The Case for a Minimum Unit Price

Please consider the following scenario:-

A group of four friends decide to go for a drink.
They have about £6 each:-

They could go to the pub and have a couple of pints each with perhaps enough left over for a packet of peanuts.
On average, they would each consume roughly 5 units of alcohol.

or

They could go to a supermarket and buy 2 bottles of special-offer spirits (currently a well known supermarket has on offer a bottle of a leading brand of vodka for £9.99) and have enough left over for some mixers or a couple of cans of super strength lager.
In this example, on average, they would each consume roughly 14 units of alcohol.

I won’t go in to the Government’s safe or recommended number of units as frankly I have no faith in the way that these figures were calculated (see Times OnLine article ). However, if there is to be a review of the way that alcohol is taxed for the good of our health, it would be insane to increase the cost of beer in pubs.

Surely it can’t be that difficult to introduce tax laws that promote sensible drinking practises.

• To stop plans to increase beer tax by up to a third
• To enforce existing laws – not create new ones - to deal firmly with irresponsible drinkers and premises
• To end the irresponsible promotion of alcohol in supermarkets, pubs and elsewhere
• To trust responsible adults to make informed choices about what they drink, not punish them for the actions of an irresponsible minority
• To support the British pub as a vital part of social life in local communities.

Join the campaign to Axe the Tax

Short Measures

Full Pints Key Facts

• 26.6% of pints are more than 5% short measure
• Short measure costs consumers £481 million a year, or over £1.3 million a day
• Pubs serve customers 208 million more pints than they buy in
  
  CAMRA needs your help to ensure you receive a full pint of beer every time. Please sign CAMRA's National Full Pints Petition calling for an end to short beer measures.
  

Why we need a new Beer Orders Law.

During the 1980’s The Government (a Conservative Government furthermore, not known for unnecessary interventions) was so concerned about the domination of the licensed trade by what were known as the Big Five that it referred the situation to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The resulting legislation known as the “Beer Orders” act was introduced by Lord Young in 1987 and it revolutionised the British pub scene giving beer drinkers a choice that many could have only dreamed of.
The bill however had one fatal flaw. Instead of putting restrictions on any business that owned more than 2,000 pubs, it only put that restriction on any brewery that owned 2,000 pubs.
Over the years the major brewers either sold their pubs or breweries, or in the case of some, both.
In 2002 Government of the day deemed that the Beer Orders act was outdated and scrapped it.
But why should we be concerned?  We’ve never had it so good. Dozens of new breweries are opening up every year. Even the tied and managed houses have more beers than ever and real ale is available in the vast majority of pubs across the country.
The answer to this question is quite simple. We are in great danger of loosing this choice. Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns own far more pubs than the big brewers of the 70’s.  Smaller pub chains and the quickly expanding mega-regionals like Green King, Fullers and Wolverhampton and Dudley are extremely tempting targets for multinational finance houses like the Goldman Sachs backed R20 group.

• But what happens when these breweries are “de-listed”?
• What happens when these small breweries can’t make both ends meet because they have been “de-listed”?
  
• What happens when the major finance houses insist that the pubs in their portfolio can only buy beer from breweries in the same portfolio?
• What happens when the major pub chains drive such a hard bargain that they can undercut every other pub in the district?
  
• What happens when all the other pubs can only survive by buying in the cheapest of beer?

What happens my friends is, it’s back to the bad old days of Whitbread Tankard(*) and only Whitbread Tankard on virtually every Island bar.
Please don’t tell me that it won’t happen. Let’s just make sure it doesn't.

* Substitute any mass produced, over promoted pathetic excuse for beer.

Have you been "Pythoned"?

Have your timbers been shivered by a boa constrictor?
Drinkers in several Island pubs have noticed that they needed to put on their mittens in order to pick up their pints. The problem in a significant number of cases has been the dreaded python. This piece of ingenious apparatus puts all the beer lines in together in one bundle (or "Python). The principle is that all the lines surround one cooling line with the lagers nearest to it on the inside and the real ales on the outside. This, in theory, should ensure nice cold lager and an appropriately cooled pint of real ale. Sadly , in practice, what comes out of the spout in many cases is all at the same teeth chattering temperature. Happily CAMRA has been at hand to identify the problems and in at least 2 pubs the whole shooting match has been ripped out and a more sensible system installed. If you've been "pythoned" let us know.

Campaign for Morris Dancing at the opening of the 2012 Olympics.

The thought occurs that as London and more precisely England are to host the 2012 Olympics the opening ceremony usually reflects the national culture for the world to see.

We all know we live in a multicultural society, we know this because all the do gooders and “hug a tree” mob tell us so. They also arrange lots of training and courses in Caribbean Carnival costumes, Samba drumming, African Drumming and we all put sweets in the office kitchen at Diwali.

This entire multicultural ism seems to leave out our own national culture our own traditions of dance and song.

We have a rich and varied national culture in our folk dancing and song.  A lot of the songs and dances were formed in times of hardship by the working classes. Men down the pits, Agricultural workers on the land, Fisherman at sea catching shoals of herring and the women who prepared them and of course not forgetting the cotton mills up North all very harsh working environments where songs and dancing were born. We have sword dancing, clog dancing, Molly dancing North West Morris dancing, Carnival Morris dancing to name a few, we also have a vast range of ancient and modern folk songs. These are living traditions that are evolving all the time it is alive and kicking. 

Are we proud of them?  No of course not, we put Morris Dancing on Fosters adverts as a joke. On the Continent they are proud of their heritage, the Brittany Ferry from Portsmouth to St Malo has a Frieze of Traditional Breton Dancers in the main lounge. Where would you see a frieze of Morris Dancers on a British Ferry???

So all this rambling is coming to the conclusion that we must be proud of our heritage and show it off well. At Rugby internationals the New Zealanders have their Haka
We should have a Morris side out there dancing before the match. It would not be a problem for there to be 200 Morris dancers on the pitch.

We want at the opening of the 2012 Olympics Morris dancing and our national traditions of England to be there. Sure there are other parts of the Multicultural society that should be there but we want our own national heritage to be recognised as something worthwhile and not just a joke for beer ads.
Do not forget Morris dancers dance regularly outside pubs to raise money for charity.
They search out good pubs with real ale to power the dancing.

So spread the word Morris Dancing at the opening of the 2012 Olympics!