Quick links
Hurrah! Apparently men can
drink 63 units a week without any negative health effects.
John Lewis is to narrow its price promise of 'never knowingly undersold'. I suppose the advantages of it are that only a few people have to do it for us all to benefit, as I was going to say I don't know anyone who has ever used it.
The Telegraph says
Chinese growth will overtake US growth in dollar terms at market exchange rates for the first time in the modern era. I don't know if this is absolutely correct - did America not have negative GDP growth in 1980? Anyway you know what they mean.
Back at home the
economy is still growing at a rate of over 3% a year, or at least was in Q3 07.
Labels: Alcohol, economics
The Centre for Policy Studies
I was under the impression that the CPS was a right-wing think tank, and indeed its
website says that:
It exists to promote coherent and practical public policy, to roll back the state...
In today's Sunday Telegraph there is a letter from a "Kathy Gyngell" that blames Gordon Brown for teenage drinking because he has not raised taxes on alcohol sufficiently and she demands (presumably vastly) higher taxes. How is this coherent with rolling back the state?
Labels: Alcohol, Think tank nonsense
English wine
Land of Hope and Glory,
Mother of the Free,
How shall we extol thee,
Who are born of thee?By drinking English wine, of course. That's my project for the summer, anyway. On the whole the quality is pretty good these days if you choose carefully. Prices are relatively high, however.
Thus I can certainly recommend this week's tipple, from
Yearlstone vineyard near Tiverton in Devon. They do five
wines - We bought two no.1s, and two no.5s, both of which are lovely. They have sold out of 2004 red wines, but - in my experience - English red wines aren't all that. If you can't get to Devon, you can buy these online
here (though I've not tried the service).
One advantage of English whites is that they are reasonably low in ABV, these range from 10.5% to 11%. So you can have two bottles.
Labels: Alcohol, English wine, Not a Tim Worstall paid blogging spot, wine
Pubs
The Guardian has an
article on how big business is wrecking our local pubs, and in particularly the rather celebrated case of Harveys and Lewes. I'm a little sceptical of the arguments put forward - there is at least a good a case in my mind that big business has resuced many of our 'local' pubs from seediness and squalor, though things might be different outside London.
What is interesting in this case, however, is that Greene King, of which I have long been a very contented shareholder (though not at the moment, I found to my surprise yesterday) is the villian. Greene King has expanded rapidly over the last 8 years or so, and is admittedly now well on the way to being a huge international brewer. But not that long ago it was, to all extents, a small regional brewer, and it seems rather odd to hear 'Bury St Edmunds', that lovely market town in Suffolk, spoken of so disparagingly.
Update: A somewhat different
story in the Economist about the decline in pubs in London's old-fashioned posh areas.
What is more, residents are increasingly fussy about having even the tidiest pub as a neighbour. The Australian, typically, had been barred from allowing drinking outside for some years. Late licences, after 11pm, are also almost unknown in smart residential areas. Residents squelched a bid by a local historical group, the Chelsea Society, to speak up for The Australian.
David Le Lay, the society's chairman, wonders how raffish village charms will survive without a certain tolerance from residents. “If we don't watch out, we'll all be living in a very prim and proper area.” A survey by his society found that in the late 1950s there were 54 pubs in the old borough of Chelsea. In 1980 there were 44 and by 2005 the total was only 26; three more have closed since then, though some may re-open. With pubs shutting up shop, some streets are empty and echoing at night; and one of the rare places where people from different walks of life congregate socially is in shorter supply.
Update II:
Nick Cohen joins in on Lewes, saying that the Sustainable Communities Bill would mean the local council "will be able to compel Greene King to stock Harvey's Bitter". I've learnt that it's best not to take Nick Cohen's opinion as fact, and on the face of it this (obvously) or something like this doesn't seem to be explicitly mentioned in the Bill, which I'm reading
here. I'll do some more research, but if anyone else knows. It would be a rather far-reaching law if true - it seems to me they could subsidise a pub if the area was lacking in them, but Lewes is certainly not, and I can't see how they can compel it, let alone 'merely' a provision of one type of ale, which surely is not a public service of enough importance to be covered by the act?
Labels: Alcohol
