the great beer race

[our new neighbours]

I've been challenged to a race by Andy. He's a sneaky devious bastard who's set himself up to win but, you know, I'm going to see if I can beat him. The race is, on the face of it, fairly straight forward; who can complete a brew day the quickest from start to finish? In theory he should wipe the floor with me as he is an experienced brewer but, then again, I do have a huge wealth of experience in production so that might just tip the balance a little back towards me.

At 7:30 tomorrow morning I will begin my day assuming that we still have mains water. On Monday the pipes had frozen solid so we had to abandon brewing but today, even though the snow was falling, it had returned. Already Andy has intimated that he might start at 5:30 on Friday morning with his brew .. .. .. elapsed time will decide the winner.

Not that it's an even race in any case. The brew that I'm doing, our 'best bitter' Velocity, is more complicated, of larger volume, and must be clear which with this current batch of malt isn't always straightforward. Andy on the other hand has chosen to make our stout, Black William, which is supposed to be cloudy .. .. ..

Both of us will tweet our progress during the days via the @adurbrewery twitter account. Feel free to offer support (to me) or abuse (to him) during the challenge!

compare and contrast: two headlines, one story

Take a moment and see if you can spot the difference in the headlines in the Guardian and the Independent about a new national scoring system for food businesses.
Both headlines refer to the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme which becomes operational today whereby all food businesses will be rated and their score, from 0-5, posted online. It's just that, oh I don't know, one piece seems a lot more negative about it than the other one does.

From personal experience an EHO will rate your business as much on how deferential you are to them as the actual hygiene of the place. Or if they got laid last night. Or the weather. Their interpretation of the legislation is just that - their interpretation. There are guidelines for the EHOs to follow but many of them are quite vague because of the variety of different types of business that they cover and subjectivity creeps in to the assessment process.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that if you did read both articles the Independent version of the story is more to my tastes than the fanciful "anything the public sector does is good" attitude of the Guardian piece which fails to take into account the resistance that this nationalised scheme has generated from councils (who already run similar schemes they set up themselves) and businesses who are afraid that their EHO will visit them the day after they argued with their spouse/siblings/parents/kids and mark them down on that basis for all the world to see.

a burning question

Crematorium bosses face being jailed if council plans to tackle pollution do not work.

These must be privately run crematoriums right? Because otherwise it would be a case of some public servants making laws and allocating funds to other public servants and then fining those other public servants if their solutions don't work. Who wins in that situation? Certainly not the taxpaying public .. .. ..

Councils could be fined up to £50,000 while crematorium managers could even face jail if the changes are not made by the end of 2012.

Nope. It's council run crematoriums.

/facepalm

interfering fuckwittery

Scotland is to get the power to set it's own limits for drink-driving according to a report on the BBC this morning. It's part of a transfer of powers being discussed in the Scotland Bill that the government has launched today.

A vox pop with a senior policeman who's name I didn't catch being screened this morning made me gasp with the sheer audacity of what he claimed. He said that once the drink-drive limit had been lowered in Scotland it would be a good thing if the whole UK could have a single unified limit to prevent confusion.

Well it does at the moment you fuckwit and the only reason it wont is if you and your interfering politician chums piss about with it.

and the winner is?

Not really what I'd expect from an equality driven multicultural society. When the fuck can we stop giving people awards for their gender/race/sexuality?

snap!

Seen on the wall of the smoking area at the rear of a central Brighton pub.

would you like extra punctuation with that sir?

finally!

If it carries on at this rate then we may well be snowed in. By 2025.

one for me one for you

is andrew lansley really a conservative?

I only ask because this latest idea, that menus should contain calorie information, is going to damage hundreds if not thousands of small businesses.

Why? Has he any idea how much gathering this information will cost? We looked into it at the brewery and the best price we could find was £140 per test. We currently produce 14 beers which, if we had to produce the information, would cost us nearly £2000. Imagine a small independent take away that has over 50 different lines on sale. How many of the owners could afford the £7000 or so to continue to trade? How many would just shut up shop? Big business can afford to spread that cost across all of its outlets but small business would be beggared by these proposals, especially in the current financial climate.

You'd expect this kind of thing from the jealous-of-other-peoples-success Labour Party but not the Tories

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

The Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill is due to be published next week and, according to Tom Whitehead in the Telegraph,

The reforms will see GPs and NHS trusts given a key say in licensing applications, particularly where alcohol-fuelled disorder starts to impact on a local health service, such as A&E or ambulance services.

A separate review could also see councils given the power to refuse alcohol licenses solely on the grounds that they could damage "public health".

Well that's going to end well isn't it? It's almost obligatory to be anti-alcohol (for the proles) if you take a senior role in an NHS trust. NHS trusts provide a huge chunk (£542,000 out of a £1.13m total) of direct funding for anti-alcohol fakecharity Alcohol Concern (2009 account). In the same accounting period the general public donated the grand sum of £8186. Allowing the NHS to intervene in licensing matters on the grounds of "public health concerns" is ridiculous. Whether a bar opens or closes at a particular location is not going to impact the amount of alcohol people consume, just the location at which they consume it. Unless of course ALL licenses are rejected on "public health" grounds.

The article goes on to say that

Under the proposals, individuals will be able to object to applications "regardless of geographic proximity" as long as they show they will be affected by alcohol-related problems.

It could include someone living close to a taxi rank used regularly by nightclub customers, people affected by noise because of night bus stops nearby or those with concerns about going into a town at night because of too much drunken behaviour.

Wasn't one of the main arguments in favour of the smoking ban that people were put off from going to pubs because they didn't like smelling of smoke? Non-smokers were going to flock to pubs once the ban was enforced because they could enjoy a sociable drink and not be subjected to second hand smoke .. .. .. .. except they didn't did they?

Strangely when this Bill was announced in the Queen's Speech there was no mention of this provision. We'll have to watch closely and see if Tom is correct.

it could never happen in england

Harriet Harman simply wouldn't allow it.

wireless security

Police in Bradford are using Bluetooth technology to try and catch drug dealers in the city. Officers are using the system to send messages to residents' mobile phones, asking them for information about drugs in their communities. The messages will also be sent to people's laptops.

Says the BBC.

I don't know about you but the bluetooth capabilities of my mobile and laptop are switched off unless I'm actively using them for data transfer and if I got a request to receive a package from an unknown source during the infrequent times they were active I'd decline to do so.

Looking back to a post I wrote last year about a similar scheme in Devon and Cornwall I'd warn people in Bradford to think carefully before accepting any bluetooth message from the police.

black friday amusement

It's not even the end of the first day of Amazon's inaugural Black Friday week in the UK and already there are some unhappy shoppers out there. You know the type - didn't bother to read the T&C's and are upset because they didn't get to buy the items they wanted. Even the Daily Mail is upset that terrific bargains are selling quickly. Amazon prospering? The swines!

sunday morning walk

I wanted to stop off at the brewery yesterday morning to see how far the fermentation had progressed on the beer we'd brewed this week. As there are a few paths that I used to ride that emerge from the hill very close to the brewery building I decided to take the boys for a short adventure walk. five miles, two and a half hours, and three hundred and thirty six vertical meters later (up and down) we arrived back at the car.

The climb up through the woods wasn't too bad as it is very sheltered but when we neared the top of the hill we became exposed to the chilly wind that was blowing across the top of the South Downs. A small directional error on my part meant that we emerged at the top of 'pigtails and braces', a little further east than I'd intended.



Undeterred we headed west along the South Downs Way until we reached the top of 'The Lion Trail', a semi-secluded gorgeous piece of mountain biking singletrack heaven tucked away just off the SDW.





My enjoyment of the glorious surroundings was marred a little when one of my sons presented me with a discarded inner tube he'd found slung into the woods. It makes me so angry that a lazy inconsiderate bastard cyclist could do that. They'd obviously bought a spare with them to replace the punctured tube so it would be no extra hassle for them to take it home. Actions like that ruin it for the rest of us especially as it's private land and the landowner has only just agreed to allow public access to it. The offending tube is currently residing in my bin at home.



Still .. .. .. a great walk in fantastic surroundings.

plainly ridiculous

source

The BBC, among others, is reporting the comments of Andrew Lansley regarding plain packaging for cigarette packs. I could rant and rave about this ludicrous bullshit that the government, supposedly dedicated to reducing state interference, is proposing but Dick Puddlecoat has already done so in brilliant fashion. Unlike the other reports I've read the BBC devotes a huge amount space in their initial article to fakecharity mouthpiece Martin Dockrell.

Why did it take 11 hours from the time the story was first published to include a counter argument to balance the piece? It's not as if this is a non-contentious issue. There is no definitive proof that I've seen that plain packaging will reduce smoking rates or smoking take up. I guess that's another attempt at point 6 (page 18) [google docs].

I'm also curious to know why the editor of this story decided to change 'ASH' to 'Ash'. ASH's site uses complete capitalisation for their name so why change it? Do the lower case letters soften the acronym somehow?

The final paragraph of the article, which has remained through all revisions, made me chuckle in an ironic, spurious ASH lies, kind of a way. If hiding tobacco out of the way changes young people's attitudes to it how can it do anything other than reduce the future turnover of those businesses that sell it? If it doesn't result in retailers losing money then it doesn't have an impact on smoking rates which renders the whole experiment completely pointless.

Returning to the announcement a thought crossed my mind. Maybe someone in the higher echelons of government who is an anti-smoking smoker wants plain packaging to appease his guilt at a habit that he considers filthy? Maybe he thinks that plain packaging will make it easier to hide his pleasure from his family? Who knows.

Any anti-smokers who have stumbled across this page who think plain packaging is a great idea stop for a moment and think. The anti-smoking lobby tactics have been emulated by the anti-alcohol lobby and the anti-obesity lobby. If this idea gains traction then how long before legislation is brought forward so all of our purchases are packaged in this way? Reducing state interference in our lives? My arse.

Go and read Dick Puddlecoat's take on the story. Especially if you voted Conservative.

the must have xmas toy?

Why would this new Transformers toy from Hasbro cause offence and outrage to anyone? *Waits for Tim Yeo*

minimum alcohol pricing legislation fails

With the amount of positive coverage the BBC has given to the wonderful panacea that is the idea of setting a minimum price for a unit of alcohol (Raising the minimum price of alcohol 'benefits all', Ministers propose Scottish minimum drink price of 45p, Plans for minimum alcohol price, Alcohol Concern calls for end of 'pocket money' alcohol, Call for all-party meeting on minimum pricing, Alcohol in Jersey is 'too cheap and too easy to find', Alcohol abuse 'created by price', Is alcohol too cheap?, Northern Ireland psychiatrists in drink price call,'I drank 15 cans a day', Apology over drink price claims, Minimum alcohol price 'would give retailers a windfall', Health Minister considering minimum price for alcohol, Watchdog backs a minimum price for alcohol) it's hardly surprising that they've not dedicated much time to the news that the plans were rejected by MSPs by a margin of 76-49 votes.

The Alcohol Bill was passed by MSPs including provisions to ban "irresponsible" drinks promotions, tougher proof of age requirements and a Social Responsibility fee for alcohol retailers. Quite how something is legally determined as irresponsible evades me, the social responsibility charge is just another way of gathering tax revenue, and how old someone looks is entirely random and subjective. All these measures are yet more small steps towards a total state control of our lives.

The measures that didn't get through this time, minimum pricing and a raise in the legal age for purchasing alcohol, will no doubt be brought forward again on a national scale once the current measures seem normal. In fact after I'd begun writing this post I came across a link on Twitter [NSFW] to a news article that suggests that the SNP, or politicians in general, are not going to give up on the idea of minimum alcohol pricing.

Why can't these interfering spunkmonkeys leave us alone?

smartphone antidote

It makes calls.




And it has an address book feature.

Seen here

foamy bird

Saw this residue from my mate's pint the other night. Is it a peacock or a cockerel?

shock, horror

BBC News has been outraged all morning about a kite surfer who jumped over Palace Pier in Brighton on Thursday. They've been emphasising the danger, how lives could be lost and that the owners of the pier had not given permission for the stunt.

Which is a little bit different to how they covered the story when the same people performed the same stunt almost exactly a year ago.

*chuckles*

dodgy statistics from ash scotland

The BBC has news that ASH Scotland has guesstimated the costs that smoking puts on the Scottish economy. It's an amusing report because it contradicts itself in its convoluted effort to brand smoking as evil.

Ms Duffy said the cost of smoking was greater than the money received from tobacco duties, stating: "The Scottish government estimates it receives £940m in tobacco-specific duty, leaving a deficit of at least £129m.

Just as with alcohol duty and fuel duty VAT is demanded on tobacco duty. To calculate the duty plus VAT at the current rate of 17.5% we multiply by 1.175 so £940m x 1.175 = £1104.5m or in plain English smoking has a minuscule impact on productivity as the estimated costs and the actual revenue are almost identical. It may even have a positive impact.

So how is this £1.1bn cost to the Scottish economy figure arrived at? "smoking breaks, absenteeism among smokers and the lost output due to early deaths totalled more than £692m" So non-smokers don't have breaks, aren't absent and never die young from non-smoking related illness? I wonder if that figure includes the savings made in later life care and pension payments that would inevitably have to be made to a longer living population?

Looking for more information I headed over to the ASH Scotland website and after failing spectacularly to discover more coverage of this story I did discover a page dedicated to Workplace and Productivity which has a link to a study published in the BMJ on the Costs of employee smoking in the workplace in Scotland. A telephone survey of 200 businesses, of which 167 responded, which was carried out in 1996 almost 10 years before the Scottish smoking ban was introduced seems to be the source of this information. Only companies employing 50 or more people were surveyed. Small business which employs 88.6% of people in the UK [ONS] wasn't ever asked.

The study does answer my earlier question as to whether future health care costs have been included

It has been postulated that health care cost savings may not be realised if smoking rates fall, since smokers tend to have a lower life expectancy and therefore consume fewer health care resources in later life. Research findings across countries have differed, although when future health care costs are discounted (future costs given progressively a lower weight), smokers' life time health care expenditures have generally outweighed non-smokers.

[translation] "we didn't like the results so we fucked about with the statistics to give us results that suited our purpose" and also the accuracy of the figures

It is clear from this study that there is a limited research base from which to make precise estimates.

[translation] "we made it all up" but then that doesn't matter when you have specific targets does it? The end justifies the means when you are waging a war against smoking.

great head

Right then yeast that'll give you plenty to work with. Do your thing and make this into beer please.

off their nutts

Really? MORE dangerous? Vote 'no' here

creativity in education

In her inset day today my wife and her colleagues watched and then discussed this video with the aim of improving the education available for the pupils at their school. Even if you have no personal interest in the state of the education system it's well worth watching and there's no way for me to describe what Ken Robinson says that is better than he does himself. Make a cup of tea, sit back, enjoy, think.