concern that in some cases the beards may not be properly maintained and risk bringing the hirsute into disrepute.

There were some signs that Boris Johnson had started to grow a beard during a previous, non-illness related, absence from Downing St earlier in the year. However this had gone by the end of March.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, given Boris Johnson’s often dishevelled appearance and particularly his unkempt hair ‘styles’ we are pleased to see that he has returned without a beard

BLF guidance on Working From Home beards

https://kmflett.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/working-from-home-beard-week-6-warning-on-beards-of-convenience/

Beard Liberation Front

27th April

Media Release

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Working From Home beard: Week 6. Warning on ‘beards of convenience’

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with many working from home, and barbers closed, the numbers of people growing beards has increased significantly. Unilever has reported a downturn in sales of razors due to people ‘shaving less’ underlining that lockdown beards are becoming permanent.

However the campaigners say that the lockdown beard must be maintained and not just left to sprout any old how.

Christopher Howse writing in the 10,000^th edition of The Spectator this week warned against ‘beards of convenience, worn like unwashed vests.

With many work meetings now taking place virtually via Skype, Zoom or Team a working from home beard may add gravitas to the wearers on-line presence but not if it is an unkempt mess

BLF Organiser Keith Flett, we cannot say enough that growing a beard is just the first part of a process. Once you have grown it regular maintenance is essential.

Working From Home beard. How to maintain your beard

1 Check 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

4 Occasional pruning will help to strengthen hair growth and make sure you desired style is maintained

5 Don’t forget to post the occasional picture of your well maintained beard on social media to encourage others.

London Socialist Historians

26^th April

Summer Term 2020 Update on seminars, newsletter & activities

Ordinarily socialist history seminars for the summer term 2020 would have been starting on Monday 4^th and continuing every couple of weeks into June and the end of the 2019/20 academic year.

Its not quite ordinary inevitably because Monday May 4^th would have been the May Day Bank Holiday (we’ll be marking May Day on the day itself as usual) but the Government changed that to Friday May 8^th to mark VE Day.

However the Institute of Historical Research is currently closed and we are not able to hold seminars at the moment.

Apologies to those who were planning to attend the last seminar of the Spring Term on Monday March 16^th, Rhys Williams on Tom Mann in Australia, which I cancelled at short notice but I think prudently so. We plan to re-arrange the seminar for the next time Rhys, who is based in Australia, is in the UK.

The summer term LSHG Newsletter will be produced as usual during May, perhaps a little later than usual as there are no seminars to publicise.

Dates for seminars for the academic year 2020/21 should be available during May. It is hoped to resume seminars from October 2020 but obviously it is too early yet to be definite on that. We have a number of papers and speakers on a waiting list!

There are a range of virtual socialist history activities currently being undertaken and details of these are probably best checked by following the London Socialist Historians twitter account @LSHGofficial and by visiting the website http://londonsocialisthistorians.blogspot.com/  where every issue of the Newsletter back to 1997 is now on-line.

Finally there are some socialist history podcasts available on the IHR website. Below is a link to a seminar John Newsinger gave in November 2017 on Orwell and the left:

https://www.history.ac.uk/podcasts/revolution-labourism-orwell-and-left

There is plenty for socialists to be doing even in times like these but history remains a vital context to current events.

Keith Flett, LSHG Convenor

The Ambridge Socialist

26^th April

Robert Snell is right on Moss

Robert Snell has tried to whack Philip Moss and eject him from his house after Lynda Snell invited him. Of course Robert failed and then at Lynda’s behest had to apologise to Moss. Yet as readers of the Ambridge Socialist know Robert Snell was right, albeit he has no idea of the precise nature of the operation that Moss is running.

BBC reports from Ambridge will shortly stop for much of May. The Ambridge Socialist will stay on Philip Moss’s case until he is arrested, charged and brought to trial.

Is Tracy Horrobin the way forward for Ambridge cricket?

Tracy has taken a training session for the cricket team. It appears to have been a robust affair and indeed one comment on social media wondered whether she was in fact aiming to build a new fascist party rather than a cricket team. Sgt Knacker Burns, currently team captain, was not impressed. When the Ambridge season actually starts, if it does, we’ll see if Tracy’s methods have had any impact.

Saint Shula?

Not really the Ambridge Socialist’s department but we note that Shula has been having some kind of test to see if she can be allowed to hold religious office. Its nice we suppose that the Church has some kind of due diligence in place for these things.

In Other News

We’d like to hear less of Kenton. Hopefully he’s not involved in the more focused episodes of the -Archers due in a few weeks-time. Kenton may be a relation to Clement Attlee but Clem was rather more modest

The Ambridge Socialist in the Interregnum

This Thursday, 30^th April, is the last BBC update from Ambridge for a weeks. The Ambridge Socialist will however continue to publish weekly with news we receive from our local Borsetshire correspondents

The Jolly Butchers at 10 years old

Its 10 years since I first visited the Jolly Butchers pub in Stoke Newington on Saturday 24^th April 2010. It had opened a few days earlier as cask beer bar, rather different to its previous incarnation, Father Teds, which had a certain if rather different charm to it.

Many readers of the blog will know that the JBs became a craft beer institution, one of a handful of pubs in the Capital selling what at that time was a new wave of cask beers.

They all seem quite familiar now but 10 years ago for example Thornbridge Jaipur on cask was more or less unheard of in London, while Redemption was the first of the now numerous breweries in Tottenham and I think the JBs was amongst the first if not the first regular outlet.

The staff too, who I won’t embarrass by naming, went on in many cases to be very familiar and much valued faces in the world of craft beer.

Of course the JBs wasn’t without downsides. The toilets were legendary but not in a good way despite several efforts to sort the matter out. The wi-fi was a little dodgy and the seating not always as comfortable as all that.

So what though? The JBs was not the first pub selling craft beer in London but it became rightly famous as one of the best. In 2020 (notwithstanding current circumstances) there are lots of pubs and bars selling good beer in London. A reminder that 10 years ago if you wanted anything like a drinkable pint of cask beer in Stoke Newington you might well have headed a few minutes up the road to the Rochester Castle (aka Wetherspoons).

The JBs changed all that and it has stayed changed.

My first ever tweet from the Jolly Butchers

Stopped by newly re-opened Jolly Butchers; two Thornbridge beers; two Dark Star, Brodies, Redemption, Crouch Vale – promising

8:43 PM · Apr 24, 2010