The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Indian cricketer Virat Kohli will be on the 2023 Beard of the Year Longlist when its announced on 15th November.
Kohli scored a century in India’s latest 50 Over Cricket World Cup against South Africa on Sunday when it was also his 35th Birthday.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Virat is one of the foremost exponents of beard power in modern cricket. There is no question that there is a link between his stylishly crafted beard and his batting success
Titchener’s effigy must top the Ambridge bonfire with chants of ‘out, demons out’
For those interested the Archers has been studying the psychology of the Titchener mob this week. Bruce the father appears to be a core GBNews viewer, while Miles the other son seems on occasion to be slightly sensible. The demise of Ursula, Rob’s mother was as we know the reason for his reappearance. The Ambridge Socialist has no sympathy with Rob and remains in a popular front with Queen Camilla on the issue. Namely it is more than time that he departed. Burning his effigy on the Ambridge bonfire would be a start
Erratic BBC reporting from Ambridge
You could be forgiven for struggling to fully keep up with other developments in Ambridge with some rather erratic BBC reporting. Denise, formerly the front person at the vets, has reappeared after some issues at home. She is staying with Paul her son who shares with Lily and Josh. Paul is sleeping on the sofa. It has been determined that while Denise should be replacing Paul at the vets, he’ll be staying on and Denise will look for work elsewhere. However there is a potential lurve interest between Alastair and Denise.
Meanwhile Hannah has determined to quit Ambridge and Berrow Farm, having nowhere to live beyond a friend’s couch. Jazzer is being pushed towards the job although he’s more pigs than management. However Hannah meets Stella in the Bull on quiz night and joins her team with Paul. Stella suggests that she can check whether it will be ok for Hannah to occupy the spare room in her bungalow which is rented from Brookfield. Pip appears jealous, apparently believing Stella is pursuing liaisons with both Roooth and Hannah. To be continued…..
Peggy cancels St Stephens
Peggy is cancelling St Stephens and making a public statement urging a boycott of the vicar. This is a serious class issue as the Church and the Ambridge ruling class fall out
CAMPAIGNERS WONT CALL ON BRAVERMAN TO BAN GUY FAWKES BEARDS OVER CONCERNS SHE’LL JUST BAN BEARDS
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has warned of Guy Fawkes pogonophobia, the fear of beards, as the 5th November is marked in household events.
Pogonophobia is the ancient Greek for an irrational fear or hatred of facial hair, known as beardism in modern English.
The BLF says that the period around November 5th is the traditional highlight of the pogonophobes year as, in other times, they burn an effigy of what they assume to be a dangerous radical figure with a beard, although few will openly discuss their often deep-seated concerns about beard wearers.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said in previous years we have called on the Home Secretary to ban Guy Fawkes effigies. However given Suella Braverman’s love of banning things we are not doing so this year as she’ll just use it as an excuse to ban beards full stop.
The BLF is calling on people having Guy Fawkes bonfires in their gardens not to burn effigies with outlandish beards and to discourage pogonophobic remarks and behaviour. The group says that there is some evidence that beard burning bonfires have been in decline with events to mark 5th November often confined to fireworks only and welcome this positive development.
Winter nights: the history of the poor & night shelters. Not a lifestyle choice but a permanent feature of a market economy
With November and clocks changing we are firmly in the season of winter weather
In recent times in London the Mayor has made efforts to provide overnight shelter for those on the streets as winter weather sets in. This is replicated in many but not all areas of the country.
In his essay Comers and Goers (in Dyos, the Victorian City), the late historian Raph Samuel surveyed the seasonal migration of labour into and out of cities in the late Victorian period.
He noted that many came to winter in London, where, depending on the weather, night shelters, straw yards as they were called by those who used them, funded by private charity, opened up each November. The shelters were free and without obligation. People could stay for up to a month and they were heated with a huge open fire. The largest was at Playhouse Yard Cripplegate. The alternative was the Poor Law funded Casual Ward where a stay was limited to two nights and had to be paid for by a day’s forced labour.
Samuel lists many other places where people slept rough in London including railway arches and around the main hotels where heat was to be found, but the picture remains disturbingly similar 150 years on. Progress….
Now Suella Braverman is planning on organising vigilante night sleeper patrols. Rough sleeping is the product of poverty and a market economy as much now as in Victorian times. One can easily imagine Braverman featuring as a character in a Dickens novel
The burning of effigies of public figures who are disliked for various reasons is piece of political theatre stretching back into history.
It hasn’t always been politically progressive. The historian David Cannadine has pointed out that until the late nineteenth century the burning of effigies of Guy Fawkes was associated with reactionary anti-Catholic sentiment.
That specific tradition in England at least has almost, but perhaps not quite, passed into history itself.
However the burning of effigies on 5th November has continued and the current British political crisis suggest plenty of potential candidates
Should it be an effigy of Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Suella Braverman or Dominic Cummings
Elon Musk, whose treatment of those he employs leaves a huge amount to be desired, has opined that with AI people won’t need to work anymore. The German Communist, playwright & poet Bertolt Brecht had a rather different perspective
Who built the seven gates of Thebes? The books are filled with names of kings. Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone? And Babylon, so many times destroyed. Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses, That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it? In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song. Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend The night the seas rushed in, The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.
Young Alexander conquered India. He alone? Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army? Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears? Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who triumphed with him?
Each page a victory At whose expense the victory ball? Every ten years a great man, Who paid the piper?
Following an AI summit at Bletchley Park, an occasion firmly focused on how AI can benefit the few not the many, Elon Musk has opined that in future AI will replace all jobs.
Musk is a well known if wealthy idiot but is there nevertheless something in the point?
Some jobs have declined thanks to the use of machinery. One need only look at the decline in agricultural labour over the last 150 years in the UK, or check how many people quite large factories producing things like coca cola actually employ (answer, surprisingly few, its mostly done by machine).
However I’m old enough to remember the pamphlet written by the late Chris Harman some decades ago now titled ‘is a machine after your job’.
He meant is a computer after your job. The answer is, no it wasnt. What the computer has done has create yet more work, often of a rather mundane nature.
Some might argue that this is a victory for capital since it must have increased the productivity of labour and increased exploitation of the workforce. It is possible but it is arguable.
The reasons for this were actually pointed out at length by Raph Samuel in his Workshop of the World article in an early issue of History Workshop Journal.
Samuel surveyed in detail the industries of Victorian capitalism, which ones had moved to machine production, which ones hadn’t and why. The reality was that the labour process did not always lend itself to reliable use of machinery and sometimes it was simply just much cheaper to employ lots of workers than use expensive machines and those jobs, then as now, were not well paid. I suspect, broadly, that the same principles apply today.
Beyond that however while Engels rightly wrote of the dull compulsion of economic reality, and much work is drudgery or worse, there is dignity in labour and satisfaction in doing a decently paid, skilled job well. Is there still a political party that aims to make sure this is the nature of the UK’s workforce I wonder…. The race to the bottom doesn’t work for ordinary people and its usefulness to capital is debatable.
King Charles and Queen Camilla have been in Kenya. The King didn’t apologise for British brutality during the fight for independence in the 1950s but did suggest that it hadn’t been ideal.
On October 31st there was a banquet in Nairobi. Kenya has an excellent cuisine but the lengthy menu including Stilton, Beef Wellington and Earl Grey cake did seem to suggest that it was a sort of imperial heritage affair.
However unlike the recent austerity focused banquet given to the Royals by Macron at the Palace of Versailles recently there does seem to have been plenty to eat…
Beard Liberation Front says Erik ten Hag must shave his beard off and start again
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has reported on its specialist analysis of Erik ten Hag’s managerial crisis at Manchester United.
United have suffered their worst start to a football season for many years.
While ten Hag has said he is determined to stay at the Club the BLF analysis suggests that this won’t be possible without significant action to address what has become a follicular crisis.
The campaigners say that it has become clear that ten Hag has the wrong sort of beard to successfully manage Manchester United. He will need to shave his beard off and start again, looking at successful managerial facial hair styles such as that of Mikel Arteta at Arsenal or Ange Postecoglou at Spurs.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, Beard Power is a key route to footballing success but when a particular beard style is just not working the only thing is to shave it off and start again
Matt Hancock, the language of COVID & the consequences
Thursday at the COVID Inquiry saw further discussion of the role of Matt Hancock who was Health Secretary in 2020.
Earlier in the week Dominic Cummings had been sharply critical of Hancock particularly in respect of care homes and making sure COVID did not spread and cause deaths. As a matter of record that did not happen with tragic but potentially avoidable consequences.
Chris Wormald who was Permanent Secretary at the Dept of Health was asked if he thought Hancock was lying or thought to be lying about what was happening and what was being done in the early months of COVID. Wormald said that he thought rather than Hancock ‘over promised’. He went on to note that Hancock set ambitious targets to promote achievement against them.
In reality the targets and spin were not matched by things actually happening. The consequences are to be found in the COVID death toll and those living with long COVID
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