Buffet bafflement

Over the years I’ve enjoyed numerous buffets in pubs at various events. But a perennial problem is that plates of mixed sandwiches are put out without any indication of what the sandwiches are. Now, I don’t eat egg, and so am constantly worried I might pick up what I think is a cheese sandwich but turns out to be egg. But if you’re a vegetarian the problem is far worse. Especially in poor light it can be very hard to determine exactly what is on a sandwich, and you could even miss out on something appetising because you didn’t know what it was. So surely it would make sense to put out all the same type of sandwich on each plate, and if possible even to attach little signs saying what they are. The principle that “not everyone eats everything” could also usefully be adopted by those who put together pub menus.

Five myths about alcohol

1. We are drinking more than ever and 1 in 4 people are drinking at hazardous levels
   
2. Alcohol is cheaper than it was 20 years ago
   
3. There is a worsening epidemic of underage drinking
   
4. Alcohol-related hospital admissions have risen by 69%
   
5. Lager is cheaper than water

All effectively dispatched here by the Filthy Smoker. He concludes:

It is doubtful that even the British Medical Association really believes that charging 50p a unit or banning Guinness adverts will make the slightest difference to rates of consumption, but that is not really the objective. The objective is to officially identify drinking as 'bad' in the same way that smoking is 'bad'. From that starting point, all else follows.

Further down the slippery slope

You still hear plenty of deluded Pollyannas claiming that we really have nothing to fear from the anti-drink lobby in this country, and those who say we do are just scaremongering. But then along comes Mike Craik, Chief Constable of Northumbria and Association of Chief Police Officers national spokesman on licensing, and thus someone whose views cannot be easily dismissed, arguing in favour of an 80p minimum price per alcohol unit and a complete ban on all alcohol advertising.

Now, some people have said that a minimum price of 40 or 50p a unit wouldn’t be anything to worry about, but once the principle has been established it opens the door for the level to be constantly ratcheted up. 80p a unit would effectively double the price of mainstream drinks in the off-trade, thus making a huge hole in the budgets of ordinary households, and would start to impact on the lower end of the on-trade, for example the Sam Smiths’ estate, notorious for scenes of alcohol-related disorder. Holts Bitter in one of my local pubs is £1.84 a pint, which at 4.0% ABV is almost exactly 80p per unit.

One assumes he’d have to ban home brewing and personal imports of alcohol at the same time, otherwise legitimate domestic off-sales would decline to virtually zero.

A total advertising ban would, as I said the other day, lead to the drinks market stagnating and keep the door firmly shut against any new entrants. What’s more, it would effectively turn CAMRA into a proscribed organisation, as all its activities either revolve around the promotion of beer drinking or are funded by alcohol advertising. You can’t run a beer festival if you’re not allowed to tell anyone about it. Though you have to wonder whether they would realise what was happening until it was already too late.

Maybe this is a good argument for having elected chief police officers, as then Craik would have to submit his authoritarian, élitist views to the voters.