Kmflett's Blog

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE   8th November

Contact Keith Flett     07803 167266

CAMPAIGNERS SAY JEREMY CORBYN’S BEARD IS IN THE TRADITION OF KEIR HARDIE NOT MARX

by George Charles Beresford, sepia-toned platinotype print, 1905

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the Election campaign underway familiar criticism that Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is a ‘marxist’ has appeared again.

The criticism is often linked with his beard. For example an article in the right-wing Spectator magazine by Melissa Kite (22^nd June 2019) referred to Corbyn as a ‘great bearded Marxist’.

The campaigners say such references reflect pogonophobic prejudice.

In reality Corbyn’s beard is firmly in the great social-democratic tradition of the first Labour Leader Keir Hardie

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said Karl Marx had a fine beard, but his beard was not the only facial hair style on the left and Jeremy Corbyn’s beard can be found to stand in the hirsute tradition of Keir Hardie

Beard Liberation Front

7th November

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it is not too late for Tom Watson, who will not stand as a candidate in the December 12th General Election, to get a place on the annual poll for Parliamentary Beard of the Year.

Watson won the title in 2009 but in recent years has been clean shaven.

However the campaigners say that male politicians who stand down from representative roles quite often grow beards afterwards to signify a change of image and approach, Al Gore being a notable example.

WIth the vote for Parliamentary Beard of the Year not opening until 22nd November Watson has time to grow a gravitas adding beard and get on the poll.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, this might well be Tom’s last crack at regaining his Parliamentary Beard of the Year title of 10 years ago and we hope he gives it a go

Winners of the Parliamentary Beard of the Year Award

2001 Jeremy Corbyn

2002 Charles Clarke

2003 Robin Cook

2004 Frank Dobson

2005 David Blunkett

2006 George Galloway

2007 Jeremy Corbyn

2008 John Thurso

2009 Tom Watson

2010 Gerry Adams

2011 Jeremy Corbyn

2012 Jeremy Corbyn/John Randall

2013 Julian Huppert

2014 Jeremy Corbyn

2015 Jeremy Corbyn

2016 Jeremy Corbyn

2017 Ben Bradley

2018 Jeremy Corbyn

2019…..

Beard Liberation Front

7th November

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Beard of the Year 2019 Longlist

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that it has begun the process of determining the Beard of the Year 2019 with the publication of the longlist for the annual Award.

The on-line poll to determine the twelve finalists is now open and will close on November 21st

The final poll then opens on November 22nd with the winner announced on December 28th

Names of other contenders can be added but the criteria remain clear:

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.

Beard of the Year longlist

Jurgen Klopp, football manager

Ben Stokes, cricketer

Philip Wilton,Tottenham cheese maker

Stig Abell, Editor, Times Literary Supplement

Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader

Noam Chomsky, academic & activist

Ben Bellamy, Winner, Beard of Autumn 2019

Lenny Henry,comedian

Paul Mason, Winner,Scary Beard of Halloween 2019

Benjamin Zephaniah, poet

Michael Rosen, author & broadcaster

George Clooney, actor

Billy Connolly, performer

Idris Elba, actor

Prince Harry, Royal

Billy Bragg, musician

Rylan Clark-Neal, Strictly, It Takes Two

Bob Harris, broadcaster

Raheem Sterling, footballer

Alexei Sayle, comedian

Lowkey, rapper

Brewdog has engaged Newcastle based Hive HR to do employee surveys so that they can engage with their workforce.

Details are here:

https://netimesmagazine.co.uk/news/brewdog-engages-hive-hr-to-deliver-employee-feedback-surveys/

I’m sure HIve HR do a professional job but in my lengthy experience as a trade union officer employees often feel constrained in answering such surveys due to doubts about how absolutely confidential they are.

If Brewdog want genuine employee feedback they could recognise an independent trade union. That would be quite a punk thing to do in the world of non-unionised craft beer.

The Metropolitan Police ban on Extinction Rebellion protests in London has been ruled illegal.

The key part of the Court ruling is in this Guardian report:

In a judicial review ruling handed down on Wednesday morning, the judges said the Met had been wrong to define Extinction Rebellion’s two-week long “autumn uprising” as a single public assembly on which it could i

“Separate gatherings, separated both in time and by many miles, even if coordinated under the umbrella of one body, are not a public assembly under the meaning of section 14(1) of the 1986 act,” Dingemans said.

“The XR autumn uprising intended to be held from 14 to 19 October was not therefore a public assembly … therefore the decision to impose the condition was unlawful because there was no power to impose it.

The ruling, which I expect we will hear more about is of some interest to historians of protest but also to those who supported or opposed E P Thompson’s view of the Rule of Law in his book Whigs and Hunters.

He wrote in a brief conclusion:

We reach then, not a simple conclusion (law=class power) but a complex and contradictory one. On the one hand.. the law did mediate existent class relations to the advantage of the rulers; not only is this so, but as the century advanced the law became a superb instrument by which these rulers were able to impose new definitions of property to their even greater advantage.. On the other hand the law mediated these class relations through legal forms, which imposed again and again, inhibitions upon the actions of these rulers

Historical work in progress

Beard Liberation Front

press release 6th November

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners provide guidelines on how to grow Movember facial hair

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of the hirsute, has provided guidelines on how to grow a Movember moustache.

Movember started on 1st November with people growing moustaches or generally not shaving for important charitable purposes.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the key thing about our guidelines for Movember is that they do not involve shaving anything. They are about growing facial hair, both for enjoyment and for charity.

GUIDELINES ON GROWING A MOVEMBER MOUSTACHE

1] Do not shave the upper lip for the first week.

2 After a week assuming hair growth, trim and prune the moustache to taste

3] After this wash and deal with any split ends on a daily basis, while trimming and pruning several times a week

4] If the moustache growth is inadequate there are several steps that can be taken:

a] Marinade the upper lip in a glass of an imperial stout for five minutes each day for a week

b] Shave the upper lip twice daily; this will stimulate follicle growth

5] Do not shave the moustache off at the end of November. After all December is the season for the greatest hirsute figure in our culture: Santa Claus

https://uk.movember.com/

Jacob Rees Mogg’s  comments on the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which he made on LBC on 5th November, have rightly caused outrage and he has apologised. Whether an apology is sufficient is another matter.

Mr Rees Mogg apparently thought that the residents of Grenfell did not use their ‘common sense’. There is no need to dwell on that point, indeed to do so simply raises appalling issues.

However the wider issue of Rees Mogg and what he thinks ‘common sense’ is, is of interest.

According to Raymond Williams in Keywords, common sense amounts to a ‘blunt assertion of the obvious- what everybody knows or knows to be practical’.

But what an Old Etonian thinks every one knows or should know might not be the same as what the ‘common’ person (as Rees Mogg would no doubt see them in another usage of the term) see it as.

Interestingly in his book The Victorians (2019) Rees Mogg also makes reference to common sense.

For example he writes of the Victorian radical and soldier General Napier, ‘His views in many cases are not especially radical at all but are simply common sense’.

Elsewhere Rees Mogg quotes Adam Smith ‘it is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than buy’. Rees Mogg adds that for Lord Palmerston this was ‘mere common sense’

In short Rees Mogg seems to use the term to mean the ‘obvious’ Perhaps he should try waking up in a burning building in the middle of the night…

In the Making of the English Working Class E P Thompson noted some of the issues that made William Cobbett angry about what he called ‘The Thing’ in the unreformed pre-1832 Parliament:

The anger of Cobbett, we need only think of the things which made him angry:  the fat contracts, the squalid scandals of the Royal Dukes, the soaring rents and taxes and the impoverishment of the rural labourers

200 years on a Guardian Editorial rightly notes that Jeremy Corbyn is still rightly angry about the Thing which identifies in a very similar way to Cobbett

“tax dodgers, dodgy landlords, bad bosses and big polluters”

The Guardian in an Editorial (5th November) has argued that Labour’s plans for the economy are long overdue and indeed important for the future of democracy:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/04/the-guardian-view-on-labours-radical-plans-fix-the-economy-and-democracy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The conclusion reads:

Jeremy Corbyn’s attack on the “tax dodgers, dodgy landlords, bad bosses and big polluters” ought not to be dismissed. UK inequality is at a damagingly high level and the system is being rigged in favour of politically connected wealthy interests. Politicians need to realise that it is not just the economy that is at stake if they do not act – they are risking our democracy too.

Its something that has an echo in British history perhaps particularly in the views of William Cobbett

EP Thompson encapsulated the Cobbettian worldview in the Making of the English Working Class. Describing Cobbett’s intervention in the 1806 election for the Westminster seat in the unreformed Parliament, he noted how Cobbett summed up the opponents of the radical candidate:

‘relations of placemen and pensioners’, ‘tax-gatherers, magistrates, policemen and dependent clergy’, ‘play-actors, scene-shifters, candle-snuffers, and persons following.. immoral callings’.

That world eventually began to change as Parliamentary Democracy started itself to be renewed with the 1832 Reform Act. It might be noted however that the passage of the Act was a fine call between reform and a plebeian revolution.

High stakes indeed