Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 28th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

BEARD LIBERATION FRONT CALLS FOR GUARDIAN APOLOGY ON POGONOPHOBIC COMMENT

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has called out the Guardian for pogonophobia, after columnist Jonathan Freedland referred to Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘scraggily beard’ in the 21^st December 2019 edition of the paper.

The full reference is,’ with a scraggily beard trimmed only once he won the leadership..’.

Freedland, while displaying his own prejudices, is clearly unaware that Jeremy Corbyn has won the Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award more times than any other MP.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, perhaps of all papers there should be no place for pogonophobia in The Guardian. We have raised the matter with the paper and we are calling on Mr Freedland to make a full apology.

What would William Cobbett have made of Sir Iain Duncan Smith?

William Cobbett a writer and farmer was a radical Tory who strongly criticised what he saw as the Old Corruption of the political system before the 1832 Reform Act.

He strongly disliked the power of patronage in the system, people who held well paid positions in Government and other official structures not on merit or competence, and certainly not because they were elected, but rather because of who they were or who they knew.

In his Rural Rides, Cobbett criticised ‘pensions, sincecures, tithes and the other ‘glorious institutions’ of this ‘mighty empire’. He referred to this collectively as The Thing.

One wonders how far we have really come, two centuries on, when in the New Honours List we find honours for several Conservative MPs and activists including the architect of Universal Credit Iain Duncan Smith who retained his Parliamentary seat on 12^th December by a small margin.

Labour, it will be pointed out, has done very much the same thing when it is in Office, as do the Liberal Democrats in a more limited way thanks to their more limited numbers. One wonders what William Cobbett would have had to say about Sir Iain Duncan Smith

Beard Liberation Front

28th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Real New Year’s Honours Rylan Clark-Neal beards Stig Abell for Beard of the Year 2019

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said Strictly It Takes Two and Supermarket Sweep host Rylan Clark-Neal has shaved opposition to win the Beard of the Year 2019 vote.

Competition bristled but Rylan and his fan base saw off challenges from Times Literary Supplement Editor Stig Abell and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Rylan Clark Neal surged from third place to win the annual accolade with 52% of the vote compared to Stig Abell’s 32%. There were over 6,000 votes in total.

The criteria for Beard of the Year is as follows:

The Award is NOT about people who grow beards in their bedrooms and post pictures of them on the internet

The Award IS about people with consistent beards in the public eye who promote a positive image of the hirsute

TV doctor Xand Van Tulleken and cosmologist Peter Coles currently at Maynooth University in Ireland shared the Award in 2018.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it looked like it would be a close shave until the last couple of days when Rylan’s fan base really got behind his beard. As winner & runner up for Beard of the Year Rylan Clark-Neal and Stig Abell are get adverts for the positive public impact of beards and both are worthy recipients of this greatest of New Year’s Honours

Beard of the Year 2019 shortlist

Rylan Clark-Neal

Ben Bellamy

Jeremy Corbyn

Alexei Sayle

Mauricio Pochettino

Billy Connolly

Ben Stokes

Jurgen Klopp

Bob Harris

Stig Abell

Michael Rosen

Idris Elba

Billy Bragg

George Clooney

Chris Woakes

Beard Liberation Front

28th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Strictly’s Rylan Clark-Neal shaves opposition to win Beard of the Year 2019 vote

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said Strictly It Takes Two and Supermarket Sweep host Rylan Clark-Neal has shaved opposition to win the Beard of the Year 2019 vote.

Competition bristled but Rylan and his fan base saw off challenges from Times Literary Supplement Editor Stig Abell and Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn

The criteria for Beard of the Year is as follows:

The Award is NOT about people who grow beards in their bedrooms and post pictures of them on the internet

The Award IS about people with consistent beards in the public eye who promote a positive image of the hirsute

TV doctor Xand Van Tulleken and cosmologist Peter Coles currently at Maynooth University in Ireland shared the Award in 2018.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Rylan is a very popular figure and his beard is a central part of that. His victory in the Beard of the Year poll underlines that beards are now mainstream in British life.

Beard of the Year 2019 shortlist

Rylan Clark-Neal

Ben Bellamy

Jeremy Corbyn

Alexei Sayle

Mauricio Pochettino

Billy Connolly

Ben Stokes

Jurgen Klopp

Bob Harris

Stig Abell

Michael Rosen

Idris Elba

Billy Bragg

George Clooney

Chris Woakes

From the Lord of Misrule to the Feast of Fools: our Christmas traditions and theirs

The modern Christmas, aside from a festival of commercialism and invented Victorian tradition, amounts to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with perhaps some note paid to Twelfth Night (Epiphany).

The actual religious traditions of Christmas are, as you might expect, some way from those that their supposedly modern-day adherents keep.

For example Advent was not about opening windows on a calendar but four weeks of a restricted diet (a semi-fast) where fish (often rotten) was the main food eaten as roast meat and pies were eschewed. Christmas Eve was a day of particularly strict diet with no meat, cheese or eggs eaten.

This is why Christmas Day and the twelve days that followed were days of feasting (at least for the rich).

Before Christmas Day a Lord of Misrule (traditionally a peasant or at least someone of lower social standing than the senior clergy), was appointed to oversee the celebrations of which Christmas Day was the first.

Each of the Twelve Days had some festivity but the one that gained the widest purchase beyond Twelfth Night itself was the Feast of Fools, which took place around January 1st.

There is a long religious history to these events, all of which were eventually suppressed, but again I am hardly historically qualified to comment in detail on this.

More in my area of socialist history is the reason for their suppression. They had come to represent notions of the subversion of authority and symbolised however briefly the world turned upside down. In other words beyond the feasting and drinking was a practical demonstration of the modern slogan that ‘another world is possible’.

To understand what this was about it’s probably best to think in the context of Carnival and the Carnivalesque. This was a brief period when people were not what they seemed, might appear in disguise or play unfamiliar roles.

Moreover this was confined not to the clergy but reached out into the wider population. It originated with the Church because of the dominant role in played in early modern society.

There is a lot of detail on this in Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun for those wanting to follow it up further, and a limited amount of original source material in manorial roles, official Church records and so on.

Before the Election on 22nd November Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to Waterways World.

He talks about his enthusiasm for cycling up the towpath of the River Lee from Hackney to Broxbourne and rightly urges the need to ‘clean up’ the area around Tottenham lock beset by developers far more interested in developing than they are in local people:

Do you still get much chance to indulge your canal passion?

I visit them quite a lot, mainly cycling alongside them – the Lee Navigation especially, up to Broxbourne. That waterway is actually a fantastic place for wildlife – I just wish they’d clean it up a bit more around Tottenham Lock.

The full interview is here:

https://www.waterwaysworld.com/jeremy_corbyn_interview.html

Their Christmas Holidays and Ours: Does Christmas still have twelve days?

January 5th is Twelfth Night, in the traditional calendar a festival to rival that of Christmas Day, and January 6th Epiphany. These dates mark the end of the Christmas holiday period.

How far people in work in 2018/19 observes a 12-day holiday or take time off depends on occupation, employer practices and individual circumstances. It may be that some official statistics are collected on the matter- although I’m not aware of them.

Whether time off is extended or otherwise over the Twelve Days has been the subject of employer and class led change.

For example Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that in 1797 the Customs and Excise Office in London closed for six days between December 21st (St Thomas’s Day) and 6th January (Epiphany). By 1838 it opened on every day except 25th December. Hutton notes that between 1790 and 1840 ‘employers, led by the Government, carried out a ruthless pruning of the Christmas holidays..’ The 1833 Factory Act had decreed that, Sundays aside, the only days when a worker should not attend work were Christmas Day and Good Friday. The 1871 Bank Holiday Act added a few Mondays into the equation as well as St Stephens Day (Boxing Day)

However from the early 1840s, led by Charles Dickens, efforts to reclaim and promote Christmas as a popular festival of harmony and social peace, certainly for the middle classes were well underway. Hutton notes that in 1847 the Poor Law Commission allowed a Christmas dinner in all Workhouses. The modern Christmas was under development.

The point being that time taken off work at Christmas (or not) although dictated to an extent by the 12 days of the traditional calendar has also been about the promotion or denial of people to take time off work.

The modern retail Christmas, as shopworkers union USDAW has underlined again this year, seems to consist of Christmas Day (if you are lucky).

Others may take time from 24^th December to 2^nd January, 8 or 9 days but not 12.

However long you do or do not take in 2019 things are guaranteed to be better ordered and regulated if you are in a trade union.

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

31st December

Contact: Keith Flett 07803 167266

Competition still bristling in Beard of the Decade vote

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that competition is still bristling in an on-line poll for the Beard of the Decade.

When the poll was last run, ten years ago, Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis beat Fidel Castro. He is the only person to feature on both lists.

The campaigners say that the criteria for the Beard of the Decade list is that the individual has worn a beard consistently over the last 10 years and has had a significant positive impact in the public eye.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn remains in the lead but competition is bristling with Michael Rosen, Moeen Ali and Brian Blessed all challenging

The vote is open now and will close at midday on January 1^st with the winner declared on 2^nd January

Rylan Clark Neal was named Beard of the Year 2019 on 28^th December

Beard of the Decade

Jeremy Corbyn

Brian Blessed

Michael Rosen

Moeen Ali

Idris Elba

Michael Eavis

Billy Bragg

Robert Plant

Lennie Henry

Mark Gatiss

Roger Protz

Ted Kelsey

The origins of Boxing Day are in 2019 perhaps obscure. It was not,despite it now being a major sporting day,traditionally a time for boxing matches for example.

Rather the early modern traditions of the day go back to the 1660s (just after the period when Christmas had been banned) where Christmas gifts (usually money) were left in a box by the better off for those who had done work for them during the year.

Hutton in Stations of the Sun notes that Samuel Pepys recorded putting money in five or six such boxes on Christmas Day 1667 to allow the recipients to have a more enjoyable festive season.

Of course the wealthy being what they are complaints were not slow in coming. In 1710 Jonathan Swift complained that he would be ‘undone’ by the giving of Christmas boxes and in 1756 Sir John Fielding that the total cost of such boxes could amount to £30 (when the average wage was around £1 a week).

As Hutton notes the practice was not easily given up by the less well off and in 1871 Boxing Day itself became an official day off, a Bank Holiday.