Comments on: Bravo! Bravo!

By: diogenes1960

diogenes1960 — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:40:01 +0000

echo John B – the denial of good bitter to the British consumer is driven by the fact that the proper craft brewers were all bought up by Scottish and Newcastle and others who then started brewing Watney’s Red Barrel, John Smith’s and other strange keg bitters or appalling lager brews in mega-quantities. The British consumer was not prepared to pay slightly more for a better tipple unlike most other beer drinkers of the world. However, the British beer drinker is prepared to pay over the odds for a mediocre Belgian beer – Stella Artois. Five years ago, it was hard to find a bar in Brussels that served Stella – if you wanted that style of beer you had to choose between Maes and Jupiler, both of which have far more flavour than Stella. Sheer brewery power means that Stella has made some inroads but it is still rare to find anyone other than a Brit drinking Stella of his/her own volition, I would wager.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 13:14:47 +0000

My baked beans of choice are Heinz Organic. I get a deep satisfaction from all that branding.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:03:53 +0000

I don’t know how bad it is in the UK but here in the US the prices for organic are prohibitive. A dozen large organic eggs cost over twice as much as the store brand. These people are just pricing themselves out of business.

By: john b

john b — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:39:22 +0000

“protection and subsidy has largely done away with our local breweries”

Please do explain how. Note: “the rise from the Victorian era to the 1980s of massive, low-cost industrial breweries with their own estates of tied pubs, buying out local brewers largely to close them down” does not count as “protection and subsidy”.

If anything it’s the opposite – the fact that we didn’t subsidise or ban the closure of local breweries was a major driver behind the UK being the most industrialised brewing country in Europe (well, except Ireland).

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:42:05 +0000

“That is the use of such schemes.”

It’s what they tell you they’re about. But you probably forgot the foul games the Soil Association is playing denying organic status to organic vegetables grown in Kenya because they are air freighted to the UK.

Do you care that a Kenyan pig was well treated, or do you want to protect UK farmers from imports? You said the former, but the Soil Association is doing the latter.

By: Jock

Jock — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:59:07 +0000

Unfortunately, protection and subsidy has largely done away with our local breweries as well, so our pigs will never be as happy as these Italian ones!

By: Craig Foulkes

Craig Foulkes — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:36:19 +0000

Your point is valid that both pigs are just as well cared for. My problem is that in not knowing my local pig farmer, I cannot know the conditions in which the pig was raised. I need a way of knowing that the meat produced from the supermarket is from a pig which has been well treated while it was being raised. That is the use of such schemes.

By: Mark Wadsworth

Mark Wadsworth — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:08:10 +0000

Lobbyists want two things: barriers to entry and subsidies. Subsidies are no use without barriers to entry, but barriers to entry are in turn a form of subsidy.

By: Kay Tie

Kay Tie — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 09:53:56 +0000

“a trade union for organic farmers”

Worse than that: it’s a guild. And worse than a brand, it has a legal monopoly on the use of a descriptive word.