So Who Fancies A Pint, Then?
TheEye likes to see a campaign well-run. If you want to see an organisation so unbelievably useless at running one then the irony is that its the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) who can’t organise a piss-up in a brewery.
Yes, the pub-saving campaign is brought to you by the same people who gave up trying to fight the smoking ban when a survey of half a dozen quaffers of murky pints of Old Badgerbaiter said that on the whole they weren’t bothered either way. Hundreds of pubs then were forced to close as trade promptly fell through the floor. They are going the same way by thinking that appeasing the Government is a reasonable strategy this time as well.
The Times has investigated and thinks that at current trends Great Britain will run out of pubs by June 2037. Obviously a pointless statistical extrapolation, but it gave them a decent headline.
From that page: “CGA’s figures differ markedly from CAMRA’s – the Campaign for Real Ale (shown above in green),but by CAMRA’s own admission, its survey hasn’t been going as long, isn’t as formal, and relies on reports from volunteers at its 200 branches around the country.“
Volunteers, eh? Alcohol Concern was created by the British Government in 1985 and although it pretends to be a charity it actually receives less than 1% of its income from private donations. CAMRA isn’t on the taxpayers’ teat so is at a massive disadvantage.
Look at the graph again and take a guess at when the smoking ban came in.
TheEye will welcome all readers to his local when they are in the area…St C already has his weekend booked for next month. A small locals bar were smoking is allowed but is so well ventilated that you’d never notice if everybody else was anyway.
No Real Ale though. Red wine or large G&T’s please. Or a decent scotch.
UPDATE: After a comment on a live chat tonight TheEye wishes to clarify that it loves real ale, but real ale does not like TheEye. Half a dozen pints and it is Goodnight Vienna.
SOURCE: The Times but repeated on other blogs in different styles.
CAMRA in it’s day was a wonderful force for good, I started going into pubs just as it got underway ( though luckily my Schools’ pub was the only one in my N london suburb not to go gas or electric ).
But, down the road, The Formica Arms where we first got away with underage drinking made the Rovers Return look like a palace: fizz beer, dodgy bogs, MUSAC, crap lager, dirty furniture, dead locals, stale fags, pork scratchings and cartoon staff.
Ah, the CAMRA beer festivals at Alexandra Palace before it burned down, we soon learned to buy just a half pint commemorative glass.
CAMRA were responsible for the first and by far most succesfull consumer rebellion ever and the effects are still with us today ( micro-breweries etc. ) but, frankly, the old dog has had its’ day, as witness the curling up in face of the smoking ban and its’ current “appeasement” and Vichy collaboration in helping the Govt. to attack supermarket off-sales as the ’cause’ of binge drinking.
Three cheers for CAMRA but please, R.I.P..
When in Jersey I was taken to the only CAMRA recommended pub…The Lamplighter.
Called that because it was so gloomy. All of the lights were gas powered. No electric lighting in the bar area. Only real ale on tap. If you asked for a Budweiser you were basically invited to leave.
I hear it has been taken over by a pub chain now and has become the same as every other hostility in the area.
Not a real ale drinker (I like it but can’t handle it) but, if true, to lose a place of such character anywhere is a crying shame.