Beer Good, Dictators Bad

Something I hadn't realised about Brewdog when I did my unpaid advertising for them on Friday, is that in one important way they have in fact followed in my footsteps, by pointing out how unconvincing Putin's heterosexuality is:

A Scottish brewery has launched a ‘not for gays' beer in protest at Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay laws, and have even sent a crate to the Russian leader himself.

The limited-edition ‘Hello, My Name is Vladimir’ beer features a Warhol-esque impression of Vladimir Putin wearing make-up on its label and the satirical *not for gays small print across the bottom.

BrewDog, the brewery responsible for creating the ‘protest beer’ included the following description on the labels: “Hello, my name is Vladimir. I am 100 per cent hetero and will pass laws to prove it.

On the subject of the camp Cossack, negotiations with Putin over the war in Ukraine are a complete waste of time. Russia has broken every treaty it has ever signed with respect to Ukraine and its assault will only be stopped if the Ukrainians are given weapons to fight back. It is much like the wars in the former Yugoslavia in that regard, the peace treaties signed by Belgrade meant nothing until Croatia was given the resources to fight back.

Hipsterism And Beer

There is a lot to admire about the Scottish brewery Brewdog, the guys at Samizdata have previously celebrated Brewdog's glorious contempt for the nanny state and they do make some really good beer. Their growing chain of bars are also worth visiting, with quality beer, exceptionally good service and a relaxed atmosphere.

Yet I have to admit my enthusiasm for the purveyors of craft beers is very different from my antipathy for the real ale community. Partly that is because they are much more prescriptive about what constitutes a real ale, but that is not the whole reason. The similarities between real ales and craft beers are too great to pretend it is about taste. No at the end of the day I have to admit that I have hipster tendencies, craft beers are appreciated because compared to the real ale guys, they are cool, sophisticated and not in anyway  associated with people who aren't like this:

The Ties That Bind (Pubs).

An overlooked story of 2014, overlooked by me at least, is the decision by MPs to partially untie pub landlords from the pub companies. This will allow landlords to buy beer at the market rate and to have their rents assessed independently. It seems like a good idea but there are more fundamental problems for the pub industry, namely:

• The smoking ban- it won't be reversed and it hasn't been bad for all pubs but for the spit & sawdust type backstreet boozer it remains a problem.
• The pubcos overinvestment in property. When property prices were shooting up from the 1990s to the 2008 crash it didn't matter too much whether pubs were profitable because the value of the properties was rising fast enough to ensure that on paper the pub companies were loaded. After the crash they realised the flaw in that plan.
• The quality of people becoming landlords is not great, mostly because hardly anyone who understands what's involved would want to to do it. It's almost impossible to make money as a tenant so only fools rush in to take them over. Also going to the pub a lot does not mean you are well suited to running one.
• The quality of people running pubcos isn't great- the firms aren't rapacious capitalist exploiters, but edifices that are teetering on the brink of collapse who can't afford to take long term decisions without having serious cash flow problems today.
• Tax on beer, even during the midst of the great recession the tax on beer has reason inexorably.

Until all that is sorted out then it will remain a very risky business to get involved in.

Spot The Agenda!

There is a horrible story about a teenage girl who has had to have her stomach removed after drinking a cocktail containing liquid nitrogen (the nitrogen wasn't an ingredient in the cocktail, it got in there by mistake) at a bar.

Can you spot the the agenda of the spokesghoul/ shroud waver quoted by the Daily Mail?:

But last night Dr John Ashton, director of public health for Cumbria, said she was a victim of a dangerous gimmick used to sell more alcohol.
He said: 'This girl is the victim of an irresponsible alcohol industry that's now competing on gimmicks.
....

Dr Ashton said it was time the Government brought in better regulation of the drinks industry to stop such tragic incidents.
He said: 'It is shocking that a teenage girl goes out to celebrate her 18th birthday and ends up in intensive care with life-changing injuries.
'The alcohol industry uses these types of gimmicks to make alcoholic drinks more enticing - yet staff can use liquid nitrogen without any proper training.

....

'These things are allowed to continue in this country because of the Government's lack on control over the drinks industry.
'Essentially it amounts to a form of cowardice because there are drinks industry interests in every constituency and the Government is worried about repercussions.'

Binge Drinking Parents

According to the Children's Commissar, Maggie Atkinson, 1 in 3 children live with a binge drinker.

Something Must Be Done!

Think of the Children!


I heard her being interviewed and she insisted this was what children were telling her- whilst parroting phrases that I've never heard anyone who is not a professional busybody utter. It turns out that these phrases were uttered by children in focus groups- given that even with adults focus groups tend to say what the person in charge wants them to say and the people in charge were professional busybodies, this isn't a surprise.

While I do not doubt that alcohol is the cause, or at least the catalyst, for a lot of social problems, it does not seem plausible that 1 in 3 children live with a binge drinker and that a ludicrously inflated figure is being used for the purpose of scaremongering. And sure enough the definition of binge drinking is men who have more than eight drinks on one session or women who have more than 6.

No definition of what a "drink" is, but I suspect that they are referring to units because the definition of binge drinking given by other bodies is 8 units for men and 6 for women. That is about three glasses of wine for a woman or three pints of beer for man. I often "binge" under this definition- having up to 12 units over the course of about 6 or 7 hours on a weekend day every so often. Yet I don't consider myself to be a binge drinker, as I drive home and beat my terrified family in an alcohol fueled rage..... or not.


The report does not say how often this one has to binge to be classified as a binge drinker either- is having three sherries over Christmas Day a danger?


Yet the Childrens' Commissioner uses figures derived from these kind of definitions to imply that scenarios like this are endemic in Britain:

‘“I need somewhere safe to go quickly when mum starts drinking and cutting herself but where can I go?”

That is a quote by a young person in the report. To which the only response is "Holy Shit! Your Mum has a problem". But it is not the kind of behaviour that is associated with three glasses of wine once in a while.


Either they should give honest statistics for the number of problem drinkers or illustrate the issue with examples that are more likely among "binge drinking" parents. But quotes like:

"Some times my Dad comes home with a takeaway before falling asleep for half an hour in the arm chair" 

 Would not generate much interest.

Quote Of The Day

From This is South Wales:

A CARMARTHEN scaffolder who took to drinking after being unable to work through a drink-related injury squared up to police outside a town pub

I maybe going out on a limb here, but I think he may have started drinking before the accident.

Via Ambush Predator

CAMRA- Or COMRA

The Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) may be a fine example of the free market working well. One of the little known facts about the organisation is that the most important figure in it's early years was the editor of the Socialist Worker. It may not be going to far to say that CAMRA is a Trotskyite entryist organisation hell bent on the destruction of the free market. On the other hand it may be going to far.

In support of this consider the appearance of Viz's "Real Ale Twats" with a typical meeting of middle aged Trots.

An Apology

In previous posts I may have given the impression that anti drink campaigns are driven by hysterical nitwits who just want to boss people around and that furthermore alcohol really isn't that bad. Overnight I have reconsidered my opinion and now accept that alcohol is and evil vomit provoking and headache inducing poison that should be banned immediately.

Joined Up Government

Two of today's headlines which were juxtaposed on google news earlier today:

No more nanny state on health: Andrew Lansley

And also this:

Minister to set minimum prices in war on cheap drinks and force tobacco firms to sell cigarettes in plain packets

The minister in question is Andrew Lansley.

It's for your own good..

Pissheads.

Is there an quivalent of the Dunning Kruger effect for alcohol? I can't help noticing that people who inform the world of their capacity to consume alcohol are almost invariably complete pissheads.

The Violence Forecast

Hot weather + Alcohol + Possible England World Cup Exit = High Possibility Of Being Bottled.

Update: Great minds and all that.

Update 2: The much anticipated riots haven't occurred, I attribute this to the aggression sapping limpness of the England performance.

Alcohol Puritans

Any hopes that this government might be less puritanical than the last one seems unfounded:

Officials are looking at changing the wording on licence applications so that pubs and clubs wanting to extend their hours will have to prove after-hours drinking offers a tangible "benefit" to the local community.

If they didn't provide a tangible benefit then presumably people wouldn't be willing to spend money in return for goods and services from them. This is just a way of empowering busybodies to shut down pubs, if certain establishments have a problems with alcohol related violence then deal with them individually.

Winos On A Bench

I saw 6 winos on one park bench yesterday, is this a record?

If so is this due to the recession?

More Policy Based Evidence Making

Aren't these researchers missing something here:

Parents underestimate the influence their own drinking habits have on their children's attitude to alcohol, government research suggests.

A Department for Children, Families and Schools study suggests children from heavy-drinking households are more likely to use alcohol themselves.

Wouldn't a study also find that children from tall families are more likely to be tall themselves? Perhaps children copy their parents growing habits. Quickly googling 'Alcohol' 'environmental' & 'genetic' brings up studies like this which conclude:

genetic factors played a major role in the development of alcoholism among males, with similar influence for alcohol abuse and alcohol dependence. ^....... in this population-based sample, environmental factors shared by family members appear to have had little influence on the development of alcoholism in males.

I don't doubt that the influence of parents matters, but it is also beyond question that someone's susceptibility to alcohol is influenced by genetics. In other words you'd expect someone's drinking habits to resemble that of their parents.

Alcohol Good.

Is it me or is the message of this story that drinking will help you get a better job.

Blaming Alcohol.

I see both the government and the next government are presenting plans to deal with the evil of alcohol. While there are health issues associated with alcohol and drunks can put themselves into risky situations these dangers by and large are by and large borne by the drinkers themselves, there are exceptions to this, such as drink driving but they can be dealt with separately. The reason that it is a problem for society at large is because of the antisocial behaviour of people getting drunk in public and becoming aggressive and obnoxious towards other people.

However most people don't behave like that whilst intoxicated, in most countries the scenes observed in British town centres every Friday night are not the norm. Alcohol itself does not make someone violent. Studies* have in fact shown that people become violent and agressive whilst drunk have very particular personality traits whilst sober- they tend to be those who blame their misfortunes on external forces rather than taking responsibility themselves, thus being drunk becomes an excuse to behave badly.

If anti-drinking campaigns emphasise the role of alcohol in turning people into antisocial yobs it could actually reinforce that behaviour by encouraging them to attribute the harm they to to the drink rather than to their own decisions.

* I'll dig up a reference later.

I Ho.

Are Disney within their rights to object to "Ho White & the Seven Dwarfs"?

The article talks about potential copyright and licencing issues, but as long as the beer company isn't using aspects of the story that Disney created I don't see what they are doing wrong. Snow White was a traditional folk tale that Walt Disney took and made a feature film based on, but surely that doesn't give them the rights to all future interpretations of a story that they did not create.

Cross Dressers? They Were Furious.

What happens when two drunk scumbags decide to attack a couple of drag queens on a Friday night in Swansea? This (the good stuff starts at around 1:10):



Full story here.

Update: Changed the post title.

Shock- Trade Body Supports Stifling Competition!

The Scottish Executive supports a minimum price for alcohol:

A spokesman for the SNP administration said: “The UK’s four Chief Medical Officers all back minimum pricing, and the BMA, Royal College of Nursing, the police, the British Liver Trust, and indeed the licensed trade association, all support the Scottish government’s proposals

The 'licensed trade association' is an organisation which (a) should really be capitalised and (b) is made up of " Hotels, Public Houses, Restaurants, Refreshment premises, Entertainment premises and also Off-sales premises.". In other words all bodies which compete against supermarkets and who would benefit if a minimum price was established to prevent the large supermarkets undercutting them.

They are quite open about existing for the benefit of their members so it is a bit odd for the Scottish executive to refer to them as backing a proposal designed to boost public health and reduce public order offences when that is clearly not something that has anything to do with them.

Where Would We Be Without Surveys?

English turn to booze on holiday

Who Knew?