The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the first Test of the summer concluding at Lords with an England victory, it is clear that Bazball is also Beardball.
The robust style of cricket introduced by England coach Brendan McCullum has beards at its centre.
Both McCullum and England captain Ben Stokes have beards as did many of the England side who faced Ireland at Lords.
The campaigners say that it is not only the visual impact of the England player’s beards, which may distract opponents, but also the interaction between facial hair and bat and ball. This can be crucial and is one of the least understood aspects of Bazball.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Bazball is synonymous with Beard Power. The days of clean shaven cricket are coming to an end. BazBeardBall will be key in the forthcoming Ashes series
The Times & rail strikes: time to read the Making of the English Working Class
According to a Times Editorial (2nd June) current rail disputes from members of ASLEF and the RMT are led by ‘militant Marxists’ who have organised ‘Luddite campaigns’ to prevent job cuts and improvements to productivity. In case you were wondering that is code for cutting back on safety and shutting ticket offices.
The Times Editorial writers live firmly in the industrial world of the 1970s (which had a lot to be said for it) while the rail unions are very much in 2023. The current strikes have to be agreed by ballot, with some of the most restrictive conditions in Europe. Further they only work because union members not only vote for them but actively support them.
The problem lies with the Government and its abject failure to properly fund a public transport system.
Whether the union leaders in question are or are not Marxists is not centrally relevant, since they are above all union leaders within the industrial framework which promotes and ends workplace struggles. They are certainly not Luddites. They are not seeking to destroy the railways but rather to keep them going.
The Times would do well to read E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class which looks at how a world of collective action developed after Luddism.
Thompson himself would have enjoyed the Editorial, he was amused by the perpetual reaction to be found in them.(see, Sir, Writing by Candlelight)
Some readers at least of this post will be well aware that Bud Light, which is marketed as a beer, has lost market share in the US after it ran a promotion campaign featuring a transgender personalityon TikTok.
Leaving the quality of the beer aside Big Beer in the UK doing the same would be welcome and it is Pride Month.
Budweiser is of course owned by ABInBev which is quoted on the UK Stock Exchange but is a global beer company.
A US Culture War saw Bud Light sales drop for 6 consecutive weeks from April 1st although what culture warriors were doing looking at TikTok is questionable.
The competition has benefited particularly Mexican beer Modelo Especial.
However ABInBev won’t be too put out. Ultimately it owns that brand too.
Labour’s 9th June 1983 Manifesto: 40 years before its time?
It is 40 years since Mrs Thatcher defeated Michael Foot’s Labour in the 1983 General Election.
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.
Foot won 8.4 million votes achieving 27.6% of the poll which was certainly on the low side. Labour often tops 10 or 11 million votes in General Elections and on occasion higher. It is worth reflecting however that in 2010 Labour got 8.6 million votes and 29% of the poll.
The electoral point in 1983 was the break-away of the Social Democratic Party to the right of Labour which split the left of centre vote and allowed Mrs Thatcher to achieve a decisive victory and Parliamentary majority. It might be argued that the Falklands War helped although it could also be noted that the Labour leadership under Foot had supported the war.
It is argued that Foot, by 1983, a veteran Labour activist was not the man to lead Labour at a General Election.
Foot was a man of the left- a nuclear disarmer and an MP for a radical South Wales seat. Yet he was of the post-1945 left, not the new left that had appeared from the 1960s onwards. His victory in the Labour leadership election after the 1979 Labour defeat to Thatcher represented the culmination of decades of political work in the Party. But that was the past and Elections tend to be about the future.
It is an awkward reflection on modern politics that it is doubtful someone as old as Foot would lead a party into an Election now. It is a question of image, spin and discrimination that existed in the 1980s has grown worse since and needs to be tackled.
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- manifestoes 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 about 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, and much good did it eventually do them or the country’s economy.
The SDP meanwhile were upset by things such as the call for Britain to leave the Common Market. One doubts Nigel Farage has 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.
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.
Michael Foot may have been thought too old to lead the country by some, but these ideas were it seems 40 years before their time…
These boots are made for walking. Braverman to ban ‘slow walking’ protests again
Just Stop Oil protesters carried out slow walking protests in various parts of London for the last 5 weeks.
Police already have the powers under Section 12 of the Public Order Act to move protesters off the road which the Met report they do with a delay of at most 20 minutes from the start of the protest.
Suella Braverman, who is on a mission to ban any kind of protest that comes to her attention decided to ban slow walking by adding a clause on to the current Public Order Bill. Unfortunately for her but fortunately for democracy this was defeated in the Lords.
The Times now reports (1st June) that Braverman plans to widen the banning criteria to include serious disruption to the community, a wider test, and to lower the bar for illegality to anything that causes more than minor disruption (undefined)
There will of course, Braverman style, be no need for democratic scrutiny or debate to planned tweaks to the 1986 Public Order Act but the serious disruption change will need to be voted on in Parliament before they head off for their summer holidays
Reality and Braverman belong in different solar systems but this is law as Culture War.
Firstly much of London already has, quite rightly, 20mph speed limit and getting anywhere that speed is imaginative on many roads. It’s doubtful that slow walking protests in roads really makes that much difference.
In the meantime while I don’t walk as quickly as I did I still get annoyed by people who meander on pavements, usually looking at their phone. Can’t Braverman pass a law to ban that?
National Beard Week 2023: Positive Images of the Hirsute
Beard Liberation Front
2nd June
Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266
National Beard Week 2023: Positive Images of the hirsute
National Beard Week, organised by the Beard Liberation Front, an informal network of beard wearers, will run from June 19th to June 24th.
It is a long standing annual event designed to highlight positive images of hirsuteness and to call out beard haters- pogonophobes.
Results are achieved by a mixture of social media polls and, for more specialised areas such as Beard Friendly Employer, careful checks by BLF researchers.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, beards are making progress and National Beard Week 2023 will aim to see more made
National Beard Week 2023
Monday 19th June: Hirsute Personality of the Year: the beard wearer who has made the positive public impact during the year.
Tuesday 20th June: Beard Friendly Sandwich of the Year: the sandwich that goes in the mouth not the beard.
Wednesday 21st June: Hirsute Broadcaster of the Year: the broadcaster whose beard has had the most public impact.
Thursday 22nd June: Pogonophobe of the Year: the most notorious beard hater of the year.
Friday 23rd June: Beard Friendly Employer of the Year: the field grows wider each year 2020.
Saturday 24th June: Beard of Summer 2023: the third of the four quarterly seasonal Awards.
The Trades Union Congress first met on 2nd June 1868 but only The Guardian reported it
The TUC met for the first time at the Mechanics Institute in central Manchester, after a call was issued by the Manchester and Salford Trades Council, on June 2nd 1868.
While both the Times and the Telegraph (founded 1855) were in daily publication in 1868 only one paper, the Manchester Guardian, reported the proceedings day by day.
It might be thought that this was simply because the paper was Manchester based and that no doubt was a part of it but it was more complex than that.
1868 was well before the rise of independent labour politics on a significant scale (ILP founded 1893) and many trade unionists were supporters of the Liberal Party. Indeed the leader of late Chartism Ernest Jones who worked with Marx and Engels was associated with the ‘left’ of Manchester Liberalism before his death in 1869.
The Manchester Guardian of course was also a Liberal Party supporter and that came with a particular view of trade unionism- not that of strikes and pickets- but of a way of representing working men (this was 1868) as an important interest group in society.
Whether the Guardian will remember this 155 years on is questionable. In 1968 to mark the 100th anniversary they published a special supplement with an interview with the then TUC General Secretary George Woodcock who inevitably was talking about changing times for trade unionism and the need to modernise.
John Torode noted (2nd June 1968) that ‘new methods of bargaining are throwing new burdens on union officials. It is no longer enough to be able to thump the conference table, bluff and shout and eventually walk away with the money’. Those were the days…
Beard Liberation Front Media Release 1st June Contact BLF Organiser Keith Flett 07803 167266 Start of Meteorological Summer, beard trimming guidelines issued. The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers which campaigns against beardism, irrational prejudice against the hirsute, has issued advisory authorisation to the hirsute to trim their beards with June 1st being the official start of summer
The campaigners have advised the hirsute to take special care of their beards as temperatures continue to be at 20C or above in some areas.
BLF organiser Keith Flett said, shaving off the beard in the UK during summer temperatures is a serious error. Facial hair has a cooling effect on the skin and exposed to the sun’s rays after shaving sunburn is a likely outcome
Flett continued, however when in Algiers in 1882 Karl Marx had a full beard trim-not a shave-, as opposed to pruning, and exceptionally this is also permitted until further notice.
Guidelines for maintaining & trimming the Beard in summer weather
If the beard is above three inches in length significant summer weather trimming is in order, following the guidelines set by Marx in 1882 If the beard starts to over-heat immersing it in the freezer cabinet of the nearest supermarket will provide an instant remedy Hand held fans may also be used to ventilate the beard If the beard starts to dry out in the heat and follicles become brittle immersion in water will help. Alternatively a glass of craft beer will moisturise and nourish the beard. Trimming should on no account be done in a barbers shops. Barbers are notorious pogonophobes who will enthusiastically ‘over-trim’ and shave the beard entirely Trimming should be done using a pair of fine scissors and a mirror to a length and style to suit. DO NOT use any form of shaver. Trimming is a craft job
Engels kept hedgehogs when in Manchester, partly as pets, but in Victorian times hedgehogs were also used to clear the kitchen of insects. There is no reference in Marx and Engels Collected Works to the political perspectives of the hedgehog
However Isiah Berlin’s 1953 essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox seeks to grapple with the matter from a Tolstoyian perspective.
In his view Foxes accept a variety of perspectives on life, and are therefore acceptable to liberal capitalism. Hedgehogs by contrast are single minded, believing the world can be understood in its totality. Berlin therefore sees them as marxists.
Context is important here. Berlin was writing at the early height of the Cold War of which he was an enthusiastic supporter.
Hedgehogs are regular visitors to our central Cardiff garden. They are only woke at night however and I have yet to discuss Capital with one. Foxes are not seen. By contrast in North London foxes are regular visitors to the garden, while hedgehogs are not. A dialectical conundrum
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that with the first Test of the summer starting at Lords, it has become clear that Bazball is also Beardball.
The robust style of cricket introduced by England coach Brendan McCullum has beards at its centre.
Both McCullum and England captain Ben Stokes have beards as do the majority of the England side set to face Ireland at Lords.
The campaigners say that it is not only the visual impact of the England player’s beards, which may distract opponents, but also the interaction between facial hair and bat and ball. This can be crucial and is one of the least understood aspects of Bazball.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Bazball is synonymous with Beard Power. The days of clean shaven cricket are coming to an end
Kmflett's Blog 