Really Useful Knowledge: Basic but reliable test for media Election bias
if you want to track a form of partisanship that becomes more and more evident by the day, count the number of times – on TV, on radio and in newspapers – the prime minister is referred to as Boris and his Labour rival as Jeremy. It’s a no-contest victory for Johnson. Single name recognition gives a political leader a huge advantage.
Roy Greenslade, The Guardian, 10th November
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Press Release
10th November Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
Beard Liberation Front set for decision on General Election candidates
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it will make a final decision on whether to stand candidates in the 12th December General Election on 12th December ahead of the final date for nomination of candidates.
It has looked at standing against Iain Duncan Smith in Chingford as a symbol of clean shaven reaction but remains wary of splitting the vote in a marginal seat.
At the same time it is consulting on a list of Beard Friendly candidates who it will actively promote.
The campaigners say that they are concerned at the level of pogonophobia in Westminster politics and that far too many MPs are still clean shaven men in suits and that they are determined to make this an Election issue.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, while in previous Elections we have participated in a ‘Beardies and Baldies Alliance’ of candidates who face discrimination because of either the presence of facial hair or the lack of head follicles, in 2019 we have decided to change tack and focus specifically on the beard.
The Beard Liberation Front is an informal network of beard wearers and welcomes supporters, both women and men, who agree with our core principles.
It is not party political and does not usually stand candidates in Elections. However it is political in a broader sense, as it seeks a less discriminatory and more beard friendly Britain.
Founded in 1995 it campaigns against prejudice and celebrates positive images of the hirsute with an annual Beard of the Year award at the end of December. Beard Week, which focuses on a range of beard related issues, takes place every year in late June.
It has produced an updated version of its Election Manifesto on which it will seek the views of candidates and will publicise those who sign up to its Beard Friendly Charter.
The Beard Friendly Charter (Summary)
No to Beardism and pogonophobic prejudice against the hirsute
More hirsute MPs
More hirsute public employees and monitoring of hirsuteness levels in the senior Civil Service
Promotion of positive public images of the hirsute
No dress codes at work, beyond a requirement for smart appearance for public facing roles
Restrictions on barbers shops
The Ambridge Socialist
November 10th
Reporting on the Class Struggle in Borsetshire
Will Corbyn threaten the Ambridge Kulaks?
During the week the Daily Torygraph had a front page quote from Johnson that will have mystified almost all of its readers but would have been well understood by Ambridge Socialist readers. Johnson suggested that Labour wanted to pursue the rich in the same way that Stalin had the Kulaks.
Should the Kulaks of Ambridge be concerned?
Will Jeremy Corbyn be coming from Martyn Gibson, Brian Aldridge and Justin Elliott. We certainly hope so.
RUSS: D-I-V-O-R-C-E
Lily has told Call Me Russ that he needs to expedite his divorce from his current wife Lara or else. Indeed Lily has paid a visit to Lara although the BBC has not revealed the content of their discussion. An Xmas decision is coming for Russ. Is he getting a divorce from his wife or from the Archers?
Ambridge Socialist 2019 Election Campaign
Supporters of the Ambridge Socialist are meeting upstairs at The Bull on Sunday 10th November to finalise their candidate for the December 12th Election and their programme.
We give a proletarian salute to Joe Grundy as his funeral takes place at St Stephens
Edward Kelsey, a lifelong trade unionist, died in April 2019 aged 88 and the character he represented for so long in the Archers Joe Grundy died just short of 100 years of age in October 2019.
Joe’s funeral was on 8th November, at St Stephens.
There has been a lot of memorialising about the late Joe Grundy in Ambridge recently. Bert Fry wrote a poem and the Professor tinkled the keyboards with a special tune, believed to be a variation on The Wurzels, I am a cider drinker
Some of the memories have been less than satisfactory however. David Archer claimed that Joe Grundy was a poacher and, by definition that this was wrong. The Ambridge Socialist believes that Joe Grundy was not poaching but taking animals from common land for his own use and purposes. Further Archer claimed that Joe Grundy’s dog had to be shot by the Archer Dynasty was it was worrying sheep. This was simply an act of class war and vengeance on the Archers’ part and deserves to be remembered as such.
Joe Grundy was a fearless and tireless opponent of the rich of Ambridge and deserves to be remembered as a proletarian hero. Someone who was always for the many of Ambridge not the few, otherwise known as the Archer Dynasty
What is remembered on Remembrance Sunday
Simon Jenkins* no doubt has a point about an obsession with the second world war and Nazis to the exclusion of other history – that of colonialism and imperial wars for example. It is hardly time, though, to forget all about the second world war. My late father fought at Monte Cassino in 1944 and saw some of his comrades die there. A lifelong socialist, he would invariably wear a poppy on Remembrance Sunday. He wasn’t interested in Tory flag-waving. His concern, as when he was to be found on Anti-Nazi League protests in his later years, was to make sure that the industrial scale of murder represented by the Holocaust was both never forgotten and never repeated.
Keith Flett
Guardian 10th November 2017
*Simon Jenkins piece
E P Thompson, Beyond The Cold War (1981)
In 1981 E P Thompson was invited to give the Dimbleby Lecture but was then disinvited by the BBC . The lecture went ahead unofficially however at Worcester Guildhall and was published as a pamphlet, Beyond the Cold War.
Below is a brief extract (and a link to the full document)which might well sum up the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years on
History never happens as the actors plan or expect. It is the record of unintended consequences. Revolutions are made, manifestoes are issued, battles are won: but the outcome, twenty or thirty years on is always something that no-one willed and no-one expected. Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet, reflected in Dr Zhivago on the ‘indirect results’ of the Russian Revolution, ‘which have begun to make themselves felt, the fruits of fruits, the consequences of consequences’
https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/113717.pdf?v=ab87222b5505d946095b42b5abf757ce
With respect to Lt. Col. Bill Hestir (“Grant and Lee’s Beards Never Saw Gas Masks,” Letters, Nov 2): I deployed to Afghanistan for the better part of a year—my gas mask stored safely in my foot locker the entire time, far from my Apache helicopter. A beard would have made no difference one way or the other. There is great value in our military projecting a professional image, but also great value lost in the service going deliberately out of its way to have its members look distinctly different than the society it serves.
Capt. Jared Graham, USA (Separated)
Tony Benn Diary Friday 10th November 1989
Out of the blue, and quite amazingly, the Berlin Wall is being removed. The Brandenberg Gate was opened yesterday, and today bulldozers and cranes went in and began hammering holes in the wall and thousands of East Germans are coming over into the West. But in reality it is causing enormous anxiety in NATO because the whole defence argument has changed, while the Labour Party continues to call for three Trident submarines as a first priority. So it is an extremely important event, and very moving.
The removal of the Berlin Wall, a key symbol of the Cold War, did as Benn noted 35 years ago have a significant political impact. Such is the 24 hour news cycle and absence of any historical perspective of current media that the anniversary appears to have gone unnoticed
The Ambridge Socialist
8th November
Joe Grundy: A Proletarian Salute
Edward Kelsey, a lifelong trade unionist, died in April 2019 aged 88 and the character he represented for so long in the Archers Joe Grundy died just short of 100 years of age in October 2019.
Joe’s funeral is today, 8th November, at St Stephens.
There has been a lot of memorialising about the late Joe Grundy in Ambridge recently. Bert Fry is even writing a poem and the Professor will tinkle the keyboards with a special tune, believed to be a variation on The Wurzels, I am a cider drinker
Some of the memories have been less than satisfactory however. David Archer claimed that Joe Grundy was a poacher and, by definition that this was wrong. The Ambridge Socialist believes that Joe Grundy was not poaching but taking animals from common land for his own use and purposes. Further Archer claimed that Joe Grundy’s dog had to be shot by the Archer Dynasty was it was worrying sheep. This was simply an act of class war and vengeance on the Archers’ part and deserves to be remembered as such.
Joe Grundy was a fearless and tireless opponent of the rich of Ambridge and deserves to be remembered as a proletarian hero. Someone who was always for the many of Ambridge not the few, otherwise known as the Archer Dynasty
Modern large scale business is a complex (sometimes deliberately so for financial reasons) matter and as a trade union officer that deals with some of the largest UK businesses I can testify to that. On occasion one is left head scratching as to what the real purpose of a business move is.
Brewdog’s sale and lease back of its refrigerated warehouse and distribution centre in Motherwell, the Hop Hub, to CBRE Global Investors isnt quite in that category.
A report is here:
https://www.scotsman.com/business/brewdog-sells-eurocentral-hop-hub-in-eight-figure-deal-1-5039844
Sale and lease back is a common device in industry addressing issues around costs and risk. In this case CBRE appears to have paid Brewdog £14m on a 20 year lease and Brewdog will obviously have to pay rent to CBRE.
CBRE are a company that specialises in investing in and managing property.
So far so not exceptional and there is certainly nothing to criticise Brewdog for.
It does however put the long running issue about when craft beer brewers are and are not independent into a wider and more complex framework.
The deal is about property not beer and should have no influence over what beer is brewed and so on.
That said CBRE a significant global company now do have a stake in Brewdog’s continued existence and profitability and no doubt will at the very least keep an eye on that.
Does that impact at all on Brewdog’s independence? The devil is in the detail which of course is in commercial confidence.
Business is business…
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The publication tells the story of some courageous individuals and groups who put their commitment to a progressive cause before any consideration of loyalty to a nation state, in particular people who have acted from principle when they consider that the country of their birth is acting in a repressive or unjust manner. We are particularly interested in those who have taken up arms against their “own side”, soldiers who side with the oppressed, rather than following orders to kill and subjugate, as well as civilians who actively resisted their own authoritarian governments during times of war.
