Comment: Onwards and upwards with cask's good news
Propaganda [prop-uh-gan-duh
]1) Information, ideas or rumours deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation
2) The deliberate spreading of such information
3) The particular doctrines or principles propagated by an organisation or movement.
Harsher critics of The Cask Report might construe last week¹s release of this piece of research (see News, page 5) as such.
This wariness is, say members of the brewing industry, why the report in previous years has not had the all-important coverage in the national press they felt it deserved.
This is the third year of the report (formerly known as The Intelligent Choice) to be unashamedly backed by Britain¹s brewers and brewing trade bodies - all of whom have direct interest in people believing cask is in rude health.
Critics would single out report author and Publican columnist Pete Brown as a numbers guru formerly employed in marketing beer.
The problem for them is that Brown is writing the truth. The interested parties who have spoken with such zeal for so many years finally have something to support their claims.
Now the challenge is how to make the situation even better. Because pubs¹ sales should in fact have grown more than the one per cent boost they have experienced. With distribution to a greater proportion of bar-tops, 400,000 new drinkers recruited and most of them wealthier pub-goers than the average, you would expect the figure to be larger.
Cask is on its way but there is evidently still work to do, and this is no time to be resting on our laurels.
Onwards and upwards!
