Cheers Ron

One of the best things about blogging is the ability to discuss with and learn from people online.  But it's obviously better to meet them in person.

It was especially good last night to meet up for a few pints with Ron Pattinson, the beer and brewing writer, who is in Manchester on a family holiday. Ron's blog Shut Up About Barclay Perkins is a model of research and analysis of primary sources and I'm looking forward to reading the results of his digging in the Boddingtons archives yesterday

I hope Ron enjoyed the different beers and pubs, from the tiled ex-Wilsons Peveril and cosy Grey Horse to the trendy Port Street Beer House, and that he and his family enjoy the rest of their stay in Manchester.

CAMRA and coupons

Ahead of a pub crawl around Manchester tonight with Ron from Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, I was looking at the Good Beer Guide's section on the city centre.

Two of Manchester city centre's Wetherspoons are in the GBG.  I'm not against Wetherspoons pubs being in the GBG if they are the only places in a town with cheap and well-kept beer but neither of those things is the case in Manchester.  I'm not even sure Wetherspoons really qualify as pubs - they normally have the size and atmosphere of an aircraft hangar.  I also object to their inclusion at the expense of gems such as the Briton's Protection, Hare and Hounds, Lass O'Gowrie, Peveril of the Peak and Unicorn. 

There has been criticism of the commercial relationship between CAMRA and Wetherspoons whereby the former send out discount coupons to their members on behalf of the latter.  Given that entries in the GBG are decided by CAMRA members at local level, I don't think it's a case of Wetherspoons directly buying influence but rather that CAMRA members with vouchers are more likely to frequent their pubs for the discounts on already cheap beer and then vote for them.  Traditional working-class pubs that sell well-kept cask beer in Manchester seem to fall under the GBG radar, presumably because the percentage of CAMRA members among their regulars is much smaller.

Keeping keg

On the bar of a pub in Manchester city centre where I drink regularly is a tap for Bass XXXX, a keg mild. Another pub in East Manchester I go to occasionally has another, Mann's Chestnut Mild.  I have never seen anyone order a pint of either.

Neither Bass nor Mann's have been independent breweries for a long time. Mann's merged with Watneys in 1958 and Bass was taken over by Interbrew in 2000.  Their brands are now part of the portfolio of global brewers Diageo (best known for Guinness) and A-B Inbev (whose flagship "beer" is Budweiser).  I'd guess that neither of them have any interest in mild and have them contract brewed, presumably in very small quantities.

Kegs unlike casks don't have a spile hole through with carbon dioxide is vented and oxygen enters. They remain pressurised after they've been tapped and therefore slow turnover isn't a problem like it is with cask beer.  I wonder how long keg beer keeps after being tapped.  In theory, you'd think for ever.  But I'd be interested to hear from a publican, scientist or other expert if it actually does.

Called to the bar of the House

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle this week after the Labour MP for Falkirk, Eric Joyce, allegedly headbutted a Tory MP in a bar at the House of Commons.  Joyce has been arrested and charged with common assault and will appear before magistrates next month (as the incident took place in the Palace of Westminster, I'm not sure why he can't invoke parliamentary privilege and insist on trial by the House of Commons sitting as the High Court of Parliament and, if convicted, imprisonment in the Clock Tower cell reserved for MP's).

Others have rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of MP's who speak in Commons debates about cheap alcohol, extended opening hours and binge drinking before repairing to one of Parliament's ever open bars to drink heavily subsidised beer late into the night.  But unlike those who think MP's should pay more for their beer and have last orders called on them, I think we should level up, reducing the price of beer by cutting, or ideally abolishing, the tax and duty on it and allowing pubs to set their opening hours (as they could before the so-called Liberal Lloyd George introduced restricted hours in World War I). Any problems could then be dealt with by local licensing authorities. And it might also be an idea for other workplaces to introduce subsidised bars for their staff.

Morse's music

ITV3 is showing episodes of Inspector Morse on weekday mornings at the moment. Although I've seen them all dozens of times, I've been watching again and enjoying them as much as the first time they were broadcast. 

A big part of Morse's appeal is that he is the ultimate cultured copper whose interests include beer, crosswords and literature.  In the episode about drug smuggling, Deceived By Flight, he even begins to take an interest in cricket.

The one thing that jars slightly is his taste in music. Morse is a fan of opera, especially Wagner.  I presume this reflects writer Colin Dexter's own musical interests. But as a cerebral, crossword solving beer drinker, Morse would surely in real life be a jazz fan.

Shakespeare and the conspiracy theorists

I'm reading Shakespeare's Lives by Samuel Schoenbaum at the moment. The most entertaining parts are where he discusses, dismisses and pokes fun at those who believe someone else wrote Shakespeare's plays.

A lot of the people who believe a grammar school boy from Warwickshire couldn't have written the plays are clearly motivated by snobbery.  For example, the barrister Christmas Humphreys wrote in 1955: "It is offensive to scholarship, to our national dignity, and to our sense of fair play to worship the memory of a petty-minded tradesman while leaving the actual author of the Shakespeare plays and poems unhonoured and ignored. Moreover, I have found the plays of far more interest when seen as the work of a great nobleman and one very close to the fountainhead of Elizabethan England."  (Humphreys was an unusual member of the Bar, a convert to Buddhism whose North London home is now a temple). They are invariably never - unlike Schoenbaum - academic experts on Shakespeare's plays but rather eccentric amateurs: the pioneer of the theory that the Earl of Oxford wrote the plays was a schoolteacher called, rather appropriately, Looney.

There is now though another element to the anti-Stratfordian movement apart from the snobbery.  They increasingly resemble other conspiracy theorists and "truthers" who believe the moon landings were a hoax, 9/11 was carried out by the CIA and/or Mossad etc.  in believing that they have secret, "inside" information that "they" (the Government/Jews/academic establishment) don't what us to know.

The Sun also rises

When Rupert Murdoch flew into Britain last week following the arrest of senior Sun journalists on suspicion of making corrupt payments to police officers, there was some speculation that the daily tabloid was about to meet the fate of News International's former Sunday title The News of the World and be shut down. Instead, Murdoch visited the Sun newsroom and told staff that a new Sunday paper would be launched "very soon". Many thought it would appear in the next couple of months but shortly afterwards it was announced that The Sun on Sunday will launch next weekend. This was predicted when the NotW was shut down and the new title must have been in preparation since then.

Although it's wrong to assume that people who read a newspaper automatically share its attitudes or  politics (a shop steward at Longbridge car factory in the 70's I know says the West Indian guys on the shop floor always read the Times for its cricket coverage), I don't think there's much doubt that people only read the NotW for the gossip about footballers, soap stars and minor celebrities. That is borne out by the fact that while there was much discussion at the time as to which Sunday tabloid ex-NotW readers would now switch to, it seems most of them have stopped buying a Sunday paper. It is also doubtful if they will start buying The Sun on Sunday, especially as the editor has promised more "family content" in place of the salacious tittle tattle.

I know when the NotW shut down, many people pointed to the fact that the workers there were being sacrificed for their bosses' errors and the way to deal with such abuses was for News International to rerecognise the National Union of Journalists so that their staff would be bound by its code of conduct. I have some sympathy for that view but still raised a cheer when the NotW sank below the waves, seeing it as a small move towards to a more decent press. I would have felt the same if the Sun had also been axed. Of course journalists would have lost their jobs, just like the NotW staff, and before them the public hangman and witchfinder general. They would though then be able to write for better newspapers, or do something more socially useful, like roadsweeping.