The Bar Towel

On 2004-02-02 23:45, Rob Creighton wrote:
They just don't get it and certainly have no place with anyone on a legitimate open forum of opinion. Their lack of vision matches their editorial position.

Ah, the sweet sound of the bigoted decrying others of being bigoted...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mississauga Matt on 2004-02-03 07:47 ]</font>

I regard the National Post as a very average broadsheet newspaper. And obviously, when reading it, you have to bear in mind that its editorial team is slightly to the right of Ghenghis Kahn.

And I'm slightly to the right of them so its getting hard to see the centre from here.

I doubt highly that a discussion of the relative merits of newspapers is either relevant to, or indeed resolvable in, this debate.

That said, Canada has long since lacked a real newspaper at all. The Times of London has (sometimes) good editorials, but even they are getting a bit trashy. The New York Times has very good writing, but ... well, we all know the problems with the New York Times.

The sad fact is that newspapers are *all* as bad as one another - biased, lazy, and unreliable. They exist to sell ads and try not to challenge thier readers too much.

I only read them for local news updates and sports.

For real, accurate information about the world, the web is really the only place to go. Try somewhere like http://www.agonist.org for a good starting point.

On 2004-02-03 16:33, DukeOfYork wrote:
I doubt highly that a discussion of the relative merits of newspapers is either relevant to, or indeed resolvable in, this debate.

No, but it's quite fun.

That said, Canada has long since lacked a real newspaper at all.

I agree entirely.

The Times of London has (sometimes) good editorials, but even they are getting a bit trashy.

The Times of London is just another Murdoch rag nowadays. I quite enjoy reading it once in a while, but it is on par with The Sun (UK) in terms of its agenda and viewpoint.

Currently Murdoch is very happily enjoying villifying the BBC after the Hutton-whitewash to pursue his own obvious goal of having a FoxNews/CNN style mainstream newsmedia prevalent in the UK much like the US and Australia. (In which case, I will switch to primarily reading Reuters newsfeeds.)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: borderline_alcoholic on 2004-02-03 18:30 ]</font>

New York Times reporter Jason Blair fabricated and plagiarized stories for some time before being caught. It is thought that this was allowed to happen due to an appalling lack of vigilance on the part of the Times editorial staff, two of whom resigned once the scandal broke, presumably in order to preserve the reputation of the Times.

Similarly BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan lied about the British government “sexing up” intelligence on Iraq’s WMD’s.

Gilligan would later hilariously declare “most of my story was right.” Lofty journalistic standards, those.

During the maelstrom created by his allegations, BBC editor-in-chief Greg Dyke unconditionally defended Gilligan’s position without having read Gilligan’s transcripts. This can only be attributed to a lack of vigilance on Dyke’s part, or, as some allege, to a tolerance for Gilligan’s lies because they fit the general outlook (i.e. bias) of Dyke and that of the Beeb.

The scope of the Hutton Inquiry was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly. The findings are hardly a whitewash. Gilligan lied – slandered Blair, actually - the Beeb backed him up on the lies, and end result is that those who hate Blair are going to have to look elsewhere for their chance to bring him down. I’m sure they’re getting right on it.

I had a St-Ambroise Noire and a Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre today, just to keep this in some remote way beer-related.

This is going to take things more off topic further than anything else I have seen on this board, but c'est la vie.

The full set of transcripts of evidence gathered as part of the Hutton inquiry are available on his own website for you to peruse (and it does make interesting, if extensive, reading):

http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/

There is *nothing* whatsoever stating that Blair did not sex up his documents, and the UK-government-agreed-fact that they provided a 12-years old post-graduate student's paper with words changed to "terrorist" rather than "dissident" and "may possess" wmd to "do possess" wmd suggests (IMHO irrefutably) that the UK government absolutely did "sex up" documents in the build up to war. That is within the evidence in the Hutton Inquiry and nobody has yet refuted it (and I would be greatly surprised if they did now). It was his unease at these changes which led David Kelly to approach the BBC, something which he has apparently no history of doing.

The remit of the Hutton Inquiry was to look into David Kelly's suicide and not to consider the reasons for war anyway, I hasten to point out.

It is very clear that Mr. Gilligan made mistakes. He very clearly has attributed some of his own inferences to Kelly, you can call that lying if you want. It was at best an error on his part and the BBC retracted those statements, as the Hutton inquiry does point out. I am also fairly happy to see Gilligan resign over that, as it does maintain the integrity of the organisation. Greg Dyke's resignation was less called for - but it is interesting that a guy appointed by Blair with extremely close links to the labour party found fault with and was in turn screwed over by his former allies, which gives some indication of the sort of government in place within Britain at the moment.

It is also important to consider Hutton's background. He is from the protestant esatablishment within Northern Ireland, with whom it is not an uncommon traditional viewpoint that the British government should be quietly left to get on with whatever "has to be done" (and by this I am largely alluding to religious genocide) and such annoying people as the press merely serve to get in the way with their negative reporting on institutions pursuing a "final solution". These are views that I am all to familiar with, and would rather not see being accepted.

And it is standard within UK governments that you *never* launch an inquiry unless you already know the results, and a major part of achieving that is in choosing the right chap to carry it out. British judges cannot be coerced, so you pick one who does not need to be. The sad thing for Blair et al, is that they picked a bit too well and for them to come off this blameless looks far worse than some basic amount of blame would have. Clearly Blair has been positioning Jeff "Buff-" Hoon as the potential fall guy for sometime (even to the extent of keeping him in government over issues where his resignation would typically be expected - such as the incident with a soldier who died from a friendly fire incident which he would have survived had he not had his armour taken away and given to our infantry due to government penny-pinching, and similar criticism from Black-Watch that they had no anti-Biological warfare equipment, which given that they were being sent in to fight a war against a force which we believed was equipped with Biological weapons is pretty horrifying) so this is a bit of a PR disaster for them all.

And it is also the government's responsibility to protect their scientific advisors - something which they absolutely did not do in the case of David Kelly IMHO. He seems to have been thrown to the wolves in the investigations into Gilligan's report and revealed as an unreliable link in the chain to both MI5 and MI6, who have a slightly negative anecdotal history with regard to their handling of moles. You can primarily blame either the BBC or the government for his naming, but to say that one is blameless flies in the face of the British government's responsibilites.

Furthermore, upon being named, the current UK government described Kelly as being a junior scientist in the intelligence community. It was only later after much further pressure that they admitted that he was Britain's top expert in the field of WMD. Not really the sort of person that I feel especially comfortable finding to be ill at ease with the nature of what is being told to the public with regard to Iraq's weapons capabilities, your mileage may vary.

And yes, if you read through Hutton's publicly-available evidence and then consider his conclusions, I personally think that it cannot defensibly be called anything other than a white-wash.

I also believe that this whole incident may well have cost the current British government their re-election, which is quite impressive given that they even still do not really have a credible opposition in place...

You may come to the conclusion that I do not much like Blair and his cronies...

Oh, and I drank a Brussels White, an Adnams SSB, a Nice Chouffe, a Propeller ESB, a Jacobite Ale, a Black Oak Nutcracker and a Black Oak Nut Brown Ale (to continue to remain relevant to the forum).

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: borderline_alcoholic on 2004-02-04 03:07 ]</font>

I attended to Carleton University's School of Journalism back in 1977. I switched majors mid-second year because I was tired of being told I was not objective enough to be a journalist. Judging by the state of todays newspapers, which are simply opinionpapers, I might have fit right in afterall!

After reading borderline's long, extremely well-informed and articulate addition to this tangential string, I am: 1.very impressed; and 2.completely at a loss to explain how we got to this point without reading over the previous 6 or 7 pages of posts.

Thanks for the astute reading of the press and your analysis, regardless of it relevance to beerbistro. (Sorry, Steven. We'll get back to your new bar,...at some point...undoubtedly.)

Firstly, Hutton Inquiry -- whitewash.

Secondly, papers I read -- G&M, Star, [UK]Independent.

Thirdly, beers this week -- Orval, Black Oak Pale Ale, and some selections from the Belgian gift packs that I got at Christmas. (Mmmmm, Dragon d'orrrr....!)

Lastly, personally I thought Richler's review really unfortunate. He did not seem to want to see either the food or the beer in the context of pairings as they were intended. He instead seems to have chosen the tack that Joanne Cates of the G&M often takes in her reviews: all staff are glib and lazy, the writer wants service-service-service, isn't the décor pretty(?), i.e. developing a truculent and surly persona. Everything *but* the food and drink, it seems.

And if a writer or reviewer develops a professional reputation for petulence and childishness, then they become the sort of writer that people come back to read in order to dismiss. It's really about developing a profile as a controversial and glib reviewer, about provocation rather than being thought-provoking. And both Richler and Cates write this style of review regardless of whether their articles are performing complete disservices to the establishments they are ostensibly reviewing.

Unfortunately neither Richler nor Cates can write. So they just come across as shrill. (For a pleasant contrast, see the well-written but bitchy film reviews in any Friday's G&M. I can't remember the names of the reviewers.)

Of course I don't own a new restaurant so I have the option of taking jackasses like Richler (a whole generation of whose family has found jobs through nepotism) as I find them. I just hope it doesn't hurt beerbistro's prospects. I like the place, and am going there tonight for the beer tasting.

See you there,

Uncle Bobby


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Uncle Bobby on 2004-02-05 09:18 ]</font>

I'll be there too, Uncle Bobby. Please introduce yourself.

And to everyone else, thanks for the show of support, and the interesting debate on the merits of various newspapers. For the record, I subscribe to the Globe, the Star and the Sunday NY Times; had Orval and Anchor Steam last night; and am looking forward to watching Jake Richler eat his ill-chosen words when beerbistro becomes the resounding success it is certain to be.

On 2004-02-04 13:26, Uncle Bobby wrote:
After reading borderline's long, extremely well-informed and articulate addition to this tangential string, I am: 1.very impressed; and 2.completely at a loss to explain how we got to this point without reading over the previous 6 or 7 pages of posts.

Thanks for the astute reading of the press and your analysis, regardless of it relevance to beerbistro.

Thank you for your kind words.

Normal service with regard to Beer Bistro related postings will be resumed shortly...

I had two excellent meals, served very nicely to boot, at beerbistro, and I look forward to returning as soon as possible. As I said to Steve Beaumont recently, these newspaper reviews often become a kind of alternate world where the real-life experience of dining, supping and socializing seems lost in all the verbalising, posturing, and "writerliness" of the restaurant review exercise. I believe with Steve beerbistro will become a great success and indeed that that will be the best riposte to these writers of the press. They were confident in their opinions but in my view they demonstrated little understanding of the background of beer cookery and its evolution in the last 25 years. It was that lack of context that I found most objectionable in their reviews. I had other issues as well but all of these were brought out well by other posters earlier in this thread.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: old faithful on 2004-02-08 09:14 ]</font>

I'll be down on Thursday before my train ... I hope to sample the food this time. When do you guys open, now?

beerbistro is open and serving food six days a week now, Duke, from 11:00 am onward.