Shenker sunk!

It's always sad when someone loses their job, unless that person is the neo-prohibitionist boss of fake charity Alcohol Concern, Don Shenker. News broke this morning that after the taxpayer-funded fake charity Alcohol Concern lost their main source of funding from the Department of Health they could no longer afford to pay their Chief Executive and Shenker has been shown the door.
I will be raising a glass or two later this evening to the memory of this lying little shit who manipulated data and took taxpayers money to fund his half-truths and misrepresentations. This is the one good the thing this Government have done - stop wasting public money on neo-prohibitionist organisations who have their own narrow-minded ideas. Hopefully this is just the start and the next fake charity to be culled will be Shenker's bastard offspring, Alcohol Concern Cymru, though with the socialists in power in Cardiff Bay their funding by the taxpayer looks set to continue.
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money to spend"
A problem the Welsh Government are finding themselves in at the moment - here's a hit don't spend £250,000 a year on fake charity Alcohol Concern Cymru.
Hope some prospective employers have taken time to google Don Shenker, the first three hits are rather interesting:

 

Fido will no doubt have something to say on his Shenker site here 

H/T to Dick Puddlecote who broke the news via FB this morning 

Treherbert, the home of Welsh Vodka?

Well this story from the BBC has certainly put Treherbert on the map. Someone who invented paper from sheep shit has blown his house up attempting to distil alcohol.
 Packed full of inaccurate reporting from the start, the hapless BBC reporter and Police spokesperson both seem a little confused as to what caused the explosion and the legalities involved.
NB - if the inventor was making vodka he was more than likely to be distilling alcohol, rather than just brewing it.
Brewing is relatively safe - the danger arises when you concentrate the alcohol by distillation - which is illegal, even if it is for personal consumption. The law is more concerned with avoidance of alcohol duty than the safety of distilling. And there is the problem which the BBC have overlooked - why was someone distilling alcohol in their home? Was it anything to do with the high rates of duty we have in the United Kingdom? Governments forcing up prices will not stop people from drinking, it will however drive them to underground methods such as using stills to get their fix. Something that the taxpayer-funded fake charity Alcohol Concern and their boss Dong Shaker fail to see in their calls to Government for more tax on alcohol.
Daily Mail have the story here  and the reporter is intelligent enough to know the difference between distilling and brewing.
Leg-iron also has his take on the story
The inventor should have stuck to making paper from sheep shit. Let's hope he wasn't making his vodka from the same stuff!

Its ban time again!

Over to the Daily Mail who have set themselves up to be used as the mouthpiece of fake charity Alcohol Concern.

'Alcohol companies accused of exploiting Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by 'targeting young people with drink campaigns'

So which alcohol companies are doing this?

Well none if you read the article, however the bansturbators and prohibitionists at fake charity Alcohol Concern are worried that kiddies may be attracted to drink via promotions on social media.

The charity Alcohol Concern claims drinks companies’ web pages ‘appeal to minors’ with games, competitions and videos of drink-fuelled parties.

It also criticised the use of online and ‘viral’ marketing. This is where a brand message from a company may be passed on by users of a network such as Twitter or through texting – and may eventually reach an under-age user. 

Okay you can find just about anything you want online and I'm pretty sure these kids could have seen everything from the Anarchist's Cookbook to hard-core porn, yet the bansturbators want to prevent the legitimate use of the internet as an advertising tool by drinks companies.

An apologist for the fake charity Alcohol Concern is quoted as saying

'There’s a real danger of children and young people being exposed to alcohol marketing on such sites, particularly given that age verification mechanisms are largely ineffective'

The bansturbator is not mentioned but its probably Don Shenker or one of his acolytes. The problem is if you start banning alcohol on social media sites just because children may see it, where do you stop? 

Banning pub signs and names over the doors in case the children may see it? 

Banning alcohol from supermarket shelves in case a child may grasp it?

The problem is not with the advertising of alcohol but with fake charities such as Alcohol Concern and their bastard offspring Alcohol Concern Cymru being funded by the taxpayer to make attacks on an industry that is enjoyed by millions of people.

First they came for the smokers

Now they are coming for the drinkers

Welsh Assembly wastes money on fake charity

Fake charity Alcohol Concern have been splashing out on a new website with taxpayers money, this time from the Welsh Assembly who kindly gave them £250,000 last year to interfere in our lives.
The new bilingual campaign, entitled Drinkwise Wales features lots of interactive sections with the 'How Much Do You Drink' bit firmly on the front page. My answer is of course - "None of your bloody business you Nanny State Stasi employees so why don't you get the hell out of my life and stop trying to tell all of us how to run our lives". Unfortunately there is no section to put that in. Also only wine, lager, canned beer, whiskey and alcopops are mentioned on the page, leaving us real ale and cider drinkers alone. Come on now Alcohol Concern, if you are going to be preaching to the masses on how to run their lives, surely you need to be preaching to all of them?

Perhaps the worst bit of Nanny State pandering on this site is the reaction game at which you must be the farmer catching eggs from his chicken. No I'm not kidding and this pile of shit is payed for by us the taxpayer!

Nearly forgot to mention that this taxpayer-funded site is offering a competition to win £100 worth of Amazon vouchers. All you have to do is answer a few questions and give them your name, address and email address so that this fake charity can put you on their database. If you have the number on your personal ID drink entitlement card that would also be useful.

Anyway that's the Saturday rant over and I've not even read the Daily Mail yet, still if you want more on the puritanical neo-prohibitionists Alcohol Concern and their boss Don Shenker I suggest you head over to see Fido at the Don Shenker is a Chump site. NB the word 'chump' is used in the similar way that Peter the Pedarist used it earlier this year.

Don Shenker is a Chump

Both Pub Curmedgeon and Dick Puddlecote have picked up on this excellent blog, written by Brew Wales' drinking buddy Fido and entitled Don Shenker is a Chump. Well its not actually called that but I'm sure Fido meant those words. Okay possibly not, but if Mandelson can attempt to get away with it.......
Here at Brew Wales we are no fans of the Government-funded Fake Charity Alcohol Concern or of its boss, Don Shenker. In fact a Brew Wales article appears on the Don Shenker is a Chump blog.

To quote from the blog:
"Head of a fake charity, Don sees his role as blowing booze into a media problem. A scaremonger who claims that a tipple or two turns us into mad beasts that need control. Then booze can give us cancer, reduces our immune system leads to all of societies ills. Unelected, a puritan who is given your tax money to put across his pet message. Don needs to be stopped".

Digging around in his background, it appears that the fake charity boss spent some time in Wales, as he did his degree at the Trefforest Miners Institute (1987-1990), now the University of Glamorgan.
Brew Wales cannot help but think if he spent more time researching in the 'O Block' his puritanical anti-pub views would not be so strong as they are today.

Welsh Assembly to help pubs

Today in the Welsh Assembly the first formal meeting of the Cross-Party Welsh Assembly Beer and Pub Group takes place. An informal meeting was held earlier in the year to gauge support for the pub and drinks industry in the Assembly and the subjects for discussion today include tax and regulation to the beer tie and responsible retailing. Other subjects on the agenda include career paths in the pub sector, responsible selling of alcohol and the plans in Scotland, and promoting locally-sourced produce.

All 60 Welsh Assembly Members have been invited to the meeting. Speakers will include Enterprise licensee Phil Jones of Fair Pint, who secured a temporary 38% rent cut after a long-running dispute. He’ll discuss “the pros and cons of pubcos”.

Justin Grant, of the Breconshire Brewery, who chairs the Association of Welsh Independent Brewers, is due at the meeting, alongside representatives of larger brewers SABMiller, SA Brains and Coors.

The British Beer & Pub Association and Fake Charity Alcohol Concern are also due to attend. Alcohol Concern have a vested interest in appearing as according to 2007/8 figures 57% of their income came from the taxpayer. No doubt Don Shenker, Chief Executive of the Government-funded fake charity will be trying to get some funding from the Welsh Assembly Government at the meeting today for his new fake charity, Alcohol Concern Cymru.
Some information regarding the fake charity Alcohol Concern:
"Alcohol Concern supports banning happy hour, raising the price of alcohol, lowering the drink drive limit, banning glass bottles in pubs, warning labels on cans and bottles and banning TV advertising before 9pm. It described the ban on happy hour promotions as "a step in the right direction" and the introduction of cigarette-style warning labels on bottles as "a very good first step".
Basically they epitomise the nanny state along with everything that is wrong about this country today and would not exist if their Government-funding dried up.

Nine AMs are currently members of the Cross-Party Welsh Assembly Beer and Pub Group, which was formed in June. It is chaired jointly by Nicholas Bourne, leader of Welsh Conservatives in the National Assembly, and Labour AM Jeff Cuthbert.


Below: Welsh Assembly members Jeff Cuthbert and Nick Bourne met earlier this year with CAMRA members, brewers and some skinhead wearing a Felinfoel Brewery tie

From Brew Wales

Independent criticises Champion Beer of Wales winner

Failing dead tree press member, 'The Independent' has criticised the current Champion Beer of Wales, Otley O8, for encouraging binge drinking and calling it an 'extreme beer'. Brew Dog Brewery was also criticised, along with Dark Star and Thornbridge Breweries . The full article can be read here
Now events this week have proved that the national newspapers take their orders and even articles from the Government, so was this anti-beer post instigated by the teetotal one-eyed Prime Mentalist whose policies are closing 39 pubs a week? Or by one of his lackies in the Downing Street Bunker?
A quote from the fake charity Alcohol Concern, who are funded by the Government, is also included in the biased "Independent" article.
Last paragraph from the Indy was given over to common sense:

BrewDog's head brewer, Martin Dickie, denied encouraging irresponsible drinking, pointing out that some of his bottles cost £4 each. "There's no way someone can drink 20 a night. It's probably the least economic way of buying alcohol. You can get a bottle of vodka for £5."

His products were meant to be enjoyed by friends in their own homes, he added. "You can sit down with two or three friends and open two or three bottles. It's much more relaxed and you are able to savour the beer."

Pete Brown takes the article apart in an excellent rebuttal here