Kmflett's Blog

The Ambridge Socialist

20^th October

Reporting on the Class Struggle in Borsetshire

Hilda is missing but Alf is back

The Matriach’s cat, bird murderer Hilda, is officially listed as missing. The BBC has reported that Hilda spent the night out something it had never done before. Tony had a realistic answer to this: cat.

Meanwhile however long term alleged miscreant Alf Grundy is back in Ambridge as preparations for Joe Grundy’s wake continue

Where is Hilda?

Vince Casey crisis continues

The Ambridge Abattoir crisis continues and man about the West Midlands Vince Casey, despite appearances in the Bull, is in no hurry to meet Daveed and Brian to attempt to resolve matters, abattoir wise. Think: yet another Brexit reference…

Overwhelming support for statue of Joe Grundy outside The Bull

An Ambridge Socialist poll has found overwhelming support for a public subscription for a statue of Joe Grundy outside The Bull

In Other News

The Professor and Jazzer have found a Corbid. Alastair is not impressed.

Thanks to Faversham resident Nicholas Lezard for pointing out an error in last week’s Ambridge Socialist. Joe Grundy was in fact played by the late Edward Kelsey. The Editorial Board have undertaken a period of self criticism.

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release 20^th October

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Legislation called for as new study shows employers less keen to hire men with beards

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called for legislation, after a new study showed that employers discriminate against men with beards.

The study published last month in the Journal of Social Psychology showed that in a large scale sample, stereotyping of men with beards meant prospective employers looked on them less favourably than their clean shaven counterparts.

Other characteristics considered included wearing of glasses and a tie.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, in 2019 it is entirely unacceptable that men with beards should face discrimination in the job market. It is also unfortunately, in most cases, entirely legal in the UK. It is more than time for legislation to address the issue

Journal of Social Psychology, September 2019

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.2019.1671300

Effects of facial features and styling elements on perceptions of competence, warmth, and hireability of male professionals

Marc Fetscherin,Stacey Tantleff-Dunn &Arne Klumb

Few studies investigated the effects of facial characteristics on stereotyping in the business context. Using a 2 (beard/no beard) x 2 (acne/no acne) x 2 (tie/no tie) x 2 (eyeglasses/no eyeglasses) between subjects’ design, two representative samples of 364 and 711 participants rated different stimuli of male subjects on dimensions of competence, warmth and hireability. Based on 4,215 observations, results show acne has a negative and eyeglasses a positive effect on both competence and warmth. Wearing a necktie has a positive effect on competence and a negative effect on warmth. Finally, beardedness has a negative effect on warmth. We also observe that competence has a greater effect on hireability than warmth. We discuss the findings in the context of theoretical and managerial implications for male job applicants as well as HR practices.

Boris Johnson cant even get letter writing right: a guide for the PM

Following his latest defeat in the Commons on 19^th October Boris Johnson was required by law to write a letter to the EU asking for an extension to the date Britain plans to leave.

He was simply required to write a brief letter stating just that. Instead he wrote three, waffling on about his personal opinion, which was irrelevant to the process.

He also didn’t sign the extension letter a convention which may have been significant when he was at Eton but matters much less in the world of e-mail. It is usually obvious who sent a letter electronically and if it isn’t its likely to be dodgy

So what are the key elements in my view of a good letter?

1] Brevity. There is more and more to read and attention spans may be shorter

2] To the point. Not quite the hook of a stand-up comedy line but the letter needs a central focus

3] On one issue. 1+2 together mean that keeping to one issue in one letter is important although your point could be that several issues are connected

4] Humour: not always appropriate but a light hearted touch can reach places more apparently gravitas laden pronouncements sometimes don’t.

and of course regular practice makes perfect (ish)

Poll for most Scary Beard of Halloween creaks open

Beard Liberation Front

PRESS RELEASE 19th October

contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

POLL FOR MOST SCARY BEARD OF HALLOWEEN CREAKS OPEN

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, which campaigns against irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has said that the poll for the Beard of Halloween 2019 title is underway.

The 2018 vote saw a tie between Lord Sugar and Hagrid

The title, awarded each year on October 31st, takes a wry look at Halloween festivities by identifying the scariest beard in the public eye. The winner is likely to win by the narrowest crack of a squeaky floorboard.

The BLF does not generally believe that beards are scary a view promoted by generations of pogonophobes.

It is accepted though that on a dark moonless night as a beard looms through the gloom, nerves may rise a little as to what lies behind the beard.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said of course none of the beards on the shortlist is genuinely scary. But come Halloween things can look a little different…

Scary Beard of Halloween 2018

Richard Branson

Bono

Noel Edmonds

Rubeus Hagrid

Philip Green

George RR Martin

Paul Mason

Lord Sugar

Antony Worrall Thompson

The Extinction Rebellion protests in London which ended on 18th October raised the issue of the Climate Emergency but also of the right to protest.

At 9pm on Monday 14th October Deputy Assistant Commissoner Taylor of the Metropolitan Police suddenly banned all ER protests in London. He had not of course discussed the matter with the Mayor of London who has responsibility for policing in London (as the Tories frequently remind us) but might well have been in communication with Tory Home Secretary Patel.

The ban did not work, at all and this has clearly raised in DAC Taylor’s mind that the law must be changed to make more certain that he can frustrate the democratic right to protest. A Guardian report on this is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/19/police-seek-tougher-powers-against-extinction-rebellion

My brief view is also in today’s Guardian along with other letters:

The history of protest has many instances when a tactic or strategy didn’t work, was ill-conceived or counterproductive. The Extinction Rebellion protest that briefly halted trains in east London might fall somewhere in that area (Extinction Rebellion risks throwing away goodwill, Journal, 18 October). That doesn’t mean that protest on the climate emergency is not required and has some urgency. It also means that the right to protest needs to be protected and defended, in this case from the Metropolitan police. Effective protest that leads to real change is a difficult thing to achieve and historically has required what the sociologist Charles Tilly called an entire repertoire of contention. That is as true now as it was in the 1830s when the Chartists tried everything from petitions to a general strike and an armed rising to try and secure the vote.
Dr Keith Flett
London Socialist Historians Group

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/18/extinction-rebellions-right-to-protest-must-be-respected

A reminder of the history of the defence of the right to protest and organise particularly in respect of police powers was provided by EP Thompson in his collection, Writing by Candlelight:

The Chartist, Radical Liberal, Irish Nationalist and formative Labour movements were distinguished by their sensitivity to libertarian issues, and their suspicion of the polity of statism. When the police forces were enlarged and rationalized (or, as some would have it today, ’modernized’) in the mid-nineteenth century, this was a victory for bourgeois utilitarian bureaucratic policy in the face of intense resistance extending from old Tory localism through Radical Liberalism to outright Chartist opposition— for Chartists and trade unionists very well understood what kind of imperatives dictated government policies. As a consequence of this opposition, the presence of the police in British public life remained unusually subdued. They must be seen as ‘servants’ of… either the gentry or ’the public’, and they must in no circumstances exhibit a brash public presence. And, as a more concrete evidence of the old libertarian tradition, which endures to this day, the British police (at least in Britain) must go about the streets unarmed.

Really Useful Knowledge & Brexit

The amount of misinformation,bluster & plain lies on Brexit is huge. The TUC has underlined that Johnson’s Brexit deal will seriously impact on workers rights. There is a good deal more to the deal though than that. What is required is really useful knowledge on the question.

Below what that meant historically is outlined. At the bottom of the post is a link to a Tribune article by left economist James Meadway which provides a useful insight into what Johnson is trying to get away with.

What is ‘really useful’ knowledge? It is a lost analysis. An historically based category developed in the fight against the Tories last time in the late 1970s and early 1980s & then forgotten.

We’ll come to what it is-‘Spearhead knowledge’

But we can say what it is not.

It is not really useless knowledge. There is a good deal more of this now than in the period of the birth of the mass media from The Times to the Northern Star in the 1830s. In fact there is a daily media barrage of twaddle about the ‘fact’ that there is no alternative but to cut jobs and spending or the ‘fact’ that the last Government was somehow responsible for a global economic crisis.

Of course countering the twaddle is important but that it is not only what really useful knowledge is about.

It is knowledge for activists. The real counterpoint here is not useless knowledge but useful knowledge.

Useful knowledge is harder to define than useless knowledge. It may be genuinely factual but the crucial point is that it helps to challenge nothing and ultimately explains nothing about where we are and where we are going.

Richard Johnson’s original work on Really Useful Knowledge [1976] focused on the 1830s quite deliberately because this was,post the 1832 ‘Reform’ Act, the period of the first attempt to configure British capitalism in a way that would enhance and facilitate the exploitation of workers.

What were the categories that Richard Johnson used?

Spearhead knowledge or what I might term pikehead
Political Knowledge Tom Paine, William Cobbett- rights
‘knowledge calculated to make you free’ Poor Mans Guardian 14 April 1832
Owenite social science- feminism, secularism
Poverty & exploitation- labour theory of value often focusing on the ‘middleman’

It was this terrain that Johnson felt made up the framework of really useful knowledge

But it was not just the knowledge itself that was important it was how it was obtained and from who.

This was not under any circumstances officially provided information or ideas to be found in Parliamentary debates, The Times or such formally schooling as there was before the 1870 Education Act.

That meant of course that much of the unofficial really useful knowledge that circulated was neither political or, in some cases, credible.

It circulated via the unstamped press such as the Poor Man’s Guardian, from 1837 through the Chartist Northern Star and in particular through readings and discussions of articles in such papers in pubs, coffee houses and workplaces.

Link to James Meadway’s post
https://tribunemag.co.uk/2019/10/boris-bad-deal

Beard Liberation Front

19th October

Rugby World Cup: which team has the most beard power?

The Beard Liberation Front,the informal network of beard wearers,has said that while the 2019 Rugby World Cup is the most hirsute ever, the issue of which team has the most collective beard power on the pitch remains to be seen.

With the knock-out stage underway, the BLF is looking for the team that packs the most beard power.

They may not be the winning team because beards are not quite everything when it comes to rugby victories.

But the team with the most beard power will demonstrate excellence in such matters as:

Hirsute ball control

Beard tugging in the scrum

Beard waggling to distract opponents

Beer Collabs: has the thrill gone?

The 2019 Brewdog Collab festival is underway.

I attended the first evening at Cardiff Brewdog and will be back to try more later in the weekend.

I’ll post on the event itself later-suffice to say its well worth stopping by if there is a Brewdog near you.

It does however pose a wider question of whether the thrill has gone from beer collabs, of which there are any number about, and what purpose they now serve.

Back in the day of course the beer collab was something more or less unheard of. Think of London Brick, a red rye beer brewed by Kernel, Redemption and others that still makes an occasional appearance. It was ground breaking.

Now I’m not always sure what the combination of two or more breweries is adding to what will usually in any case be a pretty decent beer.

Of course there are tweaks on the idea some of which are direct collabs-the recent Skyline project between London and US breweries-and some not, the Rainbow project (currently with Left Hand)last year’s North Sea Bridges project, where breweries collaborate around an idea rather than with the beer. Harbour’s forthcoming Terroir project looks interesting in this respect, using ingredients from within 20 miles of the participating breweries.

Perhaps we are moving on from the idea of collabs between brewers to brewers producing beers that collaborate around idea…

Causing a nuisance: from E P Thompson on the Eighteenth Century Black Acts to Extinction Rebellion 2019

Following the Metropolitan Police’s ban on Extinction Rebellion protests under the 1986 Public Order Act, which did not in fact work and the legality of which will be tested in the Courts next week, a theme in media commentary has been that while protest about climate change is all very well, the protesters have disrupted life in central London and the City and have generally been a nuisance.

That of course is all part of what protest is about and the dislike of the authorities for those who cause a nuisance to the current interests of the rich and powerful has a very long history.

In Whigs and Hunters his discussion of the Black Acts which were aimed at eighteenth century poachers,  and which invariably invoked the death penalty for those caught, if a jury would convict,  E P Thompson summed the matter up

At the level of affrays between poachers and keepers there was some equality in the contest. But at the point where the petty seriously inconvenienced the great, the entire apparatus of power and law could be brought to bear to the side of the latter. The Black Act put unprecedented legal power in the hands of men who had not a generalized, delegated interest, such as the maintenance of order, or even the maintenance of the privileges of their own class, but a direct and personal interest in the conviction of men who were a nuisance to them

Beard Liberation Front

Media Release

26th December

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Nominations for Beard Friendly Pub of the Year close 31st December

The Beard Liberation Front has said that nominations for the annual vote for Beard Friendly Pub of the Year will close on 31st December. The on-line poll will open on January 2^nd 2020

BLF Inspectors have undertaken the arduous task of  surveying pubs for beard friendliness over the last couple of months (criteria below) and are now finalising the list to be voted on.

However it is obviously not possible to visit every pub and every location and a call for nominations remains open until 31st December.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, the criteria for inclusion on the list are below. We are not interested in pubs where someone once saw a person with a beard at the bar. It is rather more serious than that. Its unlikely that we wont be aware of a particularly beard friendly pub. Rather nominations may persuade us to include a bar or pub on the final list

The criteria for the Award include:

Beard Friendly Pub: a pub that welcomes the hirsute and often has a significant number of hirsute customers, including but certainly not confined to those with modern styles of beards .

Beard Friendly Ambience: a pub that may have fewer hirsute customers but is welcoming to the hirsute through some bearded bar staff and beard friendly beers, and has a generally relaxed atmosphere for all.

The campaign group says it welcomes diversity in both appearance and drinking. The truly beard friendly pub will have a genuine mix of customers not just a load of old blokes grumbling about life.

The 2019 winner was the Cock Tavern in Hackney

Nominate here by writing in the name of a pub or bar