Fear the Witch

Ever since the dawn of humanity, some people have sought to exercise control over others. In this excellent piece, blogger Leg-iron explains what has been perhaps the single key technique over the years:

The real fear is fear itself. Not fear of the Thing, but fear of being accused of being the Thing.

If you do not join in the witchhunt, and join in enthusiastically, then you may very well be a witch yourself, or at least Soft on Witches.

People will submit to full body scanners because if they refuse, they know the mob will take it as a sign of guilt. They will cheer on minimum alcohol pricing because if they don't then they must support alcoholism. They will worship the Green God because if they don't they will be seen as polar bear killers. Standard witchhunting methodology - the mob will always support the witchfinder because the witchfinder might accuse any who don't. The mob will be keen to report the witch to prove that they are not also witches. The mob is easily controlled by the fear of being accused, not the fear of the witch.

People will submit to all those lunatic controls on flights, some of which make absolutely no sense at all, not because they are scared of terrorists but because they are scared of being suspected themselves. All these controls on smoking, drinking, diet, travelling, what you can say and so on are not there for your benefit. They are to keep you in the mob, to keep you compliant and to keep you too scared to object.

Obviously this has strong resonances for the current anti-alcohol crusade, but it goes far wider in society, in fact in every case where the cry goes up “the innocent have nothing to fear” – implying that if you raise any objection, you can’t be entirely innocent yourself.

A prime example is the hysteria over paedophiles, which has led to millions of people needing expensive, time-consuming and probably ineffective background checks, and responsible men avoiding work with children for fear of others questioning their motives.

Interestingly, he says that such crusades eventually fail not because of popular opposition, but because those in authority decide that they have gone too far (as they always do):

The Righteous fail when they go too far. When people in authority start speaking out against them. The Pope stopped the Inquistion. The Church stopped the Witchfinder-General. The common people did nothing because they were under the thrall of 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' until someone they saw as an authority figure spoke out.

There are signs of this starting now. It could be messy, the Righteous have never had so many projects running at once before. What they'll take down with them, and whether they'll all go at once is anyone's guess but they will fail and I think it'll be soon.

Let us hope that the day when Sir Liam Donaldson and Don Shenker go the way of Matthew Hopkins and Joe McCarthy is not too far away.

Let’s stagger to the barricades

All those who value choice, liberty and enjoying a pint should resist the killjoys’ war on “boozy Britain,” says Tim Black, who points out the rank snobbery and contempt for the lower orders that lies behind much of contemporary anti-drink policy.

Losing your head

Many years ago I used to sometimes go out for a drink with my father and my Uncle Bill, who is long since deceased. We would get three pints with dense, creamy heads, but he only had to take a couple of sips from his glass to make the head completely disappear, leaving him with the proverbial beer that was as flat as a fluke, whereas the other two heads remained intact. It must have been some characteristic in his saliva – maybe unusually acid – which reacted adversely with the beer.

Over the years I have come across a number of other individuals who have the same effect on their beer, including one with the perhaps appropriate name of Malcolm Swallow.

I have to say this makes a pint of beer look extremely unappetising, but it doesn’t seem to deter those who suffer from it. I wonder whether this is a phenomenon others have ever encountered.

Don’t worry - drink and be merry

H/t to Jeff Pickthall for this excellent article appearing in the Spectator.

The government acts as if booze is the root cause of all our social problems, says Leah McLaren, but it’s not. Drinking is an important part of British culture, the pub is the hub of the community, and health warnings can even be counterproductive.

She quotes from Professor David Hanson (for once a prof who talks sense), who says:

There is this idea that almost any alcohol is bad and it’s moving very quickly across Europe,’ he says of the recent spate of anti-binge-drinking campaigns sweeping Britain and continental Europe. ‘You’ve got this idea that alcohol is poison and that we need to reduce consumption and that will solve all our social problems. That simply doesn’t bear out historically. In the United States, for instance, prohibition actually introduced the practice of heavy drinking by making liquor an illicit substance.

and explains how an anti-drink crusade will simply lead to responsible people enjoying themselves less while actually making the situation of genuine problem drinkers worse.

Trapped!

Well, it could be worse.

Guests celebrating new year at the highest pub in England had a longer than expected stay, after heavy snow left them stranded for three days.

About 30 people arrived at the Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire on New Year's Eve to welcome in 2010.

But the wintry weather conditions meant the residents were snowed in for a further two nights.

Let's hope they didn't run out of Old Peculier.

Free at last

Interesting developments in Stockport recently where both the Railway on Wellington Road North and Little Jack Horner’s on Wellington Street (pictured) have been bought from pub companies by their sitting tenants, and the Magnet just down the road from the Railway has been sold to new free trade owners who have turned it into a multi-beer alehouse. This is a very positive development and I wish all three pubs every success. They will be freed from the dead hand of pub company control and be able to source the beers their customers really want at more reasonable prices.

But “going free” is a double-edged sword. You have cut your ties from the brewery or pub company, but that means you no longer have anyone looking over your shoulder to keep you on the path and tell you when you’re going wrong, and you no longer have any outside marketing support. You are truly on your own. For a keen, competent licensee, that should be seen as a challenge, but for some it can lead to complacency and slipping standards.

It is probably fair to say that, over my drinking career, many of the very best pubs I have visited have been genuine free houses, but so have some of the very worst.

One particular bugbear of mine is that, freed from any higher oversight, free trade pubs can all too easily end up with a plethora of incongruous, home-made signs both inside and out, which puts across a sloppy, unprofessional image.

Also, unless you are consciously going down the “alehouse” route, it is important to have a permanent real ale of ordinary bitter strength that is what many of your regular customers drink.

Faith in the future

Well, maybe, as suggested in the comments here, it was a bit of a limited poll, but it’s ended anyway. The question was “Will we see closed pubs reopening in significant numbers during 2010?” and the 48 responses were a fairly overwhelming:

Yes: 2 (4%)
No: 46 (96%)

Clearly even the most diehard pub enthusiasts see the tidal wave of closures of the past two and a half years as an irreversible process. The next year may see a few flashes in the doldrums as struggling pub company outlets are sold off to more enterprising free trade owners, but I honestly doubt whether we will see much respite in the overall pace of closures. It even seems to have got to Stockport at last, with the Olde Woolpack and Town Hall Tavern having been boarded up in recent weeks, and a number of town centre pubs giving the impression of being very shaky.

I have been accused of tailoring polls to the anti-smoking-ban lobby (which is NOT the same as "pro-smokers") but I assure you that the latest one on where you tend to drink was motivated by comments on Tandleman’s blog about too many beer bloggers being mainly at-home drinkers. “Most (but by no means all) bloggers are home drinkers and really need to get out more”, he says.

I also have to say that a few of the anti-ban comments that have appeared on this blog border on the ridiculous. If you genuinely feel that your enjoyment of pubs has been hugely eroded by the smoking ban and you rarely visit them any more, then fair enough, I respect and sympathise with that point of view. If you assert that you NEVER visit pubs because they now offer NOTHING for you then I have to conclude you are a bit of a ranting loon. One commenter said that after the ban he never visited pubs or restaurants at all. It must be a rather limited life if you have to eat all your meals at home.

New year, old lies

Well, I was going to have a go at this nonsense from the BBC, but The Filthy Smoker has got there first and done a far better job than I ever could.

It would be nice to think that some wag at the Beeb thought it would be richly ironic to put an anti-alcohol piece online at the one time when everybody is pissed, but a more plausible explanation is that the BBC wanted to start the decade as it means to go on - ie. with doom-mongering drivel from state-funded temperance dicks.

And what’s this about “a quarter of England's population consuming hazardous amounts”? You mean they sometimes have two pints at a sitting in the pub? It seems that nowadays anyone who consumes more that the official made-up alcohol “guidelines” is branded as a “hazardous drinker”.

9 in 10 pints don’t measure up

A recent Trading Standards investigation has shown that 9 out of 10 pints served in pubs fell short of an actual pint, with an average shortfall of 4% (costing you 10p on a £2.50 pint) and a maximum deficit of a whacking 11.8%.

Full measures has long been a key campaigning point for CAMRA, and it’s something I once felt very strongly about. However, I have to say CAMRA very much shot itself in the foot on the issue by actively encouraging pubs to swap oversize glasses for brim measure ones, when it happened to coincide with replacing electric metered dispense with handpumps, and nowadays I tend to be rather more relaxed about it.

So long as pubs don’t obviously take the piss, I’m quite happy with a tight, shallow head on a brim measure pint, and I suspect most drinkers feel the same. A brim glass fits more comfortably in the hand than an oversize one. If the measure is markedly short I will politely ask for a top-up, and struggle to remember when such a request was last refused. I also don’t detect any great concern amongst drinkers that they are being short-changed. There are far more important things to devote your energies to.

And, while if you are served short measure of petrol, it will hit you in the wallet later on, short measure beer will only leave you feeling marginally less groggy the next morning, unless it is so grossly short that you end up having an unplanned extra half to compensate. You also have to wonder whether the likes of Don Shenker are actually quite keen on short measures as it means drinkers end up inadvertently consuming less without really noticing it.

It does annoy me, though, when pubs present you with a pint where the head has fallen some way short of the top of a brim measure glass – that is piss-poor presentation. And it’s disappointing the number of CAMRA members I see blithely taking pints away from the bar with inch-deep heads – I spotted one at our local Pub of the Month presentation only last Tuesday (in a pub where a top-up would have been gladly given if asked for).

Don't call time on historic pubs

Writing in the Guardian, Simon Davies says that the government should be doing much more to preserve the interiors of pubs. While there is a good case for listing the interiors of pubs that appear on CAMRA’s National Inventory, whether as whole interiors or as part survivals, beyond that the survival of pubs must be a matter of commercial viability. I like pubs with a sense of tradition and history, but I recognize that pubs can’t be preserved in aspic if they can’t attract customers. And, as many commenters point out, the government itself is the chief villain in making profitable pubs unviable at the stroke of a pen. Davies says:

It is time for political parties to take action to preserve what is left of the pub heritage. To hell with the idea that we shouldn't stand in the way of progress. I want future generations to stand in a grotty pool room and sniff the air that Johnny Rotten smelled when he changed history.

Oh the irony!

Home drinkers can’t count

The latest piece of festive joy from the Righteous is a warning that people drinking at home are pouring themselves measures much larger than the official “units” and thus underestimating their alcohol consumption.

Most people who drink spirits at home pour well over what they would get in a pub when trying to give a single measure, figures suggest.

The government's Know Your Limits Campaign found that among 600 people tested, the average amount poured was 38ml, compared with a standard 25ml.

Those aged 31 to 50 - the most generous pourers - gave an average of 57ml.

For a person thinking they were drinking 7.5 units a week, the extra measures would equate to 17 units...

…When asked to pour the equivalent of one unit into a large (250ml) wine glass, the average amount poured was 157ml - almost exactly twice the correct amount of 76.25ml.

In a smaller wine glass (175ml), it was 131ml, which is still 55ml more than the correct standard measure.

Surely the real reason for this is not ignorance but the fact that people couldn’t give a toss about the made-up official guidelines and their teeny units. And does anyone really think that 25 ml of spirits or 76ml of wine represents an acceptable or satisfying drink?

The drinkers of Britain have murmured

Back in September, Emily Ryans of CAMRA created a very laudable petition on the Number 10 website saying:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reject proposals from the British Medical Association to vastly increase taxes on alcohol and restrict pub opening hours; and to protect the interests of the responsible, sensible majority of moderate drinkers.

What drinker or pubgoer could object to that? Yet it only achieved 2,824 signatures. When we consider that CAMRA has over 100,000 members, at least half of whom must be Internet-literate, that is frankly pathetic. It was given a certain amount of publicity in What’s Brewing, but it never appeared on the front page with a direct link to the web page.

The proposition in the petition was entirely reasonable and moderate and did not challenge any of CAMRA’s shibboleths. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that far too many members are still preoccupied by tilting against the windmills of Lager, The Supermarkets, The Tie, The Pub Companies and The Keg Menace and completely fail to appreciate the existential threat to every single thing they hold dear.

Any bets on a pub revival?

There have been various comments in the beer blogosphere suggesting that we are likely to see a revival in the pub trade in 2010. This one by Paul Garrard is one example – I’m sure I’ve seen a similar one by Tandleman, but I can’t locate it at present. Locally we have seen high-profile reopenings of the Magnet in Stockport and the Black Lion in Salford. However, I have to say I think this is all dust in the wind – we may see a few more optimistic reopenings in 2010, but on balance we will continue to see closures vastly outnumbering openings. But you can give your opinion in the poll.

More or less going to the pub

I recently concluded a poll asking the question: “Do you visit pubs more or less often since 1 July 2007?” There were 73 responses, broken down as follows:

I didn’t go to pubs before but have now started: 1 (1%)
Much more often: 10 (14%)
A little more often: 10 (14%)
About the same: 11 (15%)
A little less often: 2 (3%)
Much less often: 29 (39%)
I have completely stopped going to pubs: 8 (11%)
I never went to pubs before or after: 2 (3%)

Quite a wide divergence of opinion there, whereas I suspect a real-world poll of a representative selection of drinkers would cluster much more strongly around the options of “about the same” and “a little less often”. As we know, the smoking ban is an issue that arouses strong feelings and many responses on both sides may have had something of an axe to grind. But it is notable that by far the largest single group was those who said “much less often”, and combined with those who said “I have completely stopped going to pubs” they account for over 50% of the total of respondents. So it’s hardly surprising that so many pubs have closed, and so many of those that remain are visibly struggling. For what it’s worth, I was one of only two who said “a little less often”.

Enter your high score here

I had to raise a smile at the latest example of the unintended consequences of Righteous initiatives. The NHS have launched an iPhone “app” which lets users enter details of the alcoholic drinks they have consumed and then warns them if they are exceeding “safe” levels. However,

within days of the tracker being released it was being described on the internet as an “awesome game” and users were boasting about trying to beat their “top score”.

Now who could have ever guessed that would happen?

It’s on a par with those roadside signs that light up saying “Your speed is 36 mph” which inevitably acted as an invitation to the local yoofs to see who could record the highest speed.