Sticks And Stones...

Last week, my eleven-year-old started Big School (though don’t call it that to his face, he thinks it makes him sound babyish) and, with that transition from primary to secondary education, he’s going through a few changes he’s finding awkward.

He’s no longer the biggest in a school of small children; he’s now the smallest in a school of young adults. He’s confused about whether he should swear to make himself sound cool and girls suddenly look very different to him; let’s not mention the hairs that have appeared in such places that his mum is now banished from the bathroom while he takes a shower.

And then there’s the matter of his name. I wanted to call him Jack, but with our surname my wife felt he would be picked on when he got to Big School, so she called him Malachy (pronounced with an ‘ee’ at the end). After years of all his friends saying it properly, with one innocent mistake by a new teacher they now all call him it with an ‘eye’ at the end, because it annoys him. Reacting to it has meant that a small amount of bullying has taken place and so, last night, we had a chat about how to deal with it and he went to bed a happy young lad.

Then I switched on the Morning Advertiser’s forum and saw a response to a comment of mine. It was from a member of the Fair Pint Massive, calling on the web managers to employ “better bloggers.” It made me smile. All I’d simply done was point out that the new website’s format mimics that used by major news sites across the web.

But it did make me sad, too. Not in an “I’m going to cry into my beer” kind of way (I’m tougher than that: I went to school in the eighties as the nephew of Paul Daniels, whose prime time Saturday night show resulted in me being on the receiving end of many a jealous thump), but in an “is it really necessary as adults to resort to such playground politics” kind of way.

I have no truck with Fair Pint, or many of the other organisations out there that are doing what they think is right to help struggling tenants; they, however, often seem to have difficulty with anybody who’s point of view differs from theirs and, it seems, their only response is to resort to name calling and stick throwing.

For much of this year, I’ve steered clear of the beer tie debate, mostly because there hasn’t been anything new or exciting to write about, just the same old rhetoric doing the rounds. I’ve always written from my own perspective, and I’ve always made that clear, but I never did agree with the GMB’s fanatical calls for us all to break the legally binding terms of our contracts and it always seemed folly to me to believe in Fair Pint’s assertion that in removing the beer tie we’d all be able to sell beer at £2 a pint.

But I also stayed away from the discussion because Fair Pint seemed to change their tact slightly. Rather than calling for the eradication of all pub companies with immediate effect, a more logical argument came forward: that licensees should be given the choice as to whether they wanted to be tied or not.

To me it seemed a sensible argument, but both agreements would have their pros and cons, not least the very real risk that in freeing up a pub from its tie would see the landlord looking to reap its costs back elsewhere - a fact that just always seems to get lost in the brouhaha but is alluded to in the recent story about Greene King pub The Hop Poles. The licensees have successfully been allowed to go free-of-tie in return for an undisclosed percentage of turnover on top of their current rent. Which, incidentally, wasn’t reduced.

I see nothing wrong in this: it is, after all, business and the nature of such is that to be successful we all have to strike deals. If both sides are happy with the deal, then sobeit. The utopia that is called for - a complete freedom from tie, a reduction in rent, and no financial penalty elsewhere for doing so - is little more than a pipe-dream and enforcing it would still mean sectors of the industry would suffer and jobs would be lost. Meanwhile, customers would still be paying ~£3 a pint.

The BISC report into pubcos is due to be made public on Tuesday; the Government are set to respond within three months. It’s all great fodder for foaming at the mouth and caterwauling for a few public stonings.

But like I said to my lad last night, the best thing to do is keep calm and carry on. Next time the playground bullies call him a name, he’s going to ask them if doing so makes them happy, and if they reply yes he’ll simply tell them that he’s glad, and that he’s happy for them.

He does, after all, have one ace up his sleeve: he’s quite good at karate.