blog.jimbo.org.uk

September 11, 2005

Drink-sodden Armageddon

In a smidgeon under 3 months time, the law in the UK regarding licences to sell alcohol, to put on various forms of entertainment, and to sell hot food/drink after 11pm (late night refreshment) will be changing. The 6 separate current licensing schemes will be brought under a single banner, and in the process the current statutory limits on when a licence to sell alcohol can apply will be relaxed. This isn't to say a licence won't be needed (it certainly will), or that licences will all be 24-hour (they most certainly won't!), but there will be the potential for 24-hour drinking across the UK. Which for some reason has upset people.

Admirable as upsetting the Daily Mail editors might be, it's slightly scary to think that we might be plunging towards a drink-sodden Armageddon. But are we really? Lots of other European countries trust their citizens with the right¹ to drink alcohol at just about any time of day they choose, after all, and we're told they don't suffer from our "yob culture" — I suppose the question is, do we need a shift in our culture before we can have late night drinking, or do we need late night drinking before we can have a shift in our culture? And if it's the former, how else do we go about causing this change?

I personally don't think people in general will drink more at a time, more frequently, or more in general, under the new licensing regime. What they will do is get just as insanely drunk as now at a bigger variety of times to normal (making them easier to deal with?), and perhaps start their nights out later. People also won't feel rushed to squeeze as many pints in as possible between the end of Eastenders and last orders, so we should see fewer people getting drunker than they planned, and fewer people throwing up outside pubs/takeaways. Bonus!

The "late night" part of the new licensing rules is just one aspect of the act, anyway. More significant to me is the reduction in bureaucracy for places that currently need multiple licences, and the introduction of distinct "personal" and "premises" licences, which makes sense in a whole bunch of ways, and ought to save licensees a whole bunch of court appearances in the future. For one thing, anyone working for a pub chain as a "relief manager" will simply be able to have a personal licence, and be the Designated Supervisor for any premises in the chain whenever they need to be. At present, I understand every relief manager would need to make a court appearance to be made the temporary licensee at the new premises every time they went to a new pub, although I'm willing to stand corrected on this one.

Some new licensees will face significant problems of course, since currently kebab shops and burger vans don't need a licence to operate at night, and will soon need one to sell anything hot after 11pm. The reasons for introducing these requirements (as explained in that article) are pretty sound, though.

Something else those complaining about the new laws don't seem to realise is that people can already drink until silly hours of the morning if they so decide — pubs I've worked in have had "lock-ins" previously which extend well beyond the hours they've applied to extend their licence to under the new regimes. I can think of at least 2 pubs locally where drinking to 3am or so isn't unheard of, but I can't think of any that have applied for a licence beyond 2am. I suppose some nightclubs in the city centre may have applied for more hours.

So to conclude, the new licensing laws will piss off Daily Mail editors, reduce city centre violence, reduce occurences of vomiting on pavements near pubs, shut down dodgy backstreet kebab shops, regulate the surviving ones better, and allow people to drink legally later avoiding the need for things like lockins, while reducing paperwork for publicans. Sounds good to me.

¹ I don't mean to imply that 5am-drinking is some kind of fundamental human right, here, just that some countries allow their citizens to do it.

Posted by James at 23:05 | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Tags for this entry: drinking questions politics pubs beer

July 28, 2005

Half and half

I had no idea people drank so many "cocktails" made from beer/cider. I always thought that, when you went into a typical pub, the beers on the bar were all intended for separate sale, with the possible exception that student bars expect to sell vast amounts of Snakebite and black. The last few weeks working in pubs has taught me just how wrong I was — these are just some of the concoctions I've been asked for, or heard about:

• 1/2 pint stout, 1/2 pint bitter — often called a Black and Tan, but I don't recommend ordering it by that name in Ireland any time soon, because if you're lucky you'll only offend people by polluting your Guinness. If you're less lucky, people might think you're referring to what they'll see as a terrorist group from the early 20th century. When I ran out of Guinness halfway through pouring myself a pint, I ended up trying this, and it's not half bad.
• 1/2 pint mild, 1/2 pint bitter — generaly just called "mix" or "mixed", this drink seems to be exclusively drunk by working men in their late-50s or 60s, and apparently is (like mild itself) rarely seen outside of the midlands. Quite often people drink this with a lemonade top, but with sufficient mild I would expect it to be sweet enough for most already.
• 1/2 pint stout, 1/2 pint cider — the famous Black Velvet. Absolutely vile, do not order this under any circumstances. A 50/50 mix of stout and champagne also tends to get called Black Velvet, and frankly sounds almost as bad. I'm not sure whether layering the drinks as opposed to mixing them makes a difference, and I'm not about to waste more beer finding out.
• 1/2 pint lager, 1/2 pint stout — "half and half", apparently. I've never tried it, but given I didn't like Mickey Mouse (below), I'm not in a rush to, either.
• 1/2 pint lager, 1/2 pint bitter — Mickey Mouse, also known as Golden Sunshine. Apparently it's very refreshing, but I didn't see the appeal myself.
• 1/2 pint lager, 1/2 pint cider — Snakebite. Depending who you ask, Snakebite absolutely must, or absolutely cannot, involve a dash of blackcurrant cordial. For clarity, if you want blackcurrant (and you should!), I suggest ordering "Snakebite and black," although to be honest I really recommend drinking something else — if you hate beer so much as to turn it into this, just drink an alcopop or spirit/mixer or something.
• 1/2 pint lemonade, 1/2 pint anything else — I always thought shandy only ever involved lager, and cheap lager at that, but I've since been asked for shandies made with expensive lager, with bitter, with mild, and even with stout. Bitter shandy is actually really nice, especially on a hot day. Apparently stout shandies are the hardest to make properly, since convention says that the stout and lemonade should be separated in the glass as far as possible, with the stout floating on top of the lemonade. Frankly I'm not sure I see the point!

Now I think about it, there are some gaps in this list; where, for instance, is the cider/bitter combination? Is it so vile that nobody ever drinks it, or have I just not encountered it yet? If anyone tracks down this elusive cocktail they should let me know, and if it's not utterly vile I might try it. My experience with Black Velvet doesn't give me much hope, though...

Update: cider with bitter is apparently bitter snakebite, and cider-based Black Velvet is apparently Guinness snakebite. So, that clears that up, albeit somewhat unimaginatively.

In the comments, lonecat points out that a floating stout shandy is called Fade to Black, but in fact this blog seems to be the only place on the entire Internet where that term has been used in conjunction with Guinness, so clearly more investigation is required. Also Joe reminds me that Snakebite is also known as both Snakey B and Diesel, the latter particularly in its blackcurrant-containing form.

Posted by James at 01:30 | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Tags for this entry: drinking pubs cocktails beer