ReARM ~ RedNev's Blog

David Hirst solo gig

2012-01-27T00:42:00.002Z

David Hirst, singer and songwriter from the band Misery Guts, will be playing a solo set of the band's tunes as well as some new songs, with support by Joe Keelan of The Random Family. The gig is at at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. It's £3 on door, and it begins at 8.00 p.m. The venue sells Thwaites Wainwright real ale.

Will Kaufman's Life of Woody Guthrie in Formby

2012-01-24T17:35:00.003Z

Hard Times & Hard Travellin' is the title of a live musical documentary of the life of Woody Guthrie, written and performed by Will Kaufman. It sets the songs of Woody Guthrie in the context of the American 1930s: the dust bowl, the Depression, the New Deal and the state of popular music itself. Such hard-hitting Guthrie songs as “Vigilante Man”, “Pretty Boy Floyd” and “I Ain’t Got No Home” are set alongside other relevant songs, such as Joe Hill’s “The Preacher and the Slave” and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” Altogether the show highlights the interaction of music and radical politics that marks Guthrie’s most powerful work.

Will Kaufman is a singer, multi-instrumentalist and Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Central Lancashire. He has given his Woody Guthrie presentations at festivals, universities, trades clubs, folk clubs and union halls. In 2008 he was awarded the Woody Guthrie Research Fellowship from the Broadcast Music Industry Foundation and the Woody Guthrie Foundation. His book, Woody Guthrie, American Radical, has been published by the University of Illinois Press.

Formby roots and acoustic club, Grateful Fred, presents Hard Times & Hard Travellin' at the British Legion, Whitehouse Lane, Formby, L37 3LT, on Wednesday 1 February at 8.00 p.m. On-line tickets can be bought here (note that Grateful Fred sometimes sells out).
Non-real ale bar.

23rd Bent and Bongs Beer Bash

2012-01-22T15:28:00.002Z

This festival, run by the Bent and Bongs Charitable Trust in association with Wigan CAMRA, takes place in Formby Hall in Atherton. I always go on the Saturday, and the queue snakes down around the side of the building and the full length of the car park beyond. Looking at the size of the building and the length of the queue, you'd be forgiven for assuming you won't get in. But Formby Hall must have been built using Time Lord technology because you do get in, and it doesn't take too long either, as they have an efficient door operation that some other festivals should learn from.

There's always a good range of beers, and the festival has an extremely friendly atmosphere. It's about two thirds of a mile from Atherton railway station, which itself is about a 50 minute train ride from Southport. It runs from Thursday 26 to Saturday 28 January and is open on Thursday and Friday evenings and all day Saturday - full details from the festival website.

The London Hotel, Southport

2012-01-20T18:00:00.003Z

The London Hotel in Windsor Road is a large pub in a residential area about 10 or 15 minutes' walk from the town centre. The reference to London probably refers to the area of Southport formerly called Little London, which was centred where the Blue Anchor pub is today where, apparently, merchants from London came to collect the fleeces of wool from North Meols. The name Little London is also remembered in London Square and London Street.

The London's pub sign, complete
with superfluous apostrophe!

A CAMRA meeting took me there recently; it had been a while since I'd last visited. The pub has three main rooms, one of which is often not opened but can be used if needed; the other two consist of a large multi-levelled room where the bar is, and a small front room on your left as you enter. The pub serves beers from Oakwell Brewery: Barnsley Bitter (3.8%) and Dark Mild (3.4%) - prices £1.80 and £1.70 respectively. I haven't tried the mild yet, but I find the bitter to be a perfectly standard bitter, and at least one member of the local CAMRA branch swears by it.

You could describe it as a community pub: it has a bowling green, 4 darts teams, 2 quiz teams and a pool team. They have an open mike night on Thursdays, and every Sunday evening they hold a quiz, karaoke and bingo. Like most pubs, it has suffered a downturn in trade recently, and it has eccentric opening hours during the week (such as 10 p.m. closing on Wednesday), which probably doesn't help, but I do know this is the decision of the brewery, not the licensee.

The London tends to be overlooked, but it's worth a visit. Just check the opening hours!

Pete Rimmer CD launch

2012-01-18T04:32:00.000Z

Local singer-songwriter Pete Rimmer will be playing songs from his latest solo CD, Snapshot, which he is launching this Friday 20 January accompanied by various local performers. Pete is known as a resident of the Bothy Folk Club and is also a member of local folk group, Gallimaufry. Pete says, "The CD is a collection of my own songs and covers of songs including some of Bob Dylan's hits. This is my third solo CD and it features many local bands. I look forward to showcasing my new material and I hope people enjoy it."

Admission is free, and the evening begins at 8.00 p.m. at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. Real ale from Thwaites.

Tour of West Lancs pubs

2012-01-17T13:19:00.005Z

Southport and District CAMRA covers most of West Lancs as well as Southport and Formby. The problem is that most of the West Lancs pubs are difficult and, in a couple of cases, impossible to reach by public transport. So we occasionally take a coach out to visit them, enjoy their beers and - to ensure they are not disadvantaged - score them for the Good Beer Guide. This is what we did last Sunday. I didn't try all the beers, for obvious reasons, but I enjoyed all those I did have. Not a bad pint, or one I disliked, all day.

1. The Kings Arms, Haskayne: this pub is close, but not next, to the Leeds-Liverpool canal. It has some nice woodwork and attractive fireplaces, one with a real fire when we were there. It is slightly run down but is due to refurbished soon. At one time this pub sold only Tetley's, but on our visit was serving:

Black Hole Brewery - Asteroid Ale.
Beartown - Kodiak Gold.
Bank Top - Sweeney's.

2. The Ship Inn is a canal side pub just a short walk away from the King's. It's a very picturesque, multi-roomed pub with canal side seating (but with no fence by the canal, keep an eye on children and over-merry adults). It has live music each week: on Wednesdays the Britannia Bluegrass Band plays and on Thursdays and Fridays there are open mike nights. It also does food, and a real fire was lit. The beers were:

Holts - Bitter.
Rudgate - Jorvik Blonde.
Phoenix - Pale Moonlight.

3. The Royal Oak, Aughton: an attractive pub on the A59, it serves food and has an open mike night each Tuesday, and, I'm told, live bands on Saturdays. A real fire was burning while we were there. The beers were:

Tetley - Bitter
Great Orme Brewery - Cambria.

The Cambria had just gone on and had a slight haze, so they told us it wasn't ready yet; apparently Hobgoblin had only just run out. With our choice limited to Tetley's, we tried the Cambria and despite the haze it was fine.

4. The Dog & Gun, Aughton: another attractive pub close to Aughton Park railway station with two separate rooms and a real fire. The beers were from the Marstons stable and included:

Ringwood - Boondoggle.
Jennings - Bitter.
Marstons - Pedigree.
Banks - Bitter.

The Boondoggle proved most popular in our group. It's a pity to see the cask mild had disappeared, but I gathered on a previous visit that it wasn't selling enough.

5. The Stanley Arms, Aughton: another attractive and very busy pub, the Stanley had the greatest beer range of the pubs we visited. It was doing excellent business with meals - I had to jump out of the way of busy waitresses running past with plates of food. The beer range was good too:

Tetley - Bitter.
Tetley - Mild.
Timothy Taylor - Landlord.
Salopian - Oracle.
Adnams - Spiced Winter Beer.
Marstons - Pedigree.

6. The Derby Arms, Aughton: this is a popular pub in the middle of fields, and has been the CAMRA branch Pub of the Year in the past. As well as food, they also have live music: a busy singaround on Wednesdays and some kind of gypsy jazz night on the first Monday of the month. There was also a real fire burning. The beers included:

Haworth Steam Brewing Company - Naughty Blonde.
Tetley - Bitter.
Tetley - Mild.
Redemption - Big Chief.
Frodsham - Sledgin'.

A few years ago, you wouldn't have got this range of beers in the West Lancs pubs, and it's good to see how the situation has improved. There are problems with the country pubs, however: as previously reported, the Blue Bell in Barton (close to the Kings and the Ship) has closed permanently, and I've heard that the Scarisbrick in Downholland is to be closed and converted into a high class restaurant.

If I had to pick one beer, it would probably be the Haworth Steam Brewing Company Naughty Blonde, but all were good. Anyone thinking of visiting our country pubs has a good selection of pubs and beers to choose from, as well as choices of food and live music.

David Ferrard in Southport

2012-01-12T00:52:00.004Z

David's latest CD

Who? That was my reaction too, I'm afraid! David Ferrard is a young Scottish-American singer-songwriter based in Edinburgh. I've found out that he was born to a Scottish father and an American mother, and was brought up on both sides of the Atlantic; those dual roots can be heard in his music, whether singing his own compositions or interpreting a traditional ballad or a song by Robert Burns. His songs demonstrate a strong commitment to social justice and peace and have won him songwriting and performance competitions.

Having listened to several of his songs on his website, I'm looking forward to his gig at the Bothy Folk Club this Sunday 15 January from 8.00 p.m. The venue is the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS, and serves real ale from Thwaites.

1st Lion singaround of 2012

2012-01-10T14:50:00.002Z

This Thursday sees the first acoustic singaround of the year at the Lion Tavern, Moorfields, Liverpool from around 8.00 p.m. Free and open to all, although singing is not compulsory. The Lion usually has 8 real ales on.

These sessions take place on the second Thursday of each month. I hope to see you there, if not this week then at a future one.

Blog rankings ~ can't make any sense of them

2012-01-09T17:56:00.004Z

In December 2010, ReARM sprang into the top 100 beer and wine blogs at 60, which I was pleased about at the time. After that there was a slow decline in this blog's position until a few months ago when it ended at around 103. There was a brief rally to 97, followed by dropping out of the top 100 again. So I decided to stop looking - until I looked again, of course, when I was amazed to see it's leapt back in at 55, the highest position ever.

Frankly, I can't make any sense of these rankings. They're not based on the number of hits, because in 2011 I had nearly double the number than in 2010, yet my position in the top 100 declined throughout the year. No doubt history will repeat itself and ReARM will slide down the charts again during the course of this year. If you want to follow my position, it's given on the badge at the bottom of the column on the right, and it changes monthly. To see the whole top 100 blogs, click here or on that badge. Some of them are worth your time; there's a couple I don't like, but I'm not saying which.

Day trip to Fleetwood

2012-01-09T15:41:00.003Z

A charabanc trip to Fleetwood Beer Festival for those in Southport and surrounding area.

Last year's trip to Fleetwood hits the road

The Bothy Folk Club is running a trip to the Fleetwood Beer Festival on Saturday 11 February, leaving mid-morning and returning around tea time. If you want a place, please e-mail trip organiser Jean as soon as possible, as she needs to know which size of bus to book – price depends on numbers and bus size but will be kept as low as possible. Note: you don't have to be a Bothy-goer!

Contact: jean@pownceby.fsnet.co.uk
(link disabled to prevent spam - copy & paste into an e-mail)

Link to: Fleetwood festival website

Steve Tilston at Maghull FC

2012-01-08T15:55:00.003Z

Steve Tilston with Dave Bowie
on double bass at Faldingworth

Steve Tilston is a great singer, songwriter and guitarist, born in Liverpool although he moved away long ago. He has been turning out quality albums for 40 years and his songs have been recorded by Fairport Convention, Dolores Keane, The House Band, Peter Bellamy, North Cregg, Bob Fox and John Wright. Songs like Slip Jigs and Reels, Here’s to Tom Paine and The Naked Highwayman have become modern classics. One of his songs, The Reckoning, has been nomintated in the Best Original Song category of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, and is up against On Morecambe Bay written by Southport's own Kevin Littlewood.

He is appearing at the Maghull Folk Club which meets at the Maghull Community Association, 604 Green Lane, Maghull, L31 2JH. Pay on the door, and the venue sells bottled ales.

A true story about Steve downing a drink in one can be found here.

Cains not so able

2012-01-07T16:24:00.005Z

I noticed that Cains FA was on sale in the Guest House last night. It used to be there quite often, but as I haven't seen it on the bar for a good while now, I decided to try a pint. I was very disappointed: it used to be a dry golden ale whose taste belied its strength (5%), and I usually stayed on it all night when it was available. Now it is a mediocre beer, dull-looking with a cloying flavour, and I really can't see much resemblance to the beer I used to like. The Cains website states: "A Golden coloured very 'English' golden ale with a beautifully smooth mouthfeel. Brewed with the finest English malts, the beer is brewed with a fuller flavour to delight the mouth and stimulate the tongue." Perhaps at one time, but not now.

I have been told that when Cains went into meltdown after their failed reverse takeover of Honeycombe Leisure caused them to be placed in administration in 2008, they couldn't get credit. As a result, the recipes went out of the window, replaced by the nearest approximations they could manage with whatever cheap ingredients they could lay their hands on for cash. I've no idea how accurate this is, but there's no doubt in my mind that the beers became uniformly mediocre at around that time.

With several good microbreweries in and around the Merseyside area producing far superior beers, Cains really needs to do a lot better if it wants to be a contender on the local real ale scene.

1st Bothy guests of 2012

2012-01-07T15:29:00.001Z

Gren Bartley & Tom Kitching are one of the brightest young acts on the folk scene today. Playing music from a remarkably broad range of sources, their new album ‘Boundary’ crosses genres with a healthy disdain for arbitrary pigeon-holing of styles and traditions. Some songs just need to be sung. Having met at Loughborough University, through presenting a folk show on the campus radio, the duo grew out of a wish to perform the music they loved. Over time, Gren developed a distinctive passionate song writing style that manages to push boundaries, whilst staying respectful to the traditions.

Extracts from reviews:

"Bartley proves to be an accomplished songwriter, with a restful voice that lulls its way into the mind and heart." Allmusic.com.

"The instruments spark, with the combination of the bright fiddle and the acclaimed finger picking style of Bartley giving a lovely flow to the tunes" Maverick Magazine.

They're at the Bothy this Sunday 8 January at the Park Golf Club, Park Rd West, Southport, PR9 0JS. The venue serves Thwaites real ale.

An inexpensive night out, if you want it!

2012-01-06T19:10:00.004Z

I had a meeting on Tuesday in the Falstaff on King Street, Southport, with some CAMRA people to discuss the future of the local branch magazine, Ale & Hearty. I felt encouraged as there seemed to be a determination to get it published again. I'd hate to be the editor in charge if it finally collapsed. The Falstaff, which was at one time my local when it served up to 10 real ales, had just Theakston's Lightfoot on at £2.60 a pint. It's "a delicious and refreshing, golden ale" according to the brewery website, but to me it was merely inoffensive and unremarkable. There were four other handpumps which weren't in use. The place was empty when we arrived and still was when we left. I do hope this pub can revive, but it's not looking hopeful.

I then called into the Phoenix (owned by the Smith & Jones pub company) on Coronation Walk where there was a surprise for me: a pint of real ale for £1.29. It was Tolly English Ale, brewed under the Tolly Cobbold name, but actually Greene King, with a strength of 2.8%, designed to take advantage of the new lower duty for beers that are 2.8% or below. It had more flavour than you'd expect from such a weak beer, but still seemed thin to me. They were also serving Morland Original (4.1%), another Greene King beer which was more to my taste, at £1.49 and Bombardier at £1.79. For those who like sport, and I'm not one, the Phoenix has several large screen TVs. In fact, Liverpool were being thrashed 3-0 by Man City while I was there.

On to the Baron's Bar. This bar suffered badly after the formerly independent Scarisbrick Hotel, in which it is housed, was taken over by Britannia Hotels, who immediately put on predictable regional and national beers from a single supplier, and sales plummeted accordingly. I'm pleased to report that the company has responded to the market and it was serving Moles Brewery Tap, Tetley Bitter, George Wright Pipe Dream, Flag & Turret (the house beer), Vale Brewery Best Bitter, Pride of Pendle, Lancaster Blonde and Black Sheep. All were £1.90 a pint, except for the Tetley Bitter, which was £2.25. They also had Old Rosie real cider, and there was one more one handpump which was turned around.

These two pubs, along with the Sir Henry Segrave (Wetherspoons) and the Willow Grove (Lloyds No. 1), mean that there are now several local ale houses you can drink in if you are on a limited budget. As ever, the question arises: if they can do it, why can't other pub companies?

P.S. I should also have mentioned the London Hotel, a suburban pub a short walk from the town centre. It sells Oakwell beer: Barnsley Bitter at £1.80 a pint and Dark Mild at £1.70.

All these pubs are on the Southport real ale pubs map, which you can find here.

Mason's singaround

2012-01-04T14:24:00.001Z

A bit late I know, but a reminder that the Mason's first singaround of 2012 is tonight from around 8.00 p.m. The Mason's is behind the main post office on Lord Street, serves real ale from Robinson's and usually provides a nice supper. From around 8.00 p.m. onwards. All are welcome.

New Year beer stories

2012-01-03T16:20:00.001Z

A headline shouts: "Charity says giving up alcohol for a month is futile", which sounds rather final and damning. It turns out that the British Liver Trust says it's better from the point of view of your liver's health to take a few days off alcohol a week throughout the entire year than remaining abstinent for January only, which isn't quite so prescriptive. It's what most people do in my experience anyway; I can't think of anyone who drinks seven days a week during every week of the year. The full story is here.

There are of course many reasons other than health why people go on the wagon, such as losing weight, saving money, taking it easy after a frantic Christmas break, making time to do jobs around the house, etc., and none of these reasons is futile. In this case, the strident headline is somewhat at odds with the actual message, and I wouldn't be surprised if some drinkers reading the headline only might conclude there's no point in giving up at all, which surely isn't what was intended. These people need to learn that the message itself is often not enough; how you deliver it can be equally important.

Another news story is about the woman who stole a 24 pack of beer by hiding it under her skirt. You can see the CCTV here:

Real Ale Pubs Map for Southport

2012-01-01T16:18:00.008Z

I've pinched Ken's idea (see post of 30 December) to set up a Google map of real ale pubs in and around Southport town centre. In time I'll probably insert pubs further out, as in Birkdale, Churchtown and Ainsdale, but here is the town centre and surrounding area. I've put a link to this map in my quick links (above), on my pub crawl page and in my beer links to the right. Click the blue link below the map to see a larger map and the text. I'll try to keep it up to date, and I hope it's useful.

View Southport Real Ale Pubs in a larger map

A similar map for the Bury area (but with many times more pubs) has been on Tyson's blog for some time - useful if you're going that way.

Happy New Year

2011-12-31T18:47:00.001Z

Thanks to everyone who looks at this blog ~ some of my ramblings must be worth reading, as I've had nearly twice as many hits this year than I had in 2010. All the best for 2012. Perhaps I'll see some of you at the National Winter Ales Festival, the next festival I'll be going to. Cheers!

Wigan Real Ale Pub Map

2011-12-30T15:15:00.006Z

I've just been sent a link by Ken Worthington of Wigan CAMRA to an interactive map he's put together of real ale pubs in Wigan town centre ~ you can see it here. I like Wigan pubs and have visited many of those listed; Wigan is of course convenient for many towns, including Southport where I live, with train routes in all directions. Pictured is the Swan and Railway, close to both railway stations.

There are 18 pubs listed at the moment and Ken tells me the map's still being developed. If you click on a pub name in the list to the left of the map, you are given the location and details of that pub. I've saved the link in both my beer links list and on my pub crawl page.

Pubs around Merseyside - end of an era

2011-12-29T17:32:00.006Z

The cover shows the Albany in Old Swan
where I sometimes went for quiz nights
around the time of this guide.

Looking through a box of old books, I came across a copy of “The Best Pubs Around Merseyside”, which was published by six local CAMRA branches: Merseyside, Southport, Wirral, Chester and South Clwyd, Central and North Cheshire and South East Lancs; the names of the branches involved indicate what a large area the guide covers, far beyond the bounds of the county of Merseyside. There’s no date in the guide, but a “stop press” item about Boddington selling its breweries to Whitbread dates it to 1990.

It’s interesting how much the pub and brewery scene has changed since those days, certainly a lot more than it had in the preceding 21 years. North West breweries mentioned in the guide that have vanished include: Boddingtons, Matthew Brown, Greenall Whitley, Higsons, Hartleys, Peter Walker and Tetley Walker. Guinness seems an odd entry nowadays, but it was listed because it was still producing bottle conditioned Extra Stout, a practice discontinued few years later.

The guide gloomily states that “all indications are that Higsons, Liverpool only brewery, will close in the very near future with the consequential loss of jobs and the loss of the last Mild and Bitter beers brewed in Liverpool. So-called Higsons beers brewed elsewhere, particularly by Whitbread, will not be the same.” Right on all counts, although the conviction that many of us had at the time that this would be the end of brewing in Liverpool has proved to be wrong, I'm glad to say. Oak Brewery of Ellesmere Port is mentioned, but with the comment that the stranglehold of the big brewers prevents Oak from expanding in its own area, and that as most of its output goes to Yorkshire, Stoke and Manchester, “it is possible that this year will see the brewery move closer to the areas it supplies.” That proved right too, and Oak is now the successful Phoenix of Heywood in Greater Manchester, and its beers are now quite frequently available on Merseyside.

John Smiths is commended for reintroducing real ale in 1984 with cask Bitter and Magnet, and for removing keg versions when cask was restored to a pub (“other brewers please note!”), while Samuel Smiths gets a ticking off for serving “keg beer through hand pulls and the purchase of John Smith’s stock of cask breathers.”

The preamble to the guide includes an instruction to “use this guide wisely, there are a few – only a few – independent regional brewers left in the area – value them.” Not the advice I would expect in any modern counterpart, as it seems to me it’s fashionable nowadays to slag off the regionals.

As for the pubs, the guide is charmingly eccentric. All music, except for live music, is bad: “no noisy canned music”, “no juke box ‘music’”, “pleasantly free of music”, “no recorded music”, “loud music”, “usually no ‘noisy muzak’” and “no noisy music” are just some of the comments that suggest to me that the compilers would nowadays be seeking out the quiet sessions at beer festivals, although I did find “good juke box” and “music of NON top 20 variety on tape”, but these are exceptions. It’s not afraid to be judgmental: “now a mainly young persons (upwardly mobile?) posing place”, “if it sold Oak beer it would be excellent”, “the most chic pub in town if that suits the readers taste”, “pity about the standard beers ‘wot no Oak?’” and the former St Helens Greenalls brewery apparently used to produce “flavoursome beers unlike Warrington”. The Roscoe Street Grapes’s only real ale was Boddingtons and we’re told that its inclusion “shows CAMRA to be fair, we have included it even though totally opposed to only the Manchester beer being on sale.” Not blowing your own trumpet then! In fact, real Boddingtons was an improvement for the Grapes, as it had previously sold only keg Higsons through electric pumps concealed behind handpumps.

A lot of the narrative descriptions are very terse, such as “two room roadside pub with a separate public bar” and “two room street corner local on busy shopping road” but certain pubs get fuller descriptions – for instance, the Philharmonic’s runs to 13 lines and the Roscoe Head’s to seven, including the unsurprising comment “no ‘noise’”. No mention in the latter’s entry to its residency in every Good Beer Guide, but that achievement probably wasn’t uncommon in 1990. The Everyman Bistro, which closed just recently, is described in terms that customers 21 years later would recognise: “Large three roomed basement bistro. Main room is the bar, with fresh flowers and wall ad’s for past goods. Second room has food servery which is open all day serving a wide range of food – including vegetarian – at very reasonable prices. Good beer, good food, good atmosphere. Families welcome and no recorded music.” Well, of course not.

The Carnarvon Castle, which sold Higsons and Boddingtons Bitters, was “famous for its toasties … [and] no extraneous noise”. It’s still famous for its toasties; I had one there not long ago. A lot of familiar Liverpool alehouses are present, such as the Baltic Fleet, the Globe, the Poste House, the Railway and the Lion. The Swan in Wood Street was very unusual in selling six real ales (one a guest) and a real cider, but this effort is not enough for the compilers: “Bring back Oak!” they demand.

It’s interesting which pubs aren’t mentioned, such as the Ship and Mitre, Rigby’s, the Vernon, or the Dispensary (which had a different name then), and although there is a Dr Duncans, it’s not the one you may be thinking of: this one was a Tetley house in Seel Street, which later changed its name to Pogue Mahone. The current Dr Duncans in St Johns Lane was at this time still an insurance office.

The biggest changes are in the beers. Most pubs sell only one or two beers, usually a mild and a bitter from the owning company. Where there is a different beer, it has usually come from another brewery that the company owns. True guest beers are very rare. One of the few exceptions was the Philharmonic, which sold Jennings Bitter as well as Tetley’s Mild and Bitter. Beer strengths are all given in original gravities rather than percentages; for example, the strength of Higsons is given as 1038, instead of 3.7 or 3.8% that would probably be the equivalent.

This guide describes the local pub and brewery business right at the end of an era: the infamous Beer Orders, which subsequently forced the sale of vast pub estates, had been published but not yet implemented, but strangely there is no mention of them in the guide. Within a couple of years of its publication, pub companies were established to hoover up the breweries’ estates, financed by mortgaging the pubs that the breweries had usually owned outright. Thus was the present situation created, but this guide tells us how it was at the very end of the old order.

A couple of odd omissions: it encourages readers to join CAMRA, but doesn’t have an application form, and it doesn’t include a map of the large area covered by the guide. However, at £1.75 (perhaps £3.50 now), it was good value and helped spread the real ale message in the best way – by telling people where to buy it. I’ve found it very interesting to browse through.

I'll examine the Southport changes in a future post.

Government to encourage smuggling

2011-12-28T16:16:00.000Z

So, David Cameron wants to raise alcohol prices, does he? I'm really fed up writing about this, so I'll just point out that:

UK alcohol is now so dear that HMRC lose £800 million because of smuggling (government estimate).
British beer tax accounts for 40% of the entire European beer tax bill, even though the UK accounts for only 13% of EU beer consumption (EU figures).

Cameron's preferred policy will only make both those situations worse. I've argued before (most recently on 19 December) that further increases in alcohol duty will raise no significant revenue and may be counter-productive. That is uniquely a lose-lose-lose situation, but you can't stop a politician once he's got the nanny state bit between his teeth: reason and common sense are left far behind.

Mr Cameron: how about dealing with the economy and getting people back to work? Stopping the erosion of ordinary voters' spending power so they can put money into the economy? Plugging the loopholes whereby rich corporations and individuals collectively dodge £95,000 million tax every year?

No, when your policies are bankrupt, like the country you're supposed to be running, just go after the drinkers. That'll sort it out.

New Year music

2011-12-28T01:22:00.002Z

Music events in the local area kick off again fairly sharpish after the New Year. First off the starting block is my singaround in the Guest House in Union Street, Southport on Monday 2 January. A singaround is the most informal participative music event possible, much less intimidating than an open mike night. Performing is of course optional and you can simply listen while supping one of perhaps eleven real ales.

The Maghull Folk Club has a singers night on Tuesday 3 January. It meets at the Maghull Community Association, 604 Green Lane, L31 2JH. Bottled ales.

Following close behind is the Mason's singaround on Wednesday 4 January. The Mason's is a Robinson's pub on Anchor Street, behind the main post office on Lord Street, Southport. There's often a real fire to welcome us on cold nights.

Also on Wednesday is the Jazz Night at the Shrimper with the The Merseysippi Jazz Band. The Shrimper is on Fylde Road, Southport and has Tetley cask bitter.

That covers the next week, so you see, there's no need for a post-holiday lull: start the New Year as you intend to go on!

Recent pub losses in Southport

2011-12-27T18:43:00.008Z

We were talking about pubs in the Guest House last night, in particular local pubs we have lost. The discussion was prompted by the closure of the Blue Bell in Barton near Ormskirk, that I wrote about a few days ago. Southport has lost several pubs within recent years:

The Herald on Portland Street. This hadn't been a real ale pub for many years, although 20 years ago it used to serve John Smith's Bitter and Magnet on handpump. In latter years it became a local live music venue, and I've played there 2 or 3 times myself. At the moment it's fenced in with a skip in front, and the inside is being ripped out for conversion, to flats in all likelihood, but it certainly won't be a pub again.

Nigel's Bar (in the Shelbourne Hotel), Lord Street West. Always a good pint of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, and also the first place I drank George Wright beers. This hotel was the venue of the Bothy Folk Club for three years until the hotel was closed for conversion into flats.

The Two Brewers, Kingsway, (previously the Tudor) was a training pub for Tetley Walker and was unique in that it sold both Tetley's and Walker's beers, hence the name. When the licensee of the Old Ship in Southport, a Walker's house at the time, was given a CAMRA award, he told me was pleased but slightly embarrassed, because surely the training pub - Tetley Walker's flagship pub in the town - should in theory always win any awards going. Once I entered and the barman shouted across the room, "No jeans allowed", whereupon I told him a sign outside the door rather than a humiliating shout across the pub might be better customer service. If that's how they were trained, no wonder it didn't survive. It has been demolished and replaced by a completely different business.

The Berkeley, Queens Road. Famous for a good range of real ales, including Pendle Witches Brew, its great range of pizzas and at one time a resident Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. Our band once played a charity gig there. It was closed for redevelopment into flats at around the same time as the Shelbourne, and it was owned by the same family. The name was variously pronounced as 'berkly' and 'barkly'.

Two pubs have been demolished and rebuilt:

The Blowick on Norwood Road was an old Tetley house which was demolished and rebuilt a few yards to the right of the original site and reopened with a thatched roof as the Thatch and Thistle. Last year it became the Carvery Grill and this year the Thatched Pub and Grill. The name changes show that it's going for the food market and on my last visit, the real ale had declined to Greene King IPA only. The Richmond was also an old Tetley house that was demolished and a new pub using the same name built on the same site. It's known for food and sells beers from Holts of Manchester. Although both these pubs have been replaced, the originals both had character and features of their own that haven't been replicated in the replacement buildings.

Before the smoking ban obsessives trot out their simplistic comments, I know for certain that some of these closures have nothing to do with the smoking ban. My assessment of the reasons for pub closures can be found here.

Jean's Christmas pub crawl

2011-12-22T14:09:00.003Z

Tonight is the Christmas pub crawl organised by my friend Jean Pownceby when we visit an array of great Liverpool pubs. If you're around and would like to join us for a pint, the itinerary is below.

P.S. This is a rather good pub crawl at any time of the year.

Bye bye Blue Bell

2011-12-21T17:45:00.002Z

In August last year, I wrote about the Blue Bell in Barton near Ormskirk that it had "recently been redecorated and was selling George Wright Nectar and Black Sheep Bitter when we visited. They generally like to have a George Wright beer on sale." On earlier visits, it had been selling a house beer called Blue Bell, brewed for them by George Wright. The pub never seemed to have many customers in, and in February this year I wrote that it had unexpectedly closed. I noticed that it remained closed every time I drove past and was looking increasingly neglected.

Earlier this month planning permission was granted to convert it into houses; this had been applied for in November last year. As they had advertised in our local CAMRA magazine, Ale & Hearty, as recently as Autumn last year, I can only assume the advert was a last ditch attempt to keep the pub afloat, as you wouldn't advertise if you were intending to close down your business.

The pub was on the main road from Liverpool and Maghull to Southport, and so will have been passed daily by thousands of commuters, but it wasn't surrounded by many houses. Another victim of the current recession.

Two faces are better than one

2011-12-19T16:55:00.008Z

I've just been listening to Nick Clegg (deputy prime minister, in case you were wondering) talking about the Tory proposal of tax breaks for married couples; he's fundamentally opposed to the idea that "the state should use the tax system to encourage a particular family form". The idea's laughable anyway - "Let's get married darling and get our £3 a week tax break" isn't exactly Mills and Boon - but the comment on not using taxation to influence people's behaviour is worth examining.

As I have banged on here before, we are grossly overtaxed on our beer - British beer tax accounts for 40% of the entire European beer tax bill, even though the UK accounts for only 13% of EU beer consumption. Why is this? Obviously, the first reason is that beer is seen as a cash cow - an easy way of raising a lot of money quickly. Except it's not nowadays, as I suggested on 24 September: "In my view, increases in beer tax have become self-defeating, with no increased income for the government as people drink less and less to compensate for the rocketing prices, and - despite what you read - alcohol consumption in the UK is slowly dropping. Throw in the costs of businesses going bust, including bankruptcies, job losses and state benefits, and you'd probably find that further increases in beer tax will actually lose the Treasury income." However, no current politician has the guts to challenge the received wisdom that beer tax increases are good.

But the main point I wanted to make in this post relates to the other main reason for excessive beer taxes: to control people's behaviour. Tax increases are advocated by the quango-in-all-but-name, Alcohol Concern, an organisation paid by the government to lobby the, er, government. Here the argument is occasionally wrapped in economic disguise, such as cost to the NHS and so on, but the main motive is to change people's drinking habits through the tax system. At times the language employed can be reminiscent of the old Victorian moralisers. Anyone who thought the tax system exists mainly to finance illegal wars and fund the bonuses of reckless gamblers in failing banks had better think again: it's also there to make sure you do as you're told.

LibDems, with their Liberal traditions, should be wary of supporting the use of the tax system to interfere with how people live their lives, not just in marriage, but also in relation to alcohol, letting people decide for themselves whether to have a drink, and how much they choose to drink, although the idiotic "tipple tax" they suggested in August does not lead me to believe they know how to apply their professed principles to practical policy-making.

I'm not suggesting that alcohol is free from harm - only a fool would say that - but the role of government is to provide the information to let people make an informed decision without applying the tax system to make sure they choose correctly. Such a position is entirely consistent both with Liberal traditions and with Nick Clegg's view on tax breaks for married couples, so there's little doubt in my mind that it's not one he'd adopt.

I think I'll write to Nick Clegg in the New Year to make this point, and I'll publish my letter and his reply (if any) on this blog. If he supports beer tax for manipulating behaviour, we'll know for certain he's full of humbug.

Walkers pubs but no Walkers beer

2011-12-13T17:30:00.008Z

One of my Walkers glasses from the
early 1960s. I couldn't get the words
'Walkers Ales' any clearer.

I went on a quick trip to Liverpool today for an optician's appointment and, as I was driving, I decided against any pub visits. What struck me as I strolled around, as opposed to scurrying to from one ale house to the next, was the fact that so many pubs in Liverpool still show the old Walkers livery, often still displaying the full legend, Walkers Warrington Ales. Peter Walker merged with the original Cains in 1921 and I can recall my grandmother and uncle, who both had worked for the company, still referring to it as "Walker Cain's" into the 60s and 70s, even though it had become Tetley Walker in 1960. The Walker brand was revived for a few years in the early 1980s and produced some good beers, most notably Warrington Ale and Winter Warmer, but was kicked into touch again when the company lost interest. I've written in more detail about the Walker brand here.

The pubs I particularly noticed on my flying visit were The Crown and The Vines on Lime Street, The Central and The Midland on Ranelagh Street and The Beehive on Mount Pleasant. There are others, but these were the ones that prompted this train of thought. I'm rather glad that they managed to avoid being corporately standardised both by Allied Breweries (who'd have made them into Tetley houses) and by the pub companies that now own them.

Fag Ash Lil gigs

2011-12-13T16:07:00.002Z

Local classic rock band, Fag Ash Lil, have two gigs in Southport before Christmas. I've written about them a couple of times before, so it's no secret I like this band.

The first gig is in the Blundell Arms, Upper Aughton Road, Birkdale, on Saturday 17 December. The second at On The Fringe (formerly the Shakespeare) on Scarisbrick New Road, Southport on Friday 23 December. Both gigs begin at around 9.15 pm, and unfortunately neither pub sells real ale, but that's true of most local venues that regularly put on rock bands. I've no idea why - do they think rock fans don't like real ale? That's not true in my experience. Most likely they simply feel "Why bother?" when the rock fans will come in and spend money anyway.

Christmas carols

2011-12-08T17:16:00.001Z

Thus Sunday, Jeff Stoker will be running his annual carol singing session in the Fisherman's Rest, Weld Road, Southport. Jeff has been doing this for many years supported by local singers and musicians, and invites anyone who will to join in or just listen. Carol sheets are available for those who can't remember the words from their school days, and it's free. The Fish has recently been nicely refurbished and sells 4 real ales (sadly, not free!).

To complete your Sunday, in the evening the Bothy has Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher from Lincolnshire as their final guests of the season. That's at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS, at 8.00pm. Thwaites real ale. On-line tickets or pay on the door.

CAMRA magazine not issued - again!

2011-12-05T16:24:00.002Z

Ale & Hearty from April - June 2009

My job as editor of Ale & Hearty, the magazine of the Southport and District Branch of CAMRA, is becoming more and more theoretical. Our Summer edition, due out in August, didn't materialise because Fred, who collects the adverts for us, was in hospital for an operation, which was followed by a period of recuperation. No adverts = no money = no magazine.

The Winter edition, due out in November, fell by the wayside because two advertisers withdrew their adverts at the last minute: one because the licensee never got around to designing it (we'd have done it if he wanted), and the other because of a change in licensee. This created an immediate loss of £330 and as we have no reserves to fall back on, all the work in trying to get adverts and in obtaining and writing articles has gone completely to waste, and our credibility with licensees has taken a bash. Unsurprisingly, Fred and I are feeling rather deflated at the moment.

Ale & Hearty is basically a two-man operation nowadays, and it's too much for us, but requests for extra help at meetings usually result in silence with people staring fixedly ahead. I have a plan to resolve this, but if extra help is not forthcoming, I will with great reluctance (as I was very keen when I took over) consider throwing in the towel. I hope it doesn't come to that.

A Few Striking Pints

2011-12-04T17:16:00.008Z

The 30th of November saw me joining the picket line in Bootle at the crack of dawn - oh okay, 8.45am - on the great day of action on pensions. It was good to see friends again, and at ten the Cat and Fiddle (built in the ground floor of the office block we were picketing) opened early specially for the strikers. There were four real ales on in this formerly keg-only pub: the house beer, Cat and Fiddle (brewed by Tetley; £1.69 a pint), Tetley Bitter, and two guests (£2.30 a pint) from Liverpool Organic Brewery: Styrian and Jade. I had two pints of the Jade, a very pale, dry 4.4% beer, which went nicely with the excellent full English very well. I never thought I'd do beer and food matching, but there you go.

Looking across the front of
St George's Hall

On to Liverpool to join the thousands marching through the city centre, with hundreds on the pavements applauding as we went by. I don't remember a demo of this size in Liverpool since the worst of the Thatcher years. I met quite a few friends there, some of whom I hadn't seen for years, including an ex of mine - we agreed to meet for a few drinks in the new year. You can see this politics isn't all just doom and gloom, as I'm sure the local pubs and shops would confirm.

I didn't check the shops myself, but after the rally, I went to the Ship and Mite on Dale Street, which happened to have a beer and cider festival on. It was several deep at the bar when I arrived, a combination of festival-goers and demonstrators, but eventually I got my pint of Cambrinus Lamp Oil, a full dark beer - I do like dark beers occasionally. This was followed by Flaky's 50th Festival from Phoenix, brewed to mark the fact that this was the Ship and Mitre's 50th beer festival; it was good, as Phoenix beers usually are. Burton Bridge Staffordshire Knott and Milestone's Little John were others I tried.

We moved to the Lion in Moorfields, home to my monthly singarounds that I sometimes mention here - in fact, there's another one next Thursday the 6th December (all welcome). Eight beers on: I chose Liverpool Organic 24 Carat Gold, a great beer I've had before and Steve chose the Higsons Bitter. This led to a discussion as to how it compared to the original, or indeed whether you could even remember a taste of a beer accurately after two decades. I think we agreed that you can't. Steve said was a good pint regardless.

We suddenly realised that it was twenty past eleven, so we disappeared in different directions for last buses and trains. The end to a day that had been great in many different ways.

Bothy guests - Christi Andropolis & Mark Harrison

2011-12-01T21:39:00.004Z

Christi Andropolis

These artists have cancelled at short notice due to ill health. Last minute replacement is local lad, singer guitarist Jon Brindley, who has kindly agreed to step into the breach. Jon has appeared at the Bothy before, but not for a few years. It will be good to see him back.

Christi Andropolis & Mark Harrison have been described as: "Fiddle player and singer Christi hails from New York State, her inspirations ranging from the Delta blues and Appalachian mountain music of her homeland to the Scots and English music she’s picked up during her time studying here. Joined by Teesside singer/writer/guitarist Mark Harrison, this new pairing gives new meaning to the phrase ‘transatlantic session!'"

Sounds an intriguing combination and it's all on this Sunday at the Bothy Folk Club, Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. Yours truly is doing one of the opening spots. Thwaites real ale. On-line tickets. The music begins at 8.00 pm and the bar sells real Thwaites Wainwright.

Liverpool Beer Festival – the annual ticket ritual

2011-11-26T20:14:00.006Z

If you want to go to Liverpool Beer Festival (16 - 18 February), you need to have your wits about you. There are postal applications with different rules for members of Liverpool Branch, members of other Branches and non-members, and there is the allocation for those who work the festival. Finally, there’s the famous queuing for tickets on a freezing December morning.

I’ve often said that some CAMRA members are wannabe civil servants – they love to make things really bureaucratic. Think of any CAMRA beer festival: very often, you pay your admission here, then get you glass there, and the beer tokens are on sale on the far wall in the main room. Some festivals have you queuing three times before you sip your first pint. For Liverpool, add in the fact that actually obtaining your tickets is a bureaucracy of Byzantine proportions. It takes more than 800 words on the webpage just to explain how to buy tickets; click here to see. I used to work for the DSS and, as I recall, none of its systems were as convoluted as this.

The webpage includes a Q&A bit that doesn’t always answer the question. For example:
Q) Why can’t we buy tickets online?
A) We are looking into this method. However it is complicated, due to the fact that we have to limit tickets and need to facilitate a members presale. We are however hoping to be able to offer this next year.

Nonsense, it’s not complicated. The festival webpage says that they are holding back at least 200 tickets per session for sale at the public sale day, which this year is on 10 December at the Catholic Cathedral. Why not scrap the public sale day and just put those 200+ tickets on line? You’re not obliged to put all the tickets for your event on-line: just the number you want to. I’ve set up an on-line ticket system myself, and I know that it’s very easy, very quick and free to the organiser, with the additional benefit that people who live further away might have a chance of getting in. Perhaps you're wondering how this service is funded: the on-line ticket company charges the customer 10% extra (with a 50p minimum). A £7 ticket would cost £7.70, and that 70p is considerably less than the bus or train fares into Liverpool city centre.

I look forward to next year with interest to see how the festival copes with the technology of on-line ticketing.

The FAQ also has the surly note: “If you have further suggestions for next year, please consider becoming part of the festival working group.” In other words, they won’t accept suggestions or criticisms from outside the inner sanctum. Fair enough, it’s their festival after all, but that won’t stop people having an opinion, and I know I’m definitely not alone in mine.

If you’re going to the public sale day, wrap up well and good luck!

The perfect pub

2011-11-24T00:17:00.007Z

Interesting article on the BBC website discussing what constitutes the perfect pub. It begins by referring to George Orwell's famous description in 1946 of his ideal pub, the fictitious Moon Under Water * (you can read his essay here), and then points out that there are now 14 pubs called the Moon Under Water, all them belonging to JD Wetherspoons (JDW). The nearest to Southport is in Wigan.

Tim Martin, founder of JDW, says that Orwell's essay picks out the essence of what a pub is about, which is "very similar" to what the chain is trying to create, although he admits that the writer might not have been impressed by some examples. "He'd probably say we do very well in getting near to his idealised pub in some and we've got some more work to do in others."

I'm not someone who dismisses JDW out of hand, but I think this is nonsense. An important feature of Orwell's ideal pub is individuality. Take food, for example. Orwell says of the Moon Under Water: "You cannot get dinner at the Moon Under Water, but there is always the snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and those large biscuits with caraway seeds in them which only seem to exist in public-houses. Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch - for example, a cut off the joint, two vegetables and boiled jam roll - for about three shillings."

In a JDW pub there isn't any snack counter, certainly no specialities of the house, and the food they serve, all pre-packaged and microwaved, has nothing in common with the home-made fare that Orwell describes. In general, the fixtures and fittings in JDW pubs are all bought in bulk and sent to every outlet, so that they all have a very similar look when you enter.  This bears no resemblance to the individual look of pubs where licensees have stamped their mark by choosing items that suit both their own personality and the nature of the pub - the antithesis of Spoons' one size fits all approach.

What makes a pub into a local is a strong sense of individuality; corporate styling therefore puts a pub at a disadvantage straightaway, as the brewers in the 1970s found out when they adopted corporate signage and livery to go with the national brands they were trying to get us to love. For instance, Ansells pubs in the Midlands had the identical lettering and colour scheme to Tetley's pubs in the North West. After a while, the brewers realised this wasn't working well and so revived old brands they had cheerfully discontinued in the 60s, in some cases setting up entire pub chains, like Walkers (a Tetley brand), or establishing festival ale houses (i.e. carefully designed dumps with bare floors and artificial tobacco stains on the walls) - anything as long as it didn't have the corporate styling. Some of these initiatives, like Walkers, were quite welcome, but most, like the festival ale houses, were another example of brewery accountants deciding yet again that they knew what customers wanted better than the customers themselves, despite previous experience.

Most of my favourite pubs locally are ones that have retained their character - I'll name but a few:  the Guest House in Southport, the Ship in Haskayne, the Volunteer in Waterloo and the Globe, the Lion and Ye Cracke in Liverpool. There are many more, too many to list, but these I've mentioned all have individual qualities. We should be glad they managed to avoid being ripped out into open plan, being themed, being corporately styled, being stripped down to bare seats, walls and floors, or being sold off for flats. Let's hope they survive the current danger of insolvency because of PubCo greed and excessive beer taxes.

* Moons under water seem to be associated with pubs and beer. For example, JW Lees brew a beer called Moonraker, the local name for people from Middleton.  It's said that when some poachers were approached by the constabulary, they threw their loot into a pond and began raking the reflection of the moon in the water, telling the officers they were trying to recover the green cheese. The constables went on their way chuckling at the gullibility of the yokels.

Port Street Beer House festival

2011-11-22T16:19:00.003Z

The Port Street Beer House, Manchester, is going dark. From 22 November to around 6 December, the Port Street is having an 'Old & Dark Festival'. They have been gathering beers of these styles in the cellar for some time. A couple are to be launched at special events: Hardknott Vitesse Noir on 23 November and Magic Rock's new imperial stout, Bearded Lady, on 28 November. According to their website, the beers will include:

Great Divide Yeti

Mikkeller Vesterbro Coffee Stout

Magic Rock Bearded Lady

Magic Rock Dark Arts

Hard Knott Vitesse Noir

Thornbridge Raven

Thornbridge x Kernel Burton Ale
Kernel Export India Porter (Cask)
Summerwine Cossack
Summerwine Cohort
Marble Little Jim
Moor Old Freddy Walker
Brodies Superior London Porter
Left hand Wake Up dead
Red Willow Fathomless
Gadds Black Pearl

I understand that not all beers will be real; some will be in kegs.
The beer house is at 39 - 47 Port Street, Manchester, M1 1EQ.

Local Lancashire Celebration events

2011-11-21T03:18:00.012Z

Lancashire Day is held on 27 November to commemorate the day in 1295 when the first representatives from Lancashire were summoned by Edward I to attend parliament at Westminster. Southport was part of Lancashire until local government reorganisation in 1974, but many Southport people still consider themselves to be Lancastrians. To celebrate the town's Lancashire connections, several local hostelries are putting on various events. There's a lot of fun (and decent beer) to be had.

Tue 22 November: Guest House, Union St, Southport, Lancashire Beers, Food, Charity Raffle and Entertainment with Southport Swords.

24 - 27 November: Barons Bar, Scarisbrick Hotel, Lord St, Southport, Lancashire Beers, Quiz and Town Crier/Proclamation.

24 - 27 November: Sir Henry Segrave (Wetherspoons), Lord St, Southport, Lancashire Beers, Food and Charity Raffle of Lancashire Goodies.

Sun 27 November: Inn Beer Shop, 657 Lord St, Southport. Lancashire Beers, Food and Proclamation.

Sun 27 November: The Hop Vine, Liverpool Road, Burscough, Lancashire Beers, Food, Charity Raffle, Proclamation and Entertainment with Tarleton Brass Band Sunday Afternoon.

You can read the Lancashire Day Proclamation here. All these venues sell real ale, and the Inn Beer Shop has the best bottled beer range for miles.

Prog rock band named after a brewery

2011-11-20T04:12:00.002Z

I've just discovered that a Midlands progressive rock band originally called themselves the MBs or the MB Five in the early 1960s in the hope that they'd get sponsorship from the Mitchells and Butlers brewery, which is often referred to as M&B. Both the band and the brewery are from the Birmingham area.

As they didn't get the sponsorship, they expanded their name to The Moody Blues and the rest as they say (etc). Who knows what could have come of it? Their big single might have been "Pubs That I've Sat In".

Local song for BBC folk awards

2011-11-18T04:28:00.005Z

Kevin Littlewood is a local singer songwriter and a resident singer at the Bothy Folk Club here in Southport; he and I have occasionally performed together. A few years ago, he wrote a song called On Morecambe Bay about the drowning in 2004 of 21 cockle pickers, all illegal immigrants mostly from the Fujian province of China. In humanising the tragic plight of illegal immigrants - a reviled category in modern Britain - who lost their lives simply trying to earn a living, the theme of the song has resonances of the Woody Guthrie song Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos), which was covered by Joan Baez.

It's a great song that deserves to be heard more widely, so it's good news that it's been picked up by Irish singer Christy Moore, a founder member of Moving Hearts and Planxty but now known mostly as a solo artist. His version of the song has been nominated in the Best Original Song category of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Here are all the nominations in the category:

The Herring Girl – Bella Hardy
Last – Adrian McNally (performed by The Unthanks)
On Morecambe Bay – Kevin Littlewood (performed by Christy Moore)
The Reckoning – Steve Tilston

The nominations in all categories are here. To say that locally we're all quite excited about this is probably an understatement. Here is Kevin singing his song, accompanied by fellow Bothy resident Chris Nelson on violin, with Christy Moore's cover version underneath. Which is best? It's up to you.

Lost pub - The Villiers, Liverpool

2011-11-16T00:48:00.002Z

The Villiers was a quaint old pub in Liverpool on the corner of Elliott Street and Market Street. It was like a local in the city centre, in much the same way that the nearby Globe still is. It served the excellent original Higson's (brewery closed by Whitbread, like so many others). I remember its steep stairs down to the gents which became more perilous after a few pints.

The last time I was in there was in May 1985 with my friend Pete (known to beer bloggers as Tandleman). We had just returned from our union (SCPS) conference in Eastbourne, a 7-day affair in those days that really taxed your stamina, especially with all the keg beer in the hotel bars where most of the union socials took place. I recall one morning coming down for breakfast in my hotel to see a coterie of Scots who were still drinking around the bar from the social the evening before (I'd hit the sack at around 3.30 am).

Pete and I went into the Villiers for a drink or two before going our separate ways - him in Liverpool and me home to Southport. Later that year it was demolished to make way for the Clayton Square shopping centre.

Legends strike right note for Queenscourt

2011-11-13T18:10:00.002Z

Our Lunchtime Legends gig on Friday (free entry - pass round the hat) raised £120.50 for Queenscourt Hospice. Thanks to all who came along, danced the night away and donated to this wonderful local charity. I'm still happy to accept donations if you weren't able to be there!

Till the next time then.

P.S. a late donation has increased the total to £130.50 - thanks.

Taxing the Sheep

2011-11-12T18:05:00.002Z

Reading What's Brewing, the CAMRA newspaper, I noticed that in the last financial year, Black Sheep brewery paid almost £7.5 million in alcohol duty, 41% of its entire annual turnover. No other industry, with the possible exception of tobacco, is similarly hit, but what happened to governments being committed to creating a competitive Britain for the 21st century? Many pubs and breweries are struggling because of the tax regime; as the government knows this, I can only conclude that they regard pub and brewery closures as a price worth paying. I don't see why I should pay excessive tax because certain other people believe that the legal product I choose to spend my own money on is a vice.

In the meantime, it's good that Black Sheep are making the point that beer is becoming unaffordable, because for many drinkers it is. Among the people I know, I can't think of anyone who's given up going to pubs because of the smoking ban, but I do know some who have stopped, or seriously restricted their visits, because of the prices.

Fag Ash Lil at the Mount

2011-11-10T14:50:00.003Z

I've just learnt that local classic rock band, Fag Ash Lil, are playing at the Mount Pleasant, Manchester Road, Southport this Saturday 12 November from around 915 pm.

Their website says: "Formed in 2001, we have produced two CDs, both recorded at Parr Street Studios, Liverpool, entitled How It Really Is and Not Sorry. As well as performing our original material, other tracks in the set are from Free, Led Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Jethro Tull, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Skunk Anansie and even The Sensational Alex Harvey Band! The vocals, provided by three members of the band, give a wide range of variety and diverse harmonies. The bass is solid and uncompromising and is complemented by driving percussion."

I've seen them several times and I'll be there on Saturday. The Mount serves real Tetley Bitter.

The Huers in Upholland

2011-11-08T13:46:00.003Z

The Huers, a local folk roots acoustic duo comprising Phil Caffrey and Ian Cleverdon, are doing a special gig next Saturday in Up Holland. Full details can be found on the website, but briefly they are:

An Evening with The Huers

Saturday 12th November at 7.30pm.

St Thomas The Martyr Parish Church, Church Street, Up Holland, Lancs, WN8 0ND.
Tickets are £6 each (refreshments included) with ALL proceeds going to church funds.

St Thomas’s is a former priory which is over 700 years old. That combined with special lighting and our acoustic-based music will hopefully lead to a very special night. To enquire about tickets, call 01695 627106; I understand that tickets are going really well. What’s more, there’s the White Lion across the road with Thwaites’ Wainwright usually on tap!

Also featuring special guest artist (and Huers sound engineer) Richard Abley.

Even zealots have their price

2011-11-07T16:19:00.007Z

Responsible marketing of cheap booze in Tesco earlier today

Strolling up Mount Pleasant in Liverpool today, I noticed this double window display of cut-price booze in the Tesco Express window. Then I thought of Tesco's "commitment" to a minimum price for alcohol, a commitment which consisted of doing nothing except issuing grand statements and waiting for the government to introduce a minimum price. Don Shenker, until recently Chief Executive of fake charity Alcohol Concern, said: “We welcome this announcement [in relation to minimum pricing] from Tesco and see these measures as important first steps towards more responsible supermarket alcohol sales."

We now have minimum pricing of sorts but it's still business as usual for cheap booze at Tesco's. When Alcohol Concern refused to support the government's Responsibility Deal Alcohol Network, Mr Shenker said: "By allowing the drinks industry to propose such half-hearted pledges on alcohol with no teeth, this government has clearly shown that when it comes to public health its first priority is to side with big business and protect private profit.”

Funny - when I looked into that Tesco window and remembered how Mr Shenker welcomed Tesco's initiatives (such as they were) on alcohol, I thought exactly the same thing about Alcohol Concern.

By the way, Don Shenker left Alcohol Concern recently when, due to a cut in government funding, his job became part-time. Clearly a part-time percentage of his former £70,000+ salary (largely paid by the tax payer) wasn't enough to live on. What was he spending it all on? Not champagne, I hope.

Lunchtime Legends in Southport

2011-11-05T13:38:00.002Z

The Legends at a previous
visit to the Park Golf Club

Next Friday 11 November, the Lunchtime Legends will be making their fifth visit to the Park Golf Club in Southport. The band play a wide range of classic pop songs by artists as diverse as Buddy Holly, Gene Vincent, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Sandy Posey, Brian Hyland, the Kinks, the Shirelles, Eddie Cochran, PP Arnold, and many others. They have their own distinctive style, using an unusual array of instruments for a rock & roll band: acoustic guitar, accordion, keyboard and drums.

Everyone is invited and admission is free; there will be a collection for Queenscourt Hospice, the local charity the band has raised funds for three times previously. It all begins at 7.30 p.m. at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS, which has ample parking and real ale.

The above is adapted from the press release I sent the local papers. The Legends consist of Candy Rell (vocals), Chris Harvey (keyboard, accordion), Clive Pownceby (drums, vocals) and Nev Grundy (vocals, guitar). Yes, it's the band I play with.

Brewery beer festival in Preston

2011-11-02T03:15:00.003Z

It seems that everyone is running beer festivals nowadays and in recent years, breweries have decided to get in on the act, which is good - more choice. Preston brewery, Arkwright's, is holding its 1st Beer Festival this weekend, 3 - 6 November at St Walburge's Church Hall, Weston Street, Preston, PR2 2QE. They tell us there will more than 100 real ales, ciders and perries, plus live music and other entertainment. Some of the proceeds will go to good causes. For more details, go to the festival website here.

Thu & Fri: 7 pm to 11 pm
Saturday: Noon to 11 pm
Sunday: 1 pm to 3 pm

I hope to get there, but other things may get in the way!

Chris Foster gig & other events this week

2011-10-30T15:44:00.006Z

Next Sunday 6 November the Bothy presents Chris Foster. Chris is a singer/guitarist from Somerset originally and is known for his interpretations of traditional and contemporary songs. He trained as an artist at the Norwich, and Chelsea Schools of Art. His professional break as a musician came in the early 1970s when a music agent spotted him singing at Dingles Folk Club in London. This led to eight years as a professional solo folk singer/guitarist. He recorded two acclaimed albums in the late 1970s: Layers and All Things in Common. Both featured mainly traditional songs with often complex fingerstyle accompaniments. Chris's career has taken several twists and turns since those days, and he now lives in Iceland, so it is a rare treat to be able to see him locally.

That's at the Bothy Folk Club, Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS at 8 p.m. On-line tickets here. The venue serves Thwaites real ale.

Ü Tonight (30 October) at the same venue is a Singers Night. Performers get in free.

Ü Wednesday 2 November sees the next singaround at the Mason's Arms, Anchor Street, behind the main post office on Lord Street. All welcome, especially performers. Free admission and real ale from Robinson's of Stockport.

"Why don't they believe us?" whinges minister

2011-10-27T23:06:00.008+01:00

Public health minister Anne Milton has bemoaned the fact that, despite government warnings, some people still continue to drink above the level they say is good for us. She also said that, despite the incidence of problem drinking, there was not currently any evidence available to justify altering the recommended safe limits. By alter she presumably means lower - no, Anne, you don't fiddle figures that lack credibility at their current levels. She recognises that many people simply don't believe government warnings. I wonder why that is Anne? Perhaps it's because politicians sometimes lie to us. We remember the weapons of mass destruction and the dodgy dossier, which politicians of all parties fell for, but, strangely enough, rather less of the general public did; or more recently, Theresa May's conference lies about the cat and the immigrant. On top of that, the simple truth is that most drinkers can't believe the recommended alcohol levels, especially since one of those involved in setting them admitted a couple of years ago that the figures were more or less plucked out of the air - more deceit.

In one respect, she shows some sense of reality by recognising that a minimum price for alcohol - favoured by her Labour shadow, Diane Abbott (the Lefty who sent her kid to private school) and the nanny statist Scottish National Party - is probably illegal, but steers straight back on track with her support for manipulating the market by the use of alcohol duty, such as the recent increase in duty on strong beer and reduction on weak beer that I discussed here. I can think we can therefore safely assume that the beer tax escalator is likely to stay.

But undeniable hypocrisy comes into play when she looks at her colleagues. She acknowledges that MPs were "susceptible" to "risky behaviour" like excessive drinking because of their anti-social hours and the time they spend away from family, but says she does not believe that any of Parliament's many bars should be shut down in a bid to make them more sober. And no mention at all of ending the taxpayers' subsidy of the prices they pay in those bars. With such double standards, Anne, is it really surprising that we find believing you and your mates so hard?

The original article is here.

Josh Harty and The Good Intentions

2011-10-26T17:33:00.005+01:00

Josh Harty

Grateful Fred's next guest is Josh Harty. Josh is the third generation of a family of musicians from the Dakotas. His latest CD, A Long List of Lies is proving popular with lovers of authentic American music.

"Harty has a warm, intimate performance style. You can ease into his songs from the first note and his voice has that perfect combination of resignation and hope. The songs are all downbeat, even mournful, and Harty's performances are utterly convincing, whether on the doom-laden Whiskey & Morphine, the more upbeat tune (but downbeat lyrics) of Sweet Solution" - Jeremy Searle, Americana UK, 2011.

The Good Intentions - the bank manager years

Josh will be supported by The Good Intentions, the Liverpool-based Americana/Bluegrass trio whose latest CD Someone Else's Time is receiving great reviews. They are winners of the British Country Music Awards - Best Americana Act of the Year 2011.

Grateful Fred meets at a NEW VENUE: Formby British Legion, Whitehouse Lane, Formby, L37 3LT. Full directions here and tickets are available on-line here. The music begins at 8.00 p.m.

Great Northern Beer Festival

2011-10-25T17:10:00.005+01:00

It's on this week in Manchester - click on the poster to read it more easily, or go to the festival website. Southport residents should remember that the trains are not running between Southport and Wigan, although you can go by train from Southport to Manchester via Liverpool.

Thu: 4.00 pm to 10.30 pm. Fri & Sat: midday to 10.30 pm.
£3 admission, including a £1 refundable deposit on the glass. Concessions apply.

Take Flight In Birkdale

2011-10-25T03:13:00.001+01:00

Local progressive band, the Frank Flight Band are playing a gig in the Blundell Arms in Birkdale this coming Saturday. Their sound has been described as "psychedelic, challenging, melodic music". They are happy to put a 16-minute song on their website, and are clearly prepared to take all the time the music may need. They are supported on this pre-Hallowe'en gig by a certain Nev Grundy. Come along and hear for yourself this Saturday 29th October upstairs at the Blundell Arms, Upper Aughton Road, Southport.

But I don't drink 7.5% beer ...

2011-10-20T13:58:00.017+01:00

As you may know, the government has introduced a higher rate of duty for beers above 7.5%. They say it will pay for cutting the duty on beers below 2.8%, but frankly I'm not convinced; anyone who accepts this excuse at face of value has underestimated the deviousness of governments. Having established the principle of different levels of duty, it would be a simple matter in future to reduce the percentage point at which the higher level of duty is payable, say to 6.5% in a couple of years' time, then to 5.5%, and so on, all rationalised by arguments about health, binge drinking and public disorder. Once the principle has been established, changing when the higher rate of duty kicks in is a mere detail.

I rarely drink beer of such strength, but if the trigger point for higher duty was reduced in stages to, say, 5%, then it would begin to affect me, my preferred strengths being in the 4 to 5.5% range. So that's one of the reasons why I've signed this petition calling on the government to reverse the tax increase, even though it doesn't affect me at present.

The petition gives other reasons to oppose this measure: "the higher rate of tax levied on beers brewed at 7.5% or above will have an adverse effect not only on small innovative British Breweries, but also on the independent retailers and local pubs who stock their produce. The way to tackle binge drinking amongst the young is with education not taxation."

The social anthropologist Kate Fox argued recently (see my previous post) that scaremongering and punitive tax increases are not only ineffectual but often counter-productive, meaning that government alcohol initiatives are a complete mess. This measure is just more of the same. It's time politicians took a mature and sensible approach to alcohol, not driven by tabloid headlines and the desire to be seen to "do something", believing that doing anything is better than doing nothing. Too often that simply isn't true. Please sign.

BBC Radio Merseyside Folkscene for the chop?

2011-10-18T14:31:00.023+01:00

BBC Radio Merseyside Folkscene is the country's oldest folk radio show. Stan Ambrose and Geoff Speed set up this excellent programme 44 years ago with their own money and have made it what it is today: the most listened to folk music programme on local radio. As you probably know, the BBC intends to make cuts by taking off the air such programmes. If they do, Radio Merseyside will end up sharing programmes with other regions of the country, almost certainly not folk, most likely current pop and golden oldies programmes. If you object, you have the following options:

Write to the Director-General of the BBC Mark Thompson and the BBC Trust which is currently carrying out a review of local radio. It's important to stress the uniqueness of Radio Merseyside Folkscene service, how NO OTHER station does what 'Folkscene' does and how important it is in reflecting the culture of the area please. Mark Thompson's e-mail is mark.thompson@bbc.co.uk and the BBC Trust's is trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk This is probably the best option.
Visit the complaints page of the BBC website and make (in the strongest terms) your objection to this type of cut. Website.
Write to Mick Ord, Editor of Radio Merseyside to express your support for Folkscene. By e-mail. By fax: 0151 794 0909. By post to: BBC Radio Merseyside, 31 College Lane, Liverpool, L1 3DS. Mark your e-mail, letter or fax: “For the attention of Mick Ord”.

Facebook page here. Save BBC local radio petition here.

Australian bouncers

2011-10-17T14:02:00.000+01:00

Good old Oz. They've come up with a novel solution to injuries caused by drunken falls: rubber pavements. They were originally installed to reduce the clanking noise caused by beer kegs and help keep them free from dents, when it was found they also cushioned the falls of boozers as they hit the ground. As a result many bars and clubs have begun replacing their concrete floors, especially around dance floors where drunken wannabe John Travoltas are most likely to come a cropper. A1 Rubber, a company that instals these floors, made from recycled tyres, has seen a 35% rise in business in the last 6 years.

Some people insist they don't solve the problems caused by excessive drinking, but one 22-year old Australian drinker doesn't give a XXXX for that, saying that the rubber sidewalks outside the his local were a much better option than "cracking my head on the kerb." He's right, you know. Full article here.

Thanks to Dave Thackeray who posted the link on Facebook.

Charity CD launch and concert

2011-10-14T14:24:00.001+01:00

On Saturday 22nd October, there will be a charity folk fundraising night for Queenscourt Hospice, Southport. The focus of the evening will be the launch of "The End of the Line", the latest CD of songs and poems written by Geoff Parry and recorded by various artists, including Chris & Siobhan Nelson, Raphael Callaghan, Chris Harvey, Pete Rimmer and Clive Pownceby. Many of the artists on the CD will be performing their songs on the night. The evening will be dedicated to the memory of friends of the performers who were looked after in the hospice.

The venue is the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 9DU, beginning at at 7.30 p.m. Admission is free, although there will be a collection for Queenscourt. Sales of the new album (minimum contribution £5) will also be donated to the Hospice.

Drunken disorder - all in the mind

2011-10-13T16:14:00.013+01:00

When I was a student, it used to interest me seeing how the various student tribes handled their drink. At the extremes, the PE students would all sit around in track suits singing rugby songs - I got fed up of hearing the tedious and rambling misfortunes of Constable Peckham - and the drama students would become even more luvvy-ish than usual. The politicos would sit in corners to talk about the latest international trouble spot, say things like, "It's all happening in Nicaragua", and sup their Greenall Whitley while waiting for the revolution.

If the media caricature of the effects of alcohol had any basis in reality, there shouldn't have been these marked differences in behaviour and instead you'd expect a lot of trouble and fighting, but in fact that was rare. I formed the view a long time ago that people develop certain habits about drinking quite early on and tend to stick with them, meaning that a lager lout of 20 years ago may well be a saga lout in 20 years' time.

Kate Fox

I was therefore interested to see this notion supported in an article by social anthropologist Kate Fox, who says: "The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol." In other words, if we think we should get aggressive after drinking, then that's what will happen. Similarly, if we think we should get flirty, than that will happen too, and so on.

I do recall reading in the 1970s that some researchers asked young lager drinkers to take part in a bogus study and their reward was as much tinned lager as they wanted, which of course was the real research. The drinkers didn't know the lager was alcohol-free and they began to behave as though they were getting drunk.

Kate Fox explains why all our alcohol education programmes are self-defeating - the old Law of Unintended Consequences again - and asserts: "If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem - a nation in which young people would binge-drink coffee every Friday and Saturday night and then rampage around town centres being anti-social, getting into fights and having unprotected sex in random one-night stands." She then tells us how she'd do this - it's quite funny, but utterly credible.

Her article also prompts the thought that the excessive penalties heaped upon the heads of licensees who serve under age drinkers only prevent young people from developing acceptable patterns of behaviour in controlled environments, instead sending them to shape their own drinking habits with the help of super-strength lagers, ciders and vodka, heavily influenced by hysterical and inaccurate propaganda about the effects of booze on behaviour. That old law again.

I wonder if the pretend charity Alcohol Concern has read her article? I doubt they'd want to because in around 1400 words she completely demolishes their entire strategy, which is almost completely funded by public money - now even more obviously a complete waste, especially in the current economic climate.

Ease Olympic stress with a beer ~ official

2011-10-11T16:45:00.011+01:00

We all know that London is going to be bulging at the seams during the Olympic Games next year, and that the capital's elderly transport systems that are already operating near capacity will face a challenge (we're not allowed to use negative words like 'problem' anymore). Transport for London Commissioner Peter Hendy recently briefed London Assembly officials on the capital's readiness for the Olympics and he had several ideas for coping with the conflicting demands of the Games and the rush hour. As well as some worthy-but-dull advice, such as working from home, staggering working hours, use your bike, telephone conferencing, etc, he also suggested: "On one or two of the days [London Bridge] will be very, very crowded and the best thing to do ... is to have a beer before you go home."

I suppose that's one way of staggering your journeys.

The full BBC news item is here.

Spoons beerex

2011-10-09T15:42:00.001+01:00

The Sir Henry Segrave, Southport

I've just realised that the Wetherspoons Real Ale and Cider Festival, which they modestly describe as the world's biggest, began last Wednesday and will be on at all Spoons and Lloyds No 1 pubs. Their website says, "This time we are featuring five American craft ales as well as plenty of new and special brews to try. On this site, you will find the full list of 50 festival Ales."

Our local Spoons in Southport is the Sir Henry Segrave, which I much prefer to our Lloyds, the Willow Grove, but there are those I know who hold the opposite view. It's on for another two weeks until the 23rd. On past experience, I'd say it's definitely worth a visit.

Simon Barron and Rosalind Brady in Southport

2011-10-07T14:43:00.002+01:00

I don't know a great deal about Simon Barron and Rosalind Brady other than that they live in Devon and their repertoire includes their own songs and interpretations of traditional English folk song. They are the guests this Sunday 9 October at the Bothy Folk Club in the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. You can get tickets on-line here, or on the door. The venue sells real ale from Thwaites.

I rather like this video of one of their songs:

Bert Jansch

2011-10-05T16:46:00.007+01:00

I've just learnt that Bert Jansch, one of the most influential guitarists of his generation, died last night of cancer at the age of 67; I hadn't known that he was ill. Bert Jansch was admired as a solo performer, but was also known for many musical collaborations, particularly as part of a duo with John Renbourn and as a member of innovative folk-jazz band, Pentangle. Many guitarists in the folk and the rock worlds have acknowledged their debt to and admiration for Bert Jansch, including Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin who recorded Jansch's arrangement of Black Waterside virtually note for note and renaming it Black Mountain Side. This was controversial as Page neither credited Jansch or paid him any royalties.

I saw him several times on solo gigs and once with John Renbourn, and the first LP I ever owned was the Bert Jansch Sampler; my own attempts at the instrumental Angie were derived from playing the track from that album over and over again. I still sometimes like to listen to his lyrical album Rosemary Lane.

The video below is of Bert Jansch playing Black Waterside, a song that he learned from the legendary folk singer Anne Briggs, a debt that that he did acknowledge. BBC report here.

Kellie and the Lion

2011-10-05T13:56:00.005+01:00

Singer-songwriter Kellie While is making a return visit to the Bothy Folk Club after an absence of several years. Kellie used to live in the Southport area and is the daughter of singer Chris While, who has herself performed at the Bothy on several occasions.

Kellie has performed with many folk luminaries, including a spell with the Albion Band and E2K and has worked as a duo with her mother. The Sydney Morning Herald said that she had "surely the greatest voice to emerge from the English folk scene since Sandy Denny". That's quite a compliment!

I first saw Kellie about 19 years ago when she agreed to play at the Bold Arms Beer Festival for which I had arranged a folk evening featuring various local artists (headlined by Kellie's mum!). Although she was then only in her mid teens, she impressed the audience with her voice, her songs, some original, and her endearing stage presence. One friend said to me on the night: "That girl is really going to go places."

The gig is at the Bothy Folk Club, Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS, on Thursday 13 October at 8.00pm. Tickets on-line here, or on the door, subject to availability. The venue sells real ale from Thwaites.

Lion Tavern Singaround
Unfortunately I can't make Kellie's gig as the event clashes with my monthly singaround at the Lion Tavern in Moorfields, Liverpool, which starts at around 8.30 pm, is free and all are welcome. The Lion serves eight cask beers. It's disappointing when things clash like this.

CAMRA ... there for the well-heeled?

2011-10-03T14:42:00.004+01:00

I've just read a headline in October's What’s Brewing (the CAMRA newspaper), "Booming real ale sales", and below it in the article, "cask only dipped by an estimated two per cent". Since when does a dip constitute a boom?

Also portrayed as good news in the article is the fact that 69% of real ale drinkers are now in social class ABC1. Is real ale expanding its customer base upwards or, in a declining market, is it losing its working class customers? I suspect a bit of both, but the loss of the working class market to whole swathes of inner city pubs that serve only smoothflow is not the good news that the WB article implies. 30 years ago my uncle ran a back street pub in Bootle, which sold real ale through electric hand pumps – not unusual then, but almost unheard of now. A mass market for real ale was wiped out without, apparently, a single tear from CAMRA, possibly because these pubs didn't meet the approved ABC1 demographic.

With above-inflation beer duty rises and pub company rip-offs, ale is increasingly an expensive niche product that ordinary people - not your wealthy professionals - are finding harder to afford. Feel-good articles should not blind us to the reality of the situation: beer sales are dropping and pubs closing.

If CAMRA is turning into the voice of the well-heeled drinker, as this article seems to suggest, I may begin to have doubts about being a member.

Cigarette machines banned in England

2011-10-01T13:11:00.012+01:00

As from today, cigarette machines are banned in pubs in England, with the rest of the UK following suit next year. The BBC News item with stats and arguments for and against is here.

I was in the Thatched Pub and Grill on Monday when a man came in from the vending machine company to tell the licensee that they would probably collect the machine by Saturday (i.e. today), but if they hadn't, to turn the machine around so it faced the wall. I thought that odd - why not just switch it off? - until I learnt that licensees "must ensure all tobacco advertising on vending machines is removed. Any person found guilty of displaying cigarette adverts on a vending machine could face imprisonment for up to six months, a fine of £5,000, or both."

Prison for displaying a cigarette advert? That's worse than the smoking ban laws whereby a failure to display "no smoking" signs could result in a fine of up to £1000, or even the £2500 maximum fine for not preventing smoking on the premises, even though the actual smoker faces a maximum fine of only £200 (I've never thought it fair that the licensee faces heavier punishment than the smoker). Such criminalising of licensees for these offences is grossly disproportionate. As a regular pub goer, I don't recall ever seeing children buying cigarettes from pub vending machines, which is not to say it never happens, but I do wonder how far the stats and figures quoted are speculative? The BBC news item states: "It is ... estimated that 35 million cigarettes are sold illegally through vending machines to children every year." (My emphasis)

Also, Trading Standards sending in under age volunteers and finding children can buy cigarettes this way isn't proof that children do in great numbers. Besides, isn't this a form of entrapment?

If the government wishes to ban cigarette machines as potentially being subject to such misuse, fair enough, but the penalties introduced are draconian and excessive*, seeing that cigarettes are not actually illegal. I wonder whether any trade association is taking the matter further?

* Please note: I am not referring to the existing penalties for selling tobacco to children, but to the new penalties for not closing the machines down and for not removing the adverts.

Sarah MacDougall at Grateful Fred's

2011-09-29T16:32:00.006+01:00

Sarah MacDougall is a Canadian singer songwriter who is making waves, not only in her home country, but also over here in England. She was born in Sweden, and Canadian newspaper 24 Hours Vancouver described her as "one of the most promising exports out of Sweden since Abba". Yes, well ... so, here's what else they're saying:

“She could make stone weep. Classic North American folk.” - Q Magazine ****
“Heartbreakingly beautiful” - Americana UK
"I love your album." - Bob Harris, BBC 2

She is appearing locally with Bob Hamilton on bass and Tim Tweedale on lapsteel at Grateful Fred's in the Freshfield Hotel, Massams Lane, Formby on Thursday 6 October. Support is by British singer songwriter, Steph Fraser. The Freshfield has a good range of real ales.

Tickets on line here, and as some recent G/Fred events have been sold out, advance purchase may prevent disappointment.

Treasury boosts foreign imports of beer

2011-09-28T02:12:00.006+01:00

Following on from my previous post, I learnt about this news item on Tandleman's Beer Blog. The extract below is from the Morning Advertiser, the pub trade news paper:

"Illicit beer now accounts for up to 14% of total UK sales, up 40% in just one year, according to figures from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). Duty: £800m in lost revenue from duty and VAT. It means the Treasury lost an estimated £800m in 2009/2010 in lost revenue from duty and VAT. In 2008/2009, the figure was £550m, with illicit beer making up 10% of the market share. The figures suggest that rising duty and the VAT increase at the start of the year is fuelling the rise in illegal imports of beer that generate no tax revenue for the Exchequer. Meanwhile, there was also a noticeable rise in illicit spirits in the UK. Illicit spirits in 2009/2010 accounted for up to 11% of the market share (2008/2009: 8%), with estimated losses for the Treasury as much as £440m (2008/2009: £310m)."

Tandleman opens an interesting discussion about how accurate the figures are, with contributions from other people, and while that discussion is relevant and informed, my main conclusion is this: if the government believes these figures, no matter what doubts any of us may have about their accuracy, then they are fiscally irresponsible to continue raising alcohol duty above the rate of inflation, especially when the economy is still in the mess the bankers created. As an aside, I'm not sure which is going up more quickly - beer tax or bankers' bonuses? Either way, we're being ripped off.

Freezing beer tax (I'm not naïve enough to foresee a cut) therefore would: help save pubs from closure and reduce job losses; help the economy by not making illegal imports even more attractive; and will help our brewers by restricting illegal competition. Will a fiscally prudent chancellor see it that way?

A plague on both their houses

2011-09-24T17:08:00.000+01:00

On Radio 4's You and Yours yesterday, there was a discussion about the report by the Business Innovation and Skills select committee on pub companies (‘pubcos’) that recommends "the introduction of a statutory code, with a genuine free of tie option, based on an open market rent review to help balance out the tenant/pubco relationship". The select committee chair was adamant that, as pubos had failed with self-regulation, statutory regulation was required to safeguard the pub industry.

Then came a spokesperson from the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) who said that inflexible statutory regulation was unnecessary as the industry was sorting the problems out, and that the pub tie was an excellent businesss model whereby people who wanted to run their own businesses could do so quickly and easily. She said that if politicians were so concerned about the pub trade, they should stop piling on the beer tax, which has gone up by 35% in recent years.

Both of course are right and both are wrong: each correctly criticises the other, but neither takes responsibility for their own part in the problems facing pubs, including the high rate of closures. As someone once said, take the plank out of your own eye before offering to remove the speck of dust from your brother's.

In the meantime, a new report from accountancy firm Ernst & Young states that British beer tax accounts for 40% of the entire European beer tax bill, even though the UK accounts for only 13% of EU beer consumption. In my view, increases in beer tax have become self-defeating, with no increased income for the government as people drink less and less to compensate for the rocketing prices, and despite what you read alcohol consumption in the UK is slowly dropping. Throw in the costs of businesses going bust, including bankruptcies, job losses and state benefits, and you'd probably find that further increases in beer tax will actually lose the Treasury income.

And as for the BBPA's rosy view of the pubco tie, there are so many people (some I have spoken to) who have sunk their savings into running their own pub only to find the figures for turnover were exaggerated, that they have to pay well over the market rate for supplies of all drinks, that if they manage to turn a pub around despite pubco restrictive conditions and it become a success, the rent is arbitrarily increased so that it is the pubco, not the licensee, who reaps the benefits of all that hard work, and that if they are less successful, they may have to give up the pub and are left with nothing but debt.

If it were up to me, I'd take the BBPA's recommendations on beer tax and the select committee's report on statutory regulation. That couldn't solve problems overnight, but would perhaps begin a process of recovery rather than the slow decline we are now witnessing.

Sandgrounder Beerfest Beer List

2011-09-21T13:03:00.002+01:00

The beer list is now available for the Southport Beer Festival - click here.

For times, entry charges and a map, click here.

It begins tomorrow at 6pm and is open all day Friday and Saturday. I hope to see you there.

Dave Thornley and the Dharma Bums gig

2011-09-20T15:14:00.002+01:00

A free gig by Dave Thornley and the Dharma Bums at the Park Golf Club on Thursday 29 September, beginning at 9.00 pm:

The Park Golf Club is on Park Road West, Southport, PR9 9DU, and it sells real ale from Thwaites.

If you want to sound knowledgeable, The Dharma Bums is a novel by Jack Kerouac, author of On The Road.

Sandgrounder Beer Festival 2011

2011-09-18T17:46:00.004+01:00

Next weekend, Southport plays host to the 12th Sandgrounder Beer Festival. It opens at 6pm on Thursday 22 September and at midday on Friday and Saturday; it closes at 11pm on all three days. Entry is free to CAMRA members (£1 on Friday after 6pm), and £3 to non-members (£4 on Friday after 6pm). The extra pound on Friday evening is for the local band Gallimaufry who went down rather well last year. They play a wide range of music from folk to the Beatles, and are not deafening.

I have decided not to do my usual Saturday afternoon slot after complaints from one or two individuals yet again that my solo voice and acoustic guitar were too loud! The festival is in two rooms, so if you don't feel like listening to the music, you can go into the other room; the bars are in the room without the music. There will be more than 60 beers, ciders, perries and fruit wines.

The festival is upstairs in the Scarisbrick Hotel, 239 Lord Street, Southport, PR8 1NZ, about 5 minutes walk from the railway station. Click here for more details and a map.

Just in case you're wondering, a Sandgrounder is a person who was born in Southport. As I was born in a certain city 20 miles to the south, I don't qualify.

Southport's pubs are "thriving"

2011-09-17T18:26:00.001+01:00

The latest edition of our local paper, the Southport Visiter, has a cheery headline about local pubs: "Pub scene thriving as nine Southport locals make CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide." The article itself is okay as far as it goes, but it's the headline that drew my attention. Are our local pubs really thriving? Sadly, the answer is no, they're not. As I reported in July, according to the British Beer and Pub Association, pub sales were down by 4.5% in the three months to June as beer tax and VAT rises wiped out the positive impact of the warm weather and the royal wedding, and in the year to June, beer sales were down by 7.1% as the various tax rises added 10p to the price of a pint in pubs.

I added that pubs that used to be packed may still be fairly busy, but have lost trade nonetheless, and pubs that weren't so busy are facing lean times. Southport is supposed to be a holiday resort, but many of the local pubs were almost empty at the height of summer, which should be their peak time, and I fear that some may close. The full post is here.

Southport is fortunate in having some great pubs, better than many seaside towns I've been to, but I find the complacency of that Visiter headline irritating. I understand it was meant to be a "feel good" article, but if it misleads people into thinking that all's well with our local pubs, I'm not sure that it's doing them many favours. Perhaps I'm overreacting; let's hope it encourages a few more people to go out and enjoy what's on their doorstep.

It was 50 years ago today ...

2011-09-15T15:22:00.002+01:00

... when a group from Hawthorne in California called The Pendletones attended their first real recording session at Hite Morgan's studio in Los Angeles. They took their name from the classic Pendleton wool plaid shirt, which then became popular among American youth. The band recorded Surfin’, a song that would help shape their career as The Beach Boys. Later with albums like Pet Sounds, they went way beyond the surfing sound that they, and groups like Jan and Dean, popularised. As it happens, Brian Wilson is currently on tour in Britain.

The Beach Boys sound is present and correct here, although a bit rudimentary compared to their later classic pop singles.

Deregulation - music to the ears!

2011-09-14T18:36:00.003+01:00

The government has finally announced proposals to remove regulations from a whole swathe of activities, including live music performances. You can read the announcement and a link to the consultation paper on the DirectGov website, and in an article in the Morning Advertiser. This is something I've written about before, most recently in July last year (here if you're interested), and the document echoes my comparison between acoustic music played in a pub and big screen sports ~ I'd like to think my blog is read by ministers, but I doubt it! The consultation paper describes the current confused situation as:

"You will need a licence if you want to put on an opera but not if you want to organise a stock car race. A folk duo performing in the corner of a village pub needs permission, but the big screen broadcast of an England football match to a packed barn-like city centre pub does not. An athletics meeting needs licensing if it is an indoor event, but not if it’s held outdoors. A free school concert to parents doesn’t need a licence, but would if there is a small charge to raise money for PTA funds or if there are members of the wider public present. A travelling circus generally needs a permit whereas a travelling funfair does not. A carol concert in a Church doesn’t need a licence, but does if it is moved to the Church Hall."

The proposal is that music events will require no licences with audiences up to 5,000. This is rather more than the 100-200 figure that some groups were lobbying for. The document sensibly asks whether unamplified music needs any limit at all, on the basis that "no audience limit is necessary due to the self- limiting possibilities from the event’s acoustic reach", but I can't think of any unamplified event where a 5,000 limit would ever be even remotely approached.

In the run-up to the "New" Labour government's implementing the current regime in 2003, Kim Howells, a junior Culture Minister at the time, contributed to the debate in 2001 by saying, "For a simple urban boy such as me, the idea of listening to three Somerset folk singers sounds like hell." This caused a lot of anger in the folk world and provoked West Country folk group Show of Hands to respond with the song Roots, which includes the lines:

And a minister said his vision of hell
Is three folk singers in a pub near Wells
Well, I've got a vision of urban sprawl
There's pubs where no-one ever sings at all
And everyone stares at a great big screen
Overpaid soccer stars, prancing teens
Australian soap, American rap
Estuary English, baseball caps

Apologies and attempts to claim it was a joke soon followed but I can't help wondering whether it was just such personal prejudices among many MPs about all types of live music, not just folk, that led to the dog's breakfast of regulations we are stuck with now.

This consultation is looking very positive, as the government says it is inclined to accept deregulation unless persuaded otherwise; when I work out how to take part in the consultation, I'll publish another post.

The Pitmen Poets, Wigan

2011-09-13T16:48:00.002+01:00

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

Friday the 14th October will see a rare line-up of four of the North East's most popular folk singers and song writers for a special concert to celebrate the coal mining traditions of their region. Billy Mitchell, Bob Fox, Benny Graham and Jez Lowe, under the collective name of the Pitmen Poets, will be playing at Wigan Parish Church from 8pm (there's no support act) with doors at 7.15 pm. I'm posting this more in advance than I usually would as I've been told tickets are going fast. They cost £15 in advance and £17 on the night. Phone 01942 824291 or e-mail for tickets and further details.

The church is on Crawford St, Wigan, WN1 1NL, about 5 minutes' walk from the railway stations and close to the bus station. I understand wine is available in the venue, and I know that there are several good real ale pubs just a few minutes' walk away (click here).

Beer rip off ~ no surprises there!

2011-09-12T15:13:00.009+01:00

A study carried out by the GMB union shows that the price of beer is far higher than can be justified by inflation and taxation alone, and blames the sky-high rents charged by the property/pub companies who own a huge number of pubs. It estimates that lager drinkers are charged an excess 80p, while the figure for ale drinkers is 65p. The article is here.

It's clear to me that pub companies don't really care whether a pub succeeds or not; if it fails, then they have a valuable piece of property to sell. When brewers owned most of the pubs, they needed them as an outlet for their products and it wasn't in their interest for their pubs to fail. Then came the Beer Orders of 20 years ago that by forcing breweries to sell most of their pubs created the present situation which has perhaps the most stupid business model going, one that has no incentive to succeed and which rewards failure. The Beer Orders were supported by CAMRA at the time, which with hindsight was a magnificent own goal, and another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

It's not really news, but it's interesting in a depressing sort of way to have one's opinions confirmed.

If you wish, you can find out how much beer has gone up above inflation since you bought your first pint by using the historical price converter in the right hand column. I entered the price of a pint of bitter in the year I went to college (13p in 1972); if beer had increased only by inflation since then, a pint would be £1.30 today!

Liverpool Pubs Map

2011-09-12T12:07:00.004+01:00

Liverpool & Districts CAMRA have just updated their real ale pubs map which is available free in pubs that stock their magazine, Mersey Ale. It covers several areas: the city centre, Crosby, Waterloo, Bootle, North Liverpool, West Derby, and South Liverpool. With more than 100 pubs listed, it certainly gives plenty of scope for pub crawls, and I was surprised to find out how many pubs I haven't visited. There is a large advert for Caledonian, which is fair enough as they sponsored it, but as for the rest, there is a picture of each pub, the name of the road it is in, with a corresponding number on the map. It makes no comment on the types or quality of beer available - it's simply a list of pubs that sell real ale at the time of publication.

I think this is an excellent idea, but unfortunately not possible for my own branch (Southport and District) owing to its much larger geographical area. You can see the map on their website - find it here - and download it if you want, but I find a paper copy is much easier to use.

Liverpool One Brewery

2011-09-11T13:37:00.007+01:00

Our local branch of CAMRA (Southport and District) had a trip to the Liverpool One Brewery last Friday. We met in the Lion Tavern in Moorfields, where licensee Sean Porter was surprised to see me two nights running (it had been my singaround the previous evening). After a couple of pints there, we left on the 10-minute walk to Vauxhall Road (in Liverpool 3!) and reached the industrial unit that houses the brewery. There's nothing outside to show what business the building contains, but when you go in, you can't mistake the familiar paraphernalia of a micro-brewery.

It's a 5-barrel brewery, although they hope to expand in time, but at present it is running close to capacity. The head brewer Gary gave a brief talk to us as we ate our bowls of scouse about the brewery, including how he'd learnt brewing from Stan Shaw at the Wapping Brewery in the Baltic Fleet, no doubt an excellent apprenticeship. The brewery has been going for around 18 months, and is one of an increasing number of micros in the Liverpool area, which is great for us drinkers. On sale to us at £1.50 a pint were two cask beers: Liverpool Light, a pale hoppy citrus beer (4.1%) and Liverpool Dark (5%), described as "a traditional stout, packed with roasted and toasted flavours with a dry finish." I found the latter very powerfully flavoured, and though I liked it, I don't think I'd drink much more than a couple, but I could have drunk the Light all evening; it's a very good example of the style. One of our group asked about the bottling process: we were told that the bottles were done by hand, surely very time-consuming.

I was interested to learn that the Bridewell pub, which I visited at the end of June (you can read it here), is actually their brewery tap, and very useful for them to try beers out and, if necessary, tweak them before going into full scale production. The Bridewell, a former lock up, is one of Liverpool's most unusual pubs where you can drink in the former cells.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the visit to the brewery, and afterwards Ian, Carole and I went to the extremely crowded Ship and Mitre on Dale Street for a couple of beers before catching the last train to Southport.

I've just noticed that the brewery's website proudly proclaims that their beer Mersey Mist won Silver in the IPA and Lager category at this year's Macclesfield Beer Festival. I'm sure there'll be more.

Beer festivals and stats

2011-09-08T16:53:00.000+01:00

Looking at the stats for this blog, I see that my updated beer festival page is by far the most popular one on the blog with 83 recent hits, followed by my events page with 36. I've included every kind of beer festival I can find, including those organised by CAMRA, Rotary, pubs, sports and social clubs and charities. I've gone as far afield as Cumbria, Cheshire and the Manchester area because drinkers are often prepared to travel to a festival they like the look of. Besides, there may be a few people in those areas who read this blog. I also included one in Belgrade for a laugh, but I'm not sure anyone noticed. There is of course looming close now our own Sandgrounder Beer Festival in Southport from 22 to 24 September - more info here.

While on the subject of stats, the 2nd anniversary of me installing the stats counter has just been reached (I installed it when the blog was 6 months old) on 1 September. In the first year of the counter, I got 7138 hits; in the second year the figure was 14,961, which is slightly more than double. I'm pleased about this indication that people find the blog a useful source of information which isn't collated anywhere else as far as I know. And you definitely won't find my views, opinions and rants about beer and music anywhere else at all - for which no doubt some people will be eternally grateful!

Beer range in Baron's Bar

2011-09-05T13:27:00.006+01:00

I'd heard various reports that the beer range in the Baron's Bar (in the Scarisbrick Hotel on Lord Street, Southport) had diminished from nine to 2 or 3 after the takeover of the hotel by Britannia Hotels, so I decided to check this CAMRA award-winning bar for myself. I went in yesterday afternoon and found every one of the 10 handpumps in operation. The beers served were:

Flag and Turret (the house beer); Fullers ESB; Spitfire; Tetley Bitter; Black Sheep; Bishops Finger; Hobgoblin; Pedigree; and Old Hooky. The 10th handpump as usual served Weston's Old Rosie cider. For interest, the Fullers ESB, a 5.5% beer, was £2.60 a pint, rather less than the £3.70 I paid in London six months ago.

This range seems to concentrate on regional brewers rather than microbrewers, and can therefore be seen to be less imaginative; it'd be a pity if the Baron's stopped selling the local Southport beers altogether, but perhaps I'm drawing too many conclusions from one visit. The good news is that all the handpumps are operating; a few more visits will show us whether in future the range will consist only of "the usual suspects", although if we're honest, a lot of real ale drinkers would be quite satisfied with the choice available yesterday.

Local drinkers' concerns about the Baron's Bar after the takeover have been added to by Greene King's planned conversion of the Freshfield to a Hungry Horse (see post of 31 August), which will almost certainly mean the loss of the great range of beers that that pub currently offers; real ale fans have been worried we might be losing two good local real ale venues. It just shows the truth of the cliché that you can't take anything for granted.

One other piece of news is that the Scarisbrick's new management have confirmed that they will honour the booking for the Sandgrounder Beer Festival (22 - 24 September) to take place in the hotel.

Back to normal

2011-09-04T14:35:00.001+01:00

Now that we are in late summer, our local music events begin to return to normal.

The Bothy: tonight is the final free summer singaround, and next Sunday the first guest of the autumn season guest is Jim Causley, a young singer from Devon. He has appeared at the Bothy before as part of the Devil's Interval. He also opened for the Lunchtime Legends in Whitby last year, perhaps something he'd prefer to forget!

On Monday, my singaround in the Guest House, Union Street, Southport will take place from around 8.30 p.m. Up to 10 real ales, which last night included the excellent Moorhouse's Blond Witch.

On Wednesday there will be a singaround in the Mason's Arms in Anchor Street, behind the main post office on LordStreet, Southport. The beer is either Robinsin's Unicorn or Dizzy Blonde.

On Thursday, my singaround in the Lion Tavern in Moorfields, Liverpool. A splendid little pub with eight changing real ales.

These singarounds are free and anyone can join in ~ and these are just the ones I'm most often involved with; for others, see my What's On page.

Higsionary - pt 2

2011-09-02T15:10:00.002+01:00

Another volume of the Higsionary from the old Higson's Brewery of Liverpool, courtesy of Clive Pownceby. Click on it so you can read it more easily. Click here for Higsionary - pt 1.

Freshfield to be a Hungry Horse

2011-08-31T14:21:00.002+01:00

The Freshfield Hotel in Formby sells 10 real ales and a real cider, the best range of beer in Formby by far, and has regular music nights, such as open mike nights, the monthly Grateful Fred's roots and acoustic club and a monthly jazz night. I am consequently rather concerned to hear that the owners Greene King are going to turn it into a Hungry Horse pub. A look at the website shows that Hungry Horse is all about food: the only reference to beer on the entire site is: "Our pubs are known for high quality, big value food, a choice of beers, ales and drinks to suit all tastes." Notice that even in that one sentence, food is mentioned first.

The function room will probably be converted to a restaurant, which will force out all the music nights and I can't see them retaining the great range of beers, because that is not what this chain is about. I tried to look on the pub's own website, but it seems to have been taken down.

I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it ~ it will be a shame to lose such a great real ale and music venue. I'll let you know if I hear anything new.

Always look on the Brightside ...

2011-08-30T14:40:00.003+01:00

News of another new microbrewery: Brightside in Bury, Greater Manchester. It's some way from where I live, but I'm hoping the beers will find their way to north Merseyside. It's called Brightside because it was set up at the height (or should that be the depth?) of the recession, and no doubt bar staff are already weary of punters singing the Monty Python song ~ I like to think I'd resist the temptation, but I'm not sure.

Its core range is:

Best Bitter, 4.3%, a dark amber best bitter.
Maverick, 4.8%, a light amber IPA.
Darkside, 4.3%, a black stout.
Solstice, 4.5%, a light golden ale.

While that seems a rather good range that would meet most preferences, they also have plans for occasional special beers. At present they are sold in and around the Bury area, but they plan to sell further afield: let's hope they come our way soon.

Roy Bailey in Liverpool

2011-08-30T02:19:00.001+01:00

Roy Bailey (right) with Tony Benn

Veteran socialist folk singer Roy Bailey is appearing in Liverpool on Saturday 10 September at Radical Liverpool. Colin Irwin from Mojo magazine said Roy represents "the very soul of folk's working class ideals ... a triumphal homage to the grass roots folk scene as a radical alternative to the mainstream music industry." As if to illustrate this, Roy has performed in shows with Tony Benn, with Roy singing and Tony speaking. Roy doesn't just perform political anthems; his music tends to be more thoughtful and varied, not always obviously political, and often humorous. His stage presence is self-effacing, not preachy. I have seen him many times and have always been impressed not only by his integrity and commitment, but also by the fact that his performances are entertaining and enjoyable as well.

He will be at Studio 2 of the Parr Street Studios, 33-35 Parr Street, Liverpool, L1 4JN. Doors at 7.00 pm. Ticket are £9, available here, or £10 on the door. Support is by Our Morals, the house band, and The Trestles, a local band. Radical Liverpool is a new music venue in the city that will meet on the second Saturday of each month.

Everyman folk Fly to new venue

2011-08-29T02:15:00.009+01:00

Chris and Hughie Jones's folk club at the Everyman Theatre has moved to a new venue following the closure of the theatre for a major rebuild. Their folk club now meets on Wednesday nights (instead of Tuesday) upstairs in the Fly In The Loaf, 13 Hardman Street, Liverpool. As before, admission is free, although they will as before hold a raffle and pass the hat around.

The Fly In The Loaf was formerly the wine bar Kirklands, which was named after a bakery, once boasting a royal warrant, that used to occupy these premises. It has six changing cask ales, and is worth a visit anyway, although in my opinion not when the big screen sports are on as they tend to dominate everything completely, something I regard as completely unnecessary in a pub this size. The building itself is distinctive and interesting both inside and out, as the picture suggests.

1st Ship Inn Beer Festival

2011-08-28T16:02:00.008+01:00

The Ship Inn (also known as the Blood Tub), an attractive canalside pub in Lathom near Burscough, will be holding its first Beer, Cider, Pie and Sausage Festival from the 9 to 11 September. It will be run in a marquee next to the pub and will feature:

32 cask ales.
11 ciders.
Ship Ale of the Year voting.
Moorhouse’s v. Great Britain Challenge.
King Pie competition: 12 varieties prepared by their own chefs.
Sausage barbeque.
Live music.

The Ship is at 4 Wheat Lane, Lathom, Lancashire, L40 4BX, which is less than a mile from both Burscough Junction and Burscough Bridge railway stations.

The nickname Blood Tub apparently refers to the barrels of blood, used for black puddings, which were carried on the adjacent Leeds-Liverpool canal.

Whitby Folk Week 2011

2011-08-28T13:44:00.014+01:00

My housemates, Alan and Rose, enjoying
a drink at Scalby Mill, Scarborough

I got home yesterday from my annual visit to Whitby Folk Week; we had a great time as usual. Our annual Lunchtime Legends gig in the Elsinore on Flowergate, our 20th in this venue, went down well; it was so hot in this small pub that after our 34-song set, I looked as though someone had poured a bucket of water over me. It was good to have Jez Lowe joining us again on bass, and the great Pete Coe opened for us with a very dirty-sounding distorted guitar, singing songs like I Hear You Knocking, I Fought The Law (And the Law Won) and the Kinks’ song Superman. Although we had no new recordings, we sold 4 CDs - and even 3 cassettes, believe it or not. Candy Rell’s rendition of the Dusty Springfield classic, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, got the whole pub singing. Hi Ho Silver Lining and Your Sixteen finished our set as always; the one time we did Hi Ho half way through, they wouldn't let us go until we played it again at the end!

Boggart's Breakfast dancing in Whitby

The following day, with my voice already slightly hoarse, I ended up doing another couple of hours in The Station pub, which was also good fun. The Station has some good varied song and music sessions during folk week, while the Elsinore is a magnet each evening for accordion-driven tune playing. The standard of performance of many of the music session performers, who play just for pleasure, can be very high, attracting appreciative crowds of drinkers who are happy to stand and watch. In particular, I saw a group of young female fiddle players in the Station performing with obvious energy and enthusiasm.

Whitby wouldn’t be the same without the dancers who performed regularly every day in the streets of Whitby, bringing the festival, like the pub session players, to ordinary holiday makers and residents of the town.

Music session in The Station
(Steve on the left looks shocked!)

Looking back at last year’s pub crawl, not much has changed, except that the steak and ale pie in the Duke of York disappointingly wasn’t as good. Also, £3-20 seemed to be the standard Whitby price for real ale (50 to 70p more than I’m used to paying, and about 14% up on last year, unlike my income!), except in the Elsinore where the Cameron’s Strongarm was £2-90, and the Jolly Sailors, which sold Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter for an amazing £1-61. Perhaps not wonderful, but I find it a perfectly acceptable standard bitter. My favourite beer of the week was Ossett Silver King in the Station; once when it went off temporarily, I had a Directors, which was surprisingly rather good.

Persephone dancing at Whitby

Overall, Whitby is good place for pubs and brilliant during folk week for very varied live music too.

Only 51 weeks until the next one.

Whitby from Church Street. The 102 year old swing bridge is in the distance

Smoke And Mirrors

2011-08-19T14:14:00.002+01:00

I've just listened to You And Yours on Radio 4. There were two branches of the leisure industry who are worried about their future: ice cream makers and amusement arcade operators, both of whom are struggling in the recession, and already there have been some bankruptcies. In both cases, tax was given as a significant factor. A new gaming machine tax will be the last straw for some businesses. Representatives of both industries cited the increase of VAT to 20% as a significant problem.

The closure of five shops in Chapel Street, Southport's second shopping street, was announced on the same day a week or two ago. More closures are expected.

Recent excursions into our local pubs have shown some pubs doing very poor business in August, the height of the holiday season in a seaside resort. Some licensees have had to lay off staff, with a few talking about leaving the business altogether.

I should have thought the reasons why the retail and leisure industries are suffering so badly would be obvious to all, the main one being the recession, with its attendant job insecurity, redundancies, wage cuts or freezes, inflation, declining living standards, and 20% VAT. But no: there are those who proclaim that the main reason why pubs are closing is still the smoking ban, introduced four years ago. They must believe that pubs are immune to all the economic pressures bearing on other industries. In fact, they have additional problems, such as pub companies ripping them off and beer tax rising every year at above inflation.

One argument is that pubs survived previous recessions without the current rate of closures, and as the one additional factor is the smoking ban, it must be that that's tipped so many pubs over the edge. You could say the same about Woolworth's - it too survived every previous recession, but closed in January 2009. As the smoking ban obviously didn't kill Woolies, there must be other factors destroying businesses in Britain today, and pubs, after all, are businesses.

In reality, the smoking ban isn't the only additional factor at all. In previous recessions, pubs didn't have rip-off pubcos running them; they were run by breweries who wanted an outlet for their beers and therefore had no interest in driving pubs out of business, unlike pubcos who, if a pub goes bust, have a piece of property they can sell. Neither did they have to contend with 20% VAT, escalating beer tax and hostile anti-alcohol campaigners.

Some of the smoking ban opponents state that they don't go to pubs any more since the ban, which means - logically - they don't chat to licensees as I do (as opposed to ferreting around on the internet to produce dubious evidence to support increasingly peevish arguments). The view I tend to come across is that, yes the smoking ban is a factor, but by no means the only one and not even the main one.

That's the balanced view. I'm lucky in that I have a fairly wide circle of friends, but I can't think of a single smoker who has stopped going to the pub because of the ban; on the other hand, some friends have said they are finding the prices a problem nowadays.

I have no personal axe to grind: I'm a non-smoker, but not anti-smoking. As far as I'm concerned, people can smoke all they like, but that doesn't mean anywhere they like. I'm a drinker, but in many town and city centres, drinking in public will get you a fine, but I don't go around complaining that I can't indulge in a perfectly legal activity wherever I want to. I accept that it's restricted, even though drinking in the open air on a nice day is a very pleasant thing to do. My last employers banned drinking while working decades before they banned smoking.

The only thing that annoys me about some of the anti-ban brigade is that they ignore economic realities and prefer to blame the rate of pub closures on one factor alone. Simplistic arguments are always irritating and don't reflect well on those who promote them.

New brewery & other news

2011-08-16T18:47:00.002+01:00

A new microbrewery has opened called the Blackedge Brewery. It's a 2.5 barrel brewery in Horwich, Bolton, on the edge of the West Pennine Moors. The website states that it is now in full production and at present just shows one beer, a 3.8% pale ale called HoP, but with the promise of more to come. Another to keep an eye out for. I like the fact that the pump clip is shaped like a guitar plectrum!
Thanks to Ken Worthington of Wigan CAMRA for letting me know.

Pub reopens
The Arion pub in Kenilworth Road, Ainsdale, Southport, re-opened on 15th August after an 18 months closure, during which time there were rumours that it would never be opened as a pub again. It is operated by Enterprise Inns and is under the stewardship of Jacki and Andy Phillips. They have a good food menu, including home cooked dishes, and at present have one real ale on offer, Marston's Pedigree, in good condition, and they are assessing how well this sells as they hope to eventually offer guest beers. The pub has been smartly refurbished, with a pleasant outside area.
Thanks to Mike Perkins of Southport CAMRA for this info.

Home again

2011-08-14T18:52:00.002+01:00

I've just got home from Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festival; it was excellent. As well as Fairport Convention (of course, as it's their festival), there were the Home Service, UB40, The Coral, Horslips, The Shee, Hayseed Dixie (with a bluegrass rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody!), Seasick Steve, and others. All were good in varying degrees. After Fairport, I think I enjoyed the Home Service best. Wadworth's beers were on, in surprisingly good condition considering the bar was in a field: 6X, a golden beer, and a 5% named after Fairport, which ran out first

I'll be going out shortly clutching my guitar to the singaround at the Bothy Folk Club (Park Golf Club, Park Road West) to sing songs and drink Thwaites Wainwright. Tomorrow night is the music session in the Guest House in Union Street, and on Wednesday it's the singaround in the Mason's on Anchor Street. All free and all in real ale venues.

Last chance to see Isambarde

2011-08-09T15:44:00.003+01:00

Isambarde

Isambarde, Chris Green, Jude Rees, and Emily Sanders, are performing their last gig in Southport this Friday 12th August at the Bothy; the band are splitting up at the end of September, having performed together since 2002.

They have been popular guests at the Bothy before, but had to cancel their last booking on 23 June because Chris had injured his hand. Their music is a blend of traditional and contemporary songs, and Vin Garbutt said of them: "Isambarde are a really good young band. They’re good to listen to, good to look at and it’s very obvious that they enjoy performing.”

This Friday at 8.00 pm at the Bothy Folk Club, which meets in the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS. Real ale from Thwaites.

A Blighted Panorama

2011-08-05T04:47:00.012+01:00

I've just watched a Panorama programme about alcohol misuse, called predictably Dying For A Drink (available here for 9 more days). Much of the programme concentrated on alcoholics, some of whom regularly drank 20 pints a day, or a bottle of vodka plus beer, or super-strength ciders. Such levels of consumption maintained on an almost daily basis are indeed shocking, but are in no way typical of the kind of drinking we are likely to see in our local pub. Drinking levels are actually falling in Britain, but the impression was clearly given that we are being swamped by a relentless tide of increasing misuse. Alcohol is cheap, we were told, despite the fact that our beer duty is second highest in the EU. Alcohol is too readily available: well, who allowed supermarkets to sell alcohol throughout the store, thus encouraging impulse buying, rather than in a discrete off licence section where under age sales could be much more easily monitored? The government, of course, in one of its previous fits of deregulation and "burning of red tape".*

It's true that drinking behaviours, particularly among young people, can be very different nowadays. For a night out, as students we used to meet in the pub or college bar at around 7.30 pm and take it from there. Young people nowadays often preload before leaving home, and then go on to bars and then clubs. Why?

The price of alcohol in pubs and clubs is much higher in real terms than in the past, especially after the excessive tax increases of recent years. If beer had increased only by normal inflation since 1972, the year I went to college, a pint of bitter would cost around £1.40. Drinking in pubs is not a cheap activity, so preloading cuts the high cost of a night out.*
The zealous drives against under age drinking mean that young people can't go to pubs and learn what is and isn't acceptable behaviour from older drinkers. I first bought beer in a pub when I was 16; the last thing I wanted to do was to draw attention to myself by behaving wrongly, so I tried to fit in. But nowadays, a lot of young people are developing their own approach to drinking free of any scrutiny, and often choose high strength drinks, which they do not have the experience or capacity to cope with.*

Several people in the programme referred to drinking vodka by the bottle. In alcohol terms, that's 15 pints of ordinary beer, but in its effects a lot more because it's concentrated into a pint and a quarter of liquid that can be knocked back quickly. I have never seen anyone drink a bottle of vodka in a pub, so such vodka misuse must be taking place at home or in the park where there are no controls whatsoever. This means that the fanatical enforcement of under age drinking laws in pubs is itself actually driving young people into unsupervised consumption of very strong drinks.* As an aside, I can't understand why council officials who use under age people to entrap pubs into selling them alcohol aren't themselves guilty of inciting an offence.

This programme is clearly part of a campaign to foster moral panic about drinking in the hope that the very act will be seen as antisocial or even deviant, leading to a decline in consumption, but the consequence is more likely to be even more home drinking, which has shown a steady increase over the last 20 years.* Moral panic is no way to deal with genuine problems because you generally get bad laws that backfire on you unexpectedly, and alcohol is no exception. Besides, why the rush? There have always been people who misuse alcohol; it's hardly a recent phenomenon, so surely we can take the time to address it properly, rather than adopt quick fixes that can do more harm than good.

This programme was big on tut tutting but didn't actually come up with any answers that will make a difference - just the usual anti-alcohol strategies, most of which have, I feel, contributed to the problem. It was a missed opportunity.

* These are all examples of the Law of Unintended Consequences in action, and why I consider that anti-alcohol campaigns tend to be part of the problem, not the solution - not a point of view that the programme showed any awareness of in the slightest.

Never Mind The Dovecotes

2011-08-04T16:55:00.001+01:00

I suppose quite a few readers of ReARM will remember the arrival of punk in the late 70s: brash, iconoclastic, rebellious (I'm beginning to sound like a Q magazine reviewer here), etc. To relive those wild days, a compilation album is being released by Decca featuring, among others, The Sex Pistols, The Jam, G.B.H., Siouxsie and The Banshees, Lene Lovich, The Fall, Sham 69, and X-Ray Specs. As it's hardly the first such compilation, so what? Well, this one's called Never Mind The Dovecotes and it's to raise money for the - er - National Trust. Apparently, nearly half a million of the Trust’s members were aged between 16-25 in 1977, so they anticipate a lot of interest among nostalgic, and now parental, punks playing it in the car as they take their families to Trust properties.

Good luck to them ~ it's a vast improvement on John Lydon advertising dairy products.

Eureka to reopen

2011-08-02T19:49:00.002+01:00

I've received an e-mail from the new team taking over the Eureka pub in Ormskirk that it's about to re-open. They tell me, "We intend to be famous for our range and quality of fantastic local and national real ales; we will also be regularly having live music and great food. We are passionate about these things and want this pub to thrive once again."

The new landlord and landlady are Gary and Sharon and they are aiming to have the pub open early this month. The pub's address is 78 Halsall Lane, Ormskirk, L39 3AX, a short walk from Fiveways, the A59/A570 junction.

The Eureka is a long-standing real ale pub, and I'm looking forward to visiting it again next I'm in the area.

CD Launch for charity - postponed

2011-08-01T14:58:00.003+01:00

Postponed due to Geoff being unwell. New date to be notified.

Geoff Parry is launching his 9th album called The End Of The Line this Saturday. As usual it consists of his own poems set to music by various artists, and a number of the artists involved will be performing their songs from the CD live on the night (including yours truly who sings the title track).

Admission is free, although there will be an opportunity to donate to Queenscourt Hospice, and all the proceeds from the CD sales (£5 minimum contribution) will also go to Queenscourt. All the artists are playing free of charge.

All welcome at 7.30pm on Saturday 6th August at the Park Golf Club, Park Road West, Southport, PR9 0JS, which serves real ale from Thwaites.

Move aside CAMRA

2011-07-29T18:18:00.011+01:00

It's dangerous to begin reading too many beer blogs - I try to keep my intake to around four units a day - because you sometimes read some outrageous rubbish that you feel you have to respond to, but then a quiet voice at the back of my mind will say, "Leave them, Nev, they're not worth it!" Mind you, I don't always take notice.

My friend Tandleman wrote a cheery post that it's the Great British Beer Festival (GBBF) next week and let's all have a good time (you can read what he wrote here). A simple enough suggestion, you'd think, but no: controversy raged in the comments below his post that CAMRA was stifling innovation in the beer world, that the Campaign should embrace "alternative methods of dispense" (a euphemism for keg), and whether the withdrawal of egomaniac Scottish brewery Brewdog from the GBBF was CAMRA's fault or the brewery's. Who cares? As I wrote myself, some beer bloggers certainly know how to party!

I've written about Brewdog and the craft keg debate before, but there was a novelty in this selection of rantings: Tandleman pointed out a bizarre suggestion that "the GBBF is outgrowing CAMRA & their approach. Is it time someone else organised this countries [sic] flagship beer festival? I think so." Tandleman wiped the floor with that stupid comment, pointing out that the GBBF is CAMRA's, not the country's, and it would be difficult for anyone else to organise a festival on such a scale without the army of volunteers that CAMRA can call on - he said a lot more, but you can click on the link above if you'd like to read it.

Another stupid comment was that as it's the Great British BEER Festival, CAMRA should not be selling ciders and perries, and as CAMRA promotes real ale, there should be no continental beers. Well, as it happens, I was outraged the other week when I went into a café and discovered as well as coffee, they also served tea. Even more damning, they even sold food. Don't they know the word café means coffee?

In case anyone thinks there is a sensible point to be answered here:

CAMRA has since its early days supported real ciders and perries because they are traditional British drinks which have been even more at risk than real ale. I expect the reason why they're not included in the name CAMRA is because CAMRACAP is a bit of a mouthful, but they are clearly written into in CAMRA's aims.
Continental beers, although they often do not conform to CAMRA's definition for British beers, are served at CAMRA festivals in a manner appropriate to their own traditions. After all, that's all CAMRA wants for British beer: that it be served in accordance with our beer traditions. It is not inconsistent to respect other traditional styles.

As for all those who say CAMRA should do this, or shouldn't do that (usually not members), they misunderstand what CAMRA is: a campaign whose policies are decided by its members, and not by certain embittered beer bloggers, of whom a few admit they rarely or never go to pubs, preferring to sup their supermarket selections of bottled beers in their own living room. I have no problem with people enjoying a beer at home, but when that's all you do, you've reduced beer to a private pleasure, like eating a box of chocolates while watching TV. To me, beer is not an end in itself, but is a part of my social life - quite a big part, I'd agree, but a part nonetheless. I rarely drink beer at home.

Most beer bloggers are fine; I enjoy reading what they write, and I sometimes chuck in my own two penn'orth. Disagreements can be fine too. I suppose that some of the simmering rage that occasionally shows among a noisy, aggressive minority is because they know that, whatever they blog about, it won't make the slightest bit of difference to CAMRA, or the world of beer in general. Having spent years involved in a trade union and a political party, I've learnt to accept that it's no good merely ranting about how things should be. Either you get involved to try to change things, or you don't bore others with your impotent frustrations - in other words, put up or shut up. Besides, don't you know that beer's supposed to be fun?

Blogs can be interesting, and there are quite a few links on the right to a variety of blogs: the Pub Curmudgeon has three categories of blogs among his links, one of which is headed: Beer and pub blogs (may contain nuts). And yes, that's where he's put me!

I'm not going to the GBBF this year, but if you are, I hope you enjoy yourself - and just ignore the nitpickers and hair splitters, but if they're at home supping their bottles, I don't suppose you'll come across them. Cheers!

Higsionary - pt 1

2011-07-27T14:50:00.002+01:00

Clive Pownceby has scanned some of his precious Higsionaries for me. These were produced by the old Higson's Brewery of Liverpool, which always had the knack of producing funny, local adverts.

All good fun ~ click on the Higsionary so you can read it more easily. More to come!

My thanks to Clive.

Beer sales plummet

2011-07-26T03:05:00.002+01:00

Rather alarming news from the British Beer and Pub Association that beer sales have slumped by almost 10% in the past few months, including a 15% fall in supermarkets. In detail, the BBPA stated that pub sales were down by 4.5% in the three months to June as beer tax and VAT rises wiped out the positive impact of the warm weather and the royal wedding, and in the year to June, beer sales were down by 7.1% as the various tax rises added 10p to the price of a pint in pubs. More details can be found here.

As these reductions have happened this year, the smoking ban introduced four years ago cannot be held responsible, although I shouldn't be surprised if those who see the ban as the cause of all the pub industry's woes will still find a way of blaming it. A more balanced assessment would include factors such as beer tax increasing at more than the rate of inflation, 20% VAT and the effects of the recession on people's jobs and levels of disposable income.

It's clear that giving the public extra bank holidays to mark royal weddings and jubilees are in the long term of little economic value; the 'feel good' factor soon wears off. A sustainable economy cannot be achieved by one-off royal celebrations, nor indeed by sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics; it's like giving occasional teaspoons of water to someone dying of thirst - it solves nothing and does no more than keep them going just a little bit longer.

The effects on the pub industry are highly visible to any who care to look: pubs that used to be packed may still be fairly busy, but have lost trade nonetheless, and pubs that weren't so busy are facing lean times. Southport where I live is supposed to be a holiday resort, but many of the local pubs are almost empty at the height of summer, which should be their peak time, and I fear that some may close. This is true of a lot of businesses - a local builder's yard employing quite a few staff recently said they had done £18 worth of business in a morning, considerably less than the wages bill for that day. Many businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth, and sooner or later some will have to give up the struggle. Pubs, being subject to especially vindictive tax increases, are even more vulnerable to the malign effects of current austerity measures, which are nothing more than a form of economic anorexia.

It's no good politicians supporting campaigns to save the pub and setting up parliamentary beer groups if they then vote for the harmful taxation policies that are helping destroy pubs across the land. Hypocritical tears over pints of subsidised ale in the Strangers Bar will not prevent the closure of a single pub.

A weekend of deaths

2011-07-25T19:46:00.003+01:00

It's difficult to write a post that refers both to the death of Amy Winehouse and to the massacre in Norway, but I feel impelled to because the two events have been linked in many people's minds: some individuals have poured scorn on those who have been saddened by Amy Winehouse's death for - as they've put it - mourning a junkie while nearly 100 innocent young people were ruthlessly gunned down by a deranged neo-Nazi fanatic. My view is that Amy's death is no less devastating to her family and friends than the deaths of those killed in Norway are to their own families and friends. I also tend to have an aversion to condemning people for the way they live when they're not harming anyone else, but on Facebook and in comments beneath articles about Ms Winehouse, there is no shortage of people ready to condemn her; it was her own choice, they say, she brought it on herself. I'm not so sure: I don't believe she began taking drugs and horrendous amounts of alcohol with the attitude, "This will kill me, therefore I choose it." Addiction is not a choice, it is a consequence of bad choices, which isn't the same thing at all, and once you're an addict, the concept of choice becomes rather hypothetical.

It's better to remember her undeniably great talent rather than her sad end. Unfortunately she has joined the ranks of those who in different ways burnt out, such as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Gram Parsons, Jim Morrison, Phil Lynott, Ian Curtis, to name just a few. Like those others, it's best to remember her through her music.

As for those killed in Norway, I can't believe there's anyone who reads this blog who isn't shocked and outraged by the senseless massacre and waste of so many young lives in the name of an odiously misguided ideology. But among the comments to various on-line articles, I've seen some rather vile anti-Moslem statements, as though this mass murderer's warped motives had some validity, a deceit I believe most decent people would utterly reject. If, like me, you'd like to send a message of condolence to the people of Norway, there is a link here where you can do so.

Fag Ash Lil at the Blundell

2011-07-23T15:12:00.000+01:00

Late notice I know, but I've just heard that Fag Ash Lil are playing tonight at the Blundell Arms, Upper Aughton, Road, Southport. Classic rock with a touch of blues, Fleetwood Mac and Zep, plus some original songs. When they played the George a few weeks ago, the place was heaving.

It begins at around 9.00pm. I don't think the Blundell has real ale; it's so long since I've there - probably the last time Fag Ash Lil were on.

Drink to me only with thine eyes

2011-07-22T02:02:00.009+01:00

An American study has shown that people said they preferred a glass of wine that they were told came from Italy over one that came from India, when they both came from the same bottle. Similarly, they preferred chocolates supposedly from Switzerland over ones from China, when they in fact came from the same supermarket brand. The full story is here. We know that people will knowingly buy counterfeit goods and pretend they are the originals, but this goes much further - people detect differences that don't exist because their preconceptions, or prejudices, tell them one product is better than another.

I wonder how far this applies to beer. Judging by how some people write on the subject, probably quite a lot. We have now moved beyond the realms of the real ale snob: some real ale drinkers blithely dismiss what they call brown beer, meaning I suppose traditional bitters; some condemn many of the products of micro-breweries as being poor quality beers produced by hobbyists rather than serious brewers; some won't have anything to do with the old regional brewers; and some declare that the big brewers are incapable of producing anything worth drinking. I'm oversimplifying for illustrative purposes, but I'm sure you get the general point.

There is some truth in all of these opinions, because the quality of products across brewers will obviously vary; the mistake is to generalise from them. The current buzz word is 'craft', an undefined term imported from the USA, which is really quite meaningless in the British ale context, but is employed to imply a level of discernment: if it's a craft product, it's good, but as far as I can see, we are simply replacing one set of assumptions and generalisations by another. The problem with using undefined terms is that there is nothing to stop anyone from using them. The term 'real ale' was invented and defined precisely by CAMRA and is now accepted to the extent that it's in most modern dictionaries; any brewer who described a beer as real ale when it wasn't could be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act. This is not so with the term 'craft beer', which is often used to describe the new style of keg (which I wrote about in March - here if you're interested), and I can see nothing to stop Tetley's or John Smith's describing their beers thus, even their smoothflows. Certain craft keg fanatics are so evangelical that they condemn CAMRA for not supporting the style, one which is almost certainly undefinable and is excluded by the very name of CAMRA.

To me, all of these people, those who nitpick about real ales and those who advocate craft keg - whatever that is - remind me of those who took part in that wine and chocolate study that I opened this post with. They like to draw lines and say, "This is what I like". We all like boundaries; they make things easier to understand and defining what you do and don't approve of so much simpler. However, if you go too far down that path, like the wine and chocolate people, there is a real chance that what you taste may be influenced by what you see, or what you've read on the pump clip or bottle label.

Most drinkers would probably agree with the statement that you should drink with your taste buds rather than your eyes, but I'm certain from what I've read that many do quite the opposite. Well, that's their loss.