Scott Walker: not the beer-drinker's friend

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker sells out to MillerCoors, and makes life harder for Wisconsin's craft brewers, for a paltry $23K or so.

One take from the left side and one take from the (classical) liberal side.

It is an onogoing mystery, both in the literature and in my head, why politicians can be bought for so little.

And, of course, this is another reminder that politicians on the red team are not really different from politicians on the blue team.

Economist on pubs

The Economist ponders the state of play in Britain's pubs and offers up this gem:

But not all the news is grim—and it is not just their owners that are casting around for ways to keep Britain’s pubs open. Just as pubs are diversifying, officialdom is beginning to view them more benignly: as linchpins of their neighbourhoods, which help to foster vague but politically fashionable goods such as community spirit and social cohesion. The Labour government, universally hated by publicans, appointed a “minister for pubs” a few months before it lost the general election in May. The Conservatives’ manifesto gave pubs the status of “essential services”, alongside facilities such as post offices, and promised powers for people to club together to buy boozers threatened with closure. More recently, as part of its drive to cut public spending, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition floated the idea of merging pubs with public libraries.

Pubs and libraries! Just the kind of bold, innovative thinking one expects from a non-traditional coalition like the tories and the lib dems. Among the many possible benefits: watching the normally shy librarians cut loose after a few pints and a few chapters of Jane Austen. But does this mean privatizing the libraries or socializing the pubs?

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Alcohol and interviews

I found the results of this paper, which suggests that managers interviewing job candidates over dinner implicitly penalize those who order wine, a bit surprising, and am inclined to think that the story is really something else.

In particular, it would be interesting to see this replicated in the UK, where the culture of drinking at lunch [sic] still has a tiny bit of life left. And it would be interesting to replicate it in parts of the US with lots of Baptists and not much wine, e.g. Alabama, and with lots of wine and not so many Baptists, e.g. Northern California.

It would also be interesting to see whether the choice of wine or beer matters as a function of the interviewers own preferences and as a function of the job characteristics. Also, what if the problem is that the interviewee orders the house Merlot, which signals a lack of taste or knowledge, rather than the wine per se?

Having said all this, I actually notice at work lunches when people order regular coke instead of diet coke and infer something about their weight loss intentions.

Bonus points to Reuters for actually linking to the paper. Points off for writing about a paper not yet subject to peer review.

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Firm specific workplace benefits

On the sad story of reduced on-the-job beer consumption at Carlsberg in Denmark.

From MSNBC and from the Copenhagen Post.

Key bits, from the MSNBC story:

Scores of Carlsberg workers walked off their jobs in protest Thursday after the Danish brewer tightened laid-back rules on workplace drinking and removed beer coolers from work sites, a company spokesman said.

The warehouse and production workers in Denmark are rebelling against the company's new alcohol policy, which allows them to drink beer only during lunch hours in the canteen. Previously, they could help themselves to beer throughout the day, from coolers placed around the work sites.

The only restriction was "that you could not be drunk at work. It was up to each and everyone to be responsible," company spokesman Jens Bekke said.

Hat tip: Lars Skipper

It's a school and a nightclub.

Why isn't this place getting praise for being green by using the same building for two different functions at different days and times?

Oh, yes, there is alcohol. That means policy discussions must be conducted with brains off.

Prohibition still doesn't work

Some evidence from the Great White North, as described in the Globe and Mail.

Discouraging Danes from drink

From the Danish newspaper POLITIKEN an account of the terror in the hearts of public health commissars as they ponder the reality of Danish alcohol consumption. One bit:

Minister of Health and Prevention Jakob Axel Nielsen (Cons) [says:] “Danish attitudes to alcohol are much more liberal that I care to see. This doesn’t mean that the government is preparing a ban on red wine, but we want to work on Danish attitudes to alcohol – not least in relation to our young people. In other countries around us, young people have a different attitude to drink”

Yes, we would not want any liberal attitudes, to be sure.

What is the remedy? Home visits by government temperance workers:

As a result, the Commission says that the obligatory doctor’s examination of three-year-olds should be changed to a home visit by a nurse to determine whether there is a negative alcohol culture in the family. If so, information and help can be offered to reduce consumption.

Seems to me it is the public health people with the "negative alcohol culture" not the people who responsibly enjoy consuming it. Maybe if the Danish program is successful enough they can match the binge drinking culture of the UK and the US which feeds on conflicting social messages about alcohol and the additional lure added to alcohol by its status as both a religious and a public health sin.

Hat tip: the anonymous Dane

Unhappy hour indeed

The Ann Arbor city government has been cracking down on establishments that offer a free drink along with some other service. This includes Salon Vox (noted in the article) where the charming Jenna styles (almost said "cuts", which would clearly be wrong) my hair these days. In the past, I could have a bit of wine or a martini with my haircut, which made it seem ever so much more civilized (as does the fact that Salon Vox is located next to one of A2's best used bookstores, where I always make a stop after I am done) and enjoyable than an ordinary haircut.

I am told that some of downtown A2's licensed alcholol sellers are behind this city crackdown. They fear competition from hairstylists and art galleries, which is both rather sad and pathetic in and of itself and perhaps even a bit odd. Salon Vox does a lot of business styling the hair of young women right before they go out for a night on the town. Do you think those young women will spend more or less on alcohol at the restaurant or bar or club at which they spend their evening if they start the evening just a bit tipsy from their Salon Vox Appletini or if they start it stone cold sober?

More broadly, I am puzzled as to how it can possibly improve public welfare to limit the number of liquor licenses in Ann Arbor. I do not have much problem with having a system of licenses per se but it seems to me that they should be available to all legitimate businesses that demonstrate knowledge of the rules and have procedures in place to avoid distribution to minors. The current system simply passes out monopoly rents to favored businesses. That is good for them and for the politicians to whose campaigns they contribute, but not good for the A2 drinking public at large.

Perhaps the Ann Arbor News can do a story that follows the trail of campaign dollars?

Your tax dollars at work - Detroit edition

Apparently this really happened.

This is extra cool because it combines idiot bureaucrats with zero tolerance idiocy to produce truly high powered government misbehavior.

Sigh.

Hat tip: instapundit