Wooden wombs

Over the years, I’ve come across people who have an intense interest in hi-fi, but are totally cloth-eared when it comes to music, and others fascinated by cars but who aren’t at all bothered about driving. And when I read about all these extreme beers, mega-strong beers, oak-aged beers, beers brewed with unconventional ingredients and all the rest, it does make me wonder whether some beer enthusiasts aren’t rather missing the point.

Don’t get me wrong, life would be very dull if all beer was the same, and it’s good that a wide range of beers are available and new ones are introduced, some to succeed, some to fall flat on their face. But you can only drink one at a time, and I don’t feel short-changed if I spend all evening drinking the same beer, or regularly go into pubs that offer nothing I haven’t had before.

Visiting a pub for a beer or two or six should be about celebration, or convivial socialising, or relaxing, or even just a brief respite from the stresses of life, not solely to sample a particular brew.

At heart I have to conclude I’m more fascinated by pubs than beer – by the variation in layout and architecture, the fittings from many different eras, the ebb and flow of trade, the little rituals and quirks of pub life, the mix of customers, their interaction with the bar staff and each other, the way their clientele and atmosphere reflect the varied strands of society. Every pub is different and has its own character and its own story to tell.

This is one of the reasons why I like visiting Sam Smith’s pubs as, although they only offer the one unchanging cask beer (and not always even that), they are without exception proper pubs with their own individual character and their own distinctive cast of customers. And, on the other side of the coin, why I always find the experience of visiting one of Wetherspoon’s soulless food and drink emporiums so oddly unsatisfying.

Inflating your pint

I remember the first time I bought a pint of bitter – when slightly underage – in 1976. It cost 21p. Now, obviously there has been a great deal of inflation since then, so it’s not surprising that the equivalent pint is now around £2.40, or more than ten times more. But how does that compare with the general movements in prices?

I recently came across an interesting website called Measuring Worth, which allows you to input a monetary value from any time in the past and find out what the equivalent is in present-day terms. And, it turns out that the 21p in 1976 was, in 2008, worth £1.13 in terms of the Retail Prices Index, and £1.79 in terms of average earnings. So, by whatever measure you choose, a pint of beer in the pub is actually considerably dearer than it once was.

Now, over time, you would expect the prices of things with a strong component of service (such as meals and drinks in pubs and restaurants) to increase more quickly than those in shops, because as living standards rise, wage costs rise more quickly than the cost of goods. But, even so, it is clear that the prices of drinks in pubs have risen more quickly even than average earnings, and this must have played a part in the relative decline of the on-trade against the off-trade. It could be said that the pub trade as a whole has been short-sighted in constantly pushing through year-on-year above inflation price increases and not realising that the short-term fix of increased revenues was in the long term undermining their business.

In contrast, drinks prices in the off-trade have probably risen roughly in line with price inflation. But it’s not that alcohol is underpriced in the off-trade, but overpriced in the on-trade.

Super-premium ales

One of the reasons marketeers put forward for people buying premium bottled ales is to give themselves a treat. And a growing category that directly addresses this motivation is the “super-premium” extensions of existing brands, with ABVs well above 6%. One of the first of these was Greene King’s Old Crafty Hen, a very complex beer including a proportion of an oak-aged beer called Old 5X, and which retailed for an eye-watering £2.49 for a 500ml bottle (77p a unit). I have been very impressed with this, although the price means it can only be an occasional treat, and such a rich, multi-layered beer is one to be savoured rather than guzzled. I was much less impressed by the cheaper Abbot Reserve at the same strength (£1.99, 61p per unit), in which the distinctive slightly sour, bittersweet character of the standard Abbot Ale seemed to be overpowered by cloying sweetness.

I recently spotted Marston’s Pedigree VSOP at 6.7% ABV, retailing at £2.25 for a 500ml bottle (67p a unit). The bottle label says this “delivers a rich complex pale ale with an opulent and luxurious finish”. The one I sampled was distinctly lighter than its Greene King counterparts, but didn’t really seem to drink its strength, and – in common with several other Marston’s bottled ales – demonstrated poor head retention. There is another in the cupboard awaiting a second opinion. Another one from the Marston’s stable is Wychwood King Goblin (6.6%), which I haven’t tried yet, but which didn’t impress The Ormskirk Baron.

It’s interesting that nobody from the anti-drink lobby has yet seized on this phenomenon, as they surely would if Inbev came up with a 6.7% ABV Stella brand extension. But, on the other hand, the fact that these beers sell for more per unit than their lower-strength counterparts, and that ales of this strength tend to be too rich and heavy to drink rapidly in quantity, means that in reality they have little to worry about. This category does seem to be here to stay, though, and it will be interesting to watch out for the other major producers of premium bottled ales coming up with their own variations on the style.

POLICIES ATTACK THE WORKING CLASS

It has been a week of catching up and I've just read a
very interesting piece on historian and author Chris Snowdon's blog about a report that claims lifestyle and healthist policies are an attack on the traditional working class.

A MAN WORTH VOTING FOR

From Witterings from Witney. It explains a lot about why I like Philip Davies, the Conservative MP, and why he is my blog mascot and labelled "Defender of Liberty".

He is so respected and valued, he is one of the MPs that UKIP will not stand against.
.

LET ME EXPLAIN ...

I had an email this morning from a disgruntled UKIP voter who doesn't understand why I am not pushing my anti EU views more strongly and favouring what he sees as an irrelevant policy instead.

My answer is that of course I am anti EU - I've written here before about my views on it's undemocratic political system and it's encroaching power that takes away an individual country's sovreignty and independence. I thought that as anti EU is the very heart and soul of UKIP that it would pretty much go without saying. What I wanted to try and achieve is knowledge that UKIP is no longer a single issue party and has lots of policies on all of the big issues and brave enough to touch others that dare not speak their name.

I must also admit that I haven't seen my electoral address so I have no idea what it says, but if it is based on my UKIP candidate's page, then that would explain why health propaganda, the smoking ban, and denormalistion is high on the agenda. These are all issues which affect personal freedom and civil liberties and are not, in my opinion, issues that any govt should be concened with. Much of it has only come about because of EU directives and this chap explains far better than I could. An oldie, but still a goodie.

I also know that a lot of the new groundswell of support for UKIP has come from disaffected former Labour supporters who feel like I do that there is something terribly un-British, and unfair, about this fascist type of control over simple lifestyle pleasures. It is more of them that I am trying to reach in a bid to stop them turning to the BNP which, I'm told, they doing in droves in L&H.

I believe that in this election, where the result will be very tight, traditional Tories will vote Conservative. Despite being disappointed by the Party's stance on the EU and immigration, they are too scared of voting UKIP for fear of getting in another Labour Govt. That would bring us to our knees and there would be nothing left to save in another five years' time.

The old Labour supporters, the ones that NuLabour abandoned, are the ones who can really make the difference to UKIP this election. Their concerns are debt, housing, uncontrolled immigration and whether or not they will be able to find jobs where they live. Not everyone wants to take advantage of free movement around the EU. They should have the right to work where they live. They also want to be able to go down to their local and have a pint and a smoke without having to feel like the worst kind of leper ever to inhabit the planet.

This issue is the most important to me because if we are not free to live our lives as we want, then what is the point of freedom? We agree that exclusion is bad but then we deny those that feel excluded the right to complain. We know that bullying is bad, and yet we hold up overweight children for public riducle as examples of how not to be. We know that we have a minority problem of people who behave badly when drunk - yet we make it a state of national emergency and penalise the majority by demonising what they tend to do responsibly.

This kind of social engineering - changing behaviour to get people to live the kind of lives that the state wants - is also very bad for the economy. We have seen the devastation to the pub industry. We will see small shops go out of business, and the associated suppliers of other goods, because of the tobacco display ban - the number one selling product this year. We will see small, local vending machine companies go out of business because of the tobacco vending machine ban.

This election is about taking control back from the state. That control is not just about demanding to have our say on Europe, it is about demanding the choice to live our lives as we want.

UKIP'S FIGHT TO SAVE OUR PUBS

Nigel Farage speaks about pub closures and the UKIP policy to help beleagured pub landlords.

I can already hear the supporters of the blanket smoking ban crying out that the slaughter in the hospitality industry has nothing to do with it. Yes it does, although there are obviously other factors like high tax and supermarket cheap beer and spirits. But let us not forget we had both before the smoking ban and we did not have the same rate of rapid closures.
The figures for closure are below from 2005 up to 2007. They have risen rapidly ever since and now stand at 52 per wek.
2005: 102, 2006: 216, 2007: 1,409
Even the most pub closure sceptic can't deny that it does seem like something of a strong co-incidence that the closure rate shot up so high with the divisive and discriminatory Health Act's arrival in mid-2007.

HANNON AND HELMER ON EU

There was some comfort to be had despite the ilLibDem surge in the polls last week after leader Nick Clegg's sudden popularity.

The declared "winner" of the first round,in the TV " I can be more boring than you" debate, soon came out and said he would hold a referendum on the EU if his party won the election.

But before anyone starts popping the Champagne corks in celebration that any of the three old parties care what the British people think about this issue, check out
this post from Conservative MEP Dan Hannon

It's good to see some Conservatives care as strongly about this as UKIP . Con MEP Roger Helmer recently blogged about how bad for British business the EU is, something UKIP has been saying for a long time.

Helmer points to an independent two-year study by the Oxcera consulting firm which has found that distressed companies who receive aid from European Institutions have, in some cases, a better chance at failing than those who do not. 

"Oxcera took a sampling of 1300 large, struggling Europe-based companies and found that nearly 70% of those who didn't receive government aid were able to weather the storm.  Of those who received monetary aid from the European Commission nearly a third had failed, compared to the other two thirds that were now surviving through artificial means," Helmer said. 
 
"The standard EU line on corporate assistance is that it "saves jobs and activities which would otherwise disappear".  Government intervention can sometimes be an effective support, in the way wooden stilts can hold up a house.  Without a proper foundation, however, that inadequate buttress will only prolong the inevitable."

My own view is that the open door migration policy, which is a result of EU membership, is also bad in that it does give British jobs to foreign workers. This came up in the BBC Radio Lincolnshire debate I took part in last week. Louth and Horncastle, for example, would have had many British landworkers in fields and in factories. These jobs are now filled by EU migrants and they are on the dole. I pointed out that while it is true to say that British people have as much right to work in foreign EU countries, many don't want to and they want to work where they live. They should be given that opporutnity. They will not get it if we stay in the EU.

Whatever the voter's view is on membership of the EU, it is time the issue was put to bed. What have the politicians at Westminster to fear by allowing the British people a say in the matter? In or Out? We should decide. No more spin or lies, please, Mr Clegg, Mr Brown or Mr Cameron. We've had enough.

DENORMALISATION ILLUSTRATED

Click to view


It's interesting to note that I got a mention in yesterday's article by Guardian sketch writer Simon Hoggart.

I can just imagine him and Sir Peter Tapsell guzzling fine food and wine in an English summer garden as they poured over my election address and pondered on what I could possibly mean.

It would have been nice if Hoggart had asked. By way of example, I think the humorous sketch above from Jebb and Weighill's book speaks volumes far more than I could ramble here for a few thousand words - yes,I really could rant that long on the subject of denormalisation!

The book was a present from daughter No 2 who tells me it was one of things that she saw and thought of me so she bought it. Thanks Jess, but I'm not sure it's entirely practical (tee-hee) x

MAKE YOUR MIND UP --- AND VOTE!

Politics fun from Total Politics with a serious message. Make up your mind and vote FOR a party that aligns with your views - instead of voting AGAINST the one you don't want.

Running on empty

On my journey to work, there are two pubs within half a mile of each other with their freehold up for sale. They are both prominent, striking buildings with their own car park, situated on a busy main road with a very frequent bus service, and currently trading, not closed and boarded. They are less than two miles from the centre of one of Manchester’s major satellite towns. Yes, they’re in a working-class area, but there’s plenty of housing nearby and a lot of thriving businesses – it’s no derelict wasteland. Yet you could probably snap up either of them for less than £200,000.

In fact, looking around at the number of pubs for sale, it would be easy to build up an impressive pub estate at knock-down prices. They may not be in the absolute top rank of locations, and may need a bit of refurbishment, but there are plenty on the market that appear perfectly viable. On the face of it, this would seem like a golden opportunity for ambitious entrepreneurs. But the days when the success of a brewery was judged by the size of its pub estate are long gone, and despite the Pollyannaish blandishments that the pub trade is starting to turn up, nobody’s biting.

It seems that, unless you have a position on a town-centre or suburban drinking circuit, or are in a location where you can attract a destination dining trade, pretty much any pub nowadays is a fundamentally unappealing proposition. They may continue trading for the time being, but if they happen to suffer a period of closure, then it’s very unlikely that anyone will want to step in and breathe new life into them. All this suggests that we are still a very long way from seeing the end of the wave of closures and that more and more areas of the country are going to become pub deserts over the next decade.

Of course one can point to individual success stories, but it has always been possible for keen-eyed operators to do well in a declining market. The Magnet in Stockport is a good example, but it very much caters for a niche market, and it doesn’t follow that pubs like the Bow Garrett or the Wrights Arms could be revived by applying the same formula.

If you had up to £300,000 to invest in a pub freehold, you will find plenty of pubs in all kinds of locations on the Fleurets website. But how many do you think you, or indeed anyone, could really make a go of?

The apple of my eye?

As there had been so much discussion about cider duty, I thought I would run a poll to find out how often blog readers drank cider. This has now closed, with 56 responses, broken down as follows:

Never: 9 (16%)
About once a year: 25 (45%)
About once a month: 13 (23%)
Most weeks: 6 (11%)
More than beer: 3 (5%)

I have to say very rarely drink cider in pubs, as few of the pubs I visit stock “real” cider anyway, and those that do also tend to have a choice of good beers. But I am partial to the occasional bottle at home from the likes of Weston’s, Thatcher’s, Henney’s and Sheppy’s.

It is very clear from the poll, though, that relatively few respondents drank cider at all regularly, with well over half saying they either never drank it, or only had it once a year (possibly at their local beer festival). This seems to underline the point that cider drinkers are something of a breed apart, and there is relatively little overlap between them and beer drinkers. I have seen very little about cider on the popular beer blogs, and indeed one or two have been a touch dismissive of it. A lot of beer drinkers might at various times include Guinness, premium lagers and cask ales in their “drinking repertoire”, but it’s unlikely they’ll also include cider.

While cider is officially an important campaigning priority for CAMRA, I get the impression that few members really identify with it or see it as something with which beer drinkers should be making common cause.

EXCELLENT!

CUDDLING DOGS

Along with the other main candidates in the election for the Louth and Horncastle seat, I recieved an email from a concerned couple who own a small local brewery about what my party would do to help the beleagured pub industry.

I responded immediately and offered to go and see them in Louth where the Fulstow Brewery is based. I also sent them a copy of UKIP's beer mats above which were produced before Labour began it's incredible assault on other lifestyles including "binge drinking" and the incredibly offensive term of "obesity". Pubs closure rates were at 39 a week then. They stand at 52 a week a now. They also wanted to be able to trade fairly alongside the big supermarkets which the NuLab Govt seems to be giving carte blanche permission to undercut pubs on the price of beer and spirits.

I was really interested to know the views of these non-smoking professionals and it was that the smoking ban is definately killing their industry and the assault aimed at the minority that is irresponsible enough to drink to excess won't help.

They were very pleased to take delivery of a pack of the beer mats which they said they would distribute to their clients while delivering their very fine real ales.

The couple had three gorgeous Jack Russell dogs and one took rather a shine to me and jumped up on my knee. I sat and stroked and cuddled him while we talked. I do love dogs after all. It rather compensated for the fact that no-one has yet asked me to kiss babies, which I understand is one of the requirements of campaigning.

I will be in the L&H consituency on Saturday where I hope to be able to speak to lots of people and spread the word that the time for the political revolution has come. It is only UKIP that can deliver it and free society from the grip of the same old three party alliance which supports MPs, the system, and does not listen to the views of the people who really matter - the electorate - if their concerns don't match the three's identical ideological aims.

Incidentally, the brewery told me that despite asking all candidates for their views on this issue, it was UKIP that responded.

JOIN THE REVOLUTION

THESBIAN DEBATES FUEL

I was asked to appear with the three main candidates in what I thought was a hustings event in Woodhall Spa by Lincolnshire local BBC TV news programme Look North.

I was looking forward to getting my teeth into my first debate with real politicians but when I arrived at Moreton's Service Station on the B1191, I found that there was a candidate from the Lincolnshire Independents, Lincolnshire First party and the Labour blokie Patrick Mountain. We were to discuss "transport."

However, as the three of us stood by the chilly roadside, waiting for the cameras to roll, and I tried to rehearse in my head all of the great UKIP policies on transport , I was rather put off by Patrick loosening his voice with a scale of notes.

BBC interveiwer Tim Iredale looked at him surprised and Patrick piped up that he was "practising".

"It's what you do before going on air, isn't it?" he asked.

Iredale said : "Why, are you a thesbian?"

Pat Nurse (under her breath) : "Plenty of those in the Labour Party, I think."

Anyway, cameras began to roll and instead of discussing transport, it was one question : "What would UKIP do for the motorist in the face of rising fuel costs?"

I said the party intended to give a windfall tax rebate to the motorist. Iredale asked me where the money was coming from. It would be linked to the price of oil. I said that obviously the billions we waste by being a member of the EUSSR would also come in handy and UKIP is the only party willing to give the British people a say in whether they wanted this money in the Britain's pocket or Brussels. Only they can tell us whether they want in or out.

It seems I will get that chance for debate tommorrow morning on BBC Radio Lincolnshire. I am to debate all sorts of issues with all seven candidates including the three old parties, the BNP, the English Democrats and the LiLf party.

WHY I ENTERED POLITICS

People often ask why and this is the reason. I believe in free choice and I'm against Govt dictatorship.

Because mummy says so

I reported recently that the official advice to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day had been shown to have only a negligible impact on reducing cancer risk. Now the Times reports that, just like the discredited alcohol guidelines, this target was plucked from thin air without any proper scientific justification.

So, from where did the US Government get the idea for the number five, if not the scientific studies? I was closing in. Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University, thinks she remembers exactly where. “It was Susan Foerster, the head nutritionist in California. She had the bright idea of promoting fruit and vegetable consumption in a state which was a big fruit and vegetable producer.”

The American National Cancer Institute admits that “no studies have tested the impact of specific numbers of servings on cancer risk”. But it says five was chosen in California in 1988, as it doubled the average consumption, and “the number five was memorable and provided a platform for creative message and programme delivery”.

In America now, the five-a-day message is “invisible; it has completely dropped off the radar”, says Nestle.

As I said before, eating five-a-day isn’t bad advice, but neither is it a health panacea, and failing to meet that target isn’t necessarily going to have an adverse effect on your health.

No wonder the general public are feeling like children who question why they have to do something and are given no better answer than “because mummy says so”.

Manifest lies

As several other commentators have pointed out, Labour’s 2005 election manifesto included the following commitment:

“We will legislate to ensure that all enclosed public places and workplaces other than licensed premises will be smoke-free.The legislation will ensure that all restaurants will be smoke-free; all pubs and bars preparing and serving food will be smoke-free; and other pubs and bars will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free. In membership clubs the members will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free.”

Now, that really happened, didn’t it? And – along with the broken promise not to raise the top rate of income tax – it underlines the point that political manifestos should be regarded merely as a generalised statement of aspiration rather than a cast-iron list of commitments.

But it’s interesting to speculate what the pub scene would be like if that commitment had came to pass. Certainly vastly healthier than it is today, with thousands more urban locals still in existence. But it would have opened up an undesirable class division, with a stark distinction between smoky working-class boozers and anodyne middle-class dining outlets. Pubs would have been faced with the dilemma that they could only serve food if they alienated the majority of their wet trade.

It would have raised all sorts of awkward questions and contradictions. Could we have started seeing pubs trying to build a wall down the middle and turn themselves into effectively two separate establishments, with different licensees, staff and accounts, so they could cater for all their customers? And would it have been illegal to allow pub customers to bring in food from the next-door sandwich bar, chippy or Indian, as often happens today? Might we also even have seen the rise of private members’ dining clubs where you could enjoy a smoke after your meal?

The only real solution, of course, is to let provision follow the market. If there is a genuine economic demand for non-smoking areas in pubs, or for wholly non-smoking pubs, then the market will meet it. As it was doing before 1 July 2007.

Flushed away

Edinburgh pubs face a new threat from City Council plans to restrict their capacity if they don’t have enough female toilets. Under new building regulations, pubs will have to provide one toilet for every 30 customers, and it is assumed that 50% of customers are female, even if in practice they are overwhelmingly male. If applied retrospectively, this could make many older pubs and bars which only have a single female toilet unviable, while newer, purpose-built venues will have no problem in complying, thus driving another nail into the coffin of the traditional pub.

Now, I accept that pub toilets often leave much to be desired, but surely this is going too far and ending up cutting off your nose to spite your face. On the Continent, provision of toilets often falls far short of British levels – I have been in one bar in Belgium that must have had a capacity of over 200, yet only had a sole unisex WC. Possibly the answer is for Edinburgh pubs to designate all their cubicles as unisex, although how well that would go down with punters is questionable.

And it is more than a little hypocritical for local councils to be insisting on lavish toilet provision by private businesses when they are under no legal obligation to provide an adequate number of public toilets themselves and indeed in most areas are busy closing them down left, right and centre.

Necking it

I was a touch surprised recently to read that one beer blogger (some young whipper-snapper, I think) was occasionally in the habit of drinking his beer straight from the bottle. So I thought I would run a poll to establish exactly how prevalent this practice was. This has now closed, with 71 responses, and the results were as follows:

Do you drink beer straight from the bottle or can?

Never: 29 (41%)
Rarely: 26 (37%)
Fairly often: 10 (14%)
Usually: 6 (8%)

Good to see “Never” had a small lead.

Now, I suppose if one was in the habit of frequenting nightclubs and rock concerts, one might occasionally be found necking a bottle of beer on the grounds of “when in Rome…”

But, on the other hand, surely a major part of the appreciation of beer lies in pouring it out into the glass, seeing the head and body separate and admiring its colour with the light shining through.

As I wrote in the past,

In his excellent CAMRA Guide to the Best Pubs in Yorkshire, Barrie Pepper rightly praises the licensee of the Mother Shipton Inn in Knaresborough for refusing to hand bottles over the bar. "Like me", Barrie writes, "he detests the obnoxious practice of drinking straight from the bottle. Ugh!" It's a great pity more pubs don't follow this licensee's example.

Would any self-respecting wine drinker guzzle it straight from the bottle? No, I thought not. Although, on second thoughts, I’m sure I’ve seen the late, great Keith Floyd doing it during a cookery demonstration.

NIGEL BLASTS VAN ROMPUY AGAIN.

I'm sure he'll be accused of being a rude Little Englander again by the three old parties that take part in this kind of banter in the their own parliament. Shame they dare not stand up for the British people in the EU. Good on you Nigel! I'm also hoping to keep my eye out in case there is yet another hip-hop version of his eloquent speech.

Another one bites the dust

Another sacred cow of Healthism has been slaughtered with the news that scientists have discovered that the magic “five a day” portions of fruit and veg won’t in practice do much if anything to reduce the risk of cancer. A massive study covering over 500,000 people has shown that the reduction in risk is a mere 2.5%, which falls well short of being statistically significant.

Now, in broad terms, eating plenty of fruit and veg isn’t a bad idea. But the problem with this – and the “healthy drinking” guidelines – is that what in itself is reasonable advice becomes twisted into a logical fallacy, that if X is safe, therefore it follows that anything that is not X is unsafe. Eating your five a day may be a kind of dietary ideal, but in practice falling short of it is unlikely to do you much harm. Plenty of people live perfectly long and healthy lives without ever even approaching that figure.

Back on the top shelf

Good news for cider producers and drinkers that the government’s plan to increase duty across the board by 10% above inflation has been shelved to get the Finance Bill through Parliament before the election (along with the obnoxious “broadband tax” on landlines). It seems that they seriously underestimated the strength of the opposition this would provoke – as I said before, it was about the only measure in the Budget that people were talking about. There is a case for reforming cider duty, but imposing an indiscriminate flat-rate increase that gave no recognition to smaller producers was not the way to do it.

NOW FOR SOMETHING MORE SERIOUS

According to Chiiiildren's Secretary ED Balls, there will be tough choices on whether to protect school funding and this will be at the heart of the General Election.

I've always thought that there is more wrong with our education system then just funding. It is too uniform and doesn't allow for individualism and it aims to take the child from the parent and educate it for the state.

UKIP's view, and I agree, is that NuLabour has forgotten that it has been in power for 13 years.

“They can’t bang-on about the need for reform in the education sector without expecting people to wonder what on Earth they’ve been doing in the last 13 years that’s left it in such a state," said a Party spokesman.
“The tories have remained very vague about what they’d do, (no surprise there, they've given hardly any detail on any of their policies) and the Liberals have said their priority would be to target resources at the under-achievers.
“UKIP would not ignore any group of school students, whether they were low, middle or high achievers.
“We would encourage the return of Grammar schools (without the 11 plus) and develop schools where the less academic students could be taught more vocational subjects, reach their full potential, and have vastly increased employability.”

Yes, some students, no matter how the system tries to shape them, will always be like square pegs being thrust into round holes. We need an education system that really does give parents power, choice and accountability. It seems to be the only people accountable for all that is wrong in today's system is the parents themselves. An easy target to blame for all of society's ills when parents do know what's best for their children, despite what the NuLabour state thinks.

The Tories really are no better. They have a lack of vision and are not clear on any policy. Take their claims that they could fund a cancer drug from NI contributions, for example. A think tank doesn't agree and neither does UKIP

 “This is an exceptionally cynical piece of tory spin," a spokesman said.
“The NHS budget won’t be increased to fund the rise in NI, so the one percent increase will have to be met by the existing budget arrangements.
“The tories seem to forget that the money for the rise is currently being spent in other areas of the NHS, and is therefore not available to be spent elsewhere.
“The Labour NI rise is going to damage job prospects in the UK, but that does not give licence to the tories to mislead the public in this underhand way.
“The solution to the issue of NI is glaringly obvious, abolish it.
“UKIP would abolish this ‘tax on jobs’ and introduce a flat rate tax on earnings above the minimum wage. It’s cheaper, it’s easier, it’s fairer."

For more on UKIP's policies see HERE

COOL FARAGE

A hip-hop version of Nigel Farage's insult to Van Rompuy. Cool dude!



H/T Gawain Towler

THE FIGHTBACK STARTS NOW!

Easter has been all about family this year for me and great it was to see them all. But now it's over and I'm back to reality and catching up on news of the last few days.

THIS on Leg Iron's blog caught my attention. It serves as a timely reminder, now that the election has been called, why smokers, particularly, should NOT vote for one of the three main parties.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons why people should vote "other" and I would say UKIP because of it's common sense and human policies and the fact that it is the only party that is big enough to take on the Lib/Lab/Con alliance.

Smokers are somebody too - 12 million of us - and we will use our vote. My guess is that Cameron - the main contender - for the next Big Pig In Parlt - would be wise not to continue ignoring us!

Estate of disgrace

I recently had the occasion to drive along Victoria Avenue in Higher Blackley, Manchester, for the first time in a number of years. Along here there used to be two massive 1930s estate-type pubs, but both have now disappeared and are simply vacant plots. You can see one of them – the Berkshire – on Google Street View before it was demolished. This is a pattern you can see all over the country – imposing 1930s, 1950s and 1960s estate pubs, surrounded by an expanse of under-used car park, either closed and boarded, knocked down and turned into a weed-strewn wasteland, or redeveloped into something else entirely. Here’s an all too typical example from Redhill in Surrey.

Obviously many once-thriving establishments have fallen victim to a profound social change. You can’t blame this on changing attitudes to drink-driving, as all these pubs have thousands of potential customers within walking distance and in any case were built when few working-class people owned cars. It is certainly true, though, that middle-aged people nowadays are much less likely to go out for a drink in the evenings, and younger ones are more likely to head for a town-centre circuit than go to a “local”.

Was the concept of the “estate pub” flawed from the start? There are two pervading myths about the pub trade – that coming home from work, eating your tea and then going out is the typical pattern of pubgoing, and that the presence of nearby housing guarantees business for any tolerably well-run pub – neither of which is any more than a half-truth, and which over the years have led many people to misunderstand the dynamics of the trade and make ill-informed business decisions. Possibly building smaller pubs that were part of local shopping centres rather than plonking them on massive free-standing sites in the midst of areas of housing may have given them a better chance of long-term survival.

While estate pubs may have been planned to offer all the facilities pubgoers wanted, the very act of planning made them somewhat sterile and characterless, and people felt happier in smaller, cosier, more natural and haphazard older pubs. In many areas the twentieth century pubs have gone, but the nineteenth century ones (or at least some of them) are still there. Perhaps it was a mistake to “plan” pubs at all. Might it have been better if the presence, or absence, of pubs in areas of new development had been entirely left to the discretion of private developers?

NIGEL ON HIGNFY

I think Nigel Farage - or Niggle Farage - did very well on Have I got News For You last night.

I asked my 16 year old son what he thought about it after the programme. He said he liked Nigel and he made him laugh. He said he was different and came across as honest and not "full of the same kind of spin."

My family doesn't particularly share my political views or party allegience so my politically neutral's son's opinion was encouraging and my other half's reaction interesting. He said he liked the humourous verbal assault on the unelected EU president Van Rompuy, and said it was great to hear a poltician like Nigel speak his mind even if you don't like what he says. My bloke reminded me of the time Labour's Dennis Skinner had a mardy, grabbed the Mace in the House of Commons, and threw it to the floor, and when John Prescott punched a constituent.

Have a good laugh and watch it here

Licence to drink

In yet another attack on drinkers, The Publican reports that the government are planning to introduce drinking licences as a means of curbing binge-drinking and alcohol-related disorder.

As part of a move to cut binge-drinking the government is proposing that pub customers carry a card licensing them to drink outside their own homes.

The Publican has seen draft documents apparently drawn up by pubs minister John Healey in which he outlined proposals to ensure anyone over the age of 18 entering a pub carries the credit card-sized ‘drinking licence’.

Sources within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport confirmed that such a customer licensing proposal had been discussed with a view to tackling the UK’s binge-drinking culture.

“We are looking at several ways to curb irresponsible drinking, and this is just one of the options on the table.

“If everyone who wants to drink in a pub carries a licence of the sort we are considering, it will make the job of policing trouble-spots that much easier,” the source said.

Of course, in fact this was an April Fool. But, when we have seen genuine proposals to require people to obtain an official permit to buy cigarettes, and to be issued with personal alcohol ration cards, it is too close to the truth to be funny. In a few years’ time, will I be saying “You read it here first”?

Edit: And this is post #500! :-)

FOR THE SAKE OF BALANCE

We've seen this video before but just for the sake of balance, let's have Call-Me-Dave in the starring role this time.

If you love Europe and the Queen - vote UKIP. If you want to end up like Eastern Europe, before the wall came down, vote for the Lib/Lab/Con alliance and continued memberhip of an elite, unaccountable organisation, the EU, paid for with £40 million a day of British tax-payers hard earned cash.