![[Logo : Birth of Venus in a pearl]](../../2003/pics/30cbf-sm.gif)
We're back on Jesus Green for our third year. Over the 30 years we have used a number of venues: we started in the Corn Exchange, have visited the Guildhall and Midsummer Common, returned to the Corn Exchange and then spent nine years on the Cambridge City Football Ground!
We have employed the usual time, care and attention to select a range of beers from all over the country, old favourites and new brews alike. Inevitably, we have some from my home island of Guernsey, so look out for the flag and you can buy me a pint if I'm in the vicinity (you'll know me by the infamous hat!).
What you may not know is that we buy our beers in at normal rates. We don't get the special rates that are available within the trade and the beer has to be paid for whether it is sold or not. We do try to keep our prices as fair as possible - the cost of the hire of the tent, scaffolding, fencing, flooring and the like all play their part in the way they are set.
The one thing that enables us to remain relatively competitive is the fact that all of our staff are unpaid volunteers, so if you do have a complaint keep this in mind and remember that, whilst career drinkers, not many of them are career bar stewards. Me? I'm a long-distance truck driver and we have secretaries, window cleaners, sales assistants - the list is endless.
A special welcome to all of our regulars - hi again, you know the drill! If this is your first festival, a special welcome you too! You may be wondering what CAMRA is all about and you will find an abundance of literature about the organisation around the festival site. You may then ask, has the war been won? When you consider that most of the pubs you may visit have at least one real ale on the bar, it's a reasonable question. Well, let me tell you that the battle is still being fought and we are still campaigning for a better deal for the drinkers, landlords and brewers of this country. The industry is being led by profit-motivated accountants who have no interest in the end product, nor any care for the customer - you!
So, here comes the campaign rant - these are just some of the reasons that CAMRA exists:
In 1989, the Government introduced legislation to give you, the drinker, the right of choice. The legislation became known as the "beer orders" and, like all legislation, it is complicated. Importantly, if a brewery has more than 2000 pubs, its tenants had the legal right to sell a guest beer of their choice. Equally importantly pubs were also given protection against being closed by the brewery and their future use as licensed premises was assured.
Tony and the boys in Government now say that the beer orders are no longer needed and are in the process of scrapping them. If they get their way you will see more takeovers, mergers and closures, and a lot less choice over the bar. To many of our small micro-breweries this would be crippling as they rely on the beer orders to survive. If this business dried up, many would be forced to close, so far from abolishing the beer orders, they need to be extended to include all pub companies.
We have all seen the breweries setting up their own chains and transferring their pubs over to it. This company is usually run by the same people but they can say they are a separate entity to the brewery so that the beer orders do not apply to them. This results in less choice to the licensees and so to you. If the licensees didn't have the right to a guest beer they could only sell the beers that the pub companies stipulated and guess what? It comes from the same brewery that they no longer belong to! Tony and the boys down at Number 10 think that this is perfectly OK - we in CAMRA disagree!
Now, what of the fabled full pint that we keep hearing about? The Government is talking about making it legal to serve 95% of a pint, whilst still calling it a pint, but the price would stay the same and you might not even get a top-up if you ask! However, a pub would have a visit from the weights and measures people and would be prosecuted if found to be serving short measures of wines or spirits, but the same wouldn't apply to a pint of beer! Tony and his gang of tax kings declared as part of their policy that they would introduce a "full pint law" but then that was before they got elected...
All CAMRA beer festivals serve beer in oversize glasses - this enables us to serve a full pint of liquid and if the customer wants a head on their pint or half, we have the room for both. The big breweries say this would cost them a million pounds a day to accommodate, so to me that says we, the drinkers, are being robbed of the same figure and our Government thinks that this is OK. Well, I don't! Do you? No? Well, go to the membership stand and join CAMRA today to fight for the right to choice. End of campaigning rant (at last).
This year we have three new traders on site - we have the Cambridge Army and Navy stores who will be selling camping and other kit, on the food front Katie's Thai Kitchen replaces B's Thai Kitchen owing to the latter's ill health, and we will have a crepe stall on site, so we wish them a good festival. On the wine front we are pleased to welcome Chilford Hundred and Simon Alper from Chilford Hall Vineyards in Linton and their staff.
I'll leave you with a thought:
Source: Euripides, 480-406 B.C.
Amen to that - enjoy the 30th Cambridge Beer Festival!
Shaun Marsh
Festival organiser