Kmflett's Blog

Campaign for Real Santas

December 20^th

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaign says era of ‘hideously white’ Santas with false beards must end

The Campaign for Real Santas, which promotes Santas with genuine organic beards, has said with the 2019 Santa season set to peak on Christmas Eve it is time to end the era of hideously white Santas with false beards.

The Campaigners say that a grumpy old white man with a false beard does not reflect what British society is in 2019 and there is no reason why Santas cant be women or from an ethnic minority.

In the case of Santas who cannot for a variety of reasons grow a real beard it has long been accepted that an alternative knitted wool substitute is just as good

Campaigners are urging parents and children to vigorously tug the beards of Santas they encounter as a definitive test as to whether they are in the presence of a real Santa or not.

CFRS organiser Keith Flett said, there is a real shortage of Santas who are not ‘hideously white’ and also one it seems of those with real beards. If Santa is to reflect Britain in 2019 that has got to change

THREE STEPS TO SPOT A GENUINE SANTA

1 Tug the beard of the Santa. If it bits of cotton wool come away, then the Santa is FAKE

2 If the beard remains intact tug the beard of the Santa again. If the Santa swears then they are genuine. If they simply repeat a ‘ho ho ho’ mantra they are FAKE

3 The Campaign for Real Santas says that genuine Santas must have just the right mix of bonhomie and grumpiness and an organic beard.

Notes

The Campaign for Real Santas is organised by the Beard Liberation Front

Boston Globe 17^th December 2019

Despite a healthy public demand for Santas of various ethnicities, those who book professional Santas for corporate parties and mall gigs describe a national Santa stable that is exceedingly short on diversity.

Of the 3,000 worldwide members of the Santa Claus Conservatory — an online Santa school offering webinars ranging from “Being a Mall Santa” to “Beard Whitening & Care” — a “tiny, tiny number” are Santas of color, says the organization’s founder, Ed Taylor.

“I get calls regularly from around the country asking about Santas, and I get requests for Santas of color with some frequency,” says Taylor. “And it’s very, very difficult to fulfill them.”

Once again on 1983

There is discussion that Labour’s Election defeat on 12^th December reflects that of 1983. In most cases its not a genuine discussion but simply an attempt by the right in the Labour Party and movement to assert that only their ideas can win Elections.

That is historically inaccurate (of course). I was no fan of Harold Wilson but he won 4 Elections for Labour and he was not on the right of the Party (which however was hardly the central matter of his Premierships)

Andy Beckett makes useful points about the differences between 1983 and now in the Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/19/left-labour-michael-foot-tony-blair

There is no question that  Mrs Thatcher defeated Michael Foot’s Labour in the 1983 General Election and did so fairly resoundingly

According to a Radio 4 Archive Hour programme on the subject in 2013, the Labour Election campaign was shambolic and Foot, while appealing to some of Labour’s core vote, failed to connect to a wider audience. A similar theme appeared in some coverage of the 2019 Election about Jeremy Corbyn, often from people that also thought  Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown were definitely unelectable as well.

In fact Foot won 8.4 million votes achieving 27.6% of the poll which was certainly on the low side. Labour has often topped 10 or 11 million votes in General Elections (as it did this year) and on occasion higher. It is worth reflecting however that in 2010 Labour got 8.6 million votes and 29% of the poll.

The reasons for Labour’s failure in 1983 have however been pinned on the Manifesto dubbed ‘the longest suicide note in history’. It is certainly long- manifestos tend to be even now- but the notoriety relates to its political position.

It was a manifesto of the left, or one kind of left anyway. Its focus on managing the British economy and tackling high unemployment hardly seems that controversial now. Rather it was the attacks on it by Mrs Thatcher and those that had split to the SDP that framed it in this way.

Thatcher, who used to bang on in much the same way as George Osborne once did with absurd comparisons between individual household borrowing and the national debt attacked the manifesto because it openly said that money would need to be borrowed to stimulate economic recovery. New Labour got around this charge of economic mismanagement in 1997 by saying it would stick to Tory economic limits…

The SDP (now part of the LibDems) meanwhile were upset by things such as the call for Britain to leave the Common Market. One doubts Nigel Farage read the 1983 Labour Manifesto but it reminds that the demand to depart the EU has been as strong in parts of the left as it certainly is on the right and was arguably more coherently put at that time than in recent years.

Other bits of the Manifesto now seem to be amazingly good sense. For example it says the banks will need to be regulated to make sure they lend and invest. It also proposes to set up a Foreign Investment Unit to keep an eye on what multinational companies operating in the UK were up to.

Whether you think scrapping British nuclear weapons is a good idea or not (I do with alternative work for the skilled workers concerned) it was part of the 1983 Labour Manifesto and continues to be contentious issue.

EP Thompson (who wrote a pamphlet for the 1983 Election, The Defence of Britain) noted in his introduction to the Making of the English Working Class that causes that were lost in nineteenth century Britain might yet be won in other places and at other times.

Michael Foot may have been thought too old to lead the country by some, but some of the ideas in the 1983 Manifesto were it seems 30 odd years before their time…

The irony of course was that Mrs Thatcher won in 1983 on an equally radical Manifesto, but of the right rather than the left. When the history of the period begins to be written by historians other than Dominic Sandbrook we may come to understand a bit more about the longer term significance of that

Beard Liberation Front

19^th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

A week ago he lost an Election but Jeremy Corbyn can still win the vote for Beard of the Year 2019

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the process of determining the Beard of the Year 2019 is drawing to close. The on-line poll to determine the winner is open and will conclude on December 24th

The winner is announced on December 28^th following an Electoral College review of the poll leaders. This has become necessary in recent years because of bot activity on the poll.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn currently lies 4^th and is well positioned for an attempt at victory in the last days of the poll, if he has the support.

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, the Election didn’t go well for Jeremy Corbyn but he could still win the Beard of the Year vote. As we saw he is not universally liked so the poll has lots of other contenders for people to vote for too.

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

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a long term resident of the North London Borough of Islington. He lives in Finsbury Park near to Arsenal football ground. Until several recent events another long term resident of the Borough of Islington was Boris Johnson who lived in the south of the Borough near to Angel.

If one is to believe some accounts of why Labour lost votes in some constituencies in the North of England on 12th December and the Tories won votes in some places it is because Islington dweller Corbyn is thought to be out of touch with the issues that voters have in the Midlands and the North. Apparently however another Islington dweller Johnson is in touch with them.

Islington as a Borough,like many areas of London,has pockets of wealth, along with many inhabitants who are anything but wealthy. This explains why Islington returned two Labour MPs as usual last week. It does not explain why some seats in the North of England were won by the Tories. For that other explanations are required that dont start with where either Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson live.

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 18th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

BEARD LIBERATION FRONT SAYS LABOUR MUST NOT RULE OUT FUTURE LEADER WITH A BEARD

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that Labour must not rule out a future leader with a beard despite the failure of Jeremy Corbyn’s efforts to bring the politics of beard power to 10 Downing St last Thursday.

Had he won on Thursday Jeremy Corbyn would have become Britain’s first Prime Minister with a beard since the Tory PM Lord Salisbury in 1902.

The campaigners say that Labour must be careful to combat any suggestion of pogonophobia amongst its supporters and needs to check if having a hirsute leader played any part in the Party’s defeat.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there is a desire for diversity when it comes to selecting a Labour leader particularly when one looks at the clean shaven Old Etonian who leads the Tories. While that could mean a female or BAME leader it should not exclude candidates with beards either.

Tony Blair and the old Chartists of the 1880s.

Tony Blair has been making another of speeches. They are in essence all on the same theme. Namely that he doesn’t like the left or Jeremy Corbyn (the feeling is replicated) and left of centre politics would go well if only New Labour made a come-back.

Except of course it wont. Since then there has been the 2008 crash and austerity. The world has moved on and Blair hasn’t.

That doesn’t btw mean that the content of the speech should be dismissed. True Blair often wanders off into hyperbole. For example he claims that Corbyn led a protest movement. It was one however that got 10 million votes which makes it a very popular protest. The problem is that no actual protest was involved. Whatever you may think of them, compare the yellow vest protests in France.

Blair also rightly notes that what is needed is a progressive anti-Tory politics that can win. Of course under Blair progressive politics seemed to involve war and privatisation but the broad point is still right and that surely was what the measures in Labour’s Manifesto were all about. Publicly owned railways, green new deal and so on are mainstream progressive popular politics.

Blair doesn’t in fact play his strongest card. Labour is a party of Parliamentary Socialism (including Jeremy Corbyn who has held his seat since 1983 and will end up as Father of the House if he doesn’t watch out) and Blair won three General Elections, prudently outsourcing the one he might well have lost in 2010 to Gordon Brown.

As Dylan noted, there is no success like failure, but failure is no success at all.

The phenomenon of the perpetually reappearing ex-leader is not unique to Labour. John Major was to be found last week calling for a vote to stop Johnson.

However there is also a place in labour history for historical hangovers.

Some of the Chartists of the 1840s were still to be found active in a revived socialist politics in the 1880s. They were primarily followers of the Chartist Bronterre O’Brien who believed that currency reform was central to a fairer society.

W S Sanders in his book Early Socialist Days, recalled branch life in the Battersea branch of Britain’s first Marxist organisation the Social Democratic Federation in the 1880s. The demands of the People’s Charter of 1838, suitably tweaked, were very much part of the SDF’s politics. The O’Brienite currency theory much less so.

Sanders notes that the old Chartists were seen as survivors from another age, listened to with interest by some, with frustration by others, but ultimately an anachronism.

Blair in 2019 is heading to the same place. Hopefully the track record of winning elections is not.

Beard Liberation Front

Press Release 18th December. Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

A guide to the beard friendly mince pie

December is the season for mince pie eating, but it can provide particular challenges for the hirsute.

The Beard Liberation Front has identified two key issues:

Icing sugar in the beard: this can have the effect of turning it prematurely white and can be difficult to remove. It may also lead to white beard syndrome and people shouting ‘Oi Santa’ at you.

Pastry flakes and crumbs in the beard: If this occurs it is guaranteed that any pogonophobe within 100 metres will shout ‘oi mate you’ve got the remains of your breakfast/lunch etc in your beard’.

There are several ways of avoiding the issues above:

1] Wear a special mince pie beard snood

2] Focus on eating only beard friendly mince pies. In particular pies where the ratio of filling to pastry lies with the former are likely to be more beard friendly.

3] If time and culinary skills allow you can of course make your own beard friendly mince pies

The Beard Liberation Front continues to research the beard friendly mince pie. The latest results are below:

Supermarket mince pies: Tesco, Sainsburys, Lidl, Morrisons, M&S etc. Check for the amount of frosting/icing sugar etc. Most have lids with frosting.

Heston: these are available in Waitrose. They do not have a top or flaky pastry but have increasingly become devoid of any relationship to an actual mince pie.

Designer mince pies: as Christmas Day nears these become more widely available. They are often smaller than the traditional mince pie and the emphasis tends to be more on the filling than the pastry which can help beard friendliness.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, there are some reasonably beard friendly mince pies out there but the hirsute need to choose carefully. For the unwary eater icing sugar and pastry flakes in the beard can be a serious concern

The Clash London Calling at 46, 14^th December 1979. An ultimate London record?

Its 46 years this week since the Clash released their double vinyl record London Calling (£5).

In May 1979 Thatcher had been elected for the first time (majority 40) and the year ended with what was the Clash’s riposte. Anti-racist, anti-authoritarian, pro-rebel. The music and the words went together as did the cover art for the LP.

An assessment by Mark Perryman is here:

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/cause-london-drowning

London Calling is one of the ultimate London records. Of course the Clash, Westway to the World, were West Londoners. London Calling though was recorded at studios in Pimlico (off the Vauxhall Bridge Rd) and Highbury New Park in Islington.

The culture of those areas then as now was anti-Tory anti-racist and up for a fightback. The Clash got all that in a record and listening to songs like London Calling or Clampdown again now the relevance sings out. London 1979 but perhaps even more London 2025.

A pity Joe Strummer is no longer around to write a response to 2025 UK & US politics but we do have London Calling.

Measuring Labour’s Vote on 12th December: Some Historical Perspectives

This is a voting card marked with an x in the second box with a pencil. The focus is on the pencil tip.

Labour suffered a significant Electoral defeat on 12th December while the Tories achieved a large majority, their first for three decades.

Jeremy Corbyn is right that a period of reflection is required to understand what the defeat (and victory) means for the future. Obviously it means a grim Christmas and beyond for the ‘Have Nots’ but a question on the left is what needs to be done to achieve Election victory.

The media, which at best, is not great when it comes to history have noted that the 203 seats won is the lowest total since 1935. Of course there are always other figures. One is that Labour now has the largest number of female MPs in Parliamentary history. Important progress

One interesting measure is the total number of votes cast for Labour. This (fairly obviously) is not a guarantee of Electoral success but it does in a very broad way reflect a class vote and the depth of a Party’s support.

Here Labour’s 10.3 million is well down on what Corbyn achieved in 2017 but beyond that the second highest Labour total since 2001, Tony Blair’s 2nd Election victory.

Another is the percentage of the vote- vote share achieved. This varies quite a bit. High vote share is not an automatic guarantee of Election victory (see 1970) but low vote share certainly is (see 1983). The 32.2% achieved on 12^th December is on the lower side of the historic stats. Not as low as 2010 and 2015 and in that sense the 40% achieved by Jeremy Corbyn might be seen to be against recent trends. If so, the question that needs to be answered as much as how bad the 12^th December result but what was it that saw such a good one two years ago, (albeit not good enough to win, although it would have been in some other Election years)

One thought might be that this support needs to further engaged with and organised to help secure a future Labour win. Its surely not about Westminster but about the grassroots in workplaces and communities across the country.

Labour votes. Number & percentage share of vote

2019 10.3m   32.2%

2017 12.88m  40%

2015 9.35m    30.4%

2010 8.61m    29%

2005 9.55m    35.2%

2001 10.72m  40.7%

1997 13.52m  43.2%

1992 11.56m   34.4%

1987 10.03m   30.8%

1983 8.46m     27.6%

1979 11.51m    36.9%

1974O 11.46m  39.3%

1974F 11.65m   37.2%

1970 12.18m     43%

1966  13.07m   47.9%

1964  12.01m   44.1%

1959 12.22m    43.8%

Source

House of Commons: UK Election Statistics

Beard Liberation Front

17^th December

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of the Year Vote enters final week

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that the process of determining the Beard of the Year 2019 is underway. The on-line poll to determine the winner is open and will close on December 24th

The winner is announced on December 28^th following an Electoral College review of the poll leaders. This has become necessary in recent years because of bot activity on the poll

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, its splitting hairs time in the crucial last week of voting for Beard of the Year 2019. Whose beard will ultimately flourish the most is up to the voters and the Electoral College.

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