Some Good News About Beer. And A Laugh...

The Press Association reports that a weighty tome entitled The Journal Of The Science Of Food And Agriculture has analysed 100 commercial beers and found that they contain varying levels of dietary silicon, which can help to reduce the risk of diseases such as osteoporosis. Yahoo have picked it up here.

They found that

not all beers are the same, with those containing malted barley and hops having higher silicon content than beers made from wheat. Some light lagers made from grains like corn have the lowest levels of silicon

and the PA author then goes on to claim that

beers made from hops seem to come out on top

That made me grin. It's clear from the comments of the lead researcher that the silicon comes from the barley or other grain used in the mash. I don't know whether the researchers found some beer without hops, or if the author doesn't know how beer is made. The researchers looked at production methods as well as ingredients.

I couldn't find the article in the online edition, but if I track it down, I'll update this with a link. I'd like to know which beers were used in the research.

UPDATE: The full article has to be purchased, so for now I'm off the story. However, there has been some reaction in the health and research communities. Check this out...

Now, A Minister For Pubs

The nation's weekend paper of record (the News Of The World) reports that Gordon Brown has appointed his former PPS and current Housing Minister at DCLG, John Healey MP, as his 'Minister for Pubs'.

In this role, Healey will head up a task force of five ministers to tackle the problems of pub closures. His group will meet for the first time tomorrow to scope out an initial pub survival blueprint, which might include business tax breaks, relaxation of planning laws and a right for tenants to buy out closure-threatened houses from "big breweries", though I'd expect pubcos to be included as well. We're informed that he expects to be pressured to prevent 'Badger' Darling from lumping more tax on beer in the next budget (assuming Badger will be delivering it).

Healey descibes himself as a 'beer man', though there's nothing on his personal website about this passion, and he isn't on the All-Parliamentary Beer Group as far as I can tell.

It'll be interesting to see how his brief is remitted. He will sit in Cabinet, for what that's worth, but will be be able to press the Treasury on beer duty? Will he be able to prevent misuse of restrictive covenants when pubs are put on the market? Where will he stand on alcohol misuse and harm reduction initiatives coming out of the Home Office?

He's apparently planning to hold a meeting of his Task Force in a pub, which smells of a PR stunt to me. The government's track record on sleight-of-hand initiatives and dead-end gimmicks is well enough known to wonder "why now". However, the next few days and weeks could be interesting...

Radio Times Playing With Numbers

In my previous post, I mentioned I'd contacted the Radio Times to determine the source of some stats used in an article on portrayal of pubs and drinking in soaps, authored by Gareth McLean.

RT responded, and they gave me the link to a two-part article from the Guardian entitled 'Under The Influence'. It's still online and you can read it here. Thing is, it was written in 2004, and yet McLean thought it suitable to use some of the numbers from the piece without updating or researching their currency or validity. Another example of credulous reportage which supports a corporate or policy agenda? Given Pete Brown's recent convo with the BBC online, it's hard not to draw an inference.

I've written to RT with a link to Pete Brown's re-analysis of the Health Select Committee's report. However, I thought I'd link that Guardian article, because to me it's an example of some of the shabby thinking that has shaped Government initiatives across a range of social topics for the past decade. Whether you think the science is unduly alarmist, it seems at the time that HMG already had its mind made up, and wanted the data to support it. Where have we heard that before? [cough cough] dodgy dossier [cough splutter]

Now we are served up some confusing numbers on glassing incidents in order to drive a change in beer glassware. You can download the whole publication which informed the media coverage here. Again, I can't help thinking that minds within the Home Office are already made up, and by establishing these inclusive, "stakeholder-driven" initiatives, they keep the troublemakers in the tent pissing outwards onto everybody else. Interestingly, if you read both the 2004 piece and the Designing Out Crime stuff, one name features in both, that of Steve Thomas of Luminar Group, the UK's largest nightclub operator. A man who's learned how to play the game. Somebody who pushed hard to get reform of licensing to be able to grow his business, then got 'the kidz' to drink their continental lagers and alcopops from polycarb vessels.

Generally, having seemingly suppressed alarming 'evidence' to support changes to licensing laws, we're now having startling numbers force-fed to us to stigmatise our choice of drink and venue. For fuck's sake, what do these people want?