Buckie-ing The Appeasement Trend

CAMRA, prick up your ears. This is how to deal with the anti-alcohol lobby, OK?

“The ­people who commit crimes are the ones who have to take responsibility. It is completely wrong to blame the knife manufacturer if someone stabs someone. Why just attack Buckfast?”

When asked to consider reducing the caffeine levels in the recipe,

"Why should we? It's been there for over 80 years. Why should we change the recipe just to satisfy somebody's whim?"

And also when it was suggested that the Benedictine monks that manufacture the tonic wine in their Devon monastery are to blame for the effects of Buckie,

"Why should they accept responsibility? They're not up there pouring any of their Buckfast down somebody's throat. People take it by choice because they like it, because it's a good product".

Ta to Rab for his transcription skills.

That Buckie spokesman has balls, right enough. Others who purport to defend the intake of alcoholic drinks should be taking copious notes. He was responding to a documentary from the BBC, which ... well, why not read this yourself. Honestly, it's worth waiting for. Ready? OK.

This investigation had no agenda.

Rather than start from the standpoint that this humble tonic wine was a "bad thing", we simply wanted to find out why it had acquired a reputation, particularly in the central belt, as Scotland's "commotion lotion".

No agenda. Did you get that? The BBC has been at the forefront of the rapid demonisation of alcohol for the past year, but this study was entirely coincidental and not designed to further that cause at all.

Right, when you have all picked yourself off the floor, let's continue.

We asked Strathclyde Police about the drink using the Freedom Of Information Act.

They told us that Buckfast was mentioned in more than 5,000 crime reports over the last three years.

So what was the question, Kenneth? Could it possibly have been something along the lines of "How many crime reports over the last three years have mentioned Buckfast"? You know, a stunningly neutral question like that, with no hint of an agenda for a pre-determined attack strategy ... course not.

Nah, can't be that. Cos I really trust that Kenneth guy, he's really straight up, he is. As are the BBC, obviously.

In stark contrast to the Buckie geezer, CAMRA, who have a history of playing dead when the bansturbators come knocking, choose to confront the temperance movement in an entirely different, and customarily blinkered, manner.

Iain Loe, Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) national spokesperson, said: "CAMRA welcomes the call by the Committee for the introduction of a minimum price per alcohol unit which will benefit community pubs by curbing the below cost selling of alcohol by supermarkets which can fuel pre-loading.

There's that talk of evil supermarkets again, which we know to be a steaming mountain of horse crap.

They claim now to be defending the 'community pub', despite being absolutely fucking useless in defending the thousands of community pubs which have closed since July 2007.

While the Buckie spokesman supplies steadfast resilience, CAMRA exhibit nothing but self-preservation and gutless appeasement.

Buckfast recognise the attack on the drinks industry, CAMRA cosy up to the bansturbators in some vain hope that they won't be next in line. As long as there is someone more unworthy, in their eyes, than them, they will point the finger and say it was nothing to do with us, Sir, it was the naughty kid over there.

Or, as Crampton puts it ...

It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.

This assault on all alcohol is real. The picking off exercise is into the back straight while CAMRA haven't even reached for their running shoes. They had an early gun, too. They could have fought the righteous before focus turned to their particular vice, but they not only refused, they wholeheartedly jumped on the side of those who wish to exert control over personal choices. In fact, they still do.

Within CAMRA membership, there are plenty who are already classed as binge drinkers by this rancid anti-fun crusade, but who blithely dismiss the danger. It's something which happens to others, not us, they kid themselves.

Yet they are in the crosshair, of that there is no doubt, but reality is as alien to them as a cool Peroni. They have ducked every fight so far and, with a pitifully few exceptions, don't even seem to recognise that they are under threat.

For every brave soul like the Buckie representative, there are a hundred or more holier-than-thou CAMRA members who truly believe that this health juggernaut will pass them by. Before yesterday, there were probably a few monks in Devon who would have agreed.

The difference is that the monks have decided that hundreds of years of tradition are worth fighting for. God bless 'em.