by andy on 28th February 2009
I spent a sobering 5 minutes first thing this morning reading through this from the head of the Audit Commission. His main point was that the Maastricht treaty more or less defines the idea of government fiscal recklessness by setting the maximum allowed level of deficit to 3% We are currently heading for closer to 12% to 15%
In the just finished TV series Oz and James drink to Britain, James May spent some time wandering around in a tee shirt with the wartime government poster “Keep calm and carry on”. It’s a classic bit of design, but under the circumstances I felt it needed something. Hence the image above.
I’m thinking about tidying this up and putting it on some shirts. Anyone interested ? Let me know.
by andy on 27th February 2009
Earlier in the year a new site fakecharities.org was started to highlight charities that take public funding from the government. It’s quite plausible that a charity that is beholden to the state for a significant proportion of its funding is less than independent. Fakecharities.org went through a technical rough patch recently but it’s alive and kicking now.
Today a number of fake charities have responded, Alcohol Concern amongst them. The Devil’s Kitchen pretty much takes them apart. In particular he writes the following about Alcohol Concern:
—snip—snip—snip—snip—ouch!
A spokeswoman for Alcohol Concern said none of its government grant is used on its lobbying activities
Really? How does that work then? Last year, Alcohol Concern’s government grant was £515,000*. Its total income was just over £900,000, of which £517,515 was spent on staffing costs. Clearly then, some—and maybe all—of our money went on salaries for people who are overt lobbyists.
And lobbyists they most certainly are, as they declared in their year-end report:
Our main focus during 2007/08 was ensuring, through our lobbying, campaigns and media work that national alcohol policy on tax, treatment and advertising reflected international evidence as the benchmark for policy decisions.
So their main focus is on lobbying and their main benefactor is the government, and yet no government money was spent on lobbying. Guess we’ll just have to take your word for that, guys.
There’s no consideration in terms of being critical of government when thinking about funding.
I bet it never crosses your mind.
—snip—snip—snip—snip—snip—snip—
Read the whole article here. Warning – The Devil’s Kitchen is a swearblogger with a fine grasp of the vernacular.
by andy on 27th February 2009
The beer stopped fermenting last week and the official abv prior to priming is 10.43%. Priming will add a few tenths of a percent and I think this is close enough to our thought that Red Wheelbarrow is 11% to declare that we’ve actually made Red Wheelbarrow rather than Green Wheelbarrow.
The beer is now nice and clear and the flavours that we wanted are gradually developing. We’ll be bottling next week. Strictly speaking, the added alcohol ought to set the schedule back a bit, but the truth is that the beer is drinkable now, albeit rather flat. So we are sticking to the same schedule.
Casks will be available by special request and I’m expecting something to be available at one or two beer festivals in the near future including the Sussex Beer Festival. The cask version will inevitably be less fizzy than the bottled version and the bottled version will certainly be truer to the style, but I believe the cask version will be an experience nevertheless!
by andy on 27th February 2009
by andy on 25th February 2009
For some reason I’d completely missed this. However I find the argument:
Perhaps the Comrades of Proven Worth would be appeased were the bold and naughty brewers to label their products more responsibly.
‘Mildly Alcoholic Fermented Drinking Fluids Nos. 1, 2 and 3, complying with EU directives 1184294, 9732054, 1579463 and 4874166; contains 1.4 alcohol units; do not exceed the stated dose; failure to recycle bottle attracts £1000 fine; caution, alcohol causes falling over, throwing up, hitting policemen and beer-goggles.’
…convincing. So our next brew will not be some variation on ‘Golden Ale’ but instead, ‘Joseph Stalin Memorial Mildly Alcoholic Fermented Drinking Fluid’ or somesuch.
by andy on 25th February 2009
I’m sure everyone at the brewery would like to express their sympathy to the Cameron family. Losing a child is the most painful thing in the world.
by andy on 24th February 2009
We’ll be at Steyning Farmers Market on the Saturday the 7th March from 9am until 1pm, Wisborough Green on Thursday the 12th from 9am until 12:30 and at Shoreham Farmer’s Market on Saturday the 14th from 9am until 1pm.
There’s a small amount of St Cuthman’s left so I’ll be bringing that, and I expect to have some Black William available as well.
by andy on 23rd February 2009
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
- Mark Twain
Two recent stories that have been much noted have struck a chord with me. The ‘we should all start growing our own food‘ by Monty Don et al, and the well attended march in Dublin in protest at the Irish Government’s ‘Austerity Measures’, which is how they’ve described a levy on public pensions.
The phrase ‘Austerity Measures’ is particularly redolent since we have only recently stopped paying America for the post war loan that triggered the austerity years in the UK, between 1946 and 1954. There was a fascinating documentary in 2006 where Sir Christopher Meyer described the history behind the loan. It’s still available at veoh.com and is well worth watching again because in the light of our multiple trillion deficit, the 3.25 billion dollars that the the Atlee government negotiated, around 124 billion pounds in modern terms, now seems laughable.
In fact, the period may be our best guide to the UK post credit crunch, and I’m beginning to wonder if one or two people in Whitehall have reached the same conclusion. Dig for Victory style campaigns are entirely logical if food imports start becoming too expensive. The period saw extensive rationing (rather more so that during the 2nd world war), tax increases, and a general deterioration in infrastructure.
You can get a glimpse of what life was like by reading the earlier sections of Orwell’s 1984 where Wiston Smith’s environment is an excellent description of 1948. Other good sources are the film 84 Charing Cross Rd, and this peculiar little number I found in the national archives. It’s worth watching for the pub scene alone – with a man slumped in a corner in front of a sign with ‘The end is in sight, prepare for death’ written on it.
The ID card was another feature, and despite Conservative promises to drop the plan I wonder if it will be quietly rebranded instead when they arrive in power and confront the situation. It also explains why I’m feeling less of citizen of a free country and more like a chicken on a farm regularly giving up my eggs for a greater economic purpose. I expect that impression to become rather firmer over the next few years.
by andy on 21st February 2009
In between the rushing around of a pretty busy week, one story slipped past me relatively unnoticed. The Consumer Prices Index was announced to be hovering at around 3%. The CPI is of course, a not very helpful measure of inflation that replaced the Retail Prices Index some time back on the grounds that CPI tended to be less than RPI and therefore less embarrassing for the government.
For most people, the news would have been greeted with a big Ed Balls style ’so what’. 3% is hardly scary even if the bank of England’s target is 2%. During the seventies inflation nudged 25% and the price of a Mars Bar (my main concern at the time) was changed on a more or less daily basis.
However, tucked away in the Chancellor’s last budget was a nasty little trap. Unless the Badger of Doom comes to his senses in April, beer duty will go up by 2% above inflation automagically. As I’ve blogged occasionally before – we actually pay VAT on this duty so the final result will be closer to a six percent rise in costs overall. This is on top of sharp rises in some other costs such as diesel and hops largely because of a weak pound.
Bottom line ? Expect a sharp increase in the price of a pint in April.
There’s nothing that can be done about any of this, short of obtaining a majority in parliament, bringing some kind of sanity to the public finances, and cutting public spending to a fraction of the current burden. This will take time, so my entirely unbiased advice as a brewer is that everyone should drink a lot more over the next few weeks whilst it’s (relatively) cheap.
by andy on 18th February 2009
We’ve pretty much run out of this and given that people have been asking for it – this is the one we are doing Thursday.
One unexpected disadvantage of stout is that the sticky black foam that falls from the fermentation vessel makes a dreadful mess of the fermentation platform and floor. A certain amount of scrubbing will be required over the next week.
The things we do for beer!
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