INVISIBLE ADDICT? Or a Target for Puritanical Mass Bullying Based on an article in the Nottingham Drinker, by Steve Westby. Its impact is national. As I progress deeper into old age it seems that the authorities are increasingly out to persecute me using nonsensical rules to pile their misery on. It is not enough that they class me as a binge drinker because about once a week I like to relax over four pints of moderate strength beer (around 4%). But now as I creep towards another milestone in only a couple of years, the magic age of 65, they have come up with the daftest edict you have ever seen and I am judging that byz their own existing barmy standards! more  Saving the British boozer Printed in the Tyke Taverner and taken  from the Yorkshire Evening Post 25 November 2010 With pubs in Leeds turning into everything from curry houses to care homes, a battle is under way to save our boozers. Grant Woodward reports. Business is booming at Paramount Investments. The property firm, which specialises in selling off former pubs, has found that the local boozer represents a lucrative market. “We’ve seen a huge increase in the number of pubs coming up for sale over the last few years,” says Gavin Sherman, managing director of the London-based outfit. “At the moment we’ve got around 300 on our books and over the last three years or so we’ve sold about 600, quite a few of them in and around Leeds. I could be here all day listing uses. Buyers turn them into anything and everything from houses and flats to convenience stores, restaurants, doctor’s surgeries, children’s nurseries. We’ve had undertakers buying them; we’ve sold them to churches and synagogues, social housing, nursing homes. You can go through the card as to what people do with them.” more HOW MANY UNITS?   What follows is pinched from the pages of  “One & Ale”, the magazine of the Cornwall branch.    We are all familiar with the 'government guidelines' that tell you that you shouldn't drink more than 21 units of alcohol a week if you are a man, 14 if you are a woman, if you want to avoid the risk of damaging your health. Indeed, if you listen to some of the wilder ravings of some members of the Alcohol Health Alliance, we are all drinking our way down the road to death and damnation. So, let's have a reality check and look at some interesting research on the subject carried out some 30 years ago, but strangely never given any airing whenever the subject of drinking among the adult population crops up in the media - which is frequently these days. Way back in 1976, a group of respected ..more...... Switching to beer can help you lose weight and cut alcohol consumption.     * New research shows 34% of men and 29% of women incorrectly believe that beer has more calories than other alcoholic drinks     * Swapping wine for beer for a single week saves as many calories as a half hour jog!*     * Leading experts to speak out during Great British Beer Festival on how beer can help you lose weight CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale, and the Beer Academy, have today come together ......more..... WHY ARE WE LOSING PUBS? Below is a letter sent to New Tyke Taverner the magazine for the Yorkshire drinker. Thanks go to the editor Dave Boothroyd for his permission to use it. Not that I’ve asked him yet. Dear David, Am I alone in thinking that when pubs were owned by such as Tetley’s, John Smith’s, Whit- bread’s etc., they were a lot better run, and by those knowledgeable in the trade? Very rarely, in those days, did you see empty, boarder-up pubs, as is the case now. They are run by the pubcos, so what was the reason for the ending of tied houses, to be owned by those who have no idea of the licensed trade? I say, if you have a god thing going, leave it alone! Best wishes, Alan Shipman This is easy. Greed. Greed, and a simple way to circumvent some badly-wrought legislation. It goes like this: In the late 1980s, the then Conservative government sponsored a report into the licensed trade, as there were many people who thought that the Big Sis brewing combines had stitched up the market and stifled fur competition. This the report found to he the case. The recommendation, in essence, was that, should a brewery control more than 2000 pubs, it was to permit the appearance on the bar of all its pubs a real ale from a source other than that of the brewery-owner itself There were other factors, too, but that is the principle one and the one of most interest to Joe Supper. Lord Young, who was running the appropriate government department at the time, said that he was ‘minded” to implement the recommendations in their entirety. Now, the big brewers did not like this and so lobbied with fiery intensity to water down the proposals so that they could manipu late the result to best suit them, while appearing to back the principles of more competition and freeing up the market. So, in 1990, when the rules changed we saw briefly a flurry of magic dust on the bars of many pubs, with beers from the smaller and micro breweries appearing. When the big lads got their acts together we soon saw their cunning plan. The new rules were so loosely framed they were able to divest themselves of all their pubs, ‘selling” them to newly-formed pub-owning companies, the majority of which were run by directors who, the day before, were running some part of the brewery. Marvellous. They ensured that the new pubco entered into an exclusive supply agreement with their former employers. Great. Stitched up as promised. Why was this so easy? Because the government .fell for, or colluded in, changes in the wording of the legislation. This meant that a brewery with over 2000 pubs must implement the new rules on fair play, but a company that owned thousands of pubs - but did not brew any ale - could do what the hell it liked. Even some smaller brewers, not affected by the original beer orders, decided to do the same. In short order, some of these pub companies merged to form larger ones. Then there was a spate of “pub swaps” whereby the market aligned all pubs of good prospect away from those with lesser pretentions. Thus we had some groupings of pubs at, shall we say, the lower end of the market being owned by what were effectively property developers. Whether these pubs were intentionally badly run is a matter of opinion, but the fact is that they often were. They were never maintained, they were rarely given the attention of a caring licensee, they were usually given pretty poor and cheap drink to Joist upon their dwindling number of customers, they were doomed. Now we have huge groups who are so heavily in debt that it is laughable to call them businesses. They screw what they can out of the gullible who chance their arm (and leg, and everything else including their savings and house) at running a pub. We’ve been round this buoy before, but it is always worth repeating - so long as these oiks are perpetrating this gross unfairness - that what they have been doing is not illegal but bloody well should be. We look now to the new coalition mob to sort this out sharpish, and if the demise of these horrible companies is the result, CA MRA will be leading the cheering. Come the revolution... That is why pubs are boarded-up. Thank you.