What Would You Have Done?

 I wrote sometime ago about the relatively recent phenomenon of queuing at the bar.  You know the kind of thing, standing in a line rather than joining a general scrum in front of the bar. Proper pub behaviour, in other words.

On return from our week in Spain, we decided to stay a couple of days in London.  We'd flown from the fab London City Airport, which was way cheaper for similar times than flying from Manchester, and comparatively a lot easier to get to given our London flat is dead handy for the Docklands Light Railway.  The landing at London City is quite an experience, and I'd recommend it, but I digress. Once we'd settled down and sorted this and that out, a pint seemed, as it usually does, an excellent idea. 

We had returned to rather pleasant weather, so cheerily set off, me still in shorts and a tee shirt. Our destination, as it almost always is, was the excellent Aldgate Tap.  OK, it is a bit modern, but I know the manager (and the owner) and it is well run and with, for London, decent prices and excellent German beer.  It is set in a square with a fountain, lots of outside seating and, being London, standing room too, but we always sit inside to avoid the inevitable smokers and now, vapers.  The pub - well a bar really if truth be known - has rather a small actual bar - probably not much more than 10 feet (ca. 3 m) long -  with all dispense being from taps on the wall. There are no fonts or pumps on the bar itself.  We walked straight to the bar, like you do, chose our beers and found a comfy low level seat - as I get older, and with my new knee, I don't really enjoy the high perch of bar stools quite so much.

The manager came over for a chat, and we sat happily afterwards with minds in neutral, just passing the odd remark.  Three quarters through our drinks, I asked E if she wanted another. Be prepared and all that. She replied in the affirmative and then said something I wasn't expecting. "You might have a bit of a wait - have you seen the queue?"  Somehow I hadn't noticed, but a queue had spontaneously formed and was now snaking out of the pub itself and well into the square. It was work chucking out time, a warm and sunny day, and the queue was being extended before our eyes as more punters joined it. I was taken aback.  This was a dilemma I wasn't expecting.  I watched and though the bar staff were making valiant efforts, the line was not diminishing. It would clearly take some time to get to the front of it, and our glasses were nearly empty.

Now, as I wrote in my earlier piece, I don't approve of queues in pubs, but this one had been organised by the customers and the dozens of people were patiently waiting their turn. E asked if we should go somewhere else, but that seemed like a defeat. Now if it had been a long traditional bar, I'd likely have just ignored the queue and walked straight to the bar, but that was totally impractical here. The bar isn't big enough.

With a heavy heart and great reluctance, I walked out of the pub and joined the tail end of the queue. The British penchant for queuing had, on this occasion at least, beaten me into conformance. Thankfully, by the time we had our third and final drink, the queue had gone. 

I am relieved that in my previous piece, I didn't nail my colours too firmly to the mast. Do circumstances alter cases? I think so, but I didn't feel great about my compliance with it.

It should also be mentioned that there are usually two good cask beers on offer at a touch under a fiver a pint. Not so common in central London these days.

The Grauniad Needs a Pint

There has been a bit of a stooshie recently, following the Guardian - without consulting anyone meaningful about the matter - suggests that we'd all be brighter eyed and more bushy tailed if we gave up pints in pubs. We should replace them by two third measures. Well? Really? Is this so?

Reporter Elle Hunt - me neither - is all in favour of it, so that's good at least. In what would best be described as a puff piece, she quotes as follows: "Researchers from the behaviour and health research unit at the University of Cambridge have recommended that the traditional British pint be abandoned in favour of the two-thirds measure.

After a trial in a dozen pubs, bars and restaurants in England, the study leader, Prof Theresa Marteau, concluded that the change – which led to nearly 10% less beer being sold and consumed – could reduce the impact of alcohol-related harm."I’m entirely in favour of the idea", says Elle, so we really should take a bit of notice, shouldn't we?  Well, no.

The Prof quoted is worried about heath. We drink too much don't we, so forcing us into drinking in smaller glasses would decrease beer sales, by 10%. Well with 50 pubs a month closing, that would certainly speed things up if that's your aim. The likely outcome wouldn't be good for the consumer either, It is likely, nay certain, that the outcome would be shrinkflation with the same being charged for less. And of course, home drinking, where most of the real harm occurs, would not be affected. Didn't spot that one Prof? We'll come back to you later.

However, Elle, isn't worried about that. She lists her reasons for disliking the pint.  This is now serious stuff. It is too big; it is unwieldy; you get bloated; the beer gets too warm before you get it down your neck; one intended pint usually end up being two, forcing you to drink over a litre of beer. How awful. This is compounded by this fatuous remark "Really, when you think about it, 568ml is an obscene amount of liquid to consume in one sitting – and 1,136ml even more so. It probably wouldn’t occur to you to drink more than half a litre of coffee, or milkshake, or kombucha at a time. So why is it the norm, in Britain, with beer – and despite the known harms?"  So there you have it. Obscene to drink over a litre of beer.

Elle tells us - she's Australian it seems - that in Sydney the schooner (not the same as two thirds actually)  is the norm and is widely accepted. I've got news for her. The pint, from my recent experience, is widely accepted too. In fact, in all the pubs around the harbour area, it was standard, though schooners were available. It was pretty much the same everywhere and though it varied from state to state, I don't recall many occasions where it wasn't available. 

If the argument is that two thirds measures should additionally be available, I wouldn't have much of an issue. Here in the UK, two thirds measures are pretty much confined to the craft beer sector, where strength is more likely to be higher. Normal pubs - and I use the word as a delineator, simply have no call for them, and it can also be argued that two thirds is a good way of disguising cost.

I've not forgotten the Prof whose team determined that if you give smaller measures that you sell less beer. (I think even the most casual primary school student of arithmetic could work that out.) Most beer in pubs though is used as an agreeable social lubricant, rather than something to get trashed on. If that's your aim, there are cheaper and quicker ways of doing so, rather than expensively necking pints of (mostly) weak beer. But the danger in all this nonsense is that it deflects from dealing with the real issues of alcohol abuse, which is, for those affected, absolutely dreadful.

Funnily enough, this daft piece has attracted much radio and other media attention. I have seen little support from subsequent public comments, though there have been some silly comparisons (small glasses in Düsseldorf for example) and many vacuous arguments, but such things are easy airtime, so we shouldn't be surprised. 

This is a fatuous article. Clickbait more than anything.  As Elle herself says, the pint has been around since 1698. I'm not for a second saying there isn't a problem, but is beer and the pint really the issue here? Let's just leave it alone and concentrate on tackling where real harm occurs, that is in unlicensed premises, like our homes and the social and political issues that surround alcohol abuse.

Oh, some stats about the UK and alcohol for perspective: 

UK is 27th for beer consumption in the world, with 67 litres per head of population. Well behind the leader, the Czech Republic, with 188.5 litres.

We don't make the top 15 for alcohol consumption in the world and, though I couldn't find exactly where we rank, we would be 18th in the EU if we were still in it.

We are 69th in the world for deaths attributed to alcohol, with 1.76 per 100, 00. (Germany is 25th with 4.32.)

Update: A more serious piece was published in the Guardian here today. It covers much of the ground I have covered, and features sensible stuff by Roger Protz and Pete Brown, but I've written this now, so here it is.

.