Thwaites Brewery evicted by travellers

Illegally excluded from their own premises

I find this quite extraordinary. According to the Lancashire Telegraph, staff at Thwaites had been due to turn up for work in Blackburn on Monday for a normal working day but a group of around 100 travellers in 30 vehicles were occupying the site, having arrived at around 8.00 pm on Saturday. A spokesperson for Thwaites said:

We have effectively been evicted from our head office and brewery site by a group of up to 100 travellers who are now denying us access in an aggressive stand-off. They are putting our family business in real and present danger.

We have been in Blackburn for over 200 years and have never experienced anything like this. They have no business on our site and are carrying out criminal damage as we speak. We are in discussions with police who have supported us during the course of the day and have the powers to evict this group immediately under Section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which they have not yet exercised. We desperately need their help to remove these people as soon as possible.

Hourly the site is being degraded and in the space of a day has become a disgusting mess. We call on the police to act now to address this situation. We have established a crisis centre to ensure our customers can continue to do business with us, but every hour's delay, or awaiting the courts opening on Tuesday after the bank holiday to get an eviction notice will mean further criminal damage to our site and our business.

We find ourselves powerless victims in this situation and I find it incredible that these travellers are allowed to get away with this sort of behaviour.

Many years ago at the Cambridge Folk Festival, a plain-clothes police officer didn't want me standing where I happened to be loitering: he assaulted me, dragged me backwards by the neck and threatened me with arrest. I was in a public place which happened to be near the police drug squad tent, although I wasn't aware of that fact until the next day when I had a chat with the people on the 'Legalise Cannabis Campaign' stall.

They could act aggressively against a lone, peaceable, and rather drunk music lover when it suited them, but faced with determined opposition, it seems they become powerless. Strange: they weren't so bashful at Orgreave.

• For the record, I don't take illegal drugs: you don't have to be a cannabis user to support the principle of legalisation. 
• I'm not anti-traveller, but actions like this reinforce the hostile attitudes that many people do have.

Postscript: the police have at last persuaded the trespassers to move. My friend Sam who works for Thwaites reported her impressions on Facebook as she returned to her desk:

Today I had to walk a gauntlet of broken glass, dirty nappies, burnt out pallets, and trash just to reach my office. Couldn't see my desk, because the contents of my drawers had been rifled through and thrown around, along with my colleagues' possessions, photos and work. Our proud brewers watched as their last week of hard work brewing was destroyed and poured away ... everyone has rolled up their sleeves and cleared up the damage left behind by travellers, filling 3 skips in the process. I seriously can't believe how much damage can be caused in 24 hours.

Lower age limit to reduce binge drinking?

Having criticised Tim Martin a few days ago when he said that the EU is bullying British business, I now find that I agree with his latest pronouncement that we should consider permitting 16 and 17 year olds to buy drinks in pubs. It's not the first time he has made this suggestion; he said much the same in 2007 here.

I've written about this before, most recently on 12 July 2014 when I argued that unsupervised teenage drinking is more likely to lead to binge drinking because under-age drinkers can "get cheap supermarket booze and drink at each other’s homes or in the park, and it’s not ordinary beer: it’s strong cider, lager or cheap vodka. And in an unsupervised environment, they don’t learn how to behave when drinking."

Pointing out that "Pubs have more or less become ghettos now for adults", Tim makes a similar point about unsupervised binge drinking while recognising that lowering the legal age would not on its own be a panacea to the problem; he simply suggests that it may help.

Our age rules in the UK are a bit of a mess. In this country, you can:

• At 16 get married, have children or join the armed forces.
• At 17, drive a potentially dangerous vehicle on the roads.
• At 18, vote in elections and referenda, fight and die for your country.

But you can't buy a drink until you're 18, often subject to age checks until you are 25. Is buying a drink really as dangerous as risking your life in combat that both activities require the same age threshold?

In Scotland, the situation is even more extreme: in the independence referendum, Scottish residents were mature enough to vote for the future of their country at 16, but face compulsory age checks when buying drinks until they're 25. That's what you get when you put nanny state nationalists in charge.

I've little doubt that Tim's call will not be heeded, and will look out for the predictable tut tutting, as in this article by Katy Rice in the Brighton Argus: she refers to drunken staggering in the second sentence and later chucks in the emotive buzzword 'vulnerable'. Interestingly, Ms Rice tweeted this on 6 September: "Girls, what's the worst thing you've done when you were drunk? Tell me your story..."

I've already read suggestions that Tim has said all this with an eye on his sales figures. 

We British prefer 'weaker' beers

According to recent research, we British prefer beer that is nearly half as strong as those on the Continent. The average strength of our favourite beers is apparently 4.4%, as opposed to the 7.9% European drinkers prefer. I'm not very surprised: most of us know that the British brewing tradition is radically different from most of those that can be found in Europe. This is not just a matter of brewing techniques.

The First World War brought serious restrictions on pubs and brewing; at one point it was illegal to buy a round. I've read an account of how a man wanted to buy drinks for himself and his wife and was refused because that constituted a round; his wife had to go to the bar to buy her own. Under the Defence of the Realm Act, licensing hours were introduced, beer was watered down and an extra penny tax put on a pint. The Temperance movement was quite a force in the UK and the brewing industry was not immune to what was, at that time, its increasing impact; these laws gave them a significant boost, although a Temperance appeal to the monarch to declare that a toast to the king could be made just as loyally with a non-alcoholic drink was given short shrift by the Palace. The Temperance movement eventually lost most of its influence when Prohibition was ended in the USA, but the effects of First World War legislation on beer, including upon its strength, continued long after the war ended. In particular, the precedent of gradually but continually cutting beer strengths continued until the 1970s when CAMRA published the strength of all beers: brewers who didn't voluntarily reveal the strength, or weakness, of their products were angry and dismayed when the Campaign had their products analysed and published the sometimes embarrassing results.

Beer drinking was was strongly identified with industrial labour. Workers wanted to slake their thirst after a day's work, especially those in heavy industry: cool pints that didn't have you sliding under the table after just a few were preferred, hence the former popularity of mild in the old industrial heartlands. The decline in mild drinking must be partly due to the ending of much of our industrial base. (There's also another possible factor that I wrote about in May.)

Traditionally, we Britons used to spend long evenings in the pub, often meeting early in the evening and staying until closing time: such long evenings demand a beer that can be drunk in fairly large quantities. Additionally, formerly popular pub games such as darts, dominoes and bar billiards required the players not to be legless.

Our beer strengths have recovered to some extent since CAMRA's exposure of the scandal of weak beer sold at premium prices. It used to be said that one national brand could have been sold legally during the American Prohibition, and there were frequent rumours that some brewers put chemicals in beer to give you a slight headache so that the next day you thought you had a hangover. I've no idea how true these stories were, but the fact that they circulated shows how some drinkers viewed the beers they were sold with a certain amount of distrust.

All these factors are specific to the UK, and have shaped our preference for beers that are less strong than those on the Continent. Personally, I'd prefer to have more pints in the 4.0% to 5.0% range than fewer at 7.9%, but that's what I've grown up with and what I've become used to. I don't think I'm untypical in this respect.

The research was by academics at Anglia Ruskin University based on 65,000 reviews on the app Pint Please.

Lethal weapons? Fine - but no beer!

I found the news that a 9-year old child had accidentally shot her gun instructor shocking in a couple of ways: the death itself obviously, but more the fact that it is perfectly legal for a child of that age to handle and fire a high-powered Uzi submachine gun, as long as a parent or legal guardian was present. That little girl will have to live with the memory of that terrible sight as well as her guilt for the rest of her life, all because her parents decided that their Second Amendment rights were more important than their child's safety and well-being.

This deeply disturbing, but also frankly bizarre, situation brought some other strange American age limits to mind:

In the USA, young people can get behind the wheel of a potentially lethal piece of equipment much younger than over here. A learner driver's licence can be obtained between the ages of 14 and 16, and a restricted full licence between 14.5 and 16.5, depending on which state you live in.

You can lose your life fighting in the USA's armed forces at the age of 18.

On the other hand, the age at which you can legally purchase and possess alcohol is 21. The system is skewed to maintain that age nationally, because any state that lowers its alcohol purchase or possession age would lose 10% of its federal highway funding, a significant reduction in its income. In some states you can drink alcohol below 21 with the agreement of your parents or spouse, as long he or she is over 21, but nowhere can you buy or own it.

I can't help feeling that our American cousins have some priorities badly wrong.

I also can't help wondering how many domestic rows result from people aged 21 or more telling their spouses they can't have a drink.

Are you 18?

The only time I was ever asked whether I was 18 in a pub was in the week after my 18th birthday; I thought it was funny as I'd been going to pubs for a while, at least as far as my very limited finances allowed. I got served when I simply said 'yes': it's not so free and easy now.

A recent article in the Morning Advertiser, the weekly publication of the UK's pub trade, states that, "Pubs have fallen well behind the off-trade when it comes to staff carrying out age verification checks". In 2013 66% of pubs passed checking tests, down 4% on 2011 and 8% on 2010. The figure for supermarkets in 2013 was 85%. The leased and tenanted sector is apparently the worst, mainly because pub companies don't provide effective ongoing staff training.

Should we be shocked? I don't think so. These are not government checks, but are run by Serve Legal, a private company funded by various parts of the retail and hospitality industries. According to the Morning Advertiser, "To pass a test, Serve Legal’s team of visitors purchase an age-restricted item and records key information about the transaction, particularly whether ID was requested. All its visitors are young looking 18 or 19 year old people, who should be asked to provide ID to complete the transaction. If a visitor is required to provide official ID to complete the transaction then the site passes. If they purchase the items without showing ID then the site fails." 

Such failed tests do not mean that the law was broken, because the mystery shoppers were all of legal drinking age (unless you live in Scotland - more about that later). Besides, the age someone looks is a matter of opinion, not demonstrable fact.

The social consequences of extremely rigid application of the law have resulted in unintended consequences. As I wrote in February 2012, "Under age drinkers used to go into a pub and behave themselves because they knew that if they didn’t, they’d draw attention to themselves and get thrown out.  So now they get cheap supermarket booze and drink at each other’s homes or in the park, and it’s not ordinary beer:  it’s strong cider, lager or cheap vodka.  And in an unsupervised environment, they don’t learn how to behave when drinking.  The consequence is that binge drinking develops at an early age without social controls, resulting in bad behaviour.  So the rigid enforcement of a law to prevent under age drinking has probably had quite the opposite effect."

Licensees face a £5000 fine and put their licences at risk if they serve underage drinkers, so it is not surprising that the trade has come up with the Challenge 25 scheme which requires you to prove how old you are up to 7 years after you reach the legal minimum drinking age. As other bloggers have suggested, it's no wonder young people are less inclined to go to pubs. In Scotland, the arch-nanny state SNP government made Challenge 25 mandatory in the Alcohol etc. Scotland Act 2010.

We live in a country where you can get married, have children or join the armed forces at 16, drive at 17, fight and die for your country at 18, but you will be subjected to age checks, compulsorily so in Scotland, to have a pint until you are 25. It's a joke isn't it?

The laws relating to age in pubs aren't as straightforward as you may think, and can be a minefield for busy licensees - click here.

Drink driving - a genuinely tough approach

A seasonal topic

There has been some discussion on Curmudgeon's blog about the thorny subject of drink driving. It's a topic I have written about before several times (including  here), and I tried to comment on his blog, but it wouldn't let me for some reason, so this is an expanded version of what I was going to write there. One comment below his post drags out that old chestnut about reducing the limit to zero.

As a drinker and a driver, I don't approve of driving over the limit, but reducing the limit to zero is a cheap and easy way of appearing to be strict while doing nothing whatsoever. The idiots who have a skinful will take no more notice of a zero limit than they do of the present law. The only people who will be affected will be those who carefully stay within the limit. But the desire to be seen to be doing "something - anything" about the problem would have been satisfied, until it eventually becomes clear the nothing much of value has been achieved.

So what would I do? I'd keep the law as it is for first offenders, because most of them never do it again; they learn their lesson, and the ban, fine and hefty insurance premiums are punishment enough. In terms of modifying unacceptable behaviour, in most cases the present law does the job.

The problem lies with those who haven't learnt from being caught and who never will. I'd propose three strikes and you're out. A lifetime ban for any driver found driving over the limit on 3 separate occasions (or perhaps even 2; I'm not fixated on 3). If found driving during a lifetime ban, prison. If found driving during an ordinary ban, automatic lifetime ban. The fact that you would be able to progress quite easily from the present law for a first offence to prison would certainly have a greater deterrent effect than making the limit zero. Drivers have a licence to drive on the road, and the word 'licence' means permission, not entitlement. A lifetime withdrawal of permission for those who repeatedly put other people's lives at risk by taking a dangerous piece of machinery onto the roads while unfit is in my opinion quite reasonable. It's no good being sorry after you've killed someone.

All we need now is enough traffic police to apply whichever law we have, as there clearly aren't enough now.

RedNev in court next?

Not an energy drink

I see in the latest issue of What's Brewing that two drinks companies have gone down the bullying path of threatening smaller companies that have similar names to their own. The Ticketybrew Brewery of Stalybridge was told by Halewood, who make Crabbies Ginger Beer, that their name was too similar to its registered trademark 'Tickety Boo'. Redwell Brewery in Norwich received several letters from Red Bull threatening court action alleging trademark infringement. Presumably they think they own the word 'red', which means I can expect to be in court shortly concerning the name of this blog. In both cases, they have backtracked, with Halewood pointing out that they never actually threatened Ticketybrew with court action. Red Bull have have decided that Redwell can continue to use its current name with the face-saving proviso that Redwell never enter the energy drinks market. They never intended to anyway.

Not tickety boo

These stories remind me of Samuel Smith's brewery taking Cropton, an independent Yorkshire brewery, to court over its use of the Yorkshire white rose on two of its beers. Samuel Smith claimed that Cropton's white rose was too similar to its own. The judge decided, in relation to the two Cropton's two beers concerned, that one infringed Samuel Smith's trademark but the other didn't.

When Liverpool Organic Brewery lost the rights to use the Higson's name, they continued brewing the beer, as they own the recipe, using a pump clip that is the same colour as the Higson's one (red). However, I noticed the Liver Bird on the clip had been redesigned, no doubt to avoid claims of copyright infringement.

How come Halewood and Red Bull backed off? In both cases, social media went mad with condemnation of the bullying tactics and the companies were worried about the adverse publicity they were getting. It is unfortunately too common, and not just in the drinks world, that big companies will threaten with court action smaller companies who have little chance of being able to afford the lawyers they'd need to fight the case. Even if they could afford the lawyers, they couldn't afford the risk of potentially massive damages should they lose. All too often, smaller companies can see no alternative but to change whatever it is the bully's copyright lawyers are nitpicking about, thus losing any reputation and good will they have already built up. It's nice the see the bullies having to back down for a change.