MPs gag themselves in protest against live music restrictions To many, a group of MPs sitting around with their mouths taped over sounds too good to be true, but the protest - by the all-party Parliamentary Music group, with the assistance of singer/songwriter Billy Bragg - was over the continued exiestence of the archaic and arcane law on live music in pubs. Under the law, licensed premises must have a live music licence if more than two people are performing and in the past licensing officers often turned a blind eye to minor infringements, but now they have clamped down in what the Musicians' Union is convinced is a way for local authorities to raise revenue.

The law as it stands is almost unenforceable as shown by recent cases including one where a pub in Greenwich was threatened with prosecution when the audience stamped their feet to folk music, and a pub in Dorset where the landlord got a formal warning after pensioners sang Happy Birthday.

The difficulty for pubs is often that the cost of the licence can be up to £5,000 in some areas, a crippling extra cost for small community pubs especially if they only have live music on an occasional basis. The result is a collapse in the number of pubs with live music, particularly pubs formerly well known among musicians for informal sessions. Reform has been promised by the government, but has failed to happen due to lack of parliamentary time despite the fact that more than 200 MPs have signed an early day motion demanding urgent action.

So its bye-bye Brakspears After 200 years of brewing and because of an alleged "declining market" for real ale Henley-upon-Thames' Brakspears brewery now plans to close by the end of the year. There has been much opposition to this with a multi-way campaign supported by staff, customers, CAMRA, and even local MP Boris Johnson but to no avail. There are strong concerns that this will now result in the loss of Brakspears' tied estate to one of the other PubCo groups.

Beer is bad for the young After a series of articles about how moderate alcohol consumption is good for you see links here), in the interests of balanced reporting, we must now pass on the views of a group of Cambridge medical statisticians who feel that this only applies to men over 34 and women over 44 . Younger people who drink on a regular basis, even if their intake is less than recommended safe alcohol limits, can "substantially" increase the risk of death, the study says.The analysis of drinking habits of men and women in different age bands from 16 to 24, 25 to 34 etc. up to over 85 estimated the relationship between alcohol consumption among certain age groups and the risk of death.


Guidelines from the medical colleges advise men to drink less than 21 units of alcohol a week and women to drink less than 14, but the study shows that among women aged 16 to 54 and men aged 16 to 34, the risk of death from all causes increases in proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed. For women, the risk of dying increases by five per cent if they drink between eight and 20 units of alcohol a week, as opposed to none. Men incur a similar risk if they consume five to 34 units a week.


To limit this risk, the researchers advise both men and women to drink well below the recommended levels. Women should limit their drinking to one unit a day until they are 44, two units a day up to age 74 and three units a day for those who are older. Men, on the other hand, should ideally limit their alcohol intake to one unit a day if they are under the age of 34, two units a day up to age 44, three units a day up to age 54, four units a day up to age 84, and five units a day if they survive beyond 85.

Pub jokes I'm REALLY not sure if I want to be starting this, but here we go.

A brain and a jump lead go into a pub and order some drinks. The barman says "I'm not serving you two!" "Why?" asked the brain. The barman replies, "Because you are out of your skull and he's bound to start something."

A man walks into a pub, and notices Vincent Van Gogh is standing at the bar. "Do you want a pint, Vince?" he asks. "No, thanks," replies the artist. "I've got one 'ere."

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walked into a pub, followed by a lesbian, a dog, and a white horse. The barman says, "is this a joke or what?"

A neutron goes into a bar and asks the barman, "How much for a beer?" "For you, no charge," the barman replies.

Beer is good for you. Part III Our Plymouth correspondent has pointed me to this article from Prague where gerontologist Dr Pavel Zemek has been quoted as saying "If men drink two beers a day they can stave off impotence." Apparently beer in moderation works well to stop arteries becoming blocked which is not only good for your health generally (as reported previously in Bibendum here and here) but is also one of the major causes of erectile dysfunction.

How on earth did you get here? One of the things about having been effectively off-line for new postings over the last week or so, is that we've had a chance to go back through some of the server logs and see where people are coming to us from. Unsurprisingly, there are a large number from people Googling for "Bibendum", but modesty leads me to think that they are in fact searching for a well-known wine merchant or restaurant rather than your humble editor.

I've started picking up a few hits from homebrew.com who have been kind enough to link to me from their blog page. The ever-reliable daypop - a specific news and blog search engine - consistently throws people my way, and most of the rest come from various webring links. Wherever you have come from, I hope you find something that entertains, educates or amuses you.

Hmm, looks knackered from in here, but looks OK to you lot out there...

Is it still broken? Kick, thump, twiddle

I'm still here, honest The lack of posts here for the last week or so has been accompanied by the muffled cursing of bloggers everywhere waiting for our gracious hosts to fix some server problems. If you can read this, we're all back on line now.

Widescreen TV, Cask ales and stomach pumps Two Glasgow pubs are having to scrap their advertising campaign in which they claim to be responsible for, among other things, 89 people having their stomachs pumped, and 11 divorces. The poster adverts on the Underground are being removed after complaints that they are both tasteless and irresponsible.

17 year old boy drinks alcohol - News at Eleven So Prince Harry has been seen drinking - well who'd have thought it? One one hand we have the media screaming on about how the Royals are "remote" and "disconnected from the public they serve", and then we find front page headlines which express shock that a 17 year-old lad goes off to a party and DRINKS ALCOHOL! Of course these same hacks never touch a drop themselves...

My Beergut saved my life OK, it's a story from the Sun, but I'm not proud! 37 year old Sean Reaney from Birmingham was attacked with a petrol-driven circular saw when he took on a group of men he suspected of fly tipping. However, because Mr Reaney weighs in at 22 stone, despite receiving an 18 inch cut across his stomach the saw didn't come close to any of his vital organs. He is now recovering in hospital.

Interbrew - the lurker in the dark? An interesting piece here from The Independent's city editor Nigel Cope about Interbrew's undercover plans for world domination and how they fell foul of the regulators in the UK

Only in America Not wanting to rush into things, the town of Tallmadge in Ohio, a suburb of Akron, finally got around to repealling Prohibition last Monday. Despite the fact that the rest of the United States did so nearly 80 years ago (on December 5th 1933 when the 21st Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, therebye ending the "Noble Experiment"), the town fathers of Tallmadge still refused to allow local sales of alcohol, fearing that too many taverns would be built. The change, approved by voters last year, was finally prompted by a desire to attract chain restaurants that depend on sales of alcohol to boost profits.

Llangollen hotel scuppers Euro experiment A week-long experiment in North Wales to accept Euros during their annual Eisteddfod festival has met with mixed reaction in Llangollen. Around 80,000 people, many from overseas, are expected at the festival and they decided to accept the new European currency during the week long as a gesture to continental visitors and their new money. Raections, however, have been mixed with one of the detractors being The Royal Hotel who firmly rejected an offer of euros for a pint of beer. "We didn't think it was worth changing our tills just for one week," said the staff.

Beer is good for you (still) New research by Dr Manfred Walz from Austria's Graz University shows that not only can drinking beer can halve the risk of having a stroke, but that moderate beer drinkers live longer and are less likely to suffer some serious illnesses.In addition, beer drinkers generally have better blood circulation and are not as prone to developing cancer.He said: "It's widely known that by drinking moderate amounts of red wine the risk of suffering from a stroke is reduced by 5%, but it is reduced by 50% by drinking small quantities of beer each day."

World Cup advertising wins customer free beer for life Football fan Pete Guest had the deal with his local landlord for getting his flag with the Pub's name on it - the Bull Inn at Hardway near Brewham in South Somerset - on the TV during the World Cup. His banner was picked up by TV cameras as Michael Owen scored in England's 3-0 win against Denmark.

Greene King profits up after a busy year After a year which saw Suffolk-based brewer and pubCo Green King firmly on the acquisitions trail (Bibendum reported last week that Oxford-based brewers Morrells were now part of the Green King empire), the company has posted pre-tax profits up 10% to 69.2 million pounds.

Free beer on the NHS In a study being carried out by the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, men are being asked to drink a litre of beer per day to examine the possible link between a vitamin called folate - found in beer - and a reduced risk of heart disease. Unfortunately the beer in question is non-alcoholic, but project leader Dr Paul Finglas defended this decision and suggested that alcoholic beer was unlikely to ever be the ideal way of delivering folate to the body. "It would be difficult to do a study where we are giving people alcoholic beer because people have to get on with their lives. Also alcohol impairs folate absorption in the body." he said.

The Bear Necessities? It's "silly season" in the mainstream press at the moment, and Bibendum is no exception. Apparently villagers in Dobratic in Bosnia have had a young bear living in the meadow close to the village since hunters killed his mother. The villagers have fed him and according to locals he is so tame that you can sit down and enjoy a beer with him without fear that he will turn aggressive. However, the bear, named Mrki, has been tricked into going on the wagon when people grew tired of his drunken 'singing' after finding half-drunk cans left over by the locals.

According to village coffee shop owner Tadija Sugic "It got to the stage of him drinking up to 20 cans of beer a day and getting drunk. We tried to give him soft drinks like cola and orange, but he just didn't like them so we decided to trick him with non-alcoholic beer - and it's worked a treat. He loves it."

Bibendum is sure that the manufacturers of Kaliber will be delighted that someone enjoys their products, but feel that Congleton's famous brewery has missed a marketing trick on this one.

Lager flavoured crisps A couple of months ago Bibendum reported that a group of food scientists at Purdue University in Indiana had figured out a way of stripping the moisture out of beer to create a "beer spice" which could be used to flavour foods. Yesterday McCoys announced the release next month of a new range known as "Lager" which, unsurprisingly, allegedly taste of lager. The company said the new flavour was made with brewing yeast and hops used in the production of lager and also claims it is considering a milder flavour for women, (a half-pint taste "for the ladies"???) and a real ale variety for traditional drinkers.

Sounds to us like a great way of ruining two perfectly good foodstuffs.

British drinkers still switching from beer to wine Research from market analysts Mintel yesterday, showed that despite falling wine sales in France, British drinkers are steadily pushing up their consumption of wine. We have gone from averaging 7.7 litres each in 1981 to 22 litres each in 2001, with sales rising over 4% last year alone. A Mintel spokesman said: "Wine has been the success story of the alcoholic drinks sector in the UK. From a beer-drinking nation, wine has grown to become an everyday drink for much of the population. Indeed, almost two-thirds of the population drink wine and over a third of these are heavy users." The UK now tops the European drinking league, with 89 per cent enjoying alcohol at home or in the pub, compared with 88 per cent of French, 76 per cent of Spaniards and 66 per cent of Germans.

ScottCo to sell off pubs? S & N's Chief Executive - Brian Stewart - is to announce tomorrow the results of a review of the company's pub estate. Many analysts are predicting that disposing of some or all of the c. 1500 pubs will be the outcome in an attempt to finance the acquisition of Kronenbourg which it bought from French food group Danone in 2000. The details have yet to be worked out, but it is believed that the estate could be worth up to £1.5 billion.

Update Well sort-of. It looks as though they intend to sell off the pubs, but continue to run them as part of their managed estate. The Independent is carrying the story here.