WHEN Cumbria University launched in 2007, the motley collection of former colleges had one jewel in the crown, the world famous former Charlotte Mason College in Ambleside.
Named after its founder, the pioneer of modern child-centred education, the college maintained its reputation with generations of teachers. It was also the only campus Cumbria had in the Lake District, with the fells and lakes featuring prominently in the promotional campaign: “Bring your dreams.
So when Cumbria University realised it had a cash crisis, with its deficit now standing at £28 million according to leaked briefing papers, and the axe was sharpened there was only one choice for the chop: Ambleside campus.
Vice Chancellor, Peter McCaffery, appointed this Spring with a brief to sort out the finances, has unsurprisingly been overwhelmed with shrieks of protest from educationalists, students and the local community, when he made the shock announcement that the campus was to be “moth-balled.”
There has been an on-line petition with 4,000 signatures, lecturers have threatened to strike, councils and MPs have launched campaigns.
Students are seeking legal advice after they were told they would have to move to other campuses, even though they only came to Cumbria University because of the Charlotte Mason connection. Nor had they budgeted to travel to Penrith, Carlisle or Lancaster (and certainly not the university’s other teacher training centre – in Tower Hamlets). Some have two-year contracts with Ambleside landlords.
When this was pointed out to Mr McCaffery at a stormy meeting he had no help or advice.
On-line petitions, protest meetings and demands from the local MP, Tim Farron, that the Government intervene had come to nought when, at a meeting at the House of Commons this week (Dec14) Mr McCaffery told Cumbria’s MPs just how deeply in the mire the university’s finances are.
Not only did the amalgamation of the former colleges fail to take advantage of any rationalisation of back office functions, it guaranteed employment to so many staff that the wages bill is out of control.
Worse, the Higher Education Funding Council for England neglected to tell the new University that the former Newton Rigg Agricultural College at Penrith needed £25 million spending on its infra-structure.
Mr Farron is calling on the HEFCE to provide stop-gap funding given that they were partly responsible for the current financial situation at the university.
He is also working with the university to launch an endowment fund for Ambleside, after he secured a six-figure donation to the campaign. But even the energetic Mr Farron accepts this appeal would fall at the first hurdle if the university were to remove undergraduate students from the campus.
Mr Farron said: “Ambleside has proven to be the most successful campus in terms of recruitment. To effectively close the campus is madness as well as a huge blow to staff, students and the whole local community.”
Vice Chancellor Professor Peter McCaffery said: “We are living in difficult times, and like many other organisations, have tough decisions to make. “
The mothballing of the Ambleside campus is expected to save the University £1.75 million pounds a year, a third of what the 600 students and 200 staff are believed to contribute to the local economy, and peanuts compared to the University’s deficit.
In fact many students fear being moved to Newton Rigg, as they believe that it will be the next campus for the chop.
The best hope for the Ambleside campus may yet be a traditional link with the Church of England, which ran St Martin’s College including the Charlotte Mason complex, before Cumbria University’s exciting takeover.
The Chancellor of Cumbria University is the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.
The Board of Governors will consider the proposals in February 2010, although the academic board, as expected rubber-stamped the plan at a meeting last night (Wednesday, Dec 16).
• An edited version of this blog will appear in next week’s pre-Christmas Private Eye.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Monday, 23 November 2009
Floods lessons to be learned
ENVIRONMENT secretary Hilary Benn was due to brief the House of Commons today (Monday) on the weather that brought chaos to the West of Britain over the last four days.
He may have expected an easy ride as the natural sympathies of MPs to the plight of hundreds of displaced families may have blunted their critical faculties.
But the representatives of the traumatised constituencies may be in angrier mood than he expected.
No doubt one hand will be clutching the begging bowl which may make it difficult to throw punches with the other.
But they will have been doing less than their duty if Mr Benn is not forced to listen to some of the very important lessons that need to be learned from the experiences.
It is tempting to think that the circumstances were exceptional. For a weather front to linger long enough for more than a foot of rain to fall in one area, as it did over the Lake District last Thursday, may be a once in a thousand year event.
But it may not. As Phil Rothwell, head of flood strategy at the Environment Agency, points out:
“The exceptional may become the norm with climate change. The evidence is that these energetic weather systems will happen more frequently.
“Climate change scientists say that very heavy rainfall in a very short time can happen almost anywhere in the country and we should expect more of them in the future.”
So it is important that the statistical novelty of the floods that still afflict Cumbria does not blind the Government to the need for its strategy to take into account the likelihood of more extreme weather.
The first obvious re-think is the propensity to build on flood plains. In nearly all less spectacular floods across the country it is the flood plains that get it worse.
This was a factor in the more dramatic floods on Humberside and in Gloucestershire in recent years.
Insurance companies are now refusing to provide cover for some properties built on them.
Local knowledge warns where they are, yet local authorities are under pressure to provide land for industry and land for affordable housing. This is true of developments around Cockermouth and Workington near the junctions of the rivers Derwent and Cocker. It was also true of Burneside outside Kendal which was a flood victim a day earlier.
So what is Mr Benn to do? Just ban building on flood plains.
Make sure the Environment Agency keeps a central register of all land with a proven track record of routinely filling with excess water in wet weather and give it the power to veto building on those areas.
Authorities will then be forced to seek alternatives and clean up brown, dilapidated and even poisoned sites, which will have a double benefit for the environment and wildlife.
Second, be more questioning of imposed protection status for waterways.
Local residents are convinced that the floods, the second in Cockermouth in four years, were at least partly due to the designation of the twin rivers as of special scientific interest by the European Union, in order to protect salmon spawning grounds.
Local Cumbria County councillor Eric Nicholson said: “That allowed English Nature to forbid the removal of gravel, which is all right in open country, but is no good near town centres.
“They said let the rivers find their own course, well it found its own course all right – right down Main Street. It is outrageous that people have had to suffer because of this useless legislation.”
Mr Rothwell said that no amount of dredging would have prevented the flooding at Cockermouth.
The agency has upgraded the flood defences for Cockermouth since the 2005 flood, which famously devastated Carlisle, but these were over-topped by the sheer amount of water, he said.
Third, there needs to be more strategic thinking about providing places for water to go before it reaches towns.
Coun Nicholson was angry at United Utilities for keeping nearby Thirlmere reservoir, which supplies water to Manchester, brim full since the end of August.
“If they had opened the sluice gates and let water out earlier then it would have had capacity to take some of the flood water when we needed it to,” he said.
Mr Rothwell had more sympathy with this idea, saying that up-country reservoirs or flood plains were being actively explored as an alternative to disfiguring towns and villages with ever more concrete flood defences.
Anyone foolhardy enough to venture into Cockermouth at the weekend would have seen the evidence of the sheer volume of water that flowed into the town.
It may well be that major flooding was inevitable. From the height of the debris, the Cocker was about 15 feet above normal, 20 yards wide moving at 25 mph - impossible to stop. On this occasion dredging the Derwent might not have made much difference.
But stopping to dredge rivers at the same time as allowing building on flood plains looks like a recipe for disaster as the good folk of Cockermouth discovered.
But there are optimistic signs that the authorities, notably the Environment Agency, are able to learn lessons from these disasters.
Mr Rothwell pointed out that the £38 million defences put into Carlisle after 2005 were one of the positive signs of last week’s floods, in that they had done their job. Carlisle escaped the worst of the damage this time.
This was despite the fact that the defence system was still not finished. Construction workers were actually diverted to plug gaps during the worst of last week’s weather.
He also said drain management by local authorities had improved, with constant clearing of blocked surface water paying dividends. This was a particular factor in Humberside’s floods.
Communication and warning tactics had also improved. It was noticeable that residents of Cockermouth who had to be rescued from flooded houses in 2005 say that this time they were moved before the waters struck.
The Environment Agency, however, needs to be wary of having too much reliance on new technology.
There were 46,000 text messages sent to people living in areas under threat and who had registered for the flood watch scheme, and the Agency claimed that 86% of messaged got through.
However in Burneside and Kendal, both of which were flooded before the deluge reached further north, said they had either not received the texts, or were told to expect the flooding six hours after it actually happened.
Mr Rothwell said that he would be investigating short falls in this system.
So, as well as the tributes and undoubtedly deserved praise for rescue workers and community spirit, there is plenty for Mr Benn to address in his speech to the Commons today of practical significance to the whole of Britain.
He may have expected an easy ride as the natural sympathies of MPs to the plight of hundreds of displaced families may have blunted their critical faculties.
But the representatives of the traumatised constituencies may be in angrier mood than he expected.
No doubt one hand will be clutching the begging bowl which may make it difficult to throw punches with the other.
But they will have been doing less than their duty if Mr Benn is not forced to listen to some of the very important lessons that need to be learned from the experiences.
It is tempting to think that the circumstances were exceptional. For a weather front to linger long enough for more than a foot of rain to fall in one area, as it did over the Lake District last Thursday, may be a once in a thousand year event.
But it may not. As Phil Rothwell, head of flood strategy at the Environment Agency, points out:
“The exceptional may become the norm with climate change. The evidence is that these energetic weather systems will happen more frequently.
“Climate change scientists say that very heavy rainfall in a very short time can happen almost anywhere in the country and we should expect more of them in the future.”
So it is important that the statistical novelty of the floods that still afflict Cumbria does not blind the Government to the need for its strategy to take into account the likelihood of more extreme weather.
The first obvious re-think is the propensity to build on flood plains. In nearly all less spectacular floods across the country it is the flood plains that get it worse.
This was a factor in the more dramatic floods on Humberside and in Gloucestershire in recent years.
Insurance companies are now refusing to provide cover for some properties built on them.
Local knowledge warns where they are, yet local authorities are under pressure to provide land for industry and land for affordable housing. This is true of developments around Cockermouth and Workington near the junctions of the rivers Derwent and Cocker. It was also true of Burneside outside Kendal which was a flood victim a day earlier.
So what is Mr Benn to do? Just ban building on flood plains.
Make sure the Environment Agency keeps a central register of all land with a proven track record of routinely filling with excess water in wet weather and give it the power to veto building on those areas.
Authorities will then be forced to seek alternatives and clean up brown, dilapidated and even poisoned sites, which will have a double benefit for the environment and wildlife.
Second, be more questioning of imposed protection status for waterways.
Local residents are convinced that the floods, the second in Cockermouth in four years, were at least partly due to the designation of the twin rivers as of special scientific interest by the European Union, in order to protect salmon spawning grounds.
Local Cumbria County councillor Eric Nicholson said: “That allowed English Nature to forbid the removal of gravel, which is all right in open country, but is no good near town centres.
“They said let the rivers find their own course, well it found its own course all right – right down Main Street. It is outrageous that people have had to suffer because of this useless legislation.”
Mr Rothwell said that no amount of dredging would have prevented the flooding at Cockermouth.
The agency has upgraded the flood defences for Cockermouth since the 2005 flood, which famously devastated Carlisle, but these were over-topped by the sheer amount of water, he said.
Third, there needs to be more strategic thinking about providing places for water to go before it reaches towns.
Coun Nicholson was angry at United Utilities for keeping nearby Thirlmere reservoir, which supplies water to Manchester, brim full since the end of August.
“If they had opened the sluice gates and let water out earlier then it would have had capacity to take some of the flood water when we needed it to,” he said.
Mr Rothwell had more sympathy with this idea, saying that up-country reservoirs or flood plains were being actively explored as an alternative to disfiguring towns and villages with ever more concrete flood defences.
Anyone foolhardy enough to venture into Cockermouth at the weekend would have seen the evidence of the sheer volume of water that flowed into the town.
It may well be that major flooding was inevitable. From the height of the debris, the Cocker was about 15 feet above normal, 20 yards wide moving at 25 mph - impossible to stop. On this occasion dredging the Derwent might not have made much difference.
But stopping to dredge rivers at the same time as allowing building on flood plains looks like a recipe for disaster as the good folk of Cockermouth discovered.
But there are optimistic signs that the authorities, notably the Environment Agency, are able to learn lessons from these disasters.
Mr Rothwell pointed out that the £38 million defences put into Carlisle after 2005 were one of the positive signs of last week’s floods, in that they had done their job. Carlisle escaped the worst of the damage this time.
This was despite the fact that the defence system was still not finished. Construction workers were actually diverted to plug gaps during the worst of last week’s weather.
He also said drain management by local authorities had improved, with constant clearing of blocked surface water paying dividends. This was a particular factor in Humberside’s floods.
Communication and warning tactics had also improved. It was noticeable that residents of Cockermouth who had to be rescued from flooded houses in 2005 say that this time they were moved before the waters struck.
The Environment Agency, however, needs to be wary of having too much reliance on new technology.
There were 46,000 text messages sent to people living in areas under threat and who had registered for the flood watch scheme, and the Agency claimed that 86% of messaged got through.
However in Burneside and Kendal, both of which were flooded before the deluge reached further north, said they had either not received the texts, or were told to expect the flooding six hours after it actually happened.
Mr Rothwell said that he would be investigating short falls in this system.
So, as well as the tributes and undoubtedly deserved praise for rescue workers and community spirit, there is plenty for Mr Benn to address in his speech to the Commons today of practical significance to the whole of Britain.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
BBC needs good lawyers
LET’s hope that the BBC had its best team of lawyers on duty on Monday (November 16) when its early evening main news bulletin broke every rule in the book.
Three of its first four items grossly overstepped the guidelines to media outlets and ran roughshod over every basic principle of media law.
Fist up was the arrest of a man, who had already been charged with five rapes and six indecent assaults.
This was expanded to a long piece about a police investigation going back 19 years and featuring a violent and predatory criminal labelled the Night Stalker.
The law says that when someone has been arrested then the media is restricted to basic information like the name of the accused and the alleged offences. The idea is that any further detail could prejudice a fair trial. Once charges have been laid the restrictions are even tighter.
It is natural for the police to go into “we’ve got our man” mode after such a long investigation, but the media is supposed to be more circumspect than this.
Not only did the BBC imply that the man was guilty, it also ran the risk of giving the accused a possible defence at any subsequent trial that the jury and witnesses had been unduly swayed by the report.
For the BBC to repeat the history and scope of the inquiry, and use words like “horrific” attacks, as it did, is a dreadful abuse of the system.
The next report was an allegation from a soldier who had been convicted by court martial of abusing Iraqi prisoners, that his commanding officer was gung-ho in attitude and somehow to blame for what went wrong.
The commanding officer named by the BBC would have had very good grounds for a libel action, remembering of course that under British law it is the media who have to prove statements are true. How could they possibly justify such a damning claim?
Similarly a report on the re-selection of South West Norfolk Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, Liz Truss, cheerfully stated as fact that she had had an affair with a named Tory MP. If he felt so inclined he could probably take the BBC to the cleaners.
The news reporter said that the affair was documented on the Internet. But legitimate news outlets like the BBC surely cannot rely on the Internet to prove stories to be true. At the very least this should have been an alleged affair.
Whether any of these stories had been run past the lawyers we shall never know. Perhaps the BBC, fortified by the routine flouting of legal restrictions by Crimewatch, thinks it is immune to guidelines the rest of the media has to obey.
But quite apart from the risks that the BBC ran of legal action against itself, it must have had anyone interested in the training of journalists and the upholding of the laws of defamation and contempt of court tearing their hair out.
Three of its first four items grossly overstepped the guidelines to media outlets and ran roughshod over every basic principle of media law.
Fist up was the arrest of a man, who had already been charged with five rapes and six indecent assaults.
This was expanded to a long piece about a police investigation going back 19 years and featuring a violent and predatory criminal labelled the Night Stalker.
The law says that when someone has been arrested then the media is restricted to basic information like the name of the accused and the alleged offences. The idea is that any further detail could prejudice a fair trial. Once charges have been laid the restrictions are even tighter.
It is natural for the police to go into “we’ve got our man” mode after such a long investigation, but the media is supposed to be more circumspect than this.
Not only did the BBC imply that the man was guilty, it also ran the risk of giving the accused a possible defence at any subsequent trial that the jury and witnesses had been unduly swayed by the report.
For the BBC to repeat the history and scope of the inquiry, and use words like “horrific” attacks, as it did, is a dreadful abuse of the system.
The next report was an allegation from a soldier who had been convicted by court martial of abusing Iraqi prisoners, that his commanding officer was gung-ho in attitude and somehow to blame for what went wrong.
The commanding officer named by the BBC would have had very good grounds for a libel action, remembering of course that under British law it is the media who have to prove statements are true. How could they possibly justify such a damning claim?
Similarly a report on the re-selection of South West Norfolk Tory prospective parliamentary candidate, Liz Truss, cheerfully stated as fact that she had had an affair with a named Tory MP. If he felt so inclined he could probably take the BBC to the cleaners.
The news reporter said that the affair was documented on the Internet. But legitimate news outlets like the BBC surely cannot rely on the Internet to prove stories to be true. At the very least this should have been an alleged affair.
Whether any of these stories had been run past the lawyers we shall never know. Perhaps the BBC, fortified by the routine flouting of legal restrictions by Crimewatch, thinks it is immune to guidelines the rest of the media has to obey.
But quite apart from the risks that the BBC ran of legal action against itself, it must have had anyone interested in the training of journalists and the upholding of the laws of defamation and contempt of court tearing their hair out.
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Santa's snail mail
IT is the time of year to be thinking about Christmas cards and being in the marketing business, I wanted to impress clients with a company card, to thank all those who had supported my new venture.
New technology would surely help my search for an appropriate design. So I started trawling the internet. Could I find the right message? No I couldn’t. And even if I had the ordering and payment systems were far from straight forward.
And then I had a brainwave. How about buying my cards, from a shop, on the High Street, and paying over the counter, with cash? Quaint old-fashioned thing that I am.
All I have to do now is write them all out, long-hand, with a pen, then put them in envelopes, with addresses, put on a stamp and take them to a post box.
Then a man can come in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, to take them to Preston, to be sorted, so another man can come round delivering them, by hand (if he's not on strike, that is).
This old technology makes no sense at all and will never catch on. But it still suits me.
New technology would surely help my search for an appropriate design. So I started trawling the internet. Could I find the right message? No I couldn’t. And even if I had the ordering and payment systems were far from straight forward.
And then I had a brainwave. How about buying my cards, from a shop, on the High Street, and paying over the counter, with cash? Quaint old-fashioned thing that I am.
All I have to do now is write them all out, long-hand, with a pen, then put them in envelopes, with addresses, put on a stamp and take them to a post box.
Then a man can come in the middle of the night, in the freezing cold, to take them to Preston, to be sorted, so another man can come round delivering them, by hand (if he's not on strike, that is).
This old technology makes no sense at all and will never catch on. But it still suits me.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Strange story of national media
News values of national newspapers and broadcasters still manage to bemuse. Even after 40 years in the business, I get taken by surprise at their fixations with each other.
Around a month ago I sent a piece about Lake District's own Taffy Thomas accepting the post as Britain's first Story-Teller Laureate.
As a national first, I naiively expected the national media to have some interest. Alas, neither a line nor a sound-bite appeared.
Locally there was some coverage. The Westmorland Gazette was naturally interested in Grasmere resident done good. Radio Cumbria followed up by interviewing Taffy on its prime drive-time slot.
But despite every news desk in the national media being given a prompt, reaction was there none.
Then I happened to mention this lack of response to the news editor of The Independent on Sunday, while discussing other matters.
He asked to look at the story and said he thought it was really interesting. It duly appeared pominently, as a page 7 lead, in Sunday's edition. As the Independent on Sunday has such a restricted circulation, you can view the article at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/laureate-to-help-storytelling-live-happily-ever-after-1812920.html
It even carried a photograph of Taffy, which was taken by Eileen Wise and not the writer of the article as mistakenly indicated.
Which is all fine and good, but it is what happened next which shows how the national media feed off each other.
On Monday morning, Radio 4's Today programme suddenly became interested, even though they had ignored their own BBC cousins at Cumbria, and there was the full glory of a James McNaughtie interview, during which Taffy told a tremendous tale, The Clever Wish.
Cut and paste this youtube link to re-listen to Taffy's national recognition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE5uu3bvUE
Stranger still the Telegraph suddenly woke up to a story they had nearly a month before and ignored, this time deciding to put it on its web-site, giving credit to The Independent web version! See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6478957/Britains-first-storytelling-laureate-named-as-Cumbrian-Taffy-Thomas.html
How about that, indeed. You couldn't make it up, Taffy.
Around a month ago I sent a piece about Lake District's own Taffy Thomas accepting the post as Britain's first Story-Teller Laureate.
As a national first, I naiively expected the national media to have some interest. Alas, neither a line nor a sound-bite appeared.
Locally there was some coverage. The Westmorland Gazette was naturally interested in Grasmere resident done good. Radio Cumbria followed up by interviewing Taffy on its prime drive-time slot.
But despite every news desk in the national media being given a prompt, reaction was there none.
Then I happened to mention this lack of response to the news editor of The Independent on Sunday, while discussing other matters.
He asked to look at the story and said he thought it was really interesting. It duly appeared pominently, as a page 7 lead, in Sunday's edition. As the Independent on Sunday has such a restricted circulation, you can view the article at: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/laureate-to-help-storytelling-live-happily-ever-after-1812920.html
It even carried a photograph of Taffy, which was taken by Eileen Wise and not the writer of the article as mistakenly indicated.
Which is all fine and good, but it is what happened next which shows how the national media feed off each other.
On Monday morning, Radio 4's Today programme suddenly became interested, even though they had ignored their own BBC cousins at Cumbria, and there was the full glory of a James McNaughtie interview, during which Taffy told a tremendous tale, The Clever Wish.
Cut and paste this youtube link to re-listen to Taffy's national recognition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSE5uu3bvUE
Stranger still the Telegraph suddenly woke up to a story they had nearly a month before and ignored, this time deciding to put it on its web-site, giving credit to The Independent web version! See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6478957/Britains-first-storytelling-laureate-named-as-Cumbrian-Taffy-Thomas.html
How about that, indeed. You couldn't make it up, Taffy.
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Iconic move raises stink
THEY say smells evoke memories. But one story this week evoked an avalanche of memories for me, including a pungent stink.
Strangely the smell was foul: vomit, stale bar towels and sickly sweet beer. But the memories were mostly pleasurable.
The story was the announcement by Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) that it wants to close the Federation Brewery, Dunston, Gateshead, with the loss of 63 jobs by the middle of next year, because of falling beer sales in the UK.
More poignantly that means switching the production of Newcastle Brown Ale nearly 90 miles down the A1 to Tadcaster and the same brewery where John Smiths is produced.
Having been brought up in Newcastle, and weaned on Broon’s sister brew, Amber Ale, the first time I ever got drunk was by quaffing three bottles of the real thing.
It was at a party where the only record was the Beach Boys’ greatest hits album, when they were just a fun surfing band, before the pretentious and over-rated Pet Sounds.
Later associations with Pop music included a Lindisfarne LP, and memorably Bonnie Bramlett, of Delaney and Bonnie (in the days when Eric Clapton was a heroin befuddled second guitarist), staggering off Newcastle City Hall, unable to cope with the effects of drinking Brown Ale on stage.
The famous bottled beer, with its iconic blue star label, first went on sale in 1927. The day after ''Broon's'' launch, it was said the local police appealed to the brewery to make it weaker because the cells were full of drunks.
The ale was also dubbed ''dog'' by drinkers, as they would make the excuse of going to ''walk the dog'' when nipping to the pub.
Like many Geordies, which I am not, I still remember with affection the sweet yeasty smell rolling across the city from the plant in Gallowgate where it was brewed next to St James's Park football ground until 2005.
In the mid-1970s, when I was resting between jobs as my theatrical family taught me to say, I actually worked behind the bar at the working men’s club owned by the brewery workers.
It was opposite the plant, and I remember with a mixture of emotions the huge draymen coming in with bottles of Brown Ale secreted in their dungarees and obviously nicked from the assembly line.
They handed these in as “payment” for their pints of Scotch or Exhibition Bitter. The club steward was delighted with this corrupt arrangement as the Brown Ale was worth more than the keg beers, although what it did to his stock-taking is hard to imagine.
Years later Newcastle Brown won Protected Geographical Indication status from the EU, meaning the Ale had to be brewed in the city, but that became a meaningless gesture with the shift a couple of miles across the River Tyne to Dunstan in 2005.
Now, Federation Ale and Dunstan, where the River Tyne was so polluted in those bad old days that anyone falling in was dead in seconds, conjured another set of memories, again accompanied by a none too pleasant smell. But that's another story.
The Gallowgate plant was finally demolished last year to make way for a science park.
The brand continues to be popular abroad, particularly in the US, but S&N say the decision was forced by falling beer sales, which have created general over capacity in the UK brewing sector.
This smacks of big business making decisions to please the stock market and financial institutions rather than customers and workers.
But then we are so used to this mind-set that it doesn’t even raise a stink these days.
Strangely the smell was foul: vomit, stale bar towels and sickly sweet beer. But the memories were mostly pleasurable.
The story was the announcement by Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) that it wants to close the Federation Brewery, Dunston, Gateshead, with the loss of 63 jobs by the middle of next year, because of falling beer sales in the UK.
More poignantly that means switching the production of Newcastle Brown Ale nearly 90 miles down the A1 to Tadcaster and the same brewery where John Smiths is produced.
Having been brought up in Newcastle, and weaned on Broon’s sister brew, Amber Ale, the first time I ever got drunk was by quaffing three bottles of the real thing.
It was at a party where the only record was the Beach Boys’ greatest hits album, when they were just a fun surfing band, before the pretentious and over-rated Pet Sounds.
Later associations with Pop music included a Lindisfarne LP, and memorably Bonnie Bramlett, of Delaney and Bonnie (in the days when Eric Clapton was a heroin befuddled second guitarist), staggering off Newcastle City Hall, unable to cope with the effects of drinking Brown Ale on stage.
The famous bottled beer, with its iconic blue star label, first went on sale in 1927. The day after ''Broon's'' launch, it was said the local police appealed to the brewery to make it weaker because the cells were full of drunks.
The ale was also dubbed ''dog'' by drinkers, as they would make the excuse of going to ''walk the dog'' when nipping to the pub.
Like many Geordies, which I am not, I still remember with affection the sweet yeasty smell rolling across the city from the plant in Gallowgate where it was brewed next to St James's Park football ground until 2005.
In the mid-1970s, when I was resting between jobs as my theatrical family taught me to say, I actually worked behind the bar at the working men’s club owned by the brewery workers.
It was opposite the plant, and I remember with a mixture of emotions the huge draymen coming in with bottles of Brown Ale secreted in their dungarees and obviously nicked from the assembly line.
They handed these in as “payment” for their pints of Scotch or Exhibition Bitter. The club steward was delighted with this corrupt arrangement as the Brown Ale was worth more than the keg beers, although what it did to his stock-taking is hard to imagine.
Years later Newcastle Brown won Protected Geographical Indication status from the EU, meaning the Ale had to be brewed in the city, but that became a meaningless gesture with the shift a couple of miles across the River Tyne to Dunstan in 2005.
Now, Federation Ale and Dunstan, where the River Tyne was so polluted in those bad old days that anyone falling in was dead in seconds, conjured another set of memories, again accompanied by a none too pleasant smell. But that's another story.
The Gallowgate plant was finally demolished last year to make way for a science park.
The brand continues to be popular abroad, particularly in the US, but S&N say the decision was forced by falling beer sales, which have created general over capacity in the UK brewing sector.
This smacks of big business making decisions to please the stock market and financial institutions rather than customers and workers.
But then we are so used to this mind-set that it doesn’t even raise a stink these days.
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
Compare the comedies
I actually remember tuning into BBC’s comedy panel show Mock The Week back in August 2008.
I don’t normally have such good recall of the pap that passes as entertainment on television, but this time I did as I was shocked and outraged by panellist Frankie Boyle's personal comments about Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington.
As a media pundit and aficionado I had been missing the brilliant and always amusing Have I Got News For You. In its absence I thought I would try out Mock The Week.
It is billed as satire, but I found the whole programme little more than juvenile insults about people who had no chance to answer back or defend themselves.
Well it seems that I wasn’t the only one. The BBC received 75 complaints from viewers. I am surprised there weren’t more.
Now, finally, the BBC Trust has ruled that the game show breached guidelines over the comments broadcast on Adlington.
Panellist Frankie Boyle's remarks were branded "humiliating" and "risked offending the audience" by the body. Too little and too late is the phrase that comes to mind.
It followed the Olympic champion's success at the Beijing Olympics.
The ruling repeats the remarks, which I won’t except to say that Boyle said that Adlington looks pretty weird. Worse, because Boyle judged that her boyfriend was really attractive, he, Boyle that is, made completely unfounded assumptions about Adlington’s behaviour.
Mock the Week’s producer has apologised, admitting: "The ribbing may have gone a tad too far on this occasion".
That just isn’t good enough. Apologies don’t come much more grudging than that.
Well it may have taken the BBC Trust more than a year to come to the obvious conclusion. I acted a mite faster.
I switched off and never again have I bothered to tune in.
Regulation of the Media is always a complex and contentious issue, with Freedom of Speech, sense of humour, defamation, and people’s sensibilities and privacy just some of the conflicting factors in constant tension.
The off switch, however, and to quote a certain Meerkat, is simples.
I don’t normally have such good recall of the pap that passes as entertainment on television, but this time I did as I was shocked and outraged by panellist Frankie Boyle's personal comments about Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington.
As a media pundit and aficionado I had been missing the brilliant and always amusing Have I Got News For You. In its absence I thought I would try out Mock The Week.
It is billed as satire, but I found the whole programme little more than juvenile insults about people who had no chance to answer back or defend themselves.
Well it seems that I wasn’t the only one. The BBC received 75 complaints from viewers. I am surprised there weren’t more.
Now, finally, the BBC Trust has ruled that the game show breached guidelines over the comments broadcast on Adlington.
Panellist Frankie Boyle's remarks were branded "humiliating" and "risked offending the audience" by the body. Too little and too late is the phrase that comes to mind.
It followed the Olympic champion's success at the Beijing Olympics.
The ruling repeats the remarks, which I won’t except to say that Boyle said that Adlington looks pretty weird. Worse, because Boyle judged that her boyfriend was really attractive, he, Boyle that is, made completely unfounded assumptions about Adlington’s behaviour.
Mock the Week’s producer has apologised, admitting: "The ribbing may have gone a tad too far on this occasion".
That just isn’t good enough. Apologies don’t come much more grudging than that.
Well it may have taken the BBC Trust more than a year to come to the obvious conclusion. I acted a mite faster.
I switched off and never again have I bothered to tune in.
Regulation of the Media is always a complex and contentious issue, with Freedom of Speech, sense of humour, defamation, and people’s sensibilities and privacy just some of the conflicting factors in constant tension.
The off switch, however, and to quote a certain Meerkat, is simples.
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