Strangers in tonight

Last night we had a very enjoyable evening in the Davenport Arms at Woodford to present licensee Yvonne Hallworth with a certificate commemorating 25 consecutive years in the Good Beer Guide. This is a classic pub, bursting with character and, while it has been altered a little over the years, still has a cosy tap-room and snug at the front, all warmed by real fires which, on a fairly mild evening, produced a roasting atmosphere. Robinson’s Hatters Mild, Unicorn, Mr Scrooge and Old Tom were all on excellent form.

However, amongst some people, this pub seems to have got a reputation for being “cliquey”. It was described by one person as “ very much a locals' local in the style of "American Werewolf in London"'s Slaughtered Lamb: odd looks from (most likely) regulars, and the like.” Well, yes, it does have a strong band of regular customers, and isn’t that really a sign of a good pub? And, given its location between Bramhall and Wilmslow, most of them tend to come from the comfortable middle classes.

I must declare an interest as I have been going in there throughout those twenty-five years, and before, delivering the local CAMRA magazine, and have had many stimulating conversations both with Yvonne and her late father John who was the licensee before her. Every pub has its own character, and I can understand why this one may not be to everyone’s taste, but I can honestly say I have never experienced that exclusiveness of which some complain. And, in reality, especially in the tap-room, it’s a lot more down-to-earth than some seem to think.

Do these moaners simply have a problem with any pub having regular customers? Another excellent Stockport pub sometimes unjustly tarred with the same brush – and which undeniably has a mostly middle-class clientele – is my local, the Nursery in Heaton Norris.

DON'T LET COUNCILS BULLY YOU

Here's a piece of good news to take us into the New Year and something that all smokers should be aware of as local authorities try and use bully-boy tactics to force smokers out of their communities as discrimination against them continues unabated.

Freedom2Choose has revealed that councils have no legal powers to stop people smoking in the open air although in Coventry at least, they will be forming Nagging or Bullying Policies in a bid to deny smoker council tax payers from using the very facilities they pay for.

They believe that Nagging smokers into submission justifies the discrimination they use against law abiding people they want to exclude from their communities.

So if approached by some Jobsworth paid to harass you if you smoke, your response should be that you are not breaking the law and they should just go away. But even though they may put you under severe provocation through their harassment, don't bite because they can then criminalise you under public order offences if you raise your voice or take issue with them.

Just be polite, smile and continue enjoying your cigarette** and tell the Jobsworth that you are breaking no laws and such council policy has no basis in law. In fact, ask them to quote what part of the Health Act 2006 they are using to stop you acting legally because they simply won't be able to tell you.

Meanwhile, as this awful fourth year of the ban is almost over, The Resistance fight continues and the anti-smoker fascists are being exposed further as their fraudulent junk science is revealed as not standing up to scrutiny

Let's hope 2012 is the year when discrimination ends against our lifestyle group and others and that the Govt starts actually funding patient care in the NHS and not propaganda designed by the bigoted ASH.

Don't forget that in Labour's term of office ONE BILLION POUNDS was thrown into the anti-smoker black hole of TV propaganda and various smoke free groups that were dying on their feet before this immoral piece of legislation was enforced through threat of criminal prosecution.

That money could have been so much better used in public service in all sorts of ways

** And don't forget to use your own pocket ashtrays.

Class in a glass

There have recently been a few postings on beer blogs discussing the issue of when the appreciation of unusual and expensive beers turns from simple enthusiasm to beer snobbery, such as here, here and here.

A point that was made was that some of this was tied up with the British class system, and it wasn’t anywhere near so prevalent in other countries. However, I have certainly got the impression that food and drink snobbery was alive and well in the USA, and indeed was often accentuated by being tied up with the “culture wars” that are a much more pronounced feature of that country’s society. This was confirmed by this piece I unearthed about food snobbery, which has very clear echoes of the way many craft beer devotees enthuse about their favoured brews:

Whereas you’re keen on Granny Smiths, he insists that you haven’t even tasted an apple until you’ve sampled a Newtown Pippin...

...Artisanal. Adjective suggestive of handmade goods and old-fashioned craftsmanship. In the food world, a romantic epithet bestowed upon the cheesemaker, breadbaker, bacon-curer, etc., who labors in his or her integrity-steeped native locale, independent of the pressures and toxicities of Big Food, to produce exquisite high-end, SMALL-BATCH edibles available by mail-order.

“The farmstand’s shelves groaned with a dazzling array of artisanal pickles.”

To my mind, anyone who ever uses the term “artisanal” in a food and drink context is unquestionably guilty of snobbery.

The pieces on the same site about rock snobbery and wine snobbery are also well worth reading.

Much of this modern snobbery is not driven by social-climbing affectation, as was often the case in the past, but by a genuine belief that one is being a champion of quality in food and drink, and indeed in other aspects of culture. But this can easily turn into a rancorous and patronising denigration of those – often from a working-class background – who do not share your heightened appreciation. Ironically this often comes from those who would consider themselves as having a left-wing political outlook. It’s far from uncommon to read denunciations in the columns of the Guardian and the Independent of people who swill Carling and eat Big Macs and pizzas from Iceland. If only we could have a society where everybody could afford to buy polenta from Waitrose!

In beer terms, I would say the key factor differentiating the snob from the mere enthusiast is whether you feel a sense of superiority over the unenlightened by choosing the expensive and exotic, or whether you just think “each to his own”.

I also came across this blog post about beer snobbery. Some of the “types of beer snobs”, particularly the “Beer Führer” and “Beer geek” are all too familiar.

A rum do

Innis & Gunn’s beers take a little bit of getting used to at first. As they’re brewed in Scotland, and oak-aged, you expect them to have some of the peaty, smoky character of Scotch whisky. But they don’t, and that takes you aback a bit. What I eventually decided they most resembled was a beer equivalent to American Bourbon-style whiskeys, smooth and slightly sweet, with pronounced oak, vanilla and toffee notes to its flavor. Once you understand what it’s getting at, you can appreciate it more.

A variant that seems especially suited to the style was the Rum Finish variety that I recently picked up in Tesco. (The photo says “Rum Cask”, but it was “Rum Finish” on the actual bottle) This was a rather steep £1.99 for 330 mls, but was available in a 3 for 2 offer covering a wide range of “world” and “craft” beers. It’s 7.4% ABV, so just coming under the HSBD threshold, and in the glass looks very much like Coke – dark but translucent with a thin but lasting head.

The typical I & G vanilla character is fairly subdued, but the toffee comes through strongly, and it is mixed with distinct fruit and spice notes. There’s a definite alcohol kick, but it’s relatively smooth and light-bodied and so is easy to drink – it’s not a heavy, chewy beer like many ales of this kind of strength. An ideal beer to sip and savour on a cold winter’s night, and probably the best I have sampled from this brewery.

Lansley speaks sense shock

I can’t say I’ve been the greatest fan of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley since his appointment last year – far too much of a Nanny Stater for me (although no worse in that respect than his predecessor). However, he came out with some surprisingly blunt common sense last week on the subject of minimum alcohol pricing:

He said that there were “big problems” with the idea, which he said would penalise the poor, fall foul of EU competition laws, and do little to tackle the kind of dangerous drinking seen in town and city centres on Friday and Saturday nights.

Roll on the day when this misguided, illiberal and élitist policy comes before the courts and gets struck down. I really do look forward to seeing the egg plastered over that face of that smug, sanctimonious git Salmond.

Lansley’s government colleague Chloe Smith was speaking on similar lines last week. Interestingly, in that debate, some backbenchers “condemned Tesco for marketing tactics that encouraged shoppers to buy from English stores when minimum pricing for alcohol is introduced in Scotland.” You do have to wonder what else Tesco are supposed to do. It would undoubtedly be illegal for them to stop Scottish people buying from English stores, and I doubt whether it would need much if any publicity for canny Scots to realise they can get a bargain in Carlisle Tesco.

Join the revolution

It’s interesting that Robinson’s have created a Facebook page here to campaign against High Strength Beer Duty, which for them is the “Old Tom Tax”. Rare to see a major company directly challenging a government policy in this way. However, although I have a page (under my own name, not A. Curmudgeon) I have to say I’ve never really “got” Facebook and would question how effective this is going to be – wouldn’t a simple petition on the brewery website be better? In reality, I would suggest it’s primarily a marketing tool. But good luck to them – it’s a fine beer.

MERRY XMAS TO THE GREAT AND GOOD

But those who cause the same chaos as the adorable Boxer dogs in this Christmas video might find themselves in the same dilemma - Santa only comes to those who behave, allegedly.

I hope the readers of this blog have a great Christmas. Things will be silent around here for a little while - but I will be back

WARNING

Please be aware that Someone is impersonating me on other blogs and writing comments that are not mine.

It is all part of his/her harassment of me for not writing posts that he or she approves.

He is also pretending to be others - like Smoking Hot, Zaphod, and Prop as well as Frank Davis and regular contributors on Simon Clark's blog"

The dickhead is also making criminal offers to sell tobacco in the name of respected bloggers who are part of The (law abiding) Resistance.

Dangerous times folks caused by an unstable psychopath.

I did report the personal harassment against me to the police today who have taken it seriously and will be taking it further. Should any blogger get a comment allegedly from me, please screen shot or keep a copy of it, as this may be useful as further evidence, but please delete because some of those in my name that I have seen are foul.

Staggering uphill

It is believed that the annual Hillgate Stagger, performed by the local branch of CAMRA, has been regularly held for longer than any other CAMRA event anywhere. Hillgate – divided into Lower, Middle and Upper – is a long historic street which stretches about three quarters of a mile south from Stockport town centre until it joins the A6 in Heaviley. It was originally the main road through the town, and would have been traversed by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 on his ill-fated advance to Derby. However, it was bypassed in the early part of the 19th century by Wellington Road South and North, the current alignment of the A6. This must have been one of the very first road bypasses anywhere in Britain.

Over the years, there have been 19 different pubs included on the crawl, although I don’t think there have been more than 17 serving cask beer in any one year. Sadly, due to inner-urban decline and the general contraction of the pub trade, there are now only nine pubs on the route with real ale, plus a couple that are keg-only. Those nine include six Robinson’s, two Holt’s and one Sam Smith’s, a considerable reduction in beer choice compared with what was available twenty years ago. At some point around 1990, the direction of the crawl was reversed to go uphill rather than downhill, as problems had been experienced with some of the pubs near the town centre locking their doors after 10 pm due to the crowds of revellers. That isn’t a problem nowadays, but the uphill direction has become well established and does mean ending up at the Blossoms where Robinson’s Old Tom is available.

The 19 pubs, starting from the bottom end, are as follows:

1. Queen’s Head (Turner’s Vaults) (Samuel Smith’s), originally in the early years of the crawl a free house offering no cask beer. Currently open and serving cask beer.
   
2. Winter’s (Holt’s) – converted from a jeweller’s shop in the early 1990s. Currently open and serving cask beer.
   
3. Spread Eagle (Robinson’s) – now closed and used as brewery offices
   
4. Royal Oak (Robinson’s) – actually just off Hillgate on High Street. Currently open and serving cask beer.
   
5. Bishop Blaize (Tetley, then Burtonwood) – previously called the Gladstone, now closed, but still in pub livery
   
6. Red Bull (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer. Shown on the picture
   
7. Waterloo (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer. Actually on Waterloo Road, just off Hillgate
   
8. Black Lion (Boddington’s) – closed for some years
   
9. Sun & Castle (Tetley, then Holt’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
   
10. Pack Horse/Big Lamp (Whitbread) – closed for some years
    
11. Golden Lion (Burtonwood) – closed for some years
    
12. Crown (Corner Cupboard) (Wilson’s, then Vaux, then pub company) – currently open but not serving cask beer, although it has in the past
    
13. Star & Garter (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
    
14. Ram’s Head (Wilson’s) – long closed, and now an Indian restaurant
    
15. Flying Dutchman (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
    
16. Royal Mortar (Robinson’s) – closed for some years, still derelict and boarded
    
17. Bowling Green (Wilson’s, then pub company) – very recently closed. Actually on Charles Street, just off Hillgate
    
18. Wheatsheaf (Wilson’s, then pub company) – currently open but not serving cask beer, although it has in the past
    
19. Blossoms (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer

That really is a classic collection of British pub names. I made a few notes on this year’s event, held last night, and with a bit of luck will write them up and post them some time over the holiday period.

Incidentally, this is post #284 for this year, thus exceeding the record set in 2009.

Mr. Elmer Keith

Elmer Keith (March 8, 1899 – February 12, 1984) was an Idaho rancher, firearms enthusiast, and author. Keith was instrumental in the development of the first magnum revolver cartridge, the .357 Magnum, as well as the later .44 Magnum and .41 Magnum cartridges.

HARASSMENT IS A CRIMINAL OFFENCE

And I don't have to put up with it ... or so the police tell me today.

Looks like someone's about to get a knock on the door.

Yes, you know who you are

RIP CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

There will be silence on this blog today in respect and honour of writer Christopher Hitchens who has died today aged 62

His brother Peter hates us because smoking did it but we all make our choice - as Christopher did - and it is OUR choice to make - as Christopher wrote with dignity when diagnosed with cancer.

I am very sorry to hear this news and my thoughts are with those who loved him and will be left with an emptiness in their lives now that he has gone.

Maybe they can take comfort that he is now immortal. Good writers leave that legacy behind even hundreds of years after their death.

I take comfort from these words he gave us :

“Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.”

Christopher Hitchens 1949 - 2011

UPDATE : Velvet Glove Iron Fist reminds us he felt the same about the nanny state and enforced snitching as we do.

That was the year that was

I’m not someone who deliberately goes out seeking exotic and unfamiliar beers, and even if I encounter them I tend to forget the names. So I won’t be doing a “best of the year” awards including categories such as Best Black IPA (sub 6.5%). But I thought I might mention a few highlights of the past twelve months.

My best pub experience (in an unfamiliar pub) was the Barrels in Hereford, a city not generally known for the quality of its pubs. This is Wye Valley Brewery’s flagship tied house, selling the full range of their own beers, together with guests and cider, at notably good-value prices. It’s a spacious, four-square pub with a good choice of rooms, a lively atmosphere and a varied clientele ranging from Bohemians to businessmen. On a dry Monday evening it was noticeable how the extensive, part-covered courtyard at the rear was absolutely full of groups of smokers and their friends.

I’ll also congratulate Joules Brewery on their sensitive refurbishment of the Royal Oak in Eccleshall, Staffordshire, which I haven’t previously mentioned on here. This is a striking pub on the main street of this small town with a distinctive arcaded frontage. I don’t know what it was like before, but they have given it a very congenial, pubby interior with a main bar, snug and lounge/dining area making much use of dark wood. It sells Joule’s three cask beers – Blonde, Pale Ale and Slumbering Monk.

Most memorable pint of the year was a superb drop of Batham’s Best Bitter in the Great Western in Wolverhampton (currently featuring in a Sky Sports darts trailer). And an honourable mention to drinking BrewDog’s Avery Brown Dredge in the Magnet in Stockport. Brewery-conditioned bottled lager at a CAMRA meeting – whatever next?

Saddest event of the year was the closure of one of my local pubs, the Four Heatons (formerly the Moss Rose). While it had declined in recent years, in the 1990s this featured in the Good Beer Guide for a number of years and was a classic example of a thriving, down-to-earth boozer. It’s still standing, but with the windows now covered by metal, not wood. There can be little doubt that this pub was kicked over the edge by the smoking ban.

Extinction threatens

The “alarming rate” of pub closures and the decline in beer volumes is a wake up call of epic proportions, claims British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) chairman and Molson Coors chief executive Mark Hunter…

…“Beer volumes have declined by a fifth in five years… while pubs continue to close at an alarming rate.”

How very perceptive of him. Perhaps he – or his predecessor – should have thought about that five years ago. And on-trade beer volumes are down by over a quarter.

RESISTANCE GETS ORGANISED

You might have noticed the two new badges on my side bar. Frank Davis shared them and I fly them with pride before I'm not allowed to have an opinion anymore.

What with bloggers getting raided by police in the Climategate scandal one has to wonder how much longer we will be able to have our say.

Until then, fly the flags too and show some unity.

Our Resistance is getting organised.

CAUSING DIVISION BETWEEN NEIGHBOURS

ASH is at it again in ensuring huge social divisions, violence and trouble become mainstream in their desire to eradicate tobacco and criminalise its consumers.

They have come up with a plan to encourage hatred of law abiding residents who smoke. No doubt the idea is make smokers eventually homeless.

This is not about health nor is it about consideration. It is about creating a climate where law abiding smokers can be bullied by smokerphobic intolerant neighbours.

ASH can only achieve its dream of destroying the tobacco industry by attacking its customers and creating such social divisions - as if they haven't done enough damage to the social fabric of this country already.

Most smokers are so browbeaten, they will probably take the bullying and do as they are told in their own homes by neighbours who have no right to dictate how they live.

But others will no doubt give interferring neighbours a punch on the nose which is just what ASH wants and why it has decided to cause trouble in communitites that until now have happily lived side by side.

ASH is disgusting. The Govt might as well fund the BNP to make immigration policy. The outcome will be the same.

The Govt should hang it's head in shame at supporting a move aimed at dividing communities.

And if you think this won't affect you because you don't smoke, then just wait until your neighbour has the right to force their way into your home, to check your fridge, and ensure that you are eating properly and feeding your kids in line with Govt or fake charity diktat.

It's already started and at the rate these things move, give it less than five years after smoking is banned in people's own private homes and it will be a reality.

If you're sure you don't want that then do nothing to help smokers now and you will surely get it.

BOYCOTT PEPSI

Pepsi is shit and never has been as good as Coke but now there are really serious and important reasons to boycot it.

The bigoted company has decided to enforce discrimination and deserves no custom.

So please spread the word and let's see if we can get the smokerphobic next on the Nanny state hit list to think again.

My son doesn't drink the shit either and as a never smoker is not really interested in this debate but he is as outraged as anyone about it and will tell all of his friends to boycott it too.

It's time there was protection for smokers in the workplace but while we have a bigoted prejudicial Govt with a health department run by idiots such as Milton and Lansley, it's never going to happen.

You kow what they say about America sneezing and Britain cathces cold? Well, lets give this American company flu.

MALEVOLENT MILTON AND THE MINIONS UPDATE

Malevolent Milton has shot up since I first posted progress on my tobacco growing experiment a month ago and so has her Ashite Minions although they have now been separated.

I gave two away to friends who were very grateful and excited to receive them but they accepted the gift on condition that when their plants grow to seed, they spread the love and plant them in the countryside, in parks, and wherever they find a good spot to enable others to find them and share them too.

That's two new members of The Resistance and I see that Frank Davis has also got involved and is reminded of his wayward yoof.

The first couple of tiny leaves I wrapped in damp disposable kitchen towel but that wasn't successful in curing them. It just made them go wet and dry without much change. They did turn colour and shrank a lot and when completely dry, I managed to mix what was produced - a sliver of tobacco - into one my commercially produced tobacco roll ups but the taste was indistinct. I guess there just wasn't enough to make a judgement.

The next leaf I picked - pictured above - was hung on a wire coat hanger by a split paper clip. The effects you can see there are after five days of just hanging naturally. Sadly, on that fifth day, just after the photo was taken, the leaf fell off and landed in my watering can which had a bit of water in it. I managed to fish it out undamaged but it was soaked. I dried off the excess as best as I could and put it back to hang.

After 8 days it has gone darker in colour and now has one of Malevolent Milton's bigger leaves, picked yesterday, to keep it company. I will continue to watch progress.

There are loads of growing and curing tips over at The Bolton Smoker's Club which I have watched avidly. The next three leaves that turn yellow on Malevolent Milton will be packaged as Junican suggests but first I thought I'd try the natural method of curing which seems to be to just hang them for a long time.

I'll also leave one on the plant to go dark brown and shriveled naturally following a suggestion from Leg Iron and just see which method works best for me.

Hopefully all my mistakes will be made on Milton and the real and serious effort of growing and curing can focus on the Minions.

I currently have three in one huge pot now but one of those is to go to another friend interested in joining The Resistance, and will be potted in time for Christmas, and one will go into another large pot to grow separately to the one final Minion that will remain.

I guess my next update will be when I finally have enough cured home grown tobacco to put in a roll up.

SMOKESCREEN HIDES REAL THREATS TO PUBLIC HEALTH

Thanks to Rose, who commented with links on the previous post, I learned about the American Hidatsa Indians and Buffalo Bird Woman who gives us a real insight into tribal culture and its speciality in agriculture before being forced onto reservations.

Born in 1839, she was given the name Mahidiweash or Maxidiwiac but her name changed twice. The first was when she married a man named Magpie in 1866 who died about a year later from "lung sickness". She married again to Son of Star and might have taken part of her name from their son Goodbird.

The old woman died in 1932 but stayed true to her culture and language to the end of her days. She had very strong views on smoking.

In her book The Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden there is a whole chapter on how the Hidatsa grew their own tobacco and how as a child she helped pick the flower bud crop and fill baskets made from buffalo scrotum.

Young men did not smoke, she said, for fear that it would weaken their lungs and make them unable to run from the enemy. If they were too slow they would die.

What she says sounds authentic and relates to my life experiences but as a child smoker, I think my lungs must have been stronger than other non-smoking kids of my age during the industrial 20th century. There was factory just up the road from my school.

I was in the hockey team, the athletics team, the cross country team, the netball team and the swimming team - often coming first, always in the top three, in running events and leading the way to success in team games. I still bear the physical scar on my shin from a particularly nasty hockey tackle during one of those games.

My son's teacher once told him that I'd probably have been a world renowned athlete if I'd never smoked and I think that could be true - although I never wanted to be and neither did any of the non-smoking other kids I beat at sport regularly.

The Hidatsas reserved smoking as a leisure activity for the old who had nothing to lose. Age had slowed them down and they couldn't run or be warriors anymore. They enjoyed keeping their tobacco gardens and would invent myths such as smoking makes your hair fall out to stop others stealing their crop.

Perhaps these old invented myths are reinvented today to scare people away from commercially produced third world farmed natural tobacco and towards Big Pharma Frankenstein produced tobacco now genetically modified to produce medicinal nicotine.

I had no idea either that in addition to being targeted by Big Pharma, that wanted a slice of the new industry, Tobacco companies were also targeted by the oil industry which sought to hide the damage it did to health behind a tobacco smoke screen.

Smokers have always felt that more should have been done to examine the effects of traffic on health as cancer and respiratory illnesses throughout the 20th Century rose while smoking rates declined. We ask the same now we are a minority in a smoke free 21st Century and those industrial illnesses continue to rise with the expansion of our road systems, air traffic, railways and the rest.

Claims are made that suggest traffic pollution is responsible for 50,000 deaths per year in Britain yet we hear very little about it as the hysteria on smoking and health hypes up a zillion notches and people are happy to target smokers as the cause.

The picture gets even dirtier when you consider that in the early days of tobacco's realigment from medicinal herb to cancer causing population killer, General Motors executives and oil billionaires sat on the panel of the American Cancer Society looking at both cigarette smoking and air pollution as possible causes of lung cancer.

Rose provides lots of information on this and links in the comments that inspired this post It certainly seems that tobacco only ever became a problem when someone realised how much money could be made from it, both directly or indirectly, and other dirty industries were happy to blame cancer on the product that was given to the white man by what they considered uncivilised savages.

In memory of the smoky pub

Phil Mellows is normally someone who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the licensed trade, and has been alert to the threat from the anti-drink lobby. But this posting about the smoking ban is, sadly, the most ignorant and bigoted nonsense imaginable. He concludes:

I supported the idea that pubs might, by installing efficient ventilation and air-cleaning kit, ‘remove the smoke – not the smoker' as the slogan went. But over a number of years, as the pub trade fought a rearguard action against legislation, it became clear to me that the world was changing and that people – smokers and non-smokers alike – were ready for a ban.

And so it's proved. The smoking ban, it's true, was the last nail in the coffin for some pubs but the vast majority, and their customers, have adapted to the new circumstances.

Has it made pubs better places? I'm afraid you have to say it has.

It’s some adaptation when pubs have lost 25% of their beer trade in less than five years. And are all those pubs that have closed, and those that have lost most of their regulars and are now just running on empty, really better places?

And he repeats the old canard that, in the days before the ban, non-smokers felt obliged to throw their clothes in the washing machine after a night in the pub, whereas in reality I doubt whether even 1% did.

Edit 16/12/11: and four days on, no comments have been approved on that article, even though I and several of the commenters here have said they have submitted some. Are they afraid of open debate or something?

Dog in the manger

Iconoclastic Scottish brewer BrewDog have recently opened their first “craft beer bar” outside Scotland in Camden, North London. Like the existing ones, it serves no cask beer, only keg. Despite this, beer blogger Mark Dredge reckons it will immediately become one of the go-to beer bars in London. BrewDog have also recently let it be known that they are going to discontinue cask beer production entirely in the New Year.

Now, from my perspective, BrewDog’s craft beer bars are very much an “urban beer bubble” phenomenon and of minimal interest or relevance to me as a consumer. However, by completely eschewing cask, they are very much throwing down the gauntlet to CAMRA. Is this a sign that the terms of discourse of the enthusiast beer market are increasingly moving away from CAMRA, or does it just show that the bubble is becoming increasingly disconnected from the mainstream?

I SAY OLD CHAP

I had to blog this.

H/T Mark Croucher : Google "Define an English person" and note the first suggestion that comes up.

This is what I saw.

Moment of truth

A point I have made several times on here is that many “beer enthusiasts” seem strangely oblivious to the threat to their pleasure posed by the growing movement to have the State control and dictate individual lifestyles.

Not only do they refuse to accept the first they came for the smokers argument, but they seem to believe that their particular interest can sail on unscathed through the obviously increasing trend towards the denormalisation and demonisation of even moderate alcohol consumption. One day, though, something will happen to make them wake up and think “oh shit, this really does mean us!”

Perhaps it will be when the UK ends up with the highest beer duties in the developed world, which a few more years of the annual duty escalator will bring about. However, from the government point of view, we are already into the realm of diminishing returns on that one, with absolute revenues dropping and a substantial rise in smuggling and illicit brewing and distilling.

Or it could be when tiered beer duty makes selling anything beyond very weak beers prohibitively expensive.

Or maybe when restrictions on promotion and advertising (which is where I fear we are likely to see most action) make it impossible to carry on the activities of running beer festivals and producing local newsletters and render most micro-breweries unviable.

I don’t know, as I’m not in possession of a crystal ball. But one day it will happen, and the one thing that is absolutely certain is that it will be too late.

And, in case anyone still didn’t accept the “first they came for the smokers” argument, you only have to read this singularly vile article from Prohibitionist harridan Joan Smith in today’s Independent on Sunday, ably fisked by Chris Snowdon here.

Any suggestion that the principles behind the smoking ban be extended to junk food prompts near-apoplexy, as though we have an inalienable right to consume as much high-fat, sugary rubbish as we wish.

You do have to wonder what is the underlying motivation here. The hackneyed argument about “unhealthy” lifestyles imposing costs on the rest of society does not really wash, as it has been amply demonstrated that, over their lifetimes, those “healthy” people who live into extreme old age cost the NHS far more.

Or it is that we need to have a healthy population to fulfil our national destiny, something disturbingly redolent of the totalitarian ideologies of the 1930s? Or simply a desire to control others and stop them doing anything that the Righteous disapprove of?

And, for what it’s worth, although she says “filling your face with popcorn is not a human right”, in my view being able to choose your own diet and not have it imposed on you by the government is a fundamental human right.

TRUE SPIRIT OF THE RESISTANCE

Smokers have been pushed to the to the edge of reason and beyond but with the threat of criminalisation looming the line has been drawn and they will go no further.

Leg Iron has written a powerful piece showing how we are are not prepared to play the game any more. Stuff tobacco control, stuff the anti-smoker's false "caring", stuff the lies about smoking and health, the false studies, the emotional blackmail, and stuff the state-paid bureaucratic idiots who think they can force us to quit by controlling our supply.

Many of us have taken to growing our own tax-free, chemical-free, home grown tobacco and we intend to spread the love and share the seed. I live in the countryside and have plenty of places where I can begin a new tobacco crop for anyone who wants to go and pick it. If I throw the seeds next spring, then I imagine there will be a strong colony of plants within a couple of years all around where I live. We have three commons close to town for those that live in the city.

And as Rose says in the comments on LI's post, if they stop us doing that then we'll just find something else to smoke because, in the true spirit of The Resistance, we will never surrender.

Our tax is being withheld because of a lack of political representation in more ways than just growing our own product. We are buying our personal stock in EU countries and the Govt's tax yield from us will get smaller and smaller as more people hear about and join The Resistance until it eventually disappears.

Companies and businesses that actively seek to exclude us will lose our trade. We will, for example, work towards bankrupting those ferry companies that fail to recognise their core customer base while treating their paying passengers worse than farmyard pigs.

We will not support fake cancer charities that plunder donations on anti-smoker propaganda for a share of the Govt's funding pot rather than research on how to cure cancer. We won't stay in hotels on holiday or visit bars and pubs that don't adequately cater for our needs.

We demand to be treated with the same respect and consideration as any other person in this country. We will not obey any new laws made to restrict us further including car bans. A car is our private property, our private space, our choice whether we smoke or not inside it, our friends, our families, our personal community, our lives to control.

It is the same with our homes and we will not let the anti-smoker industry bully us via the scaremongering fear they pump out in TV propaganda ads night after night. The current "please stop for Xmas" exploitation of young children being forced by Big Tobacco Control to read words they can barely pronounce from auto-cues is disgusting and immoral.

Our Resistance is growing and getting stronger as anger bubbles into organisation and focus with each offensive new piece of propaganda. This only inspires zealots to think they have the right to dictate our lives and bully us because we don't agree with them or pander to their paranoia. It is shameful and wasteful.

The waste of public money on anti-smoker propaganda is taking food out of the mouths of other more vital public services in these austere times that the Uk can ill-afford. It's a shame our politicians haven't got the sense or courage of their Dutch colleagues who recently did the decent thing and stopped throwing tax-payers cash down a black ideological hole.

Smokers have said enough's enough and action is now backing those words. One day The Resistance will bring this nonsense to an end.

Lifeless

Redwillow Brewery from Macclesfield have been gaining a lot of plaudits for the quality of their cask beers. So I was interested to see a selection of their beers on sale in bottle-conditioned form. Now, I know I’ve had some bad experiences in the past with BCAs from micro-breweries, but these had to be worth a try, so I ended up with a bottle of their 4.1% “classic bitter – but a bit more so” Feckless. The bottles have attractive, stylish labels with the brewery’s distinctive branding theme.

It was crystal clear in the bottle, with the yeast firmly sticking to the bottom, and I was able to pour it clear without any difficulty. However, it was almost totally devoid of any condition, so I ended up with a glassful of flat brown liquid. Even though it was clear, there was a distinct yeastiness in the taste akin to poor-quality homebrew. Sorry, guys, you’ll have to do far better than that.

I’ve described drinking BCAs from micros as a bit of a lottery, but it seems that this is a lottery you are bound to lose. Wouldn’t it make more sense for breweries like Redwillow to just bottle one flagship beer and make sure they get the quality control right?

It’s worth noting that the label didn’t have the questionable “CAMRA says this is real ale” logo.

If anyone out there runs a micro-brewery and thinks I’ve just been unlucky, feel free to send me a sample of your beer. I’ll store it upright in a cold dark place for a week or so and then give it an honest tasting without prejudice. But if I can’t (with a bit of care) pour it clear, or it shows zero or minimal condition, then it won’t even get out of the starting blocks.

THE DICKHEAD

*Sigh*

I'm about to have a go at an anonymous Smokerphobic who I won't allow to comment in response on this blog because he is banned due to the personal nature of his abuse. (If "he" is a male, incidentally, because "he's" too much of a coward to use "his" real name.)

The fat twerp (judging from his own personal description of himself) -
"... I'm using an iPod touch to post and my big fat fingers ..." who calls himself Dickie Doubleday is offensive, ill informed, and he appears to have a mission to infiltrate Simon Clark's blog to attack me mostly and others just because he can.

He never bases his arguments on "facts" and simply throws the usual insults about how smokers breathe into baby's prams, how they stink, are killing others, and his so called knowledge is based on one thing - hatred of the consumers of a product he despises.

Crikey - he even bases his knowledge on smoking like that of kids being scared of the dark. Very scientific (not). It's just pure phobic nonsense and he deludes himself that most "normal" (his words) people think the same as he does.

But when I put that theory to the test recently, I founjd that most normal people are like us. Yes, it's definitely Dickie Doubleday who is the weirdo and I guess Simon Clark allows his comments so he can continue making a Dickhead of himself for all to see.

Simon did delete a couple of his comments a few weeks ago as "sick" and "foul" and if they were anything like one he left here, they were foul and personally abusive and aimed at me.

The anti-smoker industry, which Double Dickhead so obviously supports despite his laughable protestations that he supports smokers rights and choice *snigger*, has really shown its true colours of late and one can only hope that it's social engineers have been given enough rope to hang themselves.

Certainly they are now demonstrating that this issue for them is not about health but encouraging the general public to hate and fear smokers as much as they do based on manipulated stats and made up evidence which they even argue about among themselves because it's so dodgy.

Meanwhile the tobacco control template moves forward in the vilest way to other lifestyles and I for one can't wait until I get the go ahead from the state to publically bully fat twerps like Double Dickhead. I hope the day comes when I have the authority to check his lunchbox to ensure that he can't eat himself over the state approved weight limit because the very sight of him could offend innocent children and encourage them to be fat bastards too.

DD thinks it's perfectly acceptable now to dismiss "evidence" on smoking and health as something that no longer matters because the bullies have the majority on their side (which isn't actually true incidentally.)

We from the older generation know it does matter - a lot - because for 40 years they tried to ban smoking in public for one reason and one reason alone - the only reason they could get such a ban - health based on evidence. That's why the "evidence" had to be invented.

The only anti-smoker I respected was Rollo Tomassi because he debated stats, evidence as he believes it, and in a rational, non confrontational, way but my illusions have this week been shattered.

It seems Rollo is just another smokerphobic anti who hides behind anonymity having taken the name of a fictional character in LA Confidential.

These people are truly cowards and just can't be taken seriously because they are too damn scared to come out. If they can't be honest about who they are, why on earth should we be persuaded by a single thing they say or anyone else that is interested in this debate.

I hate putting on comment moderation but sadly for this post it is going to be necessary because Double Dickhead is not welcome and I won't allow a single comment of his/hers to get through.

If he had anything of value to add to the debate rather than just random insults and wind-up tactics then I'd think differently. He deserves no voice here.

Jumping to conclusions

Well, with 57 responses to the poll, there’s an exact 2:1 split between those who think “Beachy Head Christmas Jumper” is funny and those who think it’s insensitive.

A couple of niggles

Two things recently observed in pubs that, while individually trivial, both contribute to a feeling of lack of interest in customers:

1. The pub isn’t busy, and a middle-aged guy who I presume is the licensee is the only one serving. He’s chatting on the phone, and carries on doing this even though he can see I am waiting to be served. This continues for maybe three minutes. Couldn’t he have either said “hang on, let me just serve this customer”, or said that he would ring back when more convenient? And no apology even when he eventually comes off the phone.
   

2. Another pub is nowhere near full, but ticking over reasonably. The landlady has allowed her daughter, aged approximately 10, to occupy what to my mind is the best seating position in the pub to do her maths homework on her laptop. There were other places to sit, but that, a comfortable corner bench with a clear view of the bar and a window behind, is where I always sit by preference in that particular pub if it is available.

Pilgrim’s Progress

In a recent post, I referred to Hereford’s Pilgrim Cider, a new product on the market which makes a donation to Help for Heroes of 10p for each bottle sold. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too impressed, and was taken to task in the comments by Chris Newall.

So, to be fair, I thought I’d sample another bottle. It’s 5.0% ABV and £1.75 for a 500ml bottle at Morrisons, or 4 for £5.50.

In appearance it is clear, a pale straw colour with a very gentle carbonation. The flavour is fairly sweet, with subdued fruitiness and a distinctive, somewhat “floral” note, which is what I previously described as “perfumey”.

I make no claims to any kind of expertise on cider, but this isn’t really to my taste at all. Given that it is supporting a worthy cause I’m sorry I can’t be more enthusiastic.

(And no, I didn’t just drink it this morning...)

Steer clear of pubs this Christmas

We have recently seen the launch of the annual advertising campaign against drink-driving over the festive season. Of course the sentiment is laudable, even if the means of delivering it is not always as well-focused as it could be, but surely for every person who says “better get a cab, then”, there will be another who thinks “better safe than sorry, stay at home and get some cans in”. Might it not be the case that, over the years, the subliminal drip-drip effect of these campaigns, however noble the intention, has had the unintended consequence of encouraging people to stay away from pubs, even if they are individuals who realistically are not going to become offenders? In effect, it’s a high-profile annual anti-pub marketing campaign.

1984 - ROOM 101

Blogging has been somewhat light this last couple of weeks as I took a trip back in time to 1984 when I worked in KwikSave as an early morning cleaner.

Asked to help out as cover in a "bank" sense, I thought it would be interesting to get back to mingling with the "normal" people in the outside world in the "normal" job that I used to do before qualifying as a journalist, and test this theory that only we "smokerlooneys" care about lifestyle choice and we are all making a big fuss about something the general offline public don't give a damn about.

I didn't realise, however, until I started work as a cleaner that the location was my own version of Room 101 - GP surgeries. Pretty much everywhere I went with my cloth, dustpan and brush, mop and bucket, and clinical waste bags, were warnings about MRSA and Pseudomonas and of course the propagandist anti-smoker posters plastered mostly in the patient waiting rooms.

Smoke Free shoves appeared on all four walls with just one small poster on skin cancer although the tables were stacked with leaflets warning about every kind of illness or disease imaginable or unheard of.

Worst of all was the fear that I'd go down with something nasty as the surgeries had no ventilation, no open windows, the heating was on full blast, work was done in tropical temperatures, and the regular staff I covered for were off sick with bronchitis which, on the return of one, was blamed on the germs, coughs, colds, flus, and other bugs brought in daily by patients visiting their doctor.

The pay was low at just over £6 an hour and the hours worse which means that I'd have to work for a month before I could afford a week's food shopping. These cleaners who work for the public sector workers are not in a union and they have no protection. And while their masters in the NHS moan about their gilt-edged pensions being lowered, bread line paid and to some extent exploited, domestic staff have no protection from the bosses of these unions said to be on £100,000 a year.

Cleaners can only survive by having more than one job and finding even one job is hard these days.

The lady who took me on was herself an ex-smoker. She was warned not to bring up the subject with me as I have that Basil Fawlty "Don't Mention The War" response when it's mentioned. She did when she asked if I was a smoker and impressed upon me that the buildings I'd work in were smoke free and their grounds too. I told her that the law demands no one smoke in public indoor places anymore but what I did in my own time was my own business. She agreed and said the war on smokers had gone over the top.

She would have no problem in allowing smokers to socialise inside public places with other smokers and tolerant non smokers. She doesn't believe the passive smoking scam either.

As someone who also knows parents of heroin addicts - who doesn't these days - my lady boss is also as concerned as a 20 a day smoker at the dangerous misrepresentation of the Tobacco Control graphic image logo of a heroin needle on cigarette packets. In the real and "normal" world even non-smokers understand that hyping up a tobacco habit as the same as a heroin addiction gives the wrong message to young people. They see their smoker parents quit easily but fail to see that quitting heroin isn't that simple and it is far more destructive to health, socially, and economically for the wider community.

One of the workers who came back after a period off sick was a never smoker. He tried it as a teenager but didn't like it so never took it up. He says the pubs haven't been the same since 2007 and he blamed the exclusion of smokers as the main reason for the pub's demise. He also told me his mum and dad were smokers. His dad quit because of cost. His mum still smokes. He was very interested to hear about The Smoker Resistance and asked if I was back next week to give his mum some tips and contacts.

Unfortunately, I couldn't continue the job for several reasons and mostly because I need to get back to my own profession and finding and selling stories on a daily basis and applying for the usual round of teaching jobs. I also had a massive asthma attack which I think was brought on by the strong chemicals I was dealing with and cleaning won't make me a living.

I completely admire those people who do it and I wonder who looks out for their interests or who protects their health from disgusting germ ridden health establishments. Certainly not the unions which instead of fighting for jobs, call for people to be sacked because they don't agree with them.

THE POOR CANCER RELATION

Questions are being asked about why never smokers get lung cancer and what actually causes it when the blame can't be laid uniquely at tobacco consumption since the number of people smoking is lower than its ever been.

Those hidden never smoker victims who have been stigmatised with "smoker's disease" are now being noticed as demands are made to treat people with lung cancer as equally as those with other types of cancer - whether they have ever smoked or not.

The tragedy is that while the anti-smoker industry hypes up fears against smokers it's supporters are hindering progress in medical science and wasting much needed resources which could be better used.

Their political and ideological aim of tobacco eradication and a smoke free world is bad for everyone - smokers, non-smokers and never smokers alike - because until some real perspective and hard evidential biological fact is brought to bear on the smoking and health issue, we can never go forward in finding out who is likely to be affected by lung cancer and why.

The beer bubble

Reading many beer blogs, you can’t avoid getting the impression that a “craft beer revolution” is taking place. The country, it would seem, is awash with new, exciting, challenging styles and flavours. But how far does that really spread beyond a handful of specialist outlets?

In the general run of pubs I go into, while you might see the odd guest beer or Peroni tap, that’s about it, and the vast majority of the beer drinkers are still necking Unicorn, Holts Bitter, John Smith’s Extra Smooth, Carling, Stella and Guinness. In Tesco, while there might be a little ghetto with a few BrewDog bottles and Belgian and American imports, much the same is true. I don’t really think the craft beer evangelists are giving a warm embrace to bottles of Spitfire and Warsteiner.

It’s also very much an urban phenomenon, confined to major city centres and the urban villages of the prosperous, liberal middle class. You might see it in Chorlton, but hardly in Levenshulme, let alone in Leominster. And, because London has quite a few neighbourhoods like Chorlton, it’s supposedly sweeping the board in the capital. But, beyond that limited sphere, it just doesn’t resonate at all. It’s a bubble of urban hype.

Back in the 70s and 80s, you would travel around the country and see plenty of A-boards and roadside signs proclaiming “The Red Lion -15th Century Inn – Good Food – Real Ale”. The concept of “real ale” is something that, at the time, had really caught the popular imagination. I never see similar signs advertising “craft beer”, and I don’t expect I ever will. And the Red Lion itself is probably now a private house.

“Real ale” connected beer enthusiasm with the wider drinking public. Far from evangelising to a broad audience, “craft beer” locks beer enthusiasts into a bubble of self-absorption and means they end up just drinking in their own exclusive venues and steering clear of any engagement with the hoi polloi.

A seasonal leap forward

There has been an outburst of manufactured outrage about Beachy Head Brewery naming a seasonal beer Christmas Jumper. This, it is claimed, is offensive to those unfortunates who take their own lives by jumping from said headland.

In a sense that is true, but it isn’t referring to any individual, and in any case much of the best humour has a dark edge to it and to some extent plays on our inner fears. Very often the funniest things you see are the viral text message jokes you start getting a few hours after some “tragedy” in the news.

It seems today that the acceptable subjects for humour in public are becoming so circumscribed that you can listen to some so-called comedians without even raising a smile.

In any case, the brewery’s story that they originally named a beer after the well-known unwanted gift of knitwear and only then realised it had another connotation seems entirely plausible. If any other brewery had done it, nobody would have batted an eyelid or spotted the alternative meaning.

The people complaining about this are probably the same politically correct, humour-free “legions of the perpetually offended” who were whingeing yesterday about Jeremy Clarkson suggesting in obvious jest that public sector strikers should be shot.

INDUSTRY ON THE EDGE

Yesterday was my birthday and I spent it watching the day's events at the Leveson Inquiry looking into the hacking affair which brought down the biggest newspaper in Britain and cast a shadow over the rest of the industry.

As a professional journalist, I agree entirely with all that freelance Nick Davies says about the need for some changes but not Govt or state direction of what journalists should or should not do in the quest for the truth.

Davies, who is one of my journalistic heroes, is right when he says that when newspapers brand someone wrongly and defame their character, they should have to print retractions with equal prominence rather than due prominence. This, I believe, would make the media more cautious before launching an attack if they knew that six pages of wrongful coverage would have to be balanced by six pages of putting things right.

The PCC is not adequately doing the job of ensuring regulation when things go wrong and too often looks the other way. But what can be done to regulate a free press without resorting to the tactics of those tin-pot dictator countries that control what information gets out in the public domain and what does not?

I'd certainly trust an ethical journalist like Davies to be at the forefront of any discussion or decision made to ensure rogue journos (or their overbearing editors) stay on the right side of morality in that quest for the truth. But they should never be prevented from finding that truth - especially when holding Govt ministers and powerful people to account.

Nick also spoke of robotic journalists and we smokers know all about them. The ones who don't look too far and stay on safe ground and accept any old press release as Bible Truth without even testing the authority or methods of these so called "experts".

Former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullan is also right when he says there is something rather sinister in a free society that jails journalists because of the stories they print.

I also agree that the NotW with its 168 year history should have been sold to an independent proprietor rather than just being shut down by Rupert Murdoch in the hope that he would escape the trouble that was bound to follow.

I bought that last edition in July, for posterity to add to my collection of other old newspapers, but was disappointed that in that long history mostly the trash printed under the editorship of Brooks and Coulson - the "scum of journalism" (in McMullan's words)- was published in that final edition.

Where the NotW went wrong, for me, was in hacking the phones of ordinary people and it was shocking what was done to Milly Dowler's family. I find that impossible to justify "in the public interest" because of the false hope it gave that family. And I don't believe it is the job of journalists to run counter criminal investigations alongside an active police enquiry.

When criminal cases are cold - such as Wearside Jack - such investigations can be justified "in the public interest" even though in some ways the "victim" of this journalistic investigation was an easier target to bag than someone like former defence secretary Jonathan Aitken or state-protected liars and cheats like two shags Prescott.

I also feel that some of the complaints by the many celebrities hacked is rather hollow. They will suck up to newspapers for as much publicity as they can get - as long as it is positive - but they will cry foul when caught out. Playing with the media is playing with fire and as professionals, these celebs should know this.

The hacking affair has left the newspaper industry in an even worse state than it is already. The internet, cost cutting, loss of advertising revenues and community support, have all conspired to ensure that many local newspapers won't be around in five years' time.

When the Leveson Inquiry reports back even those wealthy national papers with huge budgets will be on their knees and part of an industry that will have to work very differently to salvage what's left.

Maybe even humble freelancers like me will be able to make more hits in the press with our honestly gained and human interest stories that always got sidelined or spiked before in favour of the huge payments made to Private Investigators to dig dirt on big names - although we didn't know that at the time.

If this Inquiry brings back truth, ethics, and legitimate targets for investigative journalism without infringing on freedom of speech and expression, and the freedom of the press to scrutinise and expose wrong doing against the public, then it will be worth it.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this pans out but what comes across clearly to me is newspapers are dying because they've turned on the vulnerable while protecting the powerful.

Worth passing a few offies for?

On a vaguely similar theme to the last post, I ran a poll asking whether people bought beer from specialist off-licences, the results of which are shown in the graphic.

It’s interesting that 50% of respondents said “occasionally”, which suggests that they will contemplate using a specialist, but for various reasons don’t do so regularly. I would hazard a guess that the main reason was not price but simply convenience – while people recognise the appeal of the specialist, they won’t go too far out of their way to visit one. This is reflected by Jesusjohn’s comment on the poll:

I perhaps would more often if there were one close by. I live in Hackney - and for all the proliferation of lifestyle bars and delis, we still lack a beer specialist. My nearest, I'd wager, is Utobeer at Borough Market - a very pricey offer, if understandably so. Even so, with Waitrose stocking Thornbridge, White Shield, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams, it stocks enough decent stock for me to have something good in the fridge. Tesco's BrewDog Imperial IPA is also worthy of honourable mention. I would still go to a specialist - and indeed do on occasion - but it would have to be a local resource. With online purchasing also available for rare beers, it's simply too much effort for too little reward to go out of my way to a specialist. And bar selection has also improved immeasurably in the area. One final point - a beer shop that really does deserve more praise is Bacchanalia in Cambridge. Absolutely first rate.

As I’ve said before, I do call in about monthly at the Bottle Stop in Bramhall when I’m passing nearby, but, as it’s about six miles away in a direction I don’t routinely go in, I don’t feel it’s worth making a special journey more frequently. I would also say that their previously very impressive selection of German – especially Bavarian – imports has been rather reduced in recent years. It seems that German beers aren’t very fashionable nowadays. On the other hand, their prices are roughly on a par with undiscounted supermarket prices, so you’re not expected to pay an arm and a leg.

If you want to make a success of a specialist off-licence, it would seem you need to be careful to get both your location and social mix of catchment area right.

Worth passing a few pubs for?

I grew up in an area of North Cheshire dominated by Greenalls, and so in the 1970s it made a refreshing change to head off a few miles to the south where, around Tarporley, there was a cluster of four Robinson’s pubs. And from time to time we would visit Chester and make a beeline for the Olde Custom House, one of the very few pubs this side of the English border selling Border beers from Wrexham.

At University in Birmingham, the city was dominated by a duopoly of Ansell’s and M&B, so the handful of Davenports pubs were an attraction, and a bus trip to the Black Country to sample Batham’s, Holden’s and Simpkiss was a virtual pilgrimage. Even finding a Banks’s or Marston’s pub in the surrounding areas (then two separate and very different companies) was something of an achievement.

After that, I worked in Surrey for a while, again an area dominated by two of the then Big Six, in this case Courage and Ind Coope. But the county was surrounded by a number of well-respected independent brewers – Young’s, King & Barnes, Brakspear’s and Gale’s (all now closed) – whose tied houses either spread into the edges or started not far beyond the border. Fuller’s had virtually no presence outside London in those days.

It was also very much the case back then that the tied houses of a particular brewery had a distinctive house character. Young’s pubs tended to be big, a bit posh, traditional and comfortable, with plenty of dark wood, whereas Brakspear’s were often small and Spartan with bare wooden benches and whitewashed interior walls. Around here, Holt’s pubs were noted for their busy, basic and boisterous atmosphere, often in an environment of some architectural splendour.

But times have changed, and over the past twenty years one of the most significant changes to the British pub scene has been the wholesale removal of brewers’ identities from pubs. It has to be questioned whether today there is any cachet gained from linking a pub with a particular brewery. The beer enthusiast is likely to be found in a multi-beer outlet working his way through fifteen different golden ales tasting of lychees, while looking down with scorn at the neighbouring Robbies’ house and its boring brown beer. While Robinson’s and Lees have been busy buying up pubs from the pub companies in the last few years, in general their main objective has been to acquire establishments with the potential to develop the food trade, not showcases for their beers.

It certainly does still have a cachet for me, as in any given area the tied houses of a family brewer are likely to my mind to be better run, more “pubby” and have better-kept beer than pubs belonging to pub companies. But, in the overall pub market, does being identified as “A Bloggs’ House” now give a pub any kind of USP?

The one exception to this is Sam Smith’s, who ironically don’t even paint the name of the company on their pubs. They have a very definite, even somewhat eccentric, policy of low prices, all products bearing their own branding and a no-frills, traditional atmosphere. It doesn’t always work, but at their best Sam’s pubs are examples of what good pubs are all about. In the London area, where they have a number of pubs, they must stand out from the general herd even more than they do here.

(And for those too young to remember, “Worth passing a few pubs for” was an advertising slogan used in the 1970s for, of all things, Younger’s Tartan)

Beer battered

Reports from Scotland show a 14% fall in volumes of beer sold in the off-trade following the Scottish government’s banning of multibuy discounts from 1 October. Obviously one month’s figures are not enough to establish a trend, and it is likely there was some element of stocking-up at the end of September. Part of the reduction is also probably attributable to the fact that the effective average price of beer rose, rather than simply multibuys encouraging people to buy more than they otherwise would. The supermarkets may also welcome the opportunity to increase their margins, as big-pack multibuys, while rarely sold at an actual loss, were often heavily discounted as a tool to get customers to visit one particular shop rather than a competitor.

Over time, the retailers will no doubt work out what combination of pack sizes and price points work best under the new regime to maximise sales, and it will be interesting to see what the figures look like over a full year. As I understand it, while you can’t sell two of something for less than twice the price of one, you don’t have to sell all pack sizes of the same product exactly pro-rata, so there’s nothing to stop you selling 4x500ml cans of Carling for £3.99, and a multipack of 10x440ml cans for £7.99.

It’s not something that would greatly bother me personally, and if Morrisons started selling single bottles for £1.39 rather than 4 for £5.50 I doubt whether I’d buy any less. But it’s another small salami slice of restriction imposed on the drinks trade, and it’s the direction of travel that should concern anyone interested in the brewing industry.

It also must be questioned whether, at a time of a flatlining economy and rising unemployment, reducing the revenues of a substantial business sector by 14% as a result of government action is really a sensible thing to do.

Edit: I see in today’s paper that ASDA are advertising 20x440ml cans of Carling, or 18x440ml cans of Stella, for £10. Including Scotland. Both under 30p per unit. That’s two fingers up to Salmond, then.

TOOTH EXTRACTION UK STYLE

Desperate pain from toothache leads to desperate measures for one bloke who, I'm told, couldn't find an NHS dentist.

It's not my idea of tooth extraction but each to his or her own I suppose ... and please don't try this at home (or work) folks because the shock might just kill you.

The ciderator

Earlier this year, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White introduced his own branded beer “The Governor”, in conjunction with Middleton brewers J. W. Lees. Now, I’m no fan of his, but I suppose this must be praised as an effort to give beer more class and less of a downmarket image. However, having sampled it in both bottled and cask forms, I have to say it comes across as just another underwhelming brown beer from Lees.

Marco has now collaborated with Herefordshire cidermaker Weston’s to produce a “Governor” cider. It’s 4.8% ABV and retails in Morrison’s at £1.75 for a 500ml bottle, or 4 for £5.50. It is pale in colour with a slight greenish tinge. There’s a small amount of sediment which produces a moderately hazy appearance, although much less than Westons’ Old Rosie. It has a fresh, quite sharp taste, that probably qualifies as “medium-dry”. It only has a slight hint of carbonation and overall is probably the best bottled approximation to a traditional draught cider I’ve come across. As described here, the intention is to reproduce the characteristics of Old Rosie at a more moderate strength, which I would say they have succeeded in doing. I spotted the similarity before reading that article. However, as it is well-nigh still and a touch hazy, it might not appeal to those who are more used to Magners and Stella “Cidre”.

While I do enjoy the occasional bottle of “craft” cider, I’ve never really tried to review any on here as I lack the tasting vocabulary to describe them adequately. However, I recently sampled Hereford’s Pilgrim, which took my eye as it promises to donate 10p to Help for Heroes for each bottle sold. The company are rather coy about where it’s actually made, although the postcode links it to an industrial estate in Ledbury. However, even though it is supporting a good cause, I thought it was pretty unpleasant, with a dominant perfumey off-flavour. I won’t be trying that again.

Sheep and goats

Although the protection of workers was often used as a “smokescreen”, the underlying motivation behind smoking bans has always been an attempt to reduce the prevalence of smoking in society through a process of “denormalisation”. However, in many places where bans have been imposed, that doesn’t seem to work, and very often the steady decline in smoking rates that has occurred until the ban has stalled or even reversed.

That has certainly been the case in Ireland – “there was a slight increase in the percentage of smokers since 2002, with 29% admitting to being a smoker in 2007, compared to 27% in 2002” – the Irish ban having come in in 2004. And the latest figures from Scotland show that the same is happening there.

The number of Scots smoking has risen since it was banned in public places – and the vast majority live in our poorest housing estates.

Arguably a key reason for this is that the bans in effect force people to identify as smokers, and once they have done that they become more committed to sticking with it. You can’t really be a casual smoker any more.

One of the comments rings all too true:

Billy Dunn, 68, Parkhead, Glasgow

The retired factory worker has smoked for 60 years.

He said: “Scottish people have always smoked and it’s not going to change.

“I still come out for my pint every other day and I still manage to have a cigarette.

“However, the pubs are a lot quieter now than they were about four or five years because a lot of people aren’t able to stand outside smoking like I can.

A lot of smokers have difficulty coming down out of their homes to go for a drink and the last thing they want to be doing is having to get up every 30 minutes and go outside.

It’s also quite instructive how readily smoking and drinking are linked together:

Also, people living in the most deprived areas have very few things to indulge in which are theirs. Smoking is one of them. They might say, ‘I can light up a cigarette or drink a pint – that’s my thing.’

They have become all too often joined in a figure of speech like the proverbial horse and carriage. And, while the aficionado of craft beer, or claret, or malt whisky, may jib at the suggestion, if the Righteous choose to tar you with the same brush there’s nothing you can do about it.

Also well worth reading is this article by Dave Atherton (a regular commenter here) on The Commentator in which he argues that “smoking bans in pubs and bars, and now proposed car smoking bans constitute the most sinister assault on private property rights outside of an authoritarian regime.”