Don't let Crehan fight fail due to finances

What a disgusting situation. Bernard Crehan wins time after time and still because of Inntrepreneur tactics, could lose ('Bancruptcy threatens Crehan beer-tie battle, Morning Advertiser, 9 June).

Anyone who read the 'White Knight internal Inntrepreneur secret document in which all these underhand tactics were clearly set out, will be fully aware of what they are doing. Surely it has to be morally wrong for this case to fail just because, after 10 long years, money is the issue. Many licensees have already fallen by the wayside, and Inntrepreneur knows that with every day that passes more will lose their claim against it.

Most of the changes that the brewers/pubcos have been forced to bring in discounts etc are purely down to the Crehan case. So I ask everyone who has read the article about Bernard Crehan's plight to dig deep, as little or as much as you can afford. Please, please, please, let us all make sure that this case is heard in the House of Lords next year.

Please send your donations (cheques payable to the Bernie Crehan Fund) to: Maitland Walker, Eagle Tower, Montpellier Drive, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, GL50 1TA.

Bernard, well done. My cheque is already in the post.

AE Newnes

via email

Is Sky poking fun with leopard spots design?

Driving on the motorway the other day, a Sky

van passed us, with leopard spots all over it. Is Sky having a laugh at us?

I could only think of the saying 'A leopard never changes its spots. Sky certainly doesn't. Its prices are always too dear.

Richard Sanders

Stonemason's Arms

70 Bury Street

Heywood

Lancashire

OL10 4QT

Eight months on, and DCMS is still not talking

I attach a copy of a letter that I have sent to the minister at the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) regarding new licensing laws and applications. The content explains itself:

I have tried without success since November 2004 to get application forms either in Welsh or bilingual. With only a matter of seven or so weeks before the cut-off date of 6 August, I still have not had any replies from the DCMS. MPs are not getting responses from the department and the DCMS appears to have buried its head in the sand. Excuses for not replying have ranged from 'the minister is on holiday so no decisions can be made, to 'he's in the constituency fighting an election and we cannot reach him.

There have been eight months of emails only one of which has been replied to (two months after it was sent) faxes have not been answered at all and on every phone call, my request to speak with the minister has been refused. It is far easier to have a conversation with God than with this Government so much for Tony Blair's 'we are listening strategy.

It is estimated that up to 2,000 individuals ranging from those running pubs and hotels to village halls, are affected by this. The lack of fair play and parity between the Welsh and English languages is in my view a racist policy.

An American buying a pub in Wales can get the application form and fill it in and proceed as normal. A Welsh-speaking landlord, like myself, born, bred and educated in Wales, coming from generations of proud Welsh speakers, is denied the use of his own language in his own country by a seemingly democratically elected Government.

It also gives us a new definition of culture to the DCMS in London, culture is obviously English and anything else it need not consider.

Under the 1993 Welsh Language Act, section 26, the minister has power to act. The fact that he chooses not to speaks volumes. This is purely an obstinate anti-Welsh reaction. Other government departments appear to have very little problems with producing forms in Welsh. Why is the DCMS clearly out of step?

RoyaloakHendre@aol.com

Follow America's lead on under-age ID checks

As sceptical as I am about police interference, I think it's an excellent idea of West Yorkshire Police to put pressure on both doorstaff and barstaff to ask to see the ID of anyone who looks under 21 ('Police warn: check ages or risk action, Morning Advertiser, 9 June).

It's all too easy for bar staff to take the view that so long as someone has made it through the burly men in black on the door, then they are automatically certified as being aged over 18. I know from my own experience that this is certainly not the case.

My own view is that we should look to the approach of America, where its zero-tolerance stance is such that anyone who looks younger than George W Bush is asked for proof of age as a matter of course. It might sound extreme, but with all the hype surrounding under-age sales and the extra powers under the new licensing laws, now is the time for extreme measures to be taken.

Incidentally, I couldn't say for sure that the new licensing minister James Purnell would manage to order a pint without ID at my pub.

Name and address supplied

Interesting to see JDW's regional-food stance

It's interesting to see that JD Wetherspoon has caught on to what some pubs have been doing for quite some time serving locally-sourced food and drink in its pubs ('JDW gives its Welsh pubs a local flavour, Morning Advertiser, 9 June).

The fact that it has decided to sell produce made in Wales throughout its estate in the region makes good marketing sense and will no doubt give it more of a point of difference.

Once again, it has managed to source top quality drinks, including the first whisky to be made in Wales for years, that it will probably sell at its usual knockdown prices.

Pricing aside, it's interesting that a big managed operator would go down this route and is just another sign of how the larger players are moving into the territory that the individual operators have had to themselves.

Name and address supplied